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Towards a history of English resultative constructions: the case of adjectival resultative constructions1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2008

CRISTIANO BROCCIAS
CRISTIANO BROCCIAS*
Affiliation:
DISCLIC, Università di Genova, Piazza S. Sabina, 2, 16125 Genova, [email protected]
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Abstract

This contribution provides a corpus-based investigation of the history of adjectival resultative constructions (RCs), e.g. He wiped the table clean, with special reference to Old English and Middle English. The article first briefly discusses some of the parameters relevant to a synchronic analysis of RCs, namely causativity, causality and force-dynamics, as well as the distinction between adjectival and adverbial RCs (collectively referred to as ARCs since the two types cannot always be differentiated diachronically). The article then shows that the diachronic data point to an expansion of the ARC from very specific instantiations, involving a limited set of verbs and adjectives/adverbs (i.e. the washing and cutting scenarios), to progressively more general types (which, however, set up a coherent network of analogical extensions). It is observed that this evolutionary path correlates with the metaphorical interpretation of actions as forces and the emergence of ‘proper’ causative examples, i.e. examples where the verb only symbolises the causing subevent in the causal chain evoked by the RC. Further, it is argued that this investigation highlights the importance of the usage-based model in linguistic analysis.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 27 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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