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Sociocultural Dimensions of Lexis and Text in the History of English
Edited by Peter Petré, Hubert Cuyckens and Frauke D'hoedt
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 343] 2018
► pp. 151–180

Chapter 7
“A riddle to myself I am”

Argument shifting in English congregational song between 1500 and 1900

This article presents and refines the main results of a larger study on left-shifted arguments in congregational song (see Gather 2014) and discusses its implications for genre studies in general. Argument shifting is defined as the deviation from any unmarked order of obligatory arguments, as in the title of the famous carol We three kings of Orient are. Very often, requirements of meter and rhyme are evident causes of shifting. In this article, I provide the results obtained for congregational song, which lead to two major patterns of argument shifting with distinct syntactic and poetic criteria. The comparison to secular poetry shows the uniqueness of the phenomenon in congregational song and the conservatism of the genre.

Keywords: diachronic syntax, argument shift, word order, corpus linguistics, genre, congregational song, metrical psalm, hymn
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.English congregational song as a genre
  • 3.Argument shifting
  • 4.Corpus and methodology
  • 5.Argument shifting in English congregational song
    • 5.1Main results
    • 5.2Meter and rhyme
    • 5.3Subtypes of argument shifting
    • 5.4The two major patterns of argument shifting
    • 5.5Summary
  • 6.Comparison: Argument shifting in secular poetry
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Primary sources
  • Appendix
Published online: 4 July 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.343.07gat
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