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Research paper thumbnail of Lability and the rigidification of word order: evidence from Early Middle English

Linguistics, Aug 16, 2023

This article analyzes quantitatively the effect of five linguistic features on the position of th... more This article analyzes quantitatively the effect of five linguistic features on the position of the object in Early Middle English. Four of them have long been explored in the literature: object type, object length, clause type and type of verbal cluster (±auxiliary). The fifth feature, labilty, has so far been given less attention. Lability is the possibility that a given verb alternates between an unaccusative and transitive frame without morphological coding. This makes lability an instance of morphological syncretism. This study tests the hypothesis that, for disambiguation purposes, labile transitive verbs show a more consistent word order (VO in this case) than non-labile transitives. If confirmed, the hypothesis would point to a non-trivial connection between the increase of labile verbs and the move towards a fixed word order in Early Middle English. Such a connection has gone unnoticed in the existing literature, which, as far as the influence of morphological syncretism on word order is concerned, has focused almost exclusively on the effect of the loss of case marking. A total of 961 transitive clauses with labile and non-labile verbs were tagged for the above-mentioned five variables. Their effect on the choice between VO and OV is measured using statistical analysis. The conclusion is that verb lability is a significant predictor of VO in the period under scrutiny, with labile verbs thus spearheading the shift towards a stable word order pattern (VO) in English. The correlation between verb lability and word order rigidification demonstrated for Early Middle English in this article may be relevant for studies on word order from multiple perspectives: language-specific, typological, synchronic and diachronic.

Research paper thumbnail of Labile verbs and word order in early middle english: an initial study

Selim Journal of the Spanish Society For Medieval English Language and Literature Revista De La Sociedad Espanola De Lengua Y Literatura Inglesa Medieval, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of The SCONE Corpus of Northern English Texts

Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2009 2009 Pag 268, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Aspektsysteme

'ich liebte' 'ich gewann lieb' 'ich war am Schwitzen' 'ich bin ins Schwitzen geraten, mir ist der... more 'ich liebte' 'ich gewann lieb' 'ich war am Schwitzen' 'ich bin ins Schwitzen geraten, mir ist der Schweiß ausgebrochen ' 'ich schien, war zu sehen' 'ich trat in Erscheinung' 'ich kannte' 'ich lernte kennen' 'ich stand' 'ich blieb stehen, stellte mich' 'ich befand mich' 'ich fand mich (plötzlich)' usw. Die Nuance des perfektiven Aspekts (Aorist) ist stets inzeptiv, die des imperfektiven statal. 'rot sein' (braun-rot) 'kalt sein' 'schwarz sein' 'rot sein' 'tapfer sein' 'hell sein' 'schmerzhaft sein' 'stark sein' 'rund sein' , aber auch Verben, die Emotionen ausdrücken, wie: a-cam a-gor6 a-rbfJ a-rdfm , c-I')fda a-f)I1 a-yyo16 'lieben, mögen' 'wütend sein' 'hassen l 'in der Lage sein' 'glücklich sein' 'riechen' 'wissen' gehören zu den inchoativ-stativen Verben.

Research paper thumbnail of The basic valency orientation of Old English and the causative ja-formation: a synchronic and diachronic approach

English Language and Linguistics, 2019

The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without a... more The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without any consensus emerging so far. From a synchronic point of view, a key question is whether the pronounced tendency to labile coding in Present-day English can be traced back to the Old English period. In order to give a convincing answer, this article examines from a synchronic and diachronic point of view two of the procedures by which the basic valency of Old English has been assessed: computation of verbs and evaluation of the causative ja-formation. Concerning the former, it shows that the valency of whole verb classes in Old English is determined by previous processes of morphophonetic merger and cannot therefore be used as evidence for labilisation processes (transitivisation or detransitivation) taking place in OE itself. With respect to the latter, the article assesses whether the causative ja-formation is still a transitivising operation in Old English by examining the valency of ...

Research paper thumbnail of The different evolutive pace of English and German: the case of modal verbs

Estudios Filologicos Alemanes Revista Del Grupo De Investigacion Filologia Alemana, 2003

Research paper thumbnail of Valenzstruktur der gotischen Kausativa

Research paper thumbnail of Lexicalization and morphological simplification in Old English 'jan'-causatives

Research paper thumbnail of Annotating early modern English texts in the SCONE corpus

A Survey of Corpus Based Research Recurso Electronico 2009 Isbn 978 84 692 2198 3 Pags 1172 1190, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Tendencies in the Use of the Inflected Genitive and the Of-Construction in Middle English

Woonderous Aenglissce Selim Studies in Medieval English Language 1999 Isbn 84 8158 121 6 Pags 65 74, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of Tendencias a la simplificación morfológica en el inglés antiguo

Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of Aedean Lleida 17 19 December 1998 2000 Isbn 84 8409 045 0 Pags 53 57, 2000

Research paper thumbnail of Morphological Causatives in Old English: the Quest for a Vanishing Formation1

Transactions of the Philological Society, 2012

A few present-day English verb pairs, such as lie ⁄ lay or fall ⁄ fell, are remnants of a Germani... more A few present-day English verb pairs, such as lie ⁄ lay or fall ⁄ fell, are remnants of a Germanic word-formation type which was productive in the derivation of causative from primary verbs by means of the suffix *-(i)ja-. In Old English texts a substantial number of these verb pairs are attested, although often diachronic change has rendered them difficult to recognise. The aims of this paper are to make a new assessment of deverbal jan-pairs in Old English with the help of an updated theoretical approach and newly available sources; to establish the semantic and syntactic relationship between the members of each pair; to reveal some tendencies in the evolution of these verbs from Germanic to Old English; and to connect these to wider issues of morpho-syntactic change in English. The paper attempts a rigorous philological description sustained by relevant contemporary typological and linguistic findings. 2 Work on causatives in English goes back at least to Jespersen (1927[1965]: 332-7). Kastovsky 1973 studies the connection between word-formations patterns and the semantic deep structure in English causatives.

Research paper thumbnail of The basic valency orientation of Old English and the causative ja-formation. A synchronic and diachronic approach 1

English Language and Linguistics, 2019

The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without a... more The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without any consensus emerging so far. From a synchronic point of view, a key question is whether the pronounced tendency to labile coding in Present-day English can be traced back to the Old English period. In order to give a convincing answer, this paper examines from a synchronic and diachronic point of view two of the procedures by which the basic valency of Old English has been assessed: computation of verbs and evaluation of the causative ja-formation. Concerning the former, it shows that the valency of whole verb classes in Old English is determined by previous processes of morpho-phonetic merger and cannot therefore be used as evidence for labilisation processes (transitivisation or detransitivation) taking place in OE itself. With respect to the latter, the paper assesses whether the causative ja-formation is still a transitivising operation in Old English by examining the valency of all...

Research paper thumbnail of Lability and the rigidification of word order: evidence from Early Middle English

Linguistics, Aug 16, 2023

This article analyzes quantitatively the effect of five linguistic features on the position of th... more This article analyzes quantitatively the effect of five linguistic features on the position of the object in Early Middle English. Four of them have long been explored in the literature: object type, object length, clause type and type of verbal cluster (±auxiliary). The fifth feature, labilty, has so far been given less attention. Lability is the possibility that a given verb alternates between an unaccusative and transitive frame without morphological coding. This makes lability an instance of morphological syncretism. This study tests the hypothesis that, for disambiguation purposes, labile transitive verbs show a more consistent word order (VO in this case) than non-labile transitives. If confirmed, the hypothesis would point to a non-trivial connection between the increase of labile verbs and the move towards a fixed word order in Early Middle English. Such a connection has gone unnoticed in the existing literature, which, as far as the influence of morphological syncretism on word order is concerned, has focused almost exclusively on the effect of the loss of case marking. A total of 961 transitive clauses with labile and non-labile verbs were tagged for the above-mentioned five variables. Their effect on the choice between VO and OV is measured using statistical analysis. The conclusion is that verb lability is a significant predictor of VO in the period under scrutiny, with labile verbs thus spearheading the shift towards a stable word order pattern (VO) in English. The correlation between verb lability and word order rigidification demonstrated for Early Middle English in this article may be relevant for studies on word order from multiple perspectives: language-specific, typological, synchronic and diachronic.

Research paper thumbnail of Labile verbs and word order in early middle english: an initial study

Selim Journal of the Spanish Society For Medieval English Language and Literature Revista De La Sociedad Espanola De Lengua Y Literatura Inglesa Medieval, 2012

Research paper thumbnail of The SCONE Corpus of Northern English Texts

Proceedings of the Corpus Linguistics Conference 2009 2009 Pag 268, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Aspektsysteme

'ich liebte' 'ich gewann lieb' 'ich war am Schwitzen' 'ich bin ins Schwitzen geraten, mir ist der... more 'ich liebte' 'ich gewann lieb' 'ich war am Schwitzen' 'ich bin ins Schwitzen geraten, mir ist der Schweiß ausgebrochen ' 'ich schien, war zu sehen' 'ich trat in Erscheinung' 'ich kannte' 'ich lernte kennen' 'ich stand' 'ich blieb stehen, stellte mich' 'ich befand mich' 'ich fand mich (plötzlich)' usw. Die Nuance des perfektiven Aspekts (Aorist) ist stets inzeptiv, die des imperfektiven statal. 'rot sein' (braun-rot) 'kalt sein' 'schwarz sein' 'rot sein' 'tapfer sein' 'hell sein' 'schmerzhaft sein' 'stark sein' 'rund sein' , aber auch Verben, die Emotionen ausdrücken, wie: a-cam a-gor6 a-rbfJ a-rdfm , c-I')fda a-f)I1 a-yyo16 'lieben, mögen' 'wütend sein' 'hassen l 'in der Lage sein' 'glücklich sein' 'riechen' 'wissen' gehören zu den inchoativ-stativen Verben.

Research paper thumbnail of The basic valency orientation of Old English and the causative ja-formation: a synchronic and diachronic approach

English Language and Linguistics, 2019

The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without a... more The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without any consensus emerging so far. From a synchronic point of view, a key question is whether the pronounced tendency to labile coding in Present-day English can be traced back to the Old English period. In order to give a convincing answer, this article examines from a synchronic and diachronic point of view two of the procedures by which the basic valency of Old English has been assessed: computation of verbs and evaluation of the causative ja-formation. Concerning the former, it shows that the valency of whole verb classes in Old English is determined by previous processes of morphophonetic merger and cannot therefore be used as evidence for labilisation processes (transitivisation or detransitivation) taking place in OE itself. With respect to the latter, the article assesses whether the causative ja-formation is still a transitivising operation in Old English by examining the valency of ...

Research paper thumbnail of The different evolutive pace of English and German: the case of modal verbs

Estudios Filologicos Alemanes Revista Del Grupo De Investigacion Filologia Alemana, 2003

Research paper thumbnail of Valenzstruktur der gotischen Kausativa

Research paper thumbnail of Lexicalization and morphological simplification in Old English 'jan'-causatives

Research paper thumbnail of Annotating early modern English texts in the SCONE corpus

A Survey of Corpus Based Research Recurso Electronico 2009 Isbn 978 84 692 2198 3 Pags 1172 1190, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Tendencies in the Use of the Inflected Genitive and the Of-Construction in Middle English

Woonderous Aenglissce Selim Studies in Medieval English Language 1999 Isbn 84 8158 121 6 Pags 65 74, 1999

Research paper thumbnail of Tendencias a la simplificación morfológica en el inglés antiguo

Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of Aedean Lleida 17 19 December 1998 2000 Isbn 84 8409 045 0 Pags 53 57, 2000

Research paper thumbnail of Morphological Causatives in Old English: the Quest for a Vanishing Formation1

Transactions of the Philological Society, 2012

A few present-day English verb pairs, such as lie ⁄ lay or fall ⁄ fell, are remnants of a Germani... more A few present-day English verb pairs, such as lie ⁄ lay or fall ⁄ fell, are remnants of a Germanic word-formation type which was productive in the derivation of causative from primary verbs by means of the suffix *-(i)ja-. In Old English texts a substantial number of these verb pairs are attested, although often diachronic change has rendered them difficult to recognise. The aims of this paper are to make a new assessment of deverbal jan-pairs in Old English with the help of an updated theoretical approach and newly available sources; to establish the semantic and syntactic relationship between the members of each pair; to reveal some tendencies in the evolution of these verbs from Germanic to Old English; and to connect these to wider issues of morpho-syntactic change in English. The paper attempts a rigorous philological description sustained by relevant contemporary typological and linguistic findings. 2 Work on causatives in English goes back at least to Jespersen (1927[1965]: 332-7). Kastovsky 1973 studies the connection between word-formations patterns and the semantic deep structure in English causatives.

Research paper thumbnail of The basic valency orientation of Old English and the causative ja-formation. A synchronic and diachronic approach 1

English Language and Linguistics, 2019

The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without a... more The basic valency orientation of Old English has been addressed in a number of studies, without any consensus emerging so far. From a synchronic point of view, a key question is whether the pronounced tendency to labile coding in Present-day English can be traced back to the Old English period. In order to give a convincing answer, this paper examines from a synchronic and diachronic point of view two of the procedures by which the basic valency of Old English has been assessed: computation of verbs and evaluation of the causative ja-formation. Concerning the former, it shows that the valency of whole verb classes in Old English is determined by previous processes of morpho-phonetic merger and cannot therefore be used as evidence for labilisation processes (transitivisation or detransitivation) taking place in OE itself. With respect to the latter, the paper assesses whether the causative ja-formation is still a transitivising operation in Old English by examining the valency of all...