Article published in:
Variation and Change in the Encoding of Motion EventsEdited by Juliana Goschler and Anatol Stefanowitsch
[Human Cognitive Processing 41] 2013
► pp. 203–222
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
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.41.09hub