Scandinavian Influence on English Syntax

PMLA ◽  
1959 ◽  
Vol 74 (5) ◽  
pp. 503-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
Max S. Kirch
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
The Subject ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Germanic Languages

The Influence of Scandinavian on English vocabulary as a result of the settlement of the Northmen in England before the Norman Conquest was well established over fifty years ago by Bjôrkman. Claims have been made by some scholars about Scandinavian influence on English syntax, but these have been the subject of much controversy. As early as 1908 Logeman noted the tendency of both Danish and English to stress the preposition and usages such as “he has someone to work for,” which are not found in the other Germanic languages. Jespersen cited several correspondences between Modern English and Modern Danish, which he felt might possibly date back to the Viking settlements. Specifically he enumerated (1) relative clauses without pronouns, (2) the omission of the conjunction 'that,' (3) the use of 'shall' and ‘will’ in Middle English, (4) the genitive before nouns. Later students have followed Jespersen's lead; e.g. Marckwardt in his Introduction to English (Toronto & New York, 1942) and Pei in his Story of English (Philadelphia and New York, 1952).

A contrastive analysis of absolute constructions in French, German and Norwegian

2010 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marianne Hobæk Haff
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
General Question ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The One ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Matrix Subject

This paper is an exploration of similarities and differences concerning absolute constructions in French, German and Norwegian. In the first part, I have examined a more general question raised by these constructions: the connections between these types of absolute constructions and the matrix subject. I have shown that the means by which the absolute constructions are related to the subject can be morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic. The second part contains a purely contrastive analysis. Two issues have been examined: on the one hand, the absolute constructions and their congruent and non-congruent correspondences, on the other, the use of determiners. Essentially, French is different from the two Germanic languages, but similarities also exist between French and German, which are the center of a European Sprachbund.

XIX.—Rhythm and Rime Before the Norman Conquest

PMLA ◽  
1921 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 401-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Rankin
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Alliterative Verse ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Foreign Influence ◽  
Latin Verse ◽  
Germanic Languages ◽  
Orthodox View

The orthodox view regarding the introduction of end rime into English verse is succinctly set forth in the following quotations : “ Endrime, being a stranger to the early Germanic languages, its appearance in any of them may commonly be taken as a sign of foreign influence. In general, of course, rime and the stanza were introduced together into English verse, under the influence of Latin hymns and French lyrics.” “ Die alliterierende Langzeile war die einzige in der ags. Poesie bekannte Versart und blieb in derselben bis zu ende der ersten ags. oder altenglischen Sprachperiode in Gebrauch.” “ The transformation of the O. E. alliterative line into rhyme verse did not take place before the Middle English period. It was due to the influence of the rhymed French and Latin verse.” “ Alliterative verse was remodelled on Latin and French verse—or foreign verses were directly imitated.” The implication is that there never existed in Anglo-Saxon any verse of a form different from that of the five-type alliterative verse which prevails in the corpus of extant Anglo-Saxon poetry.

Changing Thegns: Cnut's Conquest and the English Aristocracy

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 375-387 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katharin Mack
Keyword(s):  
Eleventh Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Anglo Norman ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Edward The Confessor

England was conquered twice in the eleventh century: first in 1016 by Cnut the Dane and again in 1066 by William Duke of Normandy. The influence of the Norman Conquest has been the subject of scholarly warfare ever since E.A. Freeman published the first volume of his History of the Norman Conquest of England in 1867—and indeed, long before. The consequences of Cnut's conquest, on the other hand, have not been subjected to the same scrutiny. Because England was conquered twice in less than fifty years, historians have often succumbed to the temptation of comparing the two events. But since Cnut's reign is poorly documented and was followed quickly by the restoration of the house of Cerdic in the person of Edward the Confessor, such studies have tended to judge 1016 by the standards of 1066. While such comparisons are useful, they have imposed a model on Cnut's reign which has distorted the importance of the Anglo-Scandinavian period. If, however, Cnut's reign is compared with the Anglo-Saxon past rather than the Anglo-Norman future, the influence of 1016 can be more fairly assessed.

scholarly journals A Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English

2019 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
Robert Truswell ◽  
Rhona Alcorn ◽  
James Donaldson ◽  
Joel Wallenberg
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Detailed Account ◽  
Important Data ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Sentential Negation ◽  
Data Gap ◽  
English Syntax

This chapter reports on the construction of a new resource, the Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (PLAEME). Prose is underrepresented in the period 1250-1350, which is why this period is also underrepresented in the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English (PPCHE). This data gap is unfortunate, as we know that the period is important for morphosyntactic change. PLAEME addresses that data gap by transforming material from the Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME) into the same format as the PPCHE. The chapter present a detailed account of its construction, as well as three case studies replicating three recent studies of Middle English syntax: the establishment of not as the expression of sentential negation (Ecay and Tamminga 2017), the fixing of the syntax of the dative alternation (Bacovcin 2017), and the introduction of argumental headed wh-relative clauses (Gisborne and Truswell 2017). These case studies show that PLAEME allows these changes to be charted in much greater detail, and hence demonstrates how PLAEME fills an important data gap.

scholarly journals The Relativity Strategy of Old Javanese

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 1100
Author(s):  
Ni Ketut Ratna Erawati
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Core System ◽  
Linguistic Study ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Grammatical Relation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Popular Work

Old Javanese is one of the temporal dialects in Indonesia that is estimated to develop from the IX-XV century. The language has a lot of langues inherited in the form of literature kakawin (Old Javanese poetry) and the form of parwa (Old Javanese language prose) until now. Literary works in the form kakawin and parwa are very popular work to be sung in Balinese society especially in religious ceremonies. Therefore, the Old Javanese is very worthy of being used as a linguistic study even though the language is categorized as a dead language. In morphological typology, Old Javanese is an agglutinative type. On the other hand, syntactically the Old Javanese language includes the Split-S typology. Associated with morphological typology and syntax, the Old Javanese has a core system or verb. Thus, the Old Javanese has various forms of verb-alternation in clause structures, either in single clauses or complex clauses. Relative clauses are one part of the complex clause having a change of grammatical relation when the insertion of certain linguistic elements. The topic of this study was the relativity strategy in Old Javanese.  The relativity strategy of Old Javanese was described with related theories and concepts.  Based on the result the Old Javanese could make the subject to be relative by inserting element of the relative sang and ikang. On the other hand there was also an indirect relativity by marking of verbs and penloping.

Agents of a Fuller Revelation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel McBride Lindsey
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
American Civil War ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Spirit Photography ◽  
The One

Intense debates around spirit photography started immediately upon its discovery in late 1862. This chapter frames these debates around the career, trial, and demise of America’s first and most notorious spirit photographer, William Howard Mumler. In the context of the American Civil War, Mumler claimed to have discovered a gift for photographing spirits of departed souls and immediately became the subject of public interest and scrutiny. His uneasy affiliation with modern Spiritualism, his public ridicule by the photographic guild, and his brief celebrity in the 1860s provide a window into the at times intense uncertainty around the camera’s ability to reveal spiritual truth to modern beholders. His hearing before the New York Police Court in the spring of 1869, in particular, facilitated a very public debate around the authority of the Bible and the camera in newspaper accounts that were circulated throughout the country. In this chapter, spirit photographs emerge as a hinge between corporeal referents in studio portraiture, on the one hand, and practices of biblical beholding, on the other, that asked beholders to see what was really there.

scholarly journals The Rise of Standard I (< Me Ich): A Contribution to the Study of Functional Change in English

2014 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 29-41
Author(s):  
Jerzy Wełna
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Functional Change ◽  
Short Vowel ◽  
First Person ◽  
Personal Pronoun ◽  
Norman Conquest ◽  
Capital Letter ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Germanic Languages

Abstract In its post-Norman Conquest development the Old English first person personal pronoun ic underwent transformations which, following the loss of the consonant, finally yielded the contemporary capitalised form I, contrasting with other Germanic languages, which retain a velar sound in the corresponding pronoun. The rather complex change of ich to I involves a loss of the final velar/palatal consonant, lengthening of the original short vowel, and capitalisation of the pronoun. It is argued here that the use of the capital letter was a consequence of vowel lengthening subsequent to the loss of the consonant. This seems to be confirmed by the observation that forms retaining a consonant are extremely rarely capitalised. The data adduced in the present paper will help verify as precisely as possible the distribution of the forms of that pronoun in Middle English dialects in order to determine to what extent the changes were functionally interdependent. The evidence comes from the Innsbruck Corpus of Middle English Prose.

scholarly journals WH-extractions and relative clauses in Brazilian Portuguese

2000 ◽  
Vol 16 (spe) ◽  
pp. 141-163
Author(s):  
Esmeralda Vailati NEGRÃO
Keyword(s):  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
The Other ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Generative Theory ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Special Case

This paper aims to describe and explain WH-extraction patterns out of island contexts in Brazilian Portuguese (BP), by means of the principles established by Generative Theory. I claim that BP uses a strategy for the extraction of subjects which involves a special case of Agreement. Extractions out of relative islands are possible when the extracted WH-phrase ends up in the specifier position of the higher CP and from there it behaves as the subject of the predication. The subject-predicate relationship established under agreement makes Comp a proper governor for traces in subject position under its scope. The analysis proposed makes a distinction between two processes of relative clause formation. One in which que is an operator that transforms sentences into predicates and sits in the Comp position of a CP whose specifier can be occupied by a QP functioning as the subject of the predication. The other, in which que is a WH-word, traditionally treated as a pronoun, occupying the specifier position of a QP and introducing relative clauses as we know them.

de in Mandarin

1986 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 313-326 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Lai Shen Cheng
Keyword(s):  
Structural Properties ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Government

In Mandarin, there is an element de which has for years been the subject of analysis. Li and Thompson (1981) and Ross (1983 and 1984) have tried, with little success, to provide a unified treatment of this element. Li and Thompson (1981) claim that there are several de’s in Mandarin: a possessive marker, an adjectival marker and a nominalization marker. But the structural properties of these de’s and the similarities among them are ignored.Using the Government and Binding framework (Chomsky 1981), I will provide an analysis which accounts for the structural and functional similarities and differences among the various de’s in Mandarin. First, I will state the theoretical assumptions relevant to the discussion of de. Second, I will present the non-controversial evidence showing that de is a head-final complementizer in relative clauses. Third, I will present further data exemplifying a head-final de in other constructions. Fourth, I will demonstrate the impossibility of having a head-final de complementizer in resultative clauses. Finally, I will propose that there are two de complementizers in Mandarin, one head-final, the other head-initial.

Golgi Apparatus and Melanogenesis: Ultrastructural Study of a Human Cellular Blue Nevus (Melanocytoma)

1973 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 380-381
Author(s):  
S.R. Allegra
Keyword(s):  
Endoplasmic Reticulum ◽  
Golgi Apparatus ◽  
Ultrastructural Study ◽  
The Other ◽  
Blue Nevus ◽  
Normal Complement ◽  
Golgi Vesicles ◽  
Golgi System ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Cellular Blue Nevus

The respective roles of the ribo somes, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi apparatus and perhaps nucleus in the synthesis and maturation of melanosomes is still the subject of some controversy. While the early melanosomes (premelanosomes) have been frequently demonstrated to originate as Golgi vesicles, it is undeniable that these structures can be formed in cells in which Golgi system is not found. This report was prompted by the findings in an essentially amelanotic human cellular blue nevus (melanocytoma) of two distinct lines of melanocytes one of which was devoid of any trace of Golgi apparatus while the other had normal complement of this organelle.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document