Högre seminarium: Giacomo Bucci

The genitive of negation (GenNeg) is a typologically rare morpho-syntactic phenomenon whereby the direct object of a transitive verb and the subject of an intransitive existential verb receive the genitive case exclusively under negation. Recent investigations (Bucci 2020) showed that traces of GenNeg can be found also in the Gothic Bible (text attested from the 6th), as well as in other Early Germanic languages (7th – 11th  c. CE), such as Old High/Low German, Old Low Franconian, and Old English. At the end of this first phase, a new type of GenNeg emerged in Germanic as a by-product of the so-called “Jespersen’s Cycle”, in (at least) two mediaeval Germanic languages, namely Old Norse-Icelandic and Middle High German. The re-emergence of GenNeg in the two Germanic languages differs considerably in the type of constructions in which it appears and the type of constraints it is subjected to. By revisiting the interplay between the postverbal negator (emerged via Jespersen’s Cycle) and its genitive complement, this paper aims to show the processes that led to these divergent results in the two genetically-related languages, as well as to provide new data regarding the existence of this (generally overlooked) phenomenon in the history of the Germanic languages.