Chapter 13
Language contact and competition in the periphrastic perfect in
Early English
Based on data drawn from the computerised
Helsinki Corpus, the paper investigates the
extent to which the use of competing English perfective auxiliaries
was influenced by language contact with Old Norse in the Late Old
English period. It is shown that as in the Danelaw areas the
have-perfect with mutative intransitive verbs was used
to a statistically significantly higher extent, Scandinavian
influence is probable. We argue that this influence is likely to
have been of inductive nature. In addition, it is revealed that the
Scandinavian trigger must have been working gradually, as predicted
by the S-curve model for linguistic change. The dispersion of the
have-perfect presented with exponential increases,
decreases and minor drops, suggesting no apparent catastrophic
reorganisation. A near-deterministic association between the number
of Scandinavian features within the Norsification Package and the
use of the have-perfect with mutative intransitives also
points to the important role of Scandinavian interference.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.Research design and data
- 4.Results and discussion
- 5.Conclusion
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Abbreviations
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Acknowledgements
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Primary sources
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References