Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T12:22:22.208Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Pronominally headed relative clauses in early English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 May 2021

CYNTHIA L. ALLEN
CYNTHIA L. ALLEN*
Affiliation:
School of Literature, Languages and Linguistics Australian National University Canberra ACT [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Present-day English is unlike Old English in not using singular demonstrative pronouns with anaphoric reference to human beings. This article adds to the contributions of Cole (2017) and Los & van Kemenade (2018) in our understanding of the factors determining the choice between personal and demonstrative pronouns in Old English by documenting the hitherto unexamined use of these pronouns as heads of relative clauses. It also traces how the singular demonstrative pronouns referring to humans retreated as heads of relative clauses in Early Middle English. A corpus-based study shows that third-person personal pronouns were unusual as heads of relative clauses in Old English and normally referred to specific individuals, while demonstratives were the pronouns of choice for generic reference but could also refer to specific individuals. The increased use of personal pronouns for generic reference is well underway in Early Middle English. While the retreat of the singular demonstrative pronouns to refer to humans in Early Middle English seems to have some connection with the reduced marking of feature distinctions in that period, a simple explanation in terms of loss of gender is untenable.

Keywords

demonstrativespronounsrelative clausesOld EnglishEarly Middle English
Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 105 - 132
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Thanks to two anonymous ELL reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

Allen, Cynthia L. 1980. Movement and deletion in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 11, 261–323.Google Scholar
Allen, Cynthia L. 1992. Old English and the syntactician: Some remarks and a syntactician's guide to the works of Ælfric. In Colman, Fran (ed.), Evidence for Old English, 1–19. Edinburgh: John Donald.Google Scholar
Allen, Cynthia L. 1997. The development of an ‘impersonal’ verb in Middle English: The case of behoove. In Fisiak, Jacek (ed.), Studies in Middle English linguistics, 1–21. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Allen, Cynthia L. 2008. Genitives in early English: Typology and evidence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Allen, Cynthia L. 2016. The definite article: What happened with Þe? In Vikner, Sten, Jorgensen, Henrik & Gelderen, Elly van (eds.), Let us have articles betwixt us: Papers in historical and comparative linguistics in honour of Johanna L. Wood, 43–82. Aarhus: Dept of English, School of Communication & Culture, Aarhus University.Google Scholar
Allen, Cynthia L. 2020. Case and preposition stranding in Old English free relatives. North-Western European Language Evolution 73, 185–211.Google Scholar
Baechler, Rafaela. 2019. Analogy, reanalysis and exaptation in Early Middle English: The emergence of a new inflectional system. English Language and Linguistics 24, 123–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bately, Janet (ed.). 1980. The Old English Orosius (Early English Text Society Supplementary Series 6). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bately, Janet M. 1988. Old English prose before and during the reign of Alfred. Anglo-Saxon England 17, 93–138.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bosch, Peter & Umbach, Carla. 2007. Reference determination for demonstrative pronouns. In Bittner, Dagmar & Gargarina, Natalia (eds.), Intersentential pronominal reference in child and adult language (ZAS Papers in Linguistics 48), 39–51.Google Scholar
Clemoes, Peter (ed.) 1997. Ælfric's Catholic homilies: The first series (Early English Text Society Supplementary Series 17). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Marcelle. 2017. Pronominal anaphoric strategies in the West Saxon dialect of Old English. English Language and Linguistics 21, 381–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
d'Ardenne, S. R. T. O. (ed.). 1961. Þe liflade and te passiun of Seinte Iuliene (Early English Text Society 248). London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dobson, E. J. 1972. The English text of the Ancrene Riwle (Early English Text Society 267). London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2013. The diachrony of pronouns and demonstratives. In Lohndal, Terje & Faarlund, Jan Terje (eds.), In search of universal grammar: From Old Norse to Zoque, 195–218. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gisborne, Nikolaus & Truswell, Robert. 2017. Where do relative specifiers come from? In Truswell, Robert & Érik, Mathieu, (eds.), Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax, 25–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney D. & Pullum, Geoffrey K. et al. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Charles. 1988. Grammatical gender in English, 950 to 1250. New York: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van. 1987. Syntactic case and morphological case in the history of English. Dordrecht: Forris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van. 2017. A response to Cole. English Language and Linguistics 21, 409–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kiparsky, Paul. 2002. Disjoint reference and the typology of pronouns. In Kaufmann, Ingrid & Stiebels, Barbara (eds.), More than words: A Festschrift for Dieter Wunderlich, 179–226. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice & Diertani, Ariel. 2004. Penn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-3/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Laing, Margaret. 1992. A linguistic atlas of Early Middle English: The value of texts surviving in more than one version. In Rissanenen, Matti, Ihalainen, Ossi, Nevalainen, Terttu & Taavitsainen, Irma (eds.), History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in historical linguistics, 566–81. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Laing, Margaret. 2013–. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English 1150 to 1325, version 3.2 www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme2.htmlGoogle Scholar
Lambrecht, Knud. 2001. Dislocation. In Martin Haspelmath, Ekkehard König, Wulf Oesterreicher & Wolfgang Raible (eds.) Language typology and language universals, vol. 2, 1050–78. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou & van Kemenade, Ans. 2018. Syntax and the morphology of deixis: The loss of demonstratives and paratactic clause linking. In Coniglio, Marco, Murphy, Andrew, Schlacter, Eva & Venstra, Tonjes (eds.), Atypical demonstratives, 127–60. Berlin: De Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Millar, Robert McColl. 2000. System collapse, system rebirth: The demonstrative pronouns of English, 900–1350 and the birth of the definite article. Oxford: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce, Ball, Christopher & Cameron, Angus. 1975. Short titles of Old English Texts. Anglo-Saxon England 4, 207–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morris, Richard (ed.). 1868. Old English homilies of the 12th and 13th centuries, vol. I (Early English Text Society 29, 34). London: N. Trübner & Co.Google Scholar
Morris, Richard (ed.). 1873. Old English homilies of the 12th and 13th centuries, vol. II (Early English Text Society 53). London: N. Trübner & Co.Google Scholar
Skeat, Walter W. 1881–1900. Ælfric's lives of saints (Early English Text Society 76, 82, 94, 114). London: Trübner.Google Scholar
Suárez-Gómez, Cristina. 2006. Relativization in early English (950–1250): The position of the relative clause. Bern: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Taylor, Ann. 2014. Old English syntax. In Ringe, Donald & Taylor, Ann, The development of Old English, 392–509. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, Ann, Warner, Anthony, Pintzuk, Susan & Beths, Frank. 2003. The York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York. Distributed by the Oxford Text Archive. www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YCOE/YcoeHome.htmGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. Syntax. In Hogg, Richard M. (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. I: The beginnings to 1066, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Treharne, Elaine M. 2000. The production and script of manuscripts containing English religious texts in the first half of the twelfth century. In Swan, Mary & Treharne, Elaine M. (eds.), Rewriting Old English in the twelfth century, 11–40. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar