No way and no chance as emphatic negative response items

Previous research has shown that verbo-nominal patterns with semiotic nouns such as way, doubt and chance followed by a relative or complement clause are a locus of synchronic variation and diachronic change (Davidse, De Wolf & Van linden 2015, Gentens et al. 2016, Saad et al. 2012, Van linden & Brems 2018).
In this presentation we want to focus on the adverbials no way and no chance (without relative or complement clause) as emphatic negative response items in the sense that they act as intensified variants of no (cf. Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 849). In addition, they also exceed the latter’s functional range by having modal-attitudinal inferences or basic meanings. Examples are in (1) and (2).

(1a) “What do we do? Do we hike out downriver?” “No way,” Max answered firmly. (WB)
(1b) “A hitchhiker!” said Ellie excitedly. “Yeah, no way,” said Julia. (WB)
(2a) Did he blast the kick closer to Argentina keeper Pablo Cavallero than he intended? He grinned: “No chance! It was just as I had planned.” (WB)
(2b) Smoove bring us this manic dance track. Hear it once and then try to get the “Hype! Hype!” chorus out of your head. No chance. (WB)
In (1a) no way emphatically rejects hiking out downriver as an attractive proposal for a joint activity, whereas in (2b) it is not an intensified variant of no (see preceding yeah), but it functions as a mirative qualifier, expressing disbelief on behalf of the speaker. In (2a) no chance expresses strong speaker commitment to the impossibility of the kick having been unintentionally close to the keeper (epistemic meaning), which makes for an emphatic negative response to the preceding question. In (2b) no chance emphatically indicates the participant’s inability to get the song out of their head (dynamic meaning). Like in (1b), no + noun cannot be replaced by a ‘simple’ no.
Using the Collins Wordbanks (WB) corpus we will analyse 100 synchronic examples for no chance and no way each. We will investigate to what extent they are true – intensified – variants of the negative particle no, and analyse the types of modal-attitudinal inferences or basic meanings they express, , including epistemic, deontic, dynamic and mirative shades of meaning. This analysis crucially takes into account the nature of the utterance the adverbial responds to (e.g. proposal for joint action in (1a) vs. exclamative (1b)). We thus aim to shed light on what seems to be a new set of emphatic negative response items (possibly including no doubt/fear/etc.) and on the way they enrich this category semantically and formally (cf. paradigmatic enrichment in author & Davidse 2010).

References
Brems, Lieselotte & Kristin Davidse. 2010. "Complex subordinators derived from noun complement clauses: grammaticalization and paradigmaticity" Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 42 (1): 101-116.
Davidse, Kristin Simon De Wolf & An Van linden. 2015. The development of the modal and discourse marker uses of (there/it is / I have) no doubt, Journal of Historical Pragmatics 16 (2): 25-58.
Davidse, Kristin, Lieselotte Brems, Jacob Lesage & An Van linden. 2014. Negation, grammaticalization and subjectification: the development of polar, modal and mirative no way-constructions, ICEHL18, 14-18 July 2014, University of Leuven.
Gentens, Caroline, Ditte Kimps, Kristin Davidse, Gilles Jacobs, An Van linden & Lieselotte Brems. 2016. Mirativity and rhetorical structure: The development and prosody of disjunct and anaphoric adverbials with ‘no’ wonder. In Gunther Kaltenböck, Evelien Keizer & Arne Lohmann (eds.), Outside the Clause. Form and function of extra-clausal constituents, 125-156 [Studies in Language Companion Series 178]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saad, Khalida., Wouter Parmentier, Lieselotte Brems, Kristin Davidse & An Van linden. 2012. The development of modal, polar and mirative no way-constructions. ICAME 33, University of Leuven, 30 May-3 June 2012.
Van linden, An & Lieselotte Brems. 2018. It was chance’s chance to become polyfunctional in the modal domain. Twentieth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL20), University of Edinburgh, 27-31 August 2018.