The Beginning of the End: The Decline of External Possessors in Old English (original) (raw)

The loss of the DATIVE EXTERNAL POSSESSOR (DEP) as a productive construction in English has been regarded as setting English apart from most European languages. While this claim can be disputed, the loss of this construction in English needs an explanation. Both internal and external explanations have been suggested, but we lack a solid empirical base for evaluating them. This article supplies the beginnings of the empirical foundation necessary for further discussion of this topic by presenting the results of a systematic corpus-based study of external possessors with body parts playing the role of subject or (accusative) object in Early Old English. This investigation establishes that any explanation for the eventual loss of DEPs must be compatible with the fact that the construction was already reduced at an early stage in Old English compared with Gothic and although productive, was more limited in its range and use. The DEP was not obligatory even in the situations that favored it, and it varied with the INTERNAL POSSESSOR (IP), the unmarked possessive construction. Contact with Brythonic Celtic at an early stage provides a possible explanation for this early decline.