This paper investigates the evolution of nominal determination of a specific kind, viz. indefinite determination in the scope of negation. Four basic syntactic patterns of indefi nite nominal determination in the scope of negation are distinguished. The changes within the system of indefi nite determination in the history of German with respect to these four patterns are described on the basis of their distribution in a corpus of several Old and Middle High German texts. More specifi cally, the development and distribution of dehein / kein is investigated. While the original n-word determiner nehein (‘no’) and the second NPI (negative polarity item) determiner einig (‘any’) were virtually lost, dehein / kein changed from a weak NPI comparable to any and licensed in various non-affirmative contexts into an n-word.