Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T14:15:08.916Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Reduced Definite Article th’ in Late Middle English and Beyond: An Insight from the Definiteness Cycle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 May 2015

Jerzy Nykiel
Jerzy Nykiel*
Affiliation:
University of Bergen
*
University of Bergen, Department of Foreign Languages, Postboks 7805, 5020 Bergen, Norway, [[email protected]]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I first show that the reduced form of the definite article th’ is present throughout Middle English and Early Modern English. Then I highlight the differences in the pragmatic functions of the reduced form and full form of the article in three prose texts taken from the late 15th century and the 16th century. Given the differences, late Middle English and the first century of Early Modern English are closer to having two definite articles rather than one. The development of the reduced form th’ is part of the DP cycle in that th’ emerges as the function of the weakens. Finally, I tentatively argue that th’ is reanalyzed as the head of DP around 1500, after being initially base-generated in nP, at which point th’ is closer to a nominal marker than to a definite article.*

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , June 2015 , pp. 105 - 144
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 2015 

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

REFERENCES

Abney, Stephen P. 1987. The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation.Google Scholar
Anderson, Stephen R. 2005. Aspects of the theory of clitics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ariel, Mira. 1990. Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Ashby, William J. 1977. Clitic inflection in French: An historical perspective. Amsterdam: Radopi.Google Scholar
Auwera, Johan van der. 2009. The Jespersen cycles. van Gelderen 2009b, 35–71.Google Scholar
Bodleian Library, MS Fairfax 16. With an introduction by John Norton-Smith. 1979. London: Scholar Press.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. 1997. The Canterbury tales. The new Ellesmere Chaucer monochromatic facsimile (of Huntington Library MS EL 26 C 9). Ed. by Woodward, Daniel and Stevens, Martin. Tokyo: Yushodo Co.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam. 2000. New horizons in the study of language and mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 2004. Beyond explanatory adequacy. Structures and beyond, ed. by Belletti, Adriana, 104–131. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dahl, Östen. 2003. Definite articles in Scandinavian: Competing grammaticalization processes in standard and non-standard varieties. Dialectology meets typology, ed. by Kortmann, Bernd, 147-180. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Fraurud, Kari. 1990. Definiteness and the processing of noun phrases in natural discourse. Journal of Semantics 7. 395-433.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2004. Grammaticalization as economy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2007. The definiteness cycle in Germanic. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 19. 275-308.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2008. The negative cycle. Linguistic Typology 12. 195-243.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2009a. Renewal in the left periphery: Economy and the complementizer layer. Transactions of the Philological Society 107. 131-195.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van (ed.). 2009b. Cyclical change. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2009c. Cyclical change, an introduction. van Gelderen 2009b, 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van. 2011. The linguistic cycle: Language change and the language faculty. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelderen, Elly van, & Lohndal, Terje. 2008. The position of adjectives and double definiteness. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 82. 1-22.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1979. On understanding grammar. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd, & Reh, Mechthild. 1984. Grammaticalization and reanalysis in African languages. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag.Google Scholar
Hoeksma, Jack. 2009. Jespersen recycled. van Gelderen 2009b, 15–34.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J., & Traugott, Elizabeth C.. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jagger, Philip John. 1985. Factors governing the morphological coding of referents in Hausa narrative discourse. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA dissertation.Google Scholar
Jones, Mark J. 1999. The phonology of definite article reduction. Dialectal variation in English (Leeds Studies in English 30), ed. by Upton, Clive & Wales, Katie, 103-121.Google Scholar
Jones, Mark J. 2002. The origin of definite article reduction in northern English dialects: Evidence from dialect allomorphy. English Language and Linguistics 6. 325-345.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Julien, Marit. 2005. Nominal phrases from a Scandinavian perspective. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyons, Christopher. 1999. Definiteness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Malory, Thomas Sir. 1976a. Le Morthe d'Arthur. Printed by William Caxton 1485. Reproduced in facsimile from the copy in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York with an introduction by Paul Needham. London: The Scholar Press.Google Scholar
Malory, Thomas Sir. 1976b. The Winchester Malory. A facsimile. With an introduction by N.R. Ker. London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McColl Millar, Robert. 2000. System collapse, system rebirth. New York, NY: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Needham, Paul. 1976. Introduction. Le Morte D'Arthur. Printed by Caxton, William, Malory, Thomas Sir, 1–5. London: Scholar Press.Google Scholar
Ouhalla, Jamal. 1990. Sentential negation, relativised minimality and the aspectual status of auxiliaries. Linguistic Review 7. 183-231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pearsall, Derek, & Campbell Cunningham, Ian. 1977. Introduction. The Auchinleck Manuscript, vi-xvii. London: The Scholar Press.Google Scholar
Petyt, Keith M. 1985. ‘Dialect’ and ‘accent’ in industrial West Yorkshire. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20. 365-424.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. Radical pragmatics, ed. by Cole, Peter, 223-255. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Roberts, Ian, & Roussou, Anna. 2003. Syntactic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rupp, Laura. 2007. The (socio)-linguistic cycle of definite article reduction. Folia Linguistica Historica 28. 215-249.Google Scholar
Rupp, Laura, & Page-Verhoeff, Anne. 2005. Pragmatic and historical aspects of definite article reduction in Northern English dialects. English World-Wide 26. 325-346.Google Scholar
Schoorlemmer, Erik. 2012. Definiteness marking in Germanic: Morphological variations on the same syntactic theme. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 15. 107-156.Google Scholar
Spencer, Andrew. 1991. Morphological theory. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Strawson, Peter F. 1964. Intention and convention in speech acts. Philosophical Review 73. 439-460.Google Scholar
Tagliamonte, Sali A., & Roeder, Rebecca V.. 2009. Variation in the English definite article: Socio-historical linguistics in t'speech community. Journal of Sociolinguistics 13. 435-471.Google Scholar
Tiersma, Peter Meijes. 1985. Frisian reference grammar. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
The Auchinleck manuscript. National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS. 19.2.1. With an introduction by Derek Pearsall and Ian Campbell Cunningham. 1977. London: The Scholar Press.Google Scholar
Viereck, Wolfgang. 1995. Realizations of the definite article in dialectal English and how and when they originated. Medieval dialectology, ed. by Fisiak, Jacek, 295-307. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Vinaver, Eugène. 1947 [1967]. The works of Sir Thomas Malory. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whitelock, Dorothy (ed.). 1954. The Peterborough chronicle. The Bodleian Manuscript Laud Misc. 636. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1977. On clitics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Zwicky, Arnold M. 1994. What is a clitic? Clitics: A comprehensive bibliography 1892-1991, ed. by Nevis, Joel A., Joseph, Brian D., Wanner, Dieter, & Zwicky, Arnold M., xii-xx. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar