Negation in Romance languages : A micro-typological study on negation

Languages that are genealogically or areally related often exhibit similar typological features due to their affinity. Large scale typological studies aiming to explain universal patterns and structural variation tend to exclude data from genealogical and areally related languages not to compromise the validity of the results. This typological study investigates the micro- and the macro-typological relation by examining negation features as well as word order of negative markers in relation to the verb in a number of genealogically and areally related Romance languages. The hypothesis is that the selected languages, despite their close relatedness, will exhibit a high degree of variation in regards to negation features. Most likely, not all of the non-standard languages will exhibit the same negation features as their standard language. The results show no correlation between genealogical relatedness and negation features. Moreover, they show that standardization has no demonstrable effect on the negation constructions employed by non-standard languages and that language contact is relevant in regards to the position of the negative marker and a language's position in Jespersen's cycle. The results support the theory that the diachronic evolution of negation is governed by a language's need to emphasize negation