I: On the Study of Old English Syntax

PMLA ◽  
1936 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
George William Small
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Fruitful Field

There has recently been a pronounced turning toward the study of English syntax as a separate department of linguistics with its own technique. If, however, the study of English syntax is an attractive and fruitful field, it is too often a most bewildering and deceptive one. Aside from the external dangers of slipping off into irrelevant semantics or into morphology, there is an ever-present danger in the analysis and exposition of the strangely illogical fabric that holds our language together.

Old English Syntax

Neophilologus ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 460-466
Author(s):  
Willem Koopman
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Syntax

Old English Syntax. Bruce Mitchell

Speculum ◽  
1988 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 700-702
Author(s):  
Fred C. Robinson
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Syntax

scholarly journals He forbead þæt hi ne weopon: A negative element in the þæt-clause introduced by a verb of prohibition

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 21-36
Author(s):  
Michiko Ogura
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Negative Element ◽  
University Of Edinburgh ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
The University ◽  
Stylistic Device

In ICEHL 20 at the University of Edinburgh, I made a report of my research on this theme. The present paper gives additional facts on the construction of a verb of negation followed by a þæt-clause with a negative element. What I try to exemplify is not a historical change from expletive negative to affirmative clause, but the facts that (i) the expletive negative was one of the correlative constructions based on Old English syntax and (ii) the affirmative clause was already found in early Old English together with the negative clause, even though the negative clause was frequent in late Old English to early Middle English and then decreased after late Middle English. The verb with negative import with a negated þæt-clause is, therefore, not an illogical expression but a stylistic device of combining the negation of the governing verb with the content of the governed, negated þæt-clause.

scholarly journals Old English Syntax and Its Relation to German

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Freja Bang Lauridsen
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
German Language ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Constituent Order ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
The Relationship

At first glance, the syntax of ancient Old English appears reminiscent of the syntax of the Present-Day German language. A number of shared syntactic traits such as Subject Object Verb constituent order, Verb Second, and a complicated inflectional system have caused the two languages to be compared by scholars, who often have referred to German as simply a present-day version of the now far-gone Old English. Exploring both similarities and dissimilarities of the two languages, this article examines the relationship between the two languages’ syntax to show that although structurally similar once, modern-day English has lost most of the syntactic traits linking it to the German language and their common Proto-Germanic roots. These syntactical differences not only show that Old English was never just a modern-day variant of German but also show that the two languages are developing in separate directions – or at least in separate paces.

scholarly journals The position of negative adjectives in Aelfric’s Catholic Homilies I .

2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 392-402
Author(s):  
Maciej Grabski
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Prepositional Phrase ◽  
English Prose ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Catholic Homilies ◽  
English Syntax

In Old English, negative adjectives, i.e. incorporating the negative prefix -un, are said to generally come in postposition to nouns (e.g. Fischer, 2001; Sampson, 2010). This paper investigates to what extent this general rule is followed in Aelfric’s Catholic Homilies, the texts of this author being a typical choice for the study of Old English syntax (cf. Davis 2006; Reszkiewcz, 1966; Kohonen, 1978). The data have been obtained from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). The following research questions have been formulated: Do strong negative adjectives outnumber nonnegated adjectives in postposition? Do strong negative adjectives have a tendency to appear in postposition? Do strong negated adjectives occur in preposition? The results indicated that for the sample analyzed, strong adjectives in postposition are not predominantly negated. Additionally, the postposition of most of those which are may potentially be explained by other factors, such as modification by a prepositional phrase, co-occurrence with a weak preposed adjective (both mentioned by Fischer), or indirect Latin influence in a formulaic phrase. Also, the data does not appear to support the observation that negated adjectives tend to appear in post- rather than preposition.

Old English syntax

2014 ◽  
pp. 392-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Don Ringe ◽  
Ann Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Syntax

Dative External Possessors in Early English

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia L. Allen
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Empirical Base ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
European Languages ◽  
Dative Case ◽  
English Syntax ◽  
Early English ◽  
Genitive Case

This book presents the results of a corpus-based case study of diachronic English syntax. Present Day English is in a minority of European languages in not having a productive dative external possessor construction. This construction, in which the possessor is in the dative case and behaves like an element of the sentence rather than part of the possessive phrase, was in variation with internal possessors in the genitive case in Old English, especially in expressions of inalienable possession. In Middle English, internal possessors became the only productive possibility. Previous studies of this development are not systematic enough to provide an empirical base for the hypotheses that have been put forward to explain the loss of external possessors in English, and these earlier studies do not make a crucial distinction among possessa in different grammatical relations. This book traces the use of dative external possessors in the texts of the Old and Early Middle English periods and explores how well the facts fit the major proposed explanations. A key finding is that the decline of the dative construction is visible within the Old English period and seems to have begun even before we have written records. Explanations that rely completely on developments in the Early Middle English period, such as the loss of case-marking distinctions, cannot account for this early decline. It does not appear that Celtic learners of Old English failed to learn the external possessor construction, but they may have precipitated the decrease in frequency in its use.

Short titles of Old English texts

1975 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 207-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Mitchell ◽  
Christopher Ball ◽  
Angus Cameron
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
English Syntax

This is the list referred to by Helmut Gneuss in his ‘Guide to the Editing and Preparation of Texts for the Dictionary of Old English’, A. Plan for the Dictionary of Old English, ed. R. Frank and A. Cameron (Toronto, 1973), pp. 9–23. The list has been prepared for use in The Dictionary of Old English and in Old English Syntax now in preparation by Bruce Mitchell, and will (the compilers dare to hope) replace previous systems, including F. P. Magoun Jr's ‘Abbreviated Titles for the Poems of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Corpus’. It will be used in Anglo-Saxon England where appropriate.

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