On the inherent semantic meaning of double object Latinate verbs in English in modern and historical perspective *

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Sówka-Pietraszewska
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Time Span ◽  
Semantic Meaning ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Prepositional Object ◽  
The One

Abstract This paper shows the realization of arguments of Latinate double object verbs and an analysis of their inherent semantic meaning in the Late Middle English and early Modern English periods, hence in the time-span when they were borrowed into English. The main aim of this paper is to show that although Latinate verbs occur in a construction with what seems to be an allative preposition, not all of them lexicalize movement in the inherent meanings. In contrast, some Latinate verbs lexicalize only a caused possession. What is more, this paper shows that the caused possession Latinate verbs select a different variant of prepositional object construction than the one selected by Latinate verbs lexicalizing movement.

Motivations for particle verb word order in Middle and Early Modern English

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 489-511 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARION ELENBAAS
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Word Order ◽  
Division Of Labour ◽  
The Other ◽  
Particle Verbs ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The One ◽  
Particle Verb

This article examines possible motivations for the choice of particle verb word order in Middle English (1100–1500) and Early Modern English (1500–1700). The word order alternation of Present-Day English particle verbs, which presents language users with a choice between verb–object–particle and verb–particle–object order, first emerged in Early Middle English (twelfth century). For Present-Day English, several studies (e.g. Gries 1999, 2003; Dehé 2002) have shown that the choice is influenced by a number of linguistic factors, such as the heaviness of the object (morphosyntactic factor) and the givenness of the object (discourse factor). This article reveals the influence of a number of morphosyntactic factors and also shows that the choice is increasingly influenced by the givenness of the object. The differences between Present-Day English on the one hand and Middle and Early Modern English on the other hand are discussed in the light of syntactic changes going on in these periods. It is argued that the developments in particle verb syntax are characterised by an increasing division of labour between the two word orders, which may also explain why both orders survive into Present-Day English.

The growth of the transitivising Reaction Object Construction

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 239-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamara Bouso
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Traditional Form ◽  
Historical Trend ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
Early Modern English

Abstract This paper explores the growth of the Reaction Object Construction (ROC) as in Pauline smiled her thanks, offering new insights into its characterisation and historical development from the perspective of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995, 2006, 2019) and its application to patterns of language change (Hilpert 2013; Traugott & Trousdale 2013). It is argued that the modern ROC qualifies as a traditional form-meaning pairing and, at a deeper level, as a polysemous construction that follows the path of development of other transitivising constructions such as the way-construction (Israel 1996), and of processes of constructionalisation in general. Once the ROC imposes a coreferential constraint on its object argument, acquiring in this way its status as a form-meaning pairing over the Early Modern English period (1500–1700), the construction increases its productivity and schematicity; at the same time it decreases its compositionality since the link between the form/syntax and the overall meaning of the construction becomes less transparent, as in The door jingled a welcome. The ROC can thus be argued to be part and result of a broader development in the grammar of English, namely the historical trend towards transitivisation.

From ‘quickly’ to ‘fairly’: on the history ofrather

2008 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 345-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
MATTI RISSANEN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Type I ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Semantic Development ◽  
Syntactic Development

In this article I describe the semantic and syntactic development of the moderatorratherfrom Old to Present-day English using a variationist approach.Ratheroriginates in an Old English comparative adverb indicating speed, and hence time, but the loss of the indication of speed and movement can already be traced in the Old English period. In Middle English the ‘preferential’ senses ofrather(e.g. the type ‘I would rather do X than Y’) become more common than the temporal senses. This contrastive meaning constitutes the unmarked use ofratherin Early Modern English, but it gradually weakens in the course of the Modern English period. The moderator use becomes popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. The semantic development outlined above goes hand in hand with a syntactic development from an original adjunct into a subjunct and conjunct, and finally into a modifier of adjectives and adverbs.

scholarly journals Pray in Early Modern English drama

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-284 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ursula Lutzky ◽  
Jane Demmen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Social Status ◽  
Time Span ◽  
English Drama ◽  
Quantitative Distribution ◽  
Early Modern English Drama ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
And Gender

This study seeks to provide new insights into the development and use of pray in Early Modern English. The study is based on the sociopragmatically annotated Drama Corpus, which combines the drama text samples of three different Early Modern English corpora, comprising a total of 242,561 words from a time span of 1500 to 1760. We investigate the quantitative distribution of the different forms in which pray appears during this period, and the influence of the variables of social status and gender. The aim of the current study is consequently to shed more light on the sociopragmatic nature of pray forms, and to reach a more profound understanding of their use in the Early Modern English period.

Ditransitives in Middle English: on semantic specialisation and the rise of the dative alternation

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (01) ◽  
pp. 149-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVA ZEHENTNER
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Causal Relation ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Double Object Construction ◽  
Verb Classes ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ditransitive Verbs

This article discusses the plausibility of a correlation or even a causal relation between two phenomena that can be observed in the history of English ditransitives. The changes concerned are: first, the emergence of the ‘dative alternation’, i.e. the establishment of a link between the double object construction (DOC) and its prepositional paraphrase, and second, a reduction in the range of verb classes associated with the DOC, with the construction's semantics becoming specialised to basic transfer senses. Empirically, the article is based on a quantitative analysis of the occurrences of the DOC as well as its prepositional competitors in thePenn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edition (PPCME2). On the basis of these results, it will be argued that the semantic narrowing and the increasing ability of ditransitive verbs to be paraphrased by ato-prepositional construction (to-POC) interacted in a bi-directional causal manner.

Preposition stranding with wh-relatives: a historical survey

2000 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 295-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunnar Bergh ◽  
Aimo Seppänen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Middle English ◽  
General Trend ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Historical Survey ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Preposition Stranding ◽  
Grammatical Change

In the course of their history, English wh-relatives are known to have undergone a syntactic change in their prepositional usage: having originally occurred only with pied-piped prepositions, they came to admit preposition stranding as an alternative pattern. The present article presents an overview of this process, showing a modest beginning of stranding in Late Middle English, an increase in Early Modern English, and then a clear decrease in the written language of today, against a more liberal use in spoken English, standard as well as nonstandard. The drop in the incidence of stranding is thus not an expression of a genuine grammatical change but due to notions of correctness derived from the grammar of Latin and affecting written usage. The general trend of the development outlined is mirrored by relative that, with which the pied piping attested in Middle English completely disappeared from the language.

On interaction in herbals from Middle English to Early Modern English

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Mäkinen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Middle Ages

The focus of this article is on interaction in Middle English and Early Modern English herbals. In the Middle Ages, herbals were mainly instructive aids for producing medicines of the plants described in the text. Later, in the Early Modern English period, the herbal genre split into two, retaining the genre called herbals and giving birth to systematic botanical texts. The interaction established in texts can be studied through the use of pronouns (involvement markers) and the use of imperatives. This study shows that the strategies employed in the Middle English period are very different from the strategies in the Early Modern English period: the use of second-person pronouns and imperatives prevails in the Middle English period, whereas the use of first-person pronouns was preferred in the Early Modern English period. In addition to this, another division, irrespective of the time of writing, is observed in the material: the first group includes handbooks and practical herbals, and the other group learned and empirical herbals. Factors which explain these differences in interaction strategies are the purposes for writing and the education of the intended audience.

scholarly journals Grammaticalization by changing co-text frequencies, or why [BE Ving] became the ‘progressive’

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER PETRÉ
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Functional Changes ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Functional Development ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
The Way

While the ‘progressive’ construction [BE Ving] (Hewas playing tenniswhen Jane came in) has been studied extensively both diachronically and synchronically, studies of its functional development tend not to extend further back than Early Modern English. This article draws attention to the functional changes [BE Ving] goes through already in Middle English, whose analysis sheds new light on the principles of early grammaticalization. To understand the observed changes, all uses of [BE Ving] are considered, not only those that have a clear verbal and aspectual function. During Middle English, important changes occurred in the frequencies of the various co-texts of [BE Ving]. They involve the increase in backgrounding adverbial clauses, which leads to the semanticization of ongoingness, a feature that was initially only associated with [BE Ving] by pragmatic implicature. The outcome is grammaticalization by co-text: co-textual changes paved the way for the acquisition of progressive semantics in [BE Ving] itself.

Investigating the past of the futurate present

2021 ◽  
pp. 210-238
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Cowper ◽  
Daniel Currie Hall ◽  
Bronwyn M. Bjorkman ◽  
Rebecca Tollan ◽  
Neil Banerjee
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Distinct Class ◽  
The Past ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Present Tense ◽  
Primary Form

Using a corpus of 1118 future-referring clauses from each of five versions of the Christian Gospels, this paper explores the effect that the development of English modals as a distinct class had on the range of meanings expressed by the simple present tense. It is shown that in Old English, the simple present tense was the primary form used to express future meanings, while by Early Modern English modals were obligatory in such clauses. In late Middle English, modals were very frequently used, but are shown not to be obligatory. The change is attributed to the advent, in the late 1500s, of a contrastive interpretable feature modality, spelled out by the modals. Thereafter, a clause lacking this contrastive feature could not be interpreted as future-referring except in planned or scheduled contexts. The featural implications of the present-day decline of the true modals are then briefly considered.

EXPRESS: When the independence of syntactic representation meets the sentence processing of Mandarin: Evidence from syntactic priming

2021 ◽  
pp. 174702182110449
Author(s):  
Keshu Xiang ◽  
Hui Chang ◽  
Lu Sun
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Semantic Features ◽  
Syntactic Priming ◽  
Double Object ◽  
Priming Effects ◽  
Object Construction ◽  
Syntactic Representation ◽  
Target Experiment ◽  
Prepositional Object

There is no consensus on whether syntactic representation is independent of semantic representation in Mandarin. In four experiments, we adopted the syntactic priming paradigm to investigate the independence of syntactic representation in Mandarin. Experiments 1 and 2 investigated the priming effects of double object construction (DO) and prepositional object construction (PO) with the ditransitive verb being repeated across the prime and target. Experiment 1 showed two-way priming effects of DO and PO. Experiment 2 showed that the syntactic priming effects persisted regardless of whether the semantic features (animacy of the Theme) matched across the prime and target or not. Furthermore, such effects persisted in Experiments 3 and 4 where the ditransitive verb across the prime and target was not repeated. Taken together, these findings provide evidence that syntactic/semantic independence is universal and favored over the traditional Chinese grammar account, which claims that the syntactic representation of Mandarin is not independent of the semantic representation.

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