Jespersen's cycle is a series of processes in the historical development of the expression of negation in a variety of languages, from a simple pre-verbal marker of negation, to a discontinuous marker (elements both before and after the verb) and in some cases to subsequent loss of the original pre-verbal marker. The pattern was formulated in Otto Jespersen's 1917 book Negation in English and Other Languages, and named after him in 1979.
Jespersen's cycle is a series of processes in the historical development of the expression of negation in a variety of languages, from a simple pre-verbal marker of negation, to a discontinuous marker (elements both before and after the verb) and in some cases to subsequent loss of the original pre-verbal marker. The pattern was formulated in Otto Jespersen's 1917 book Negation in English and Other Languages, and named after him in 1979.
Source: Wikipedia "Jespersen's cycle" · CC BY-SA 4.0
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