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Verbo-nominal constructions of necessity with þearf n. and need n.: competition and grammaticalization from OE to eModE1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 2010

LUCÍA LOUREIRO-PORTO
LUCÍA LOUREIRO-PORTO*
Affiliation:
Departament de Filologia Espanyola, Moderna i Llatina, Universitat de les Illes Balears, Edifici Ramon Llull, Cra. Valldemossa Km. 7, 5, 07122 Palma de Mallorca, [email protected]
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Abstract

The evolution of verbs expressing necessity in the history of English, such as *þurfan and need, has been studied in detail, especially their semantic competition and their grammaticalization (see Molencki 2002, 2005; Taeymans 2006; Loureiro-Porto 2009). However, analogous verbo-nominal expressions involving the morphologically related nouns þearf and need and the verbs be and have have received little attention, despite their relevance as semantic competitors of the verbs and their subsequent fossilization in high-frequency expressions such as if need be and had need. The current article fills this gap by studying the development of verbo-nominal expressions with þearf and need from Old to early Modern English, and asks: (i) whether the verbs and the verbo-nominal expressions undergo similar processes of grammaticalization, and (ii) whether there is any connection between the evolution of the verbal and the verbo-nominal sets. Analysis of these verbo-nominal constructions in a 4.1 million-word corpus (including the Helsinki Corpus and fragments of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, the Lampeter Corpus and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler) shows that, firstly, both idiomaticization and grammaticalization are relevant in the development of verbo-nominal constructions; secondly, their evolution is key to the understanding of the development of the necessity verbs *þurfan and need; and finally, the competition between constructions with þearf and need calls into question the well-known hypothesis that phonological confusion with durran caused the disappearance of *þurfan in the ME period (see Visser 1963–73: 1423, §1343).

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 14 , Issue 3 , November 2010 , pp. 373 - 397
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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