Speakur

Word Pronunciation & Dictionary

jespersen's cycle

Word Rarity Very rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English

Syllables
jes-persen's -cy-cle
IPA
31
Scrabble Score
15
Letters
4
Syllables
9
Unique Chars

Meaning

name

A process in historical linguistics by which negation is expressed first by a simple preverbal marker, then by a discontinuous marker (with elements both before and after the verb, as in the French ne ... pas) and in some cases through subsequent loss of the original preverbal marker, and so on.

Etymology

Described in 1917 by linguist Otto Jespersen, and named after him in Swedish linguist Östen Dahl's 1979 article Typology of Sentence Negation.

Questions

What does jespersen's cycle mean?
A process in historical linguistics by which negation is expressed first by a simple preverbal marker, then by a discontinuous marker (with elements both before and after the verb, as in the French ne ... pas) and in some cases through subsequent loss of the original preverbal marker, and so on.
Where does jespersen's cycle come from?
Described in 1917 by linguist Otto Jespersen, and named after him in Swedish linguist Östen Dahl's 1979 article Typology of Sentence Negation.

How to pronounce jespersen's cycle

  1. Open the pronunciation page — Open the Speakur entry for “jespersen's cycle”.
  2. Read the phonetic spelling — Read the IPA spelling () so you know which sounds to aim for.
  3. Play the audio — Click Play to hear reference audio for “jespersen's cycle”.
  4. Repeat and practice — Say “jespersen's cycle” aloud, matching stress and vowels until it feels natural.