It is well documented that the study of differences in grammaticality contrasts across the world's languages has implications for the synchronic study of preferential/frequency contrasts within a single language. Our paper extends this observation, arguing that the cross-linguistic study of both grammaticality and frequency contrasts can be crucial to the proper characterization of patterns of diachronic change. As an illustration of this proposal, we investigate patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the use of postverbal negative quantifiers (e.g., nothing, nobody, no book, etc., as in, I know nothing) versus negative polarity items under negation (e.g., not … anything, not … anybody, not … any book, etc., as in, I don't know anything) in English. We show how a detailed comparison with similar patterns found elsewhere in closely related languages can give us a better understanding of which linguistic factors condition the use of these different kinds of indefinites in Modern Spoken English and a new perspective on a well-studied proposed change in progress in the English quantificational system.

中文翻译：

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句法变化中的结构解释：英语否定和极性不定的演变

有据可查的是，对世界语言中语法对比差异的研究对单一语言中优先/频率对比的同步研究具有重要意义。我们的论文扩展了这一观察，认为语法和频率对比的跨语言研究对于正确表征历时变化模式至关重要。作为该提议的说明，我们研究了动词后否定量词使用中的共时和历时变化的模式（例如，没有，没有人，没有书，等等，例如，我知道没有）与否定下的负极性项目（例如，不是……任何东西，不是……任何人，不是……任何书等，如，我愿意不知道任何事物） 用英语。我们展示了如何与密切相关的语言中其他地方发现的类似模式进行详细比较，可以让我们更好地了解哪些语言因素决定了现代英语口语中这些不同类型的不定式的使用，以及对经过充分研究的拟议变化的新视角英语量化系统的进步。