De Lisser and Durleman’s first chapter focuses on Bickerton’s hypotheses about language acquisition. Whether articulated in terms of the Language Bioprogram or in terms of default parameter settings of Universal Grammar (1981, 1984, 1999, 2014, 2016), the hypotheses predict that prototypical Creole features will emerge in early stages of child productions. This view thus leads them to expect target-inconsistent utterances during the acquisition of non-Creole languages where such features are not present, and target-consistent utterances in the acquisition of Creole languages. The investigation tests the second of these predictions for negation via an eighteen-month longitudinal study of the spontaneous production of six Jamaican-speaking children between the ages of 18 and 23 months at the start of the research. The findings reveal an absence of target-inconsistent options for the expression of negation, suggesting that children acquiring Jamaican are knowledgeable of the rules governing negation from their earliest negative utterances, be they sentential, constituent or anaphoric. Taken together, these findings suggest that the acquisition of negation in Jamaican follows Bickerton’s predictions, which are also in line with the more general claim that Negative Concord (NC) is a default choice explored in early stages of child grammar regardless of the target (Moscatti 2020; Thornton 2020).

O’Grady’s chapter discusses a recurring theme in Derek Bickerton’s work on creoles which focused on his observation, now somewhat controversial, that their morphosyntactic properties are surprisingly similar, which he attributed to a ‘language bioprogram’ bearing a close resemblance to Universal Grammar. O’Grady’s chapter explores a different line of reasoning by considering the role that processing pressures play in the syntax of creoles – and of human language in general. Drawing on data from anaphora and negation, both of which are well-documented core syntactic phenomena in natural language, he argues that their signature properties are shaped by considerations of computational efficiency and economy that can be traced to the need to minimize the burden on working memory.

Déprez’s chapter argues that Derek Bickerton was amongst the first linguists to propose a list of properties hypothesised to be common to all creole languages in his groundbreaking Roots of Language (1981). While this list of properties has sometimes inspired research promoting creole languages as unique, Déprez argues that Bickerton’s original view should better be understood as a claim that these properties were possibly universal properties of language at least abstractly and as such instantiated the roots of all languages, not just creole ones. In her contribution she revisits and reassesses Bickerton’s observations about the generality of negative concord as a common property of creole languages and beyond, sorting out what remains of his legacy in this domain from what has been discovered since then about the nature of negation and negative dependencies in creole languages. She bases herself more specifically on a detailed comparison of the French-based creoles but appeals as well to other ones to confirm patterns discovered there or complete them with additional possibilities.

This chapter presents an up-to-date overview of what we know about contemporary grammatical variation in England, drawing on a range of sources such as traditional and variationist dialectological investigations, as well as those using new technologies such as smartphone apps and Twitter feeds. It begins with an assessment of how common the use of non-standard morphosyntax is vis à vis Standard English, before presenting a well-cited list of the most widespread features that are claimed to be found right across the country. The chapter then describes contemporary non-standard grammatical variation in England, examining, in turn: verbs, negation, adverbs, prepositions, plural marking, pronouns, comparison forms, articles and conjunctions. Beyond an account of contemporary morphosyntactic variability, this survey also helps us to locate those linguistic features and those geographical areas about which we hold very little up-to-date information, and, in the light of reports of widespread traditional dialect levelling, points to those non-standard features whose vitality appears to be precarious.

This chapter discusses null-subject clauses, those that do not have the subject in the nominative case. Viewing Slavic languages in their totality, there is a range of null subjects from grammatically obligatory to optional (the presence of the subject signifies emphasis or juxtaposition) to pragmatically motivated. If we view the pro-drop feature as a continuum, as suggested by Pešková, from pro-drop in West Slavic and South Slavic to partially pro-drop in East Slavic (more so in Ukrainian, less so in Russian), then we could correlate a construction of the type (i) Uk. Hru-ACC zakinčeno-ppl ‘Game over (finished)’ with the pro-drop languages, and a construction of the type (d) Rus.-Uk. Udarilo-pastNEU gromom-INSTR ‘Hit by lightning (thunder)’ with partially pro-drop languages. In addition, Russian has a propensity to form infinitive constructions that are absent in other languages.

This chapter gives an overview of phenomena connected to polarity, especially negation, in Slavic languages. The formation of negation in Slavic is rather uniform across languages and historically relatively stable. Further, the chapter discusses the distribution of linguistic expressions connected to different environments involving polarity. The latter includes negative concord and polarity items with a major focus on different series of indefinites. These environments for indefinites are discussed: (i) specific (known to the speaker), (ii) specific (unknown to the speaker), (iii) non-specific (irrealis), (iv) polar question, (v) conditional protasis, (vi) indirect negations, (vii) direct negation, (viii) standard of comparison, and (ix) free choice. Additional negative polarity items are presented, such as scalar particles. Lastly, the chapter treats case alternations in the scope of sentential negation (genitive of negation), which is a feature inherited from Common Slavic, but not present in all modern Slavic languages. The genitive of negation exhibits differing properties in those languages which preserved it.

Gestures associated with negation have become a well-defined area for gesture studies research. The chapter offers an overview of this area, identifies distinct empirical lines of enquiry, and highlights their contribution to aspects of linguistic and embodiment theory. After relating a surge of interest in this topic to the notion of recurrent gestures (but not restricted to it), the chapter offers a visualization of the widespread geographical coverage of studies of gestures associated with negation, then distils a set of common observations concerning the form, organizational properties, and functions of such gestures. This area of research is then further thematized by exploring distinct chains of studies that have adopted linguistic, cognitive-semantic, functional, psycholinguistic, comparative, and cultural perspectives to analyze the gestural expression of negation. Studies of gestures associated with negation are shown to have played a vital role in shaping understandings of the multimodality of grammar, the embodiment of cognition, and the relations between gestures and sign.

Gestures of the face have a relatively limited presence in scholarly gesture discourses. The use of facial movements as intentional communication has been historically undermined in facial behavior research. The face has been primarily studied as expressions of emotion, traditionally theorized as involuntary signs of internal affective states. Emotion expressions are differentiated from facial movements that serve conversational functions in face-to-face dialogue. The facial gestures presented in this chapter illustrate the flexibility and diversity of meanings conveyed by facial communicative actions. Gestures can refer to affective events not present in the immediate here and now, communicate understanding of another individual’s affective experience, and convey information about a target referent. Other facial gestures have counterparts in hand gestures with similar pragmatic and semantic functions. The study of facial gestural components of linguistic communicative events is important to the construction of a comprehensive model of language.

In this chapter, negation and disjunction are integrated into the semantics developed in Chapters 7 and 8. Here, the semantics of negation is given in terms of an incompatibility relation between theories. A corresponding incompatibility relation is added to the formal language, and a more intuitive and conceptually satisfying set of rules for negation are added to the natural deduction system.

Chapter 7 discusses affirmation, negation, yes/no (polar) questions, and answers in European and Brazilian Portuguese, paying special attention to the way in which each variety grammatically encodes these locutions in non-neutral contexts.

Chapter 8 treats Ivan Turgenev’s influential portrait of a nihilist in his character Bazarov from the novel Fathers and Sons. Turgenev portrays the rise of nihilism as a conflict between the older and the younger generation in Russia that took place after the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. With his character sketch of Bazarov, Turgenev made the Russian nihilist movement famous throughout Europe. The story tells of the homecoming of the young Arkady Kirsanov who brings with him his friend from the university, Bazarov. The novel depicts the conflicts that arise when the two young men stay at the rural estate of Arkady’s father. Bazarov claims that nihilism is about negation, and his goal is to destroy everything and start again. When asked what his positive program is for afterwards, he surprisingly says that he does not have one. While Turgenev generally gives a sympathetic sketch of Bazarov, he cannot subscribe to his ideas. Like Jean Paul and Møller, he believes it is impossible to accept the idea that death is annihilation. His model is rather Bazarov’s simple grieving parents, who believe in something higher than death.

Negative systems have historically undergone several major changes that were caused by the overall properties of the grammatical system in particular periods. The functions of negatives in any period had to be consonant with the predicate structure, especially the structure of verbal predicates. This chapter addresses the developments of negatives that are most relevant to the establishment of the negative system of Contemporary Chinese rather than exhaustively surveying all negatives in history.

Stage 4 of the journey follows with an example of how implementation of a formal metalanguage helps with, but also hinders, the analysis of meaning of natural-language expressions. In particular, it addresses operations on sentences and introduces the connectives of propositional logic, assessing the degree of fit between them and their natural-language counterparts. In the process, it addesses the question of ambiguity and/or underspecification of the latter and concludes with some ‘food for thought’ on the usefulness of a formal semantic analysis.

This unit introduces students to the perfect tense, along with the associated regular and common irregular past participles. This tense allows students to converse about what they and others have done in the recent past and whether an action has been completed or not. It provides more practice on the use of direct and indirect pronouns when presented together and in combination with reflexive verbs. Furthermore, pronoun collocation in English and Spanish is contrasted, as are the ways in which English and Spanish deal with complex negative statements. Relevant expressions of frequency are provided.

This unit introduces students to the perfect tense, along with the associated regular and common irregular past participles. This tense allows students to converse about what they and others have done in the recent past and whether an action has been completed or not. It provides more practice on the use of direct and indirect pronouns when presented together and in combination with reflexive verbs. Furthermore, pronoun collocation in English and Spanish is contrasted, as are the ways in which English and Spanish deal with complex negative statements. Relevant expressions of frequency are provided.

This unit introduces students to the elemental greetings in Spanish, to nationalities and professions, enabling them to be able to give basic information about themselves and ask other people for the same. They are also introduced to subject pronouns and the present tense of ser and of reflexive verbs.