“Snake legs it to freedom”: Dummy it as pseudo-object”
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Britta Mondorf
Abstract
While dummy it in subject position (It is raining) has received much scholarly attention, its use in object position has rarely been investigated. When considering examples such as to leg it, to snuff it, we are faced with the question of what motivates the occurrence of dummy it. Using corpus-based techniques that permit context-sensitive retrieval in historical data the present paper traces the development and distribution of dummy it with the aim of shedding new light on the role of transitivity in language change. The occurrence of non-referential it can be related to a series of (de-)transitivization processes that have recently been observed for weakly entrenched verbs or verb senses. Defining transitivity with Hopper and Thompson (1980: 251) as the effectiveness with which an action takes place, it is argued that one function of it is to enhance a verb’s transitivity by equipping it with a pseudo-object. Such moderately transitive uses have also been observed for other verbs that do not normally take direct objects, e.g. verbs occurring with cognate objects, way-constructions or reflexive structures. This article presents corpus-based findings showing that dummy it modulates transitivity in accordance with the changing entrenchment of the verb it is used with.
Acknowledgement
I wish to thank the editors, Hubert Cuyckens and Martin Hilpert, as well as Günter Rohdenburg, Gunther Kaltenböck, Matthias Eitelmann, and Ulrike Schneider for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
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©2016 by De Gruyter Mouton
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- How do corpus-based techniques advance description and theory in English historical linguistics? An introduction to the special issue
- Continuing the dialogue between corpus linguistics and grammaticalization theory: Three case studies
- The diachronic development of zero complementation: A multifactorial analysis of the that/zero alternation with think, suppose, and believe
- “Snake legs it to freedom”: Dummy it as pseudo-object”
- Do you investigate word order in detail or do you investigate in detail word order? On word order and headedness in the recent history of English
- Sociolinguistic variation in morphological productivity in eighteenth-century English
- About text frequencies in historical linguistics: Disentangling environmental and grammatical change
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- How do corpus-based techniques advance description and theory in English historical linguistics? An introduction to the special issue
- Continuing the dialogue between corpus linguistics and grammaticalization theory: Three case studies
- The diachronic development of zero complementation: A multifactorial analysis of the that/zero alternation with think, suppose, and believe
- “Snake legs it to freedom”: Dummy it as pseudo-object”
- Do you investigate word order in detail or do you investigate in detail word order? On word order and headedness in the recent history of English
- Sociolinguistic variation in morphological productivity in eighteenth-century English
- About text frequencies in historical linguistics: Disentangling environmental and grammatical change
