The Metrical Role of -ly and -liche Adverbs and Adjectives in Middle English Alliterative Verse: The A-Verse

2017 ◽  
Vol 114 (4) ◽  
pp. 773-792
Author(s):  
Noriko Inoue
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Alliterative Verse

Ambiguity avoidance as a factor in the rise of the English dative alternation

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Zehentner
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Language Change ◽  
Cognitive Factors ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Dative Alternation ◽  
Cue Reliability ◽  
History Of ◽  
Potential Impact

Abstract This paper discusses the role of cognitive factors in language change; specifically, it investigates the potential impact of argument ambiguity avoidance on the emergence of one of the most well-studied syntactic alternations in English, viz. the dative alternation (We gave them cake vs We gave cake to them). Linking this development to other major changes in the history of English like the loss of case marking, I propose that morphological as well as semantic-pragmatic ambiguity between prototypical agents (subjects) and prototypical recipients (indirect objects) in ditransitive clauses plausibly gave a processing advantage to patterns with higher cue reliability such as prepositional marking, but also fixed clause-level (SVO) order. The main hypotheses are tested through a quantitative analysis of ditransitives in a corpus of Middle English, which (i) confirms that the spread of the PP-construction is impacted by argument ambiguity and (ii) demonstrates that this change reflects a complex restructuring of disambiguation strategies.

What does āgen mean in the Lindisfarne Gospels?

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-272
Author(s):  
Letizia Vezzosi
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Past Participle ◽  
Latin Text ◽  
The Past ◽  
Lindisfarne Gospels ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Core Meaning ◽  
Source Of Information

Abstract Aldred’s interlinear glosses added to the Latin text of the Lindisfarne Gospels have undoubtedly an inestimable value as one of the most substantial representatives of late Old Northumbrian. Therefore, they have been an object of study both as a source of information on this Old English variety and on the typological changes affecting Middle English. Starting from the assumption that glosses have an ancillary function with respect to the Latin text they accompany, I have argued in the present paper that they can make a significant contribution to delineating the history and meaning of a word inasmuch as glossators could have chosen vernacular words according to their core meaning. The particular case of the verbs of possession āgan and the forms derived from it, including the past participle āgen, will be used in the following discussion of the role of glosses: the investigation of their meaning in the Lindisfarne Gospels will help us understand the development of āgen into the PDE attributive intensifier own.

Adapting to survive

2018 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 363-391
Author(s):  
Nikki van de Pol
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Range Of Functions ◽  
Corpus Data ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Semantic Expansion ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Over Time

Abstract This paper traces the semantic development of the English absolute construction from Old to Present-day English on the basis of extensive corpus data. It is observed that the absolute construction developed from a solely adverbial, strictly subordinate construction into a construction with a much larger range of functions, including quasi-coordinate constructions whose ‘addition’ function comes close to that of and-coordinated finite clauses. This development involves an expansion of clausal status (from subordinate to anywhere between subordinate and quasi-coordinate) and a semantic expansion from typically adverbial meanings to any type of additional information. The process is claimed to have been facilitated by Middle English case loss and arguments for this facilitating role of case loss are adduced. It is then shown how these quasi-coordinate absolute constructions became more and more important as an absolute construction-function over time, as they were well-suited to the absolute construction’s high degree of syntactic independence. This evolution appears to have taken an opposite direction from the development of free adjuncts (Killie & Swann 2009: 339). This observation fits in well with the proposal that English ing-clauses form a network (Fonteyn & van de Pol 2015) in which each member maintains its own functional niche, rather than engaging in competition with one another.

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.

Adverbial Distribution in Middle English Alliterative Verse

1992 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karl T. Hagen
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Alliterative Verse

scholarly journals Preverbal ge- in Old and Middle English

2015 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 15-48
Author(s):  
Thomas McFadden
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Corpus Study ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Cursory Examination ◽  
Diachronic Development

This paper aims to work toward a proper understanding of the role of preverbal ge- in Old English (henceforth OE) and its disappearance in the course of Middle English. This prefix is reminiscent of its cognates in Modern German and Dutch (also written ge-) in its distribution, but even a cursory examination of the details reveals it to be quite distinct, as we will see. The proper characterization of that distribution, and of its diachronic development, has proven to be extremely difficult. I have thus carried out a large-scale corpus study using the York-Toronto-Helsinki parsed corpus of Old English prose (Taylor et al. 2003) and the Penn-Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English, 2nd ed. (Kroch & Taylor 1999). This paper will report the results of the first phase of the project, involving patterns in the data that could be identified primarily on the basis of automatic searches in the corpora.  

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