This study examines the mechanisms of the reorganisation of the Old English nominal morphology, which embraced a range of phonological and analogical developments conditioned by a variety of factors deriving from different domains. The immediate consequences of these changes are most prominent in the minor (unproductive) declensional classes, whose inflection tended to be remodelled on the patterns of the major (productive) paradigms. The focus of the study is primarily on three factors which had a major impact on the restructuring patterns of the Old English nominal morphology: frequency of occurrence, morpho-phonological salience of inflectional exponents and the formal inflectional overlap across paradigms. Interacting mostly in a synergetic way, they largely determined the shape of the nominal system as it is known now in modern English. The analysed material demonstrates as well that the dynamics of the changes in the nominal system worked towards retaining or enhancing the functionality of the system.
Most descriptions of Old English grammar do not count the instrumental as a separate case, since distinctly instrumental forms are not available for all lexical categories that are inflected for case in Old English. Assuming that the instrumental has been completely subsumed under the dative is misleading, however. In actual fact, any definite, quantified or adjective-modified masculine or neuter NP in the singular can be marked either dative or instrumental, and a clear functional difference emerges if we contrast noun phrases containing instrumental forms with those containing exclusively dative forms. Instrumental-case NPs are adverbials of time, manner and place, whereas dative-case NPs usually refer to persons and are often verbal arguments. This paper explores the extent to which the instrumental and the dative can be distinguished in Old English, the functional load of the distinction and the degree of its productivity, drawing on the results of collexeme analyses carried out on data from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose.
A frequent result produced by a search of the digital corpora of Middle English (henceforth ME) for instances of reduced th’ is a nominal involving the pronouns one or other with initial th - or t- attached. In this study I argue that two different mechanisms, that is reduction of the definite article and misanalysis of the preceding demonstrative, need to be taken into account when scrutinizing the emergence of what turns out to be four different pronouns, namely thone, thother, tone, and tother. First I flesh out the ways in which these pronouns were used in ME. Then I analyze textual evidence which sheds light on the question when and how these pronouns emerged. Finally I argue that while initial th- is always a definite determiner reduced as expected given the DP cycle, initial t - can be either a definite determiner or, less likely, part of a lexicalized pronoun.
For a long time, the striking similarities between OFris (Old Frisian) and Old English (OE) were attributed to an exclusive shared ancestor (Anglo-Frisian), but in the late 20th century that view was ousted in favor of a dialect continuum model. Recent developments in genetics, textual analysis, and archaeology, however, suggest that the earlier model is more accurate. This paper explores a series of diagnostics to distinguish between shared grammaticalizations caused by linguistic relatedness and those caused by geographical proximity. Those diagnostics are then applied to two developments exclusive to OFris and OE: the grammaticalization of aga(n) ‘have’ into auxiliary ‘have to’, and the development of a verb complement based on the OE/OFris present participle. In both cases, the diagnostics indicate that the changes occurred due to a shared ancestor, supporting the Anglo-Frisian hypothesis.
The Old English (OE) pre-modals willan and *sculan are generally considered less grammaticalized than their Modern English counterparts will and shall; nevertheless they most often function as auxiliary verbs (cf. Wischer, 2006: 173). Their present tense forms have already been studied in considerable detail, often in the context of their development into future tense markers, while their morphologically past tense forms have received comparatively little attention. In this paper I examine the past forms of willan and *sculan in the poetry texts from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus and categorize them according to their syntactic contexts and the lexical or grammatical meanings they express. Thus, the aim of this paper is to shed light on their past and non-past time-reference, their main verb use versus auxiliary use and the type of modality or other function they can express in periphrastic constructions, and hence their degree of grammaticalization in Old English.
This study argues that the changes undergone by dare in late Middle English cannot be explained solely in terms of the phonological similarity between dare and tharf, but also by the relationship between tharf and the verb need, plus the influence that the latter exerted on dare. The aim of this study is to analyse the semantic and structural changes that the verbs dare, tharf and need undergo in the period between Middle English and Early Modern English. The data are drawn from The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English and The Penn Corpus of Early English Correspondence. The analysis confirms that the verbs dare and tharf were confused in Middle English in non-assertive and 'fear' contexts. With the obsolescence of tharf, dare begins to occur more frequently in assertive contexts, and also starts to exhibit lexical features due to the influence exerted by need.
In Middle English (ME), manner of motion verbs occur in perfect periphrases with both BE and HAVE as auxiliaries (e.g. is/has run, is/has ridden), the BE-variant being the older, the HAVE-variant the more recent form with these verbs. Los (2015) hypothesizes that the choice of auxiliary with manner of motion verbs in ME might depend systematically on aktionsart in that HAVE is chosen when the verb denotes a controlled process (e.g. he has run fast for an hour), and BE when the verb denotes a change of location (e.g. he is run into town), much as in Present-Day Dutch. Also taking into account other factors that have been suggested to influence the choice of BE vs. HAVE in Middle English (such as counterfactuality, infinitive, or past perfect), I test this hypothesis on data from the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. I show that aktionsart is indeed a very reliable predictor, but overridden by counterfactuality.
The present study focuses on the analysis of the choice of either be or have in combination with the past participles of eleven motion verbs (arrive, become, come, enter, fall, go, get, grow, pass, return and run) to form perfective structures in Jane Austen’s letters and novels. She has previously been considered conservative in her grammar, specifically in relation to her preference for be as opposed to have in this type of structure. A corpus-based study shows that although she could indeed be considered conservative, the option of the auxiliary might also have been motivated by the different components of the motion situation involved in each instance. The conclusions show that some tendencies can be observed in relation to the behaviour of some of these verbs, despite the low number of occurrences of some of the verbs included in the analysis.
In this study, I examine a large number of get-passives from different genres and time periods in the Corpus of Historical American English for signs of grammaticalization by looking for evidence of semantic bleaching and morphosyntactic generalization. A comparable set of be-passives is included as a control group throughout. The study shows a dramatic increase in the frequency of central get-passives between the 1870s and the 1990s. Changes in situation type, subject type, and range of past-participle collocates, which are traced through all four genres in the corpus, provide further indications that the get-passive is continuing to grammaticalize over the period.
In Present-day English, place adverbials tend to precede adverbials of time in clusters (cf. Hasselgård, 1996). In this paper, this word order preference is investigated from a diachronic perspective. The corpus-based analysis shows that the preferred order changes from time-before-place in Old English to place-before-time towards the end of the Middle English period. In a number of binary logistic regressions this study explores which factors might motivate these preferences respectively. The obligatoriness of the adverbials and their realization form emerge as two crucial factors. Their effect can be related to the proximity principle (cf. Hasselgård, 2010), the principle of end weight, and the principle of given-before-new. Comparing the different periods of English from Old English to Early Modern English, this paper shows how the increasingly fixed position of the lexical verb can be linked to the reversal of the ordering preference from time-before-place to place-before-time.
Based on the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), this chapter inspects diachronic changes of constructions involving the concessive conjunctions although, though and even though from the 1860s to the present day. Following a short summary of changes in semantics and clause structures, the main focus lies on factors that have an effect on the position of the subordinate clause relative to the matrix clause. A Bayesian logistic regression model is used to investigate in how far the position of a subordinate clause can be predicted from the semantics of the entire construction, the connective that is used, and the weight (or length) of the complement, and whether the preferred positions of subordinate clauses change over time.
Picking up on earlier analyses, this paper explores a number of further issues bearing on the replacement of unmarked intensifiers by suffixed ones. While the evolutions of individual intensifiers may vary enormously, almost all grammatical constraints on intensifier marking can be accounted for in terms of a verbality cline: Structures displaying a high degree of verbality promote the establishment of suffixed intensifiers whereas less verbal structures tend to delay the process. The major findings supporting this generalization include the following:
Distinguishing between several subtypes of the frame far from + optional and recessive being + predicative phrase, this paper charts the evolution of the rivalling variants in British and American English over the last few centuries. The paper reports on two major findings. First, in line with the Complexity Principle, there is a tendency for more complex predicatives to help preserve the more explicit being variant better than simpler ones. In particular, morphologically complex adjectives and syntactically complex noun phrases in the predicative slot are shown to retain the being variant longer than less complex ones. Second, as regards the establishment of the less explicit zero variant, the relation between British and American English corresponds to the so-called lag and overtake scenario. While initially trailing behind British English, American English has - in more recent times - adopted the zero variant much faster than British English.
This study examines the mechanisms of the reorganisation of the Old English nominal morphology, which embraced a range of phonological and analogical developments conditioned by a variety of factors deriving from different domains. The immediate consequences of these changes are most prominent in the minor (unproductive) declensional classes, whose inflection tended to be remodelled on the patterns of the major (productive) paradigms. The focus of the study is primarily on three factors which had a major impact on the restructuring patterns of the Old English nominal morphology: frequency of occurrence, morpho-phonological salience of inflectional exponents and the formal inflectional overlap across paradigms. Interacting mostly in a synergetic way, they largely determined the shape of the nominal system as it is known now in modern English. The analysed material demonstrates as well that the dynamics of the changes in the nominal system worked towards retaining or enhancing the functionality of the system.
Most descriptions of Old English grammar do not count the instrumental as a separate case, since distinctly instrumental forms are not available for all lexical categories that are inflected for case in Old English. Assuming that the instrumental has been completely subsumed under the dative is misleading, however. In actual fact, any definite, quantified or adjective-modified masculine or neuter NP in the singular can be marked either dative or instrumental, and a clear functional difference emerges if we contrast noun phrases containing instrumental forms with those containing exclusively dative forms. Instrumental-case NPs are adverbials of time, manner and place, whereas dative-case NPs usually refer to persons and are often verbal arguments. This paper explores the extent to which the instrumental and the dative can be distinguished in Old English, the functional load of the distinction and the degree of its productivity, drawing on the results of collexeme analyses carried out on data from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose.
A frequent result produced by a search of the digital corpora of Middle English (henceforth ME) for instances of reduced th’ is a nominal involving the pronouns one or other with initial th - or t- attached. In this study I argue that two different mechanisms, that is reduction of the definite article and misanalysis of the preceding demonstrative, need to be taken into account when scrutinizing the emergence of what turns out to be four different pronouns, namely thone, thother, tone, and tother. First I flesh out the ways in which these pronouns were used in ME. Then I analyze textual evidence which sheds light on the question when and how these pronouns emerged. Finally I argue that while initial th- is always a definite determiner reduced as expected given the DP cycle, initial t - can be either a definite determiner or, less likely, part of a lexicalized pronoun.
For a long time, the striking similarities between OFris (Old Frisian) and Old English (OE) were attributed to an exclusive shared ancestor (Anglo-Frisian), but in the late 20th century that view was ousted in favor of a dialect continuum model. Recent developments in genetics, textual analysis, and archaeology, however, suggest that the earlier model is more accurate. This paper explores a series of diagnostics to distinguish between shared grammaticalizations caused by linguistic relatedness and those caused by geographical proximity. Those diagnostics are then applied to two developments exclusive to OFris and OE: the grammaticalization of aga(n) ‘have’ into auxiliary ‘have to’, and the development of a verb complement based on the OE/OFris present participle. In both cases, the diagnostics indicate that the changes occurred due to a shared ancestor, supporting the Anglo-Frisian hypothesis.
The Old English (OE) pre-modals willan and *sculan are generally considered less grammaticalized than their Modern English counterparts will and shall; nevertheless they most often function as auxiliary verbs (cf. Wischer, 2006: 173). Their present tense forms have already been studied in considerable detail, often in the context of their development into future tense markers, while their morphologically past tense forms have received comparatively little attention. In this paper I examine the past forms of willan and *sculan in the poetry texts from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus and categorize them according to their syntactic contexts and the lexical or grammatical meanings they express. Thus, the aim of this paper is to shed light on their past and non-past time-reference, their main verb use versus auxiliary use and the type of modality or other function they can express in periphrastic constructions, and hence their degree of grammaticalization in Old English.
This study argues that the changes undergone by dare in late Middle English cannot be explained solely in terms of the phonological similarity between dare and tharf, but also by the relationship between tharf and the verb need, plus the influence that the latter exerted on dare. The aim of this study is to analyse the semantic and structural changes that the verbs dare, tharf and need undergo in the period between Middle English and Early Modern English. The data are drawn from The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English and The Penn Corpus of Early English Correspondence. The analysis confirms that the verbs dare and tharf were confused in Middle English in non-assertive and 'fear' contexts. With the obsolescence of tharf, dare begins to occur more frequently in assertive contexts, and also starts to exhibit lexical features due to the influence exerted by need.
In Middle English (ME), manner of motion verbs occur in perfect periphrases with both BE and HAVE as auxiliaries (e.g. is/has run, is/has ridden), the BE-variant being the older, the HAVE-variant the more recent form with these verbs. Los (2015) hypothesizes that the choice of auxiliary with manner of motion verbs in ME might depend systematically on aktionsart in that HAVE is chosen when the verb denotes a controlled process (e.g. he has run fast for an hour), and BE when the verb denotes a change of location (e.g. he is run into town), much as in Present-Day Dutch. Also taking into account other factors that have been suggested to influence the choice of BE vs. HAVE in Middle English (such as counterfactuality, infinitive, or past perfect), I test this hypothesis on data from the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. I show that aktionsart is indeed a very reliable predictor, but overridden by counterfactuality.
The present study focuses on the analysis of the choice of either be or have in combination with the past participles of eleven motion verbs (arrive, become, come, enter, fall, go, get, grow, pass, return and run) to form perfective structures in Jane Austen’s letters and novels. She has previously been considered conservative in her grammar, specifically in relation to her preference for be as opposed to have in this type of structure. A corpus-based study shows that although she could indeed be considered conservative, the option of the auxiliary might also have been motivated by the different components of the motion situation involved in each instance. The conclusions show that some tendencies can be observed in relation to the behaviour of some of these verbs, despite the low number of occurrences of some of the verbs included in the analysis.
In this study, I examine a large number of get-passives from different genres and time periods in the Corpus of Historical American English for signs of grammaticalization by looking for evidence of semantic bleaching and morphosyntactic generalization. A comparable set of be-passives is included as a control group throughout. The study shows a dramatic increase in the frequency of central get-passives between the 1870s and the 1990s. Changes in situation type, subject type, and range of past-participle collocates, which are traced through all four genres in the corpus, provide further indications that the get-passive is continuing to grammaticalize over the period.
In Present-day English, place adverbials tend to precede adverbials of time in clusters (cf. Hasselgård, 1996). In this paper, this word order preference is investigated from a diachronic perspective. The corpus-based analysis shows that the preferred order changes from time-before-place in Old English to place-before-time towards the end of the Middle English period. In a number of binary logistic regressions this study explores which factors might motivate these preferences respectively. The obligatoriness of the adverbials and their realization form emerge as two crucial factors. Their effect can be related to the proximity principle (cf. Hasselgård, 2010), the principle of end weight, and the principle of given-before-new. Comparing the different periods of English from Old English to Early Modern English, this paper shows how the increasingly fixed position of the lexical verb can be linked to the reversal of the ordering preference from time-before-place to place-before-time.
Based on the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA), this chapter inspects diachronic changes of constructions involving the concessive conjunctions although, though and even though from the 1860s to the present day. Following a short summary of changes in semantics and clause structures, the main focus lies on factors that have an effect on the position of the subordinate clause relative to the matrix clause. A Bayesian logistic regression model is used to investigate in how far the position of a subordinate clause can be predicted from the semantics of the entire construction, the connective that is used, and the weight (or length) of the complement, and whether the preferred positions of subordinate clauses change over time.
Picking up on earlier analyses, this paper explores a number of further issues bearing on the replacement of unmarked intensifiers by suffixed ones. While the evolutions of individual intensifiers may vary enormously, almost all grammatical constraints on intensifier marking can be accounted for in terms of a verbality cline: Structures displaying a high degree of verbality promote the establishment of suffixed intensifiers whereas less verbal structures tend to delay the process. The major findings supporting this generalization include the following:
Distinguishing between several subtypes of the frame far from + optional and recessive being + predicative phrase, this paper charts the evolution of the rivalling variants in British and American English over the last few centuries. The paper reports on two major findings. First, in line with the Complexity Principle, there is a tendency for more complex predicatives to help preserve the more explicit being variant better than simpler ones. In particular, morphologically complex adjectives and syntactically complex noun phrases in the predicative slot are shown to retain the being variant longer than less complex ones. Second, as regards the establishment of the less explicit zero variant, the relation between British and American English corresponds to the so-called lag and overtake scenario. While initially trailing behind British English, American English has - in more recent times - adopted the zero variant much faster than British English.