Article published in:
Comparative Studies in Early Germanic Languages: With a focus on verbal categoriesEdited by Gabriele Diewald, Leena Kahlas-Tarkka and Ilse Wischer
[Studies in Language Companion Series 138] 2013
► pp. 41–70
Incipient Grammaticalisation
Sources of passive constructions in Old High German and Old English
Robert Mailhammer | University of Western Sidney, Australia
Elena Smirnova | Leibnitz University Hannover, Germany
In this paper we deal with Old English and Old High German copula constructions combining verbs denoting ‘be’ and ‘become’ with past participles, which are traditionally analysed as periphrastic passive constructions. We propose that these constructions cannot be seen as grammaticalised passives but rather as fully compositional structures. We investigate these constructions from an aspectual perspective and argue that the passive is only one of several possible readings for these constructions, though one that follows logically from certain combinations. In particular, we show that the copula verbs act as aspect operators that select different parts of the event structure of the past participle, and that transitivity is the crucial factor that gives rise to passive readings. As a conclusion, we outline a detailed corpus investigation in order to catalogue all possible readings and then ultimately make a contribution to the different developments of the passive in English and German.
Published online: 10 October 2013
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.138.03mai
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.138.03mai
Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
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