Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800
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Eric Hoekstra
Abstract
This article presents an overview of the changes that took place in the syntactic use of the quantifiers ea and oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 on the basis of the Frisian Language Corpus. Occurrences of Frisian ea and oait “ever” were classified and counted depending on the type of syntactic construction in which they were found. The constructions which were distinguished tend to correlate with the interpretation which the quantifier receives. This classification was performed for three main periods of the language: 1250–1550; 1550–1700; 1700–1800. It turns out that these periods saw some significant changes in the use of these quantifiers. Special attention is given to the peculiar behaviour of ea “ever” in relative clauses. It turns out that it displays properties both of free choice items and of negative polarity items. Furthermore, Frisian turns out to have been affected by language contact with Dutch at quite an early date, around 1700, when it borrowed oait to replace native ea. This change is analyzed as a case of reinforcement in the sense of Hopper & Traugott (2006). Our overall analysis supports a construction-specific analysis of changes in the use of quantifiers.
Abstract
This article presents an overview of the changes that took place in the syntactic use of the quantifiers ea and oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 on the basis of the Frisian Language Corpus. Occurrences of Frisian ea and oait “ever” were classified and counted depending on the type of syntactic construction in which they were found. The constructions which were distinguished tend to correlate with the interpretation which the quantifier receives. This classification was performed for three main periods of the language: 1250–1550; 1550–1700; 1700–1800. It turns out that these periods saw some significant changes in the use of these quantifiers. Special attention is given to the peculiar behaviour of ea “ever” in relative clauses. It turns out that it displays properties both of free choice items and of negative polarity items. Furthermore, Frisian turns out to have been affected by language contact with Dutch at quite an early date, around 1700, when it borrowed oait to replace native ea. This change is analyzed as a case of reinforcement in the sense of Hopper & Traugott (2006). Our overall analysis supports a construction-specific analysis of changes in the use of quantifiers.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
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Part I. General and specific issues of language change
- Competing reinforcements 3
- On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
- Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
- Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
- How different is prototype change? 89
- The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
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Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
- The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
- Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
- Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
- On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
- OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
- Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
- The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
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Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
- Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
- Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
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Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
- The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
- The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
- Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
- The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
- Index 399
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I. General and specific issues of language change
- Competing reinforcements 3
- On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
- Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
- Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
- How different is prototype change? 89
- The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
-
Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
- The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
- Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
- Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
- On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
- OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
- Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
- The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
-
Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
- Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
- Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
-
Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
- The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
- The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
- Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
- The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
- Index 399
