An optimality theoretic approach to variation in negative inversion in AAVE

Examples like ‘Can't nobody beat 'em.’ (‘Nobody can beat them.’) in African-American Vernacular English (aave) have the inverted form of questions but the falling intonation and sentence meaning of (emphatic) declaratives. Labov et al. (1968) concluded that this phenomenon of ‘negative inversion’ (ni) requires two overlapping but distinct syntactic analyses. Recasting them in current terms, these proposals are Aux-to-Comp movement, as in subject-auxiliary inversion in interrogatives, and a non-movement structure containing a null expletive subject. Two explanatory problems arise with the view that Labove et al. present: (i) why the single phenomenon of ni should find its expression in two distinct structures and (ii) why this inversion phenomenon is restricted to negative sentences.Using ideas from Optimality Theory, we develop a syntactic account of the ni data that also directly addresses problems (i) and (ii). We show that the relevant aspects of the syntax of aave and Standard English (se) can be accounted for in terms of the different rankings of three relevant constraints. The account is driven in part by consideration of an apparent change since the 1960's in the acceptability of ni examples in embedded clauses.Some problems which our research raises, but does not fully resolve, include a complete analysis of the function of ni structures, the explanation for the quantitative favoring of inverted over non-inverted structures, and the extent to which negative inversion in aave has changed since the 1960's, in particular whether it has become closer to similar structures found in se.