Chapter 1 Introduction
1．1 General Statements
1．2 Literature Review
1．2．1 Generative and Functional Perspectives
1．2．2 Jespersen's Negative Cycle
1．3 Theoretical Background
1．3．1 The Cognitive Prominence Principle
1．3．2 Other Theoretical Rules in Negation
1．4 Typological Checking
1．4．1 Negative Cycle in Germanic Languages
1．4．2 Negative Cycle in Romance Languages
1．5 Organization of the Study

Chapter 2 Negation in Old English and Early Middle English
2．1 Types of Negation．
2．1．1 Negative Concord and Single Negator
2．1．2 Sentence Negation and Constituent Negation
2．1．3 Negative Polarity Items
2．1．4 Negative Coordination
2．1．5 Contrastive Negation
2．1．6 Negation in Complementation
2．1．7 Expletive Negation
2．1．8 Affixal Negation
2．2 Rules of Negation
2．2．1 Negative Incorporation
2．2．2 Negative Attraction
2．2．3 Negative Raising
2．3 Theoretical Explanation
2．3．1 Negation Is Prominent
2．3．2 Reinforcement of the Negator Ne
2．4 Diversities of Negative Forms
2．4．1 Texts， Gemes and Latin Influence
2．4．2 Variation in Old English Syntax
2．5 Summary

Chapter 3 Negation in Late Middle English and Early Modern English
3．1 Major Syntactic Changes
3．1．1 Ne．．．Not Collocation
3．1．2 Loss of Ne and Negative Concord
3．1．3 The Grammaticalization of Not
3．1．4 The Grammaticalization of Do
3．2 Types and Rules of Negation
3．2．1 Negative Polarity Items
3．2．2 Negative Coordination
3．2．3 Constituent Negation
3．2．4 Expletive Negation
3．2．5 Affixal Negation
3．2．6 Negative Attraction
3．2．7 Negative Raising
3．2．8 Negative Inversion
3．3 Theoretical Explanation
3．3．1 Forward Shifting of Negators
3．3．2 Prominence and Forward Shifting of Negators
3．4 Diversities of Genres， Texts and Manuscripts
3．5 Summary

Chapter 4 Negation in Late Modern English and Present-Day English
4．1 Negation in Late Modern English
4．1．1 Double Negation
4．1．2 Negative Raising
4．1．3 The Cliticization of Not
4．2 Negation in Present-Day English
4．2．1 Sentence Negation and Constiment Negation
4．2．2 Negative Polarity Items
4．2．3 Negative Coordination
4．2．4 The Cliticization of Not
4．2．5 Negative Inversion
4．2．6 Negation and Modality
4．2．7 Emphatic Negation
4．2．8 Affixal Negation
4．3 Learnability of Negation
4．3．1 Negation in First Language Acquisition
4．3．2 The Acquisition of Negation in Second Language Learners
4．3．3 The Acquisition of Negation in Chinese Learners
4．4 Summary

Chapter 5 Conclusion
5．1 Major mdings
5．2 Models of Language Change
5．3 Limitations and Implications

Appendix
References
Postscript
List of Figure
Figure 3．1 Percentage of do forms in different types of sentences
List of Tables
Table 1．1 Jespersen's Negative Cycle according to the author's Summary
Table 1．2 Negative Cycle in German
Table 1．3 Negative Cycle in Dutch and Norwegian
Table 1．4 Negative Cycle in French
Table 2．1 Results on number of negators （%）
Table 3．1 Frequencies of ne and ne．．．not in early thirteenth century English prose
Table 3．2 Frequencies of ne and ne．．．not in main and subordinate clauses in Early Modern English prose
Table 3．3 Percentage on number of negators per clause in various texts
Table 3．4 Percentage of ne and not in Middle English verse from 1200 to 1400
Table 3．5 Percentage of ne， ne．．．not， and not in the PPCMEE2 data
Table 3．6 Percentage of replacement of ne by not and n-item s in Middle English verse from 1200 to 1400
Table 3．7 Presence of a reinforcing negator in early thirteenth century prose
Table 3．8 Inversion with and without not in early thirteenth century prose
Table 3．9 Percentage of multiple negation in Middle English literature