Caused-motion verbs in the Middle English intransitive motion construction

Judith Huber | Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität

Based on an analysis of more than 300 Middle English verbs attested in the intransitive motion construction, this chapter shows that among them, different from Present-Day English, there is a surprisingly high proportion of verbs that are primarily verbs of caused motion, such as throuen ‘throw’. I argue here that the sporadic intransitive motion use of these verbs may be explained by a number of formally and semantically similar patterns in which both intransitive and caused-motion verbs occur. These include be + past participle and the combination with a reflexive pronoun. These patterns form a closely-knit family of constructions tending to blur the distinction between the two types of verbs.

Keywords: construction grammar, Middle English, reflexive pronoun, transitivity, verb of motion

Published online: 14 November 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.41.09hub

Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

Fanego, Teresa

2017. The trolley rumbled through the tunnel: On the history of the English Intransitive Motion Construction . Folia Linguistica 51:s38-s1 ► pp. 29 ff.

Pijpops, Dirk, Dirk Speelman, Freek Van de Velde & Stefan Grondelaers

2021. Incorporating the multi-level nature of the constructicon into hypothesis testing. Cognitive Linguistics 32:3 ► pp. 487 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 july 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.