The Reanalysis of Grammaticalized Prepositions in Middle English (original) (raw)
Related papers
Semantic erosion of Middle English prepositions
2011
Contents: Grammaticalization - Semantic erosion - Decategorialization - Grammaticalization of Middle English Prepositions: From concreteness to abstractness - Occurrences of Middle English prepositions - Middle English prepositions: Dialectal distribution, composition-type distribution, text-type distribution - Spatial, temporal and figurative (semantic erosion) senses of Middle English prepositions - Collocational and idiomatic processes of Middle English prepositions: French influence.
Nodes and Networks in Diachronic Construction Grammar, 2020
The network of prepositional secondary predicate constructions has undergone massive changes throughout the history of English. While in Old English forms marked with “to” (e.g. “crown someone to king”) used to dominate, forms marked with “as” dominate in Present-Day English (e.g. “crown someone as king”). The present paper studies the changes in the network of such constructions marked with “as”, “for”, “into”, and “to” in the Middle English period by analysing changes in frequency and semantic similarity. A corpus study in the PPCME2 was conducted, based on a Distributional Semantic Model. The results indicate a sudden turning point in the early Middle English period whereby "to"-marked forms quickly lost their importance. In addition to providing insights into the (changing) nature of polysemic links and allostructions, the description of constructions copied from Anglo-Norman introduces a language contact component to the framework of Diachronic Construction Grammar.
This book is a revision of Carola Trips' dissertation, submitted to the University of Stuttgart in 2001. The goal of the study is to show Scandinavian influence on the syntax of English by detailed analysis of the Ormulum, a twelfth-century text written in the East Midlands. Given this goal, the title is somewhat misleading. Although Trips mentions that her hypothesis is that the shift from OV to VO in English is due to Scandinavian influence, she focuses on finding evidence of other cases of Scandinavian influence rather than the actual shift from OV to VO. Her assumption is that finding evidence of Scandinavian influence on Middle English syntax in general will prove that the shift in English from OV to VO is also due to this Scandinavian influence, but this of course may not necessarily be the case. Despite the fact that language contact plays an important role in Trips' hypothesis, the book is strikingly lacking in discussion of literature on this topic, such as , , and other works concerned with formulating general tendencies and principles of linguistic borrowing.
The evolution of c-structure: prepositions and PPs from Indo-European to Romance
Linguistics, 1999
Within X-bar theory prepositions are standardly taken to constitute one of the core lexical categories along with verbs, nouns, and adjectives definable by the features [±V, ±N]. Synchronically, however they share properties with both lexical and functional categories, while diachronically they are usually the outcome of processes of grammaticalization affecting true lexical categories such as verbs, nouns, and adjectives. The present paper analyzes in detail the stages whereby prepositions in Latin and Romance evolve from earlier adverbial particles and concludes that this diachronic trajectory is best modeled within a framework that separates the relational structure of a PP from its configurational representation. It is argued that lexicalfunctional grammar, with its systematic distinction between f-structure and c-structure, provides a better account of these changes than conventional X-bar theory. In conclusion a possible role for optimality theory within a formal account of syntactic change is briefly sketched.
The pace of grammaticalization and the evolution of prepositional systems: Data from Romance
Folia Linguistica, 2012
In this paper, we illustrate the uneven pace of grammaticalization in Romance by analysing a specific area of language, viz. simple and complex prepositions. Our goal is to establish a list of prepositions which are in actual use in five present-day Romance languages (to wit, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian and Spanish). In order to do so, we check the validity of existing lists against written and spoken corpora, and evaluate the degree of grammaticalization of each morpheme or construction, on the basis of (mainly) morpho-syntactic criteria. Additionally, and most importantly, a corpusbased approach makes it possible to observe these items' frequency (Bybee 2006). The result offers a clear picture of the degree of grammaticalization of prepositions in present-day Romance, showing that French seems indeed to be the most grammaticalized Romance language, followed by Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Romanian.
Philologia
In this paper we analyse the semantic load that prepositions In and On contribute to six verb-preposition combinations following the syntactic pattern " V + prep. + n/pron. ". The analysis is grounded on real language use examples extracted from two different corpora belonging to two different historical periods of the English language (present Contemporary English and Early Modern English). Our main aim is to check whether the semantic configuration of each one of these combinations is maintained or has undergone some change over time. If diachronic change has been the case, the purpose of the paper is also to show the role of topology, dynamics and function in sense extensions, as well as the patterns of these extensions. Semantic extension grounded on basic topological senses may show a difference to those semantic changes originated in functional senses.
Onmang Þaet - Incipient Grammaticalisation in Old and Middle English
Transactions of the Philological Society, 2018
This paper examines the development and use of the temporal subordinator onmang þaet. The development of the subordinator is seen as a special case of grammaticalisation, i.e. incipient grammaticalisation. Onmang þaet arises through the incorporation of the prepositional phrase onmang + demonstrative into the subordinator structure and in this respect onmang þaet resembles the grammaticalisation of other OE subordinators. The grammaticalisation of onmang þaet is however arrested in early ME, as the paper shows using a generative approach. I interpret this turn in the grammaticalisation of the subordinator as indicative of incipient grammaticalisation and I further use this observation as an avenue to identifying other features concomitant with incipient grammaticalisation. What I suggest is that incipient grammaticalisation should be associated with low frequency, minimal erosion, lack of fusion, and, finally, specialisation. I tentatively argue that options reduced via specialisation, as is the case with onmang þaet, may be the ones that qualify as cases of incipient grammaticalisation. Importantly, what follows is that incipient grammaticalisation as discussed in this study is not to be taken as referring to the early stages of grammaticalisation as such but to the grammaticalisation of infrequent structures available for a longer period of time.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 85.4: 411–421, 1984
This paper is a response and at the same time a sequel to John R. Costello's "Vestigial Substantival Adverbs and 'Prepositionalization' in Old Frisian", NM 76 (1975), 651–670. It acknowledges the importance of Costello's contribution to our understanding of this aspect of OFris syntax and adds further evidence for some of his findings. However, it also seeks to clear away certain misinterpretations on his behalf. Furthermore, my paper argues that certain emendations which Costello would not allow, are called for. This conclusion is arrived at by comparing OFris constructions containing (possible) substantival adverbs with especially Old English, the language most closely related to OFris. Costello's work is being expanded on by drawing attention to the construction of copula + adjective + dative. Finally, some methodological remarks are made on why my approach differs from Costello's.
Verbal Syntax in the Early Germanic Languages
This dissertation investigates the evidence for verb movement at the earliest stages of the Germanic languages. It is argued that already in the oldest documents of Germanic there are cases which must involve movement of the finite verb from the Verb Phrase to a functional head position higher up in the hierarchical structure. In a well-defined set of cases this is the Complementizer (C) position, but in other cases an IP-internal functional head position seems more likely as a landing-site for the verb. Moreover, it is argued that whereas in Gothic and Old English the verb does not move to C when complements are topicalized, in the other old Germanic languages, Old Norse, Old High German, and Old Saxon, V–to–C movement is obligatory in topicalizations. An examination of the runic inscriptions reveals that topicalized complements triggered movement of the verb to C already at the earliest stage in the northern part of the Germanic linguistic area.