Pas rien / Pas aucun en français classique : variation dialectale et historique

France Martineau & Viviane Déprez : Pas rien/Pas aucun en français classique : variation dialectale et historique We examine the relation between ne... pas rien and ne... pas aucun in I7th and I 8th centuries French negative contexts, in Standard French but also in vernacular French. We make the hypothesis that the source of negative concord with pas + Neg Word is not linked to the deletion of ne and the weakening of pas but is rather triggered by changes which affected the value of the negative word itself. We argue that, as in forclusive contexts, the Neg word is analyzed as an polarity item in the context ne... pas rien/aucun. This polarity reading in that context disappears during Classical Standard French with the fixation of the two-terms negation (ne... N-word) and the reanalysis of rien as an negative adverb. However.the polarity item reading has been maintained in vernacular French for rien and aucun, more particularly in contexts where the polarity item is modified.Martineau France, Deprez Viviane. Pas rien / Pas aucun en français classique : variation dialectale et historique. In: Langue française, n°143, 2004. La négation en français classique, sous la direction de Claire Badiou-Monferran. pp. 33-47