scholarly journals A Diachronic Perspective on the English Preposition TO and the Romanian Preposition LA

Linguaculture ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-162
Author(s):  
Tania Zamfir

The paper discusses the different evolution of the English preposition (P) to and the Romanian P la “at/to” which can be observed in the history of English and Romanian ditransitives. In Modern English (ModE), the preposition to can occur in configurations with (i) ditransitive predicates and (b) unaccusative predicates. Within ditransitives, the English to only functions in the prepositional frame and it has a narrow distribution; the to-dative is a genuine Goal or a Recipient with certain verb classes. The first focus of this paper is to investigate the presence of the to-dative in Old English (OldE). The investigation will reveal that the to-dative construction was neither rare nor restricted, but already present in OldE. By way of contrast, Romanian la has a richer distribution (Possessor Goal, Beneficiary, Maleficiary and Source) and it has shifted from a case marker to a [Person] marker and it has moved in the direction of inflectional dative. The second focus of the paper is to investigate the presence of la in OldR. I will show that Romanian la evolved from the Latin P ad; diachronically, Romanian has kept the analytical marking of the Dative which is realized through the P la “at/to”.

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 178-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas H. Jucker

Studies in the history of politeness in English have generally relied on the notions of positive and negative face. While earlier work argued that a general trend from positive politeness to negative politeness can be observed, more recent work has shown that in Old English and in Middle English face concerns were not as important as in Modern English and that, in certain contexts, there are also opposing tendencies from negative to positive politeness. In this paper, I focus in more detail on the notions of positive and negative face and follow up earlier suggestions that for negative face a clear distinction must be made between deference politeness and non-imposition politeness. On this basis, I assess the usefulness of the notions of positive and negative face for the development of politeness in the history of English.


1976 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 23-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Dumville

This collection of Old English royal records is found in four manuscripts: London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian B. vi; London, British Library, Cotton Tiberius B. v, vol. 1; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 183; and Rochester, Cathedral Library, A. 3. 5. The present paper aims both to provide an accurate, accessible edition of the texts in the first three of these manuscripts and to discuss the development of the collection from its origin to the stages represented by the extant versions. We owe to Kenneth Sisam most of our knowledge of the history of the Anglo-Saxon genealogies. Although his closely argued discussion remains the basis for any approach to these sources, it lacks the essential aid to comprehension, the texts themselves. It is perhaps this omission, as much as the difficulty of the subject and the undoubted accuracy of many of his conclusions, that has occasioned the neglect from which the texts have suffered in recent years.


Author(s):  
Dmitry Ganenkov ◽  
Timur Maisak

The chapter is a survey of the Nakh-Daghestanian family (also known as East Caucasian), one of the indigenous language families spoken in the Caucasus. The family comprises more than 30 languages, some of which are spoken by only a few hundred people and remain unwritten and/or underdescribed. The chapter provides general information about the sociolinguistic status of Nakh-Daghestanian languages and the history of their research as well as their phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. The languages of the family have rich consonant systems and are morphologically ergative, head-final, with rich case systems, complex verbal paradigms, and pervasive gender-number agreement. Alongside the major transitive and intransitive lexical verb classes, verbs of perception and cognition with the dative experiencer subject usually comprise one or more minor valency classes with non-canonically marked subjects. Among valency-increasing derivations, the causative is the most prominent. The most typical subordination strategies are non-finite, making use of participles, converbs, infinitives and verbal nouns.


PMLA ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 136 (3) ◽  
pp. 340-355
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Lorden

AbstractScholarship has often considered the concept of fiction a modern phenomenon. But the Old English Boethius teaches us that medieval people could certainly tell that a fictional story was a lie, although it was hard for them to explain why it was all right that it was a lie—this is the problem the Old English Boethius addresses for the first time in the history of the English language. In translating Boethius's sixth-century Consolation of Philosophy, the ninth-century Old English Boethius offers explanatory comments on its source's narrative exempla drawn from classical myth. While some of these comments explain stories unfamiliar to early medieval English audiences, others consider how such “false stories” may be read and experienced by those properly prepared to encounter them. In so doing, the Old English Boethius must adopt and adapt a terminology for fiction that is unique in the extant corpus of Old English writing.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Egi Putriana ◽  
Jufrizal Jufrizal ◽  
Fitrawati Fitrawati

The history of English language has three periods of time; Old English, Middle English, and Modern English. The linguistic forms in English development are different each period. This research aims to find out one of the changes, that is, the affix changes from Middle English to Modern English form that found in both of The Miller’s Tale Story Middle English and Modern English versions. This research also aims to find out the spelling changes in affixes. This research used descriptive qualitative method. The data, which are the collection of words that have affixes found in The Miller’s Tale, were identified based on the base of the words and its affixes and its were classified based on the type of its functions. Based on data analysis, there are seven affixes in Middle English which have been changed in Modern English form. These changes occur in the deletion of vowel, change of vowel, substitution of the affix, and elimination of the affix. The spelling change also influenced the change in suffixes. Some of the vocabularies change into the new words and some of the words change only in its vowel.


Author(s):  
Natal'ya Yu. Gvozdetskaya ◽  

The paper is an attempt to analyze the methods of representing specific features of the language of the Old English poem Beowulf in the Russian literary translation of Vladimir Tikhomirov: alliterative collocations, synonymic groups, compounds and epic variations. These specific features of Old English poetic language are rendered in the translation through the diction of different stylistic coloring – both the high-style, even archaic words as well as the everyday words close to colloquialisms. Following the Old English poet, the translator uses the oral-epic manner of narration, neither reducing it to a limited stylization, nor turning it into an innovative experiment. The translator manages to convey the ability of the Old English poetic language to coin new compounds through creating ‘potential’ words that reveal the ‘open’ character of the Old English synonymic systems. The Russian translation of Beowulf is considered in the context of the history of English translations of the poem as well as studies of Old English and Old Scandinavian literature in Russia.


PMLA ◽  
1900 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 253-289
Author(s):  
Felix E. Schelling

The comedy which appears in the following pages is reprinted from “the second impression,” as it is called on the title page, made by Francis Kirkman in the year 1661: the first edition is apparently no longer extant. Francis Kirkman occupies an interesting position in the history of the English drama as the first man to interest himself in the collection and preservation of old English plays. To him we owe the reprint of Lust's Dominion, which has been attributed to Marlowe, of The Thracian Wonder, of Gammer Gurton's Nedle, and of other plays; and from Kirkman we have the first attempt at a catalogue of English dramas, the foundation on which Langbaine, Baker, Reed, and others were later to build. The earlier form of Kirkman's “an exact Catalogue of all the playes that were ever yet printed” appeared as a supplement to the present play, and included six hundred and ninety items. A few years later Kirkman had increased his list to eight hundred and six. He tells us that he had seen and read all these plays and that he possesses most of them, which he is willing to sell or lend upon reasonable consideration.


Author(s):  
Lilo Moessner

This chapter sets the present book off against previous studies about the English subjunctive in the historical periods Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), and Early Modern English (EModE). The aim of the book is described as the first comprehensive and consistent description of the history of the present English subjunctive. The key term subjunctive is defined as a realisation of the grammatical category mood and an expression of the semantic/pragmatic category root modality. The corpus used in the book is part of The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, comprising nearly half a million words in 91 files. The research method adopted is a combination of close reading and computational analysis.


1994 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-224
Author(s):  
N. F. Blake
Keyword(s):  

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