Negative concord in Alemannic

The article focuses on variation in negative concord (NC) between and within the grammars of speakers of Alemannic. Based on a broad data set, partial grammars from individuals are extracted, and four different systems are attested: Grammar 1 with obligatory negative spread (N-spread), Grammar 2 with optional negative doubling (N-doubling), Grammar 3 with N-spread and N-doubling, and Grammar 4 without NC. My proposal in the framework of Optimality Theory (OT) is based upon two assumptions: the generation of syntactic structures is unmarked in comparison to the generation of morphological structures (cf. Ackema & Neeleman 2001; Vogel 2006); weak indefinites and negative indefinites (n-indefinites) are not different lexemes, but only allomorphs (cf. Weiß 2002a).

• Affiliations: 1: LMU Munich