The loss of the negative morpheme ne in Parisian French

Abstract

Data from a corpus of upper-middle class Parisian French demonstrate that the omission of the negative morpheme ne in negative structures is most frequent among certain demographic segments of the population. This finding, together with historical evidence, suggests that the optional deletion of the negative morpheme ne represents a continuing linguistic change, presaging the eventual total loss of ne – or ‘old not’. This change is most advanced in certain syntactic and phonetic contexts and in informal style.