Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T12:28:21.607Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The functions of weorðan and its loss in the past tense in Old and Middle English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2010

PETER PETRÉ
PETER PETRÉ*
Affiliation:
Dept. Linguïstiek, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Blijde-Inkomststraat 21, postbus 3308, B-3000 Leuven, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article, I relate the loss of weorðan in the past tense to the loss of an Old English grammatical subsystem that encouraged the expression of narrative by bounded sentence constructions. This type of construction represents a situation as reaching its goal or endpoint, and serves to mark progress in a narrative (e.g. then he walked over to the other side). Instead of this system, from Middle English onwards a mixed system emerges with differently structured bounded sentence constructions as well as, increasingly, unbounded sentence constructions – which structure events as open-ended, usually by means of a progressive form (e.g. he was walking). I show how weorðan in Old English was strongly associated with the Old English system of bounded sentence constructions – an association with boundedness is not surprising given its meaning of ‘(sudden) transition into another state’. In the thirteenth century this rigid Old English system started to break down, as primarily evidenced by the disappearance of the time adverbial þa and the loss of verb-second. Wearð, being strongly associated with the old way of structuring narrative, decreased too and eventually disappeared.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 457 - 484
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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.)

References

Arngart, Olof (ed.). 1968. The Middle English Genesis and Exodus (Lund Studies in English 36). Lund: Gleerup.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas. 1991. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Biese, Yrjö M. 1932. Die neuenglischen Ausdrücke des Werdens in sprach-geschichtlicher Beleuchtung. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 33, 214–24.Google Scholar
Biese, Yrjö M. 1952. Notes on the use of ingressive auxiliaries in the works of William Shakespeare. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 53, 9–18.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel. 1988. The development of English aspectual systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2003. Mechanisms of change in grammaticization. In Joseph, Brian D. & Janda, Richard D. (eds.), The handbook of historical linguistics, 602–23. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Mary & von Stutterheim, Christiane. 2003. Typology and information organisation: perspective taking and language-specific effects in the construal of events. In Ramat, Anna (ed.), Typology and second language acquisition, 365–402. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Carroll, Mary & Lambert, Monique. 2003. Information Structure in narratives and the role of grammaticised knowledge: A study of adult French and German learners of English. In Dimroth, Christine & Starren, Marianne (eds.), Information structure and the dynamics of language acquisition, 267–87. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carroll, Mary, von Stutterheim, Christiane & Nuese, Ralf. 2004. The language and thought debate: A psycholinguistic approach. In Pechmann, Thomas & Habel, Christopher (eds.), Multidisciplinary approaches to language production (Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs 157), 183–218. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2000. Parts of speech as language universals and as language-particular categories. In Vogel, Petra M. & Comrie, Bernard (eds.), Approaches to the typology of word classes (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology 23). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Declerck, Renaat. 2007. Distinguishing between the aspectual categories ‘(a)telic’, ‘(im)perfective’ and ‘(non)bounded’. Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 29, 48–64.Google Scholar
Denison, David. 1993. English historical syntax: Verbal constructions. London: Longman.Google Scholar
DOE: Dictionary of Old English. A-G on CD-ROM. 2008. Toronto: PIMS.Google Scholar
DOEC: Dictionary of Old English Corpus. www.doe.utoronto.ca/pub/corpus.html (accessed 19 January 2009).Google Scholar
Enkvist, Nils E. 1986. More about the textual functions of the Old English adverbial Þa. In Kastovsky, Dieter & Szwedek, Aleksander (eds.), Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries: In honour of Jacek Fisiak on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday, 301–9. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frary, Louise G. 1929. Studies in the syntax of the OE passive, with special reference to the use of ‘wesan’ and ‘weorðan’ (Language Dissertation no. 5). Linguistic Society of America.Google Scholar
Fuß, Eric & Trips, Carola. 2003. Þa, þonne and V2 in Old and Middle English. Presented at the annual LAGB meeting, University of Oxford.Google Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk. 2000. Salience phenomena in the lexicon: A typology. In Albertazzi, Liliana (ed.), Meaning and cognition, 79–101. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gotti, Maurizio, Dossena, Marina & Dury, Richard (eds.). 2008. English historical linguistics 2006, vol. 1: Historical syntax and morphology. Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Eugene. 2009. Synonymy and obsolence: The example of Old English weorþan. Presented at Studies in the History of the English Language 6 (SHEL 6), Banff, AB.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan T. & Stefanowitsch, Anatol. 2004. Extending collostructional analysis: A corpus-based perspective on ‘alternations’. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 9 (1), 97–129.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
HC: Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic Part (ICAME, version 2). 1999. Matti Rissanen et al. Helsinki: Department of English.Google Scholar
Hilpert, Martin. 2008. Germanic future constructions: A usage-based approach to language change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van & Los, Bettelou. 2006. Discourse adverbs and clausal syntax in Old and Middle English. In Kemenade, Ans van & Los, Bettelou (eds.), The handbook of the history of English, 224–48. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van & Westergaard, Marit. in prep. Syntax and information structure: The diverse nature of V2 in Middle English. To be submitted to volume on Information structure in language change (Oxford Studies in the History of English). Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van, Los, Bettelou & Starren, Marianne B. P.. 2008. From bounded to unbounded events: what the rise of the progressive in early Modern English can tell us about the causes of typological shift. www.ru.nl/aspx/download.aspx?File=contents/pages/309843/aioplaats2008sep23.doc (accessed 31 August 2009).Google Scholar
Killie, Kristin. 2008. From locative to durative to focalized? The English progressive and ‘PROG imperfective drift’. In Gotti, Dossena & Dury (eds.), 69–88.Google Scholar
Kilpiö, Matti. 1989. Passive constructions in Old English translations from Latin: With special reference to the OE Bede and the Pastoral Care (Mémoires de la Société Néophilologique de Helsinki 49). Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.Google Scholar
Kilpiö, Matti. 1993. Syntactic and semantic properties of the present indicative forms of the verb to be in Old English. In Rissanen, Matti, Kytö, Merja & Palander-Collin, Minna (eds.), Early English in the computer age: Explorations through the Helsinki Corpus, 21–32. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Klein, Wolfgang. 1994. Time in language. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Klingebiel, Josef. 1937. Die Passivumschreibungen im Altenglischen. Bottrop: Postberg.Google Scholar
Kurtz, Georg. 1931. Die Passivumschreibungen im englischen. Ohlau: Dr Hermann Eschenhagen.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2000. Onginnan/beginnan in Ælfric with bare and to-infinitive. In Fischer, Olga, Rosenbach, Anette & Stein, Dieter (eds.), Pathways of change. Grammaticalization in English (Studies in Language Companion Series 53), 251–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2002. The loss of the indefinite pronoun man. In Fanego, Teresa, Lopez-Couso, Maria José & Perez-Guerra, Javier (eds.), English historical syntax and morphology. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000, 181–202. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2009. The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: Information structure and syntax in interaction. English Language and Linguistics 13 (1), 97–125.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lutz, Angelika. 1991. Phonotaktisch gesteuerte Konsonantenveranderungen in der Geschichte des Englischen. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MEC: Middle English Compendium http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ (accessed 3 September 2009).Google Scholar
MED: Middle English Dictionary. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/ (accessed 5 September 2009).Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax, vol. 1: Concord, the parts of speech and the sentence. Oxford: Clarendon Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller, Torsten. 2009. Construction grammar, grammaticalisation and the Old English wurthe-passive. Presented at Middle and Modern English Corpus Linguistics (MMECL), Inssbruck.Google Scholar
Petré, Peter & Cuyckens, Hubert. 2008. The Old English copula weorðan and its replacement in Middle English. In Gotti, Maurizio, Dossena, Marina & Dury, Richard (eds.), English historical linguistics 2006, vol. 1: Historical syntax and morphology. Selected papers from ICEHL 14. 23–48. Amsterdam: John Benjamins,CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petré, Peter & Cuyckens, Hubert. 2009. Constructional change in Old and Middle English copular constructions and its impact on the lexicon. Folia Linguistica Historica 30, 311–65.Google Scholar
PPCME2: Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edn. Anthony Kroch. www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/ (accessed 31 August 2009).Google Scholar
Smith, Carlota. 1997 [1991]. The parameter of aspect, 2nd edn (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy 43). Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stutterheim, Christiane von. 2002. Konzeptualisierung und Versprachlichung von Ereignissequenzen. www.idf.uni-heidelberg.de/fileadmin/user_download/antrag_KVE.pdf (accessed 20 November 2009)Google Scholar
Trips, Carola & Fuß, Eric. 2007. The syntax of temporal anaphora in early Germanic. Presented at CGSW, Stuttgart.Google Scholar
Tweedale, M. 1598. Biblia Sacra juxta Vulgatam Clementinam. http://vulsearch.sf.net/html (accessed 31 August 2009).Google Scholar
Wandschneider, Wilhelm. 1887. Zur Syntax des Verbs in Langleys Vision of William concerning Piers the plowman, together with Vita de Dowel, Dobet et Dobest. Leipzig: Richter.Google Scholar
Warner, Anthony. 2007. Parameters of variation between verb–subject and subject–verb order in late Middle English. English Language and Linguistics 11, 81–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wattie, J. M. 1930. Tense. English Studies 16, 121–43.Google Scholar
Westergaard, Marit. 2009. Word order in Old and Middle English: The role of information structure and first language acquisition. Diachronica 26 (1), 65–102.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wischer, Ilse. 2006. Markers of futurity in Old English and the grammaticalization of shall and will. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: International Review of English Studies 42, 165–79.Google Scholar
worth, v.2. The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd edn. 1989. OED Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 4 April 2000. http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50287355.Google Scholar
YCOE: The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. 2003. Ann Taylor et al. York: Department of Language and Linguistic Science.Google Scholar
YPC: York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry. 2001. Susan Pintzuk & Leendert Plug. York: Linguistics Department.Google Scholar
Zieglschmid, A. J. Friedrich. 1929. Is the use of wesan in the periphrastic actional passive in the Germanic languages due to Latin influence? Journal of English and Germanic Philology 28, 360–5.Google Scholar
Zieglschmid, A. J. Friedrich. 1930. The disappearance of WERDAN in English. Philological Quarterly 9, 111–15.Google Scholar