Multiple Negation in Asian Englishes: A Corpus-Based Analysis

Multiple negation is a linguistic structure that entails the coexistence of two or more negative polarity items within the same clause (e.g., She does not have nothing) to create an emphatic meaning. Although the occurrence of this linguistic variant has been traditionally proscribed and restricted to the non-standard dialects of British and the United States English (Huddleston and Pullum 2002, 846), the impact of these exonormative varieties has contributed to its spread across non-native varieties of English (Collins 2023, 66), where it is starting to be analysed from a sociolinguistic and morphosyntactic point of view. To contribute to the existing literature on the matter, this paper aims to explore the sociolinguistic constraints that may have conditioned the presence of multiple negation in Asian Englishes. We have conducted a corpus-based study comparing the occurrence of this linguistic variant across the forementioned native varieties, and the following non-native varieties: Bangladeshi, Indian, Malaysian, Pakistani, Singaporean, Sri Lankan, and The Philippines Englishes, as represented in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English. Overall, the Philippines and Singaporean Englishes show the highest frequencies of multiple negation due to the globalization of Present-day English and the morphosyntactic innovations of computer-mediated language. Nonetheless, the other Asian varieties present much lower frequencies, accounted for by the influence of British prescriptivism and their contact with their linguistic landscape.