From time-before-place to place-before-time in the history of English
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Susanne Chrambach
Abstract
In Present-day English, place adverbials tend to precede adverbials of time in clusters (cf. Hasselgård, 1996). In this paper, this word order preference is investigated from a diachronic perspective. The corpus-based analysis shows that the preferred order changes from time-before-place in Old English to place-before-time towards the end of the Middle English period. In a number of binary logistic regressions this study explores which factors might motivate these preferences respectively. The obligatoriness of the adverbials and their realization form emerge as two crucial factors. Their effect can be related to the proximity principle (cf. Hasselgård, 2010), the principle of end weight, and the principle of given-before-new. Comparing the different periods of English from Old English to Early Modern English, this paper shows how the increasingly fixed position of the lexical verb can be linked to the reversal of the ordering preference from time-before-place to place-before-time.
Abstract
In Present-day English, place adverbials tend to precede adverbials of time in clusters (cf. Hasselgård, 1996). In this paper, this word order preference is investigated from a diachronic perspective. The corpus-based analysis shows that the preferred order changes from time-before-place in Old English to place-before-time towards the end of the Middle English period. In a number of binary logistic regressions this study explores which factors might motivate these preferences respectively. The obligatoriness of the adverbials and their realization form emerge as two crucial factors. Their effect can be related to the proximity principle (cf. Hasselgård, 2010), the principle of end weight, and the principle of given-before-new. Comparing the different periods of English from Old English to Early Modern English, this paper shows how the increasingly fixed position of the lexical verb can be linked to the reversal of the ordering preference from time-before-place to place-before-time.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The dynamics of changes in the early English inflection 9
- “Subsumed under the dative”? 35
- ‘Thone vpon thother’ 57
- Leveraging grammaticalization 77
- Old English wolde and sceolde 111
- A corpus-based study on the development of dare in Middle English and Early Modern English 129
- Counterfactuality and aktionsart 149
- Conservatism or the influence of the semantics of motion situation in the choice of perfect auxiliaries in Jane Austen’s letters and novels 175
- Signs of grammaticalization 199
- From time-before-place to place-before-time in the history of English 223
- Variation and change at the interface of syntax and semantics 247
- Further explorations in the grammar of intensifier marking in Modern English 269
- The rivalry between far from being + predicative item and its counterpart omitting the copula in Modern English 287
- Index 309
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Introduction 1
- The dynamics of changes in the early English inflection 9
- “Subsumed under the dative”? 35
- ‘Thone vpon thother’ 57
- Leveraging grammaticalization 77
- Old English wolde and sceolde 111
- A corpus-based study on the development of dare in Middle English and Early Modern English 129
- Counterfactuality and aktionsart 149
- Conservatism or the influence of the semantics of motion situation in the choice of perfect auxiliaries in Jane Austen’s letters and novels 175
- Signs of grammaticalization 199
- From time-before-place to place-before-time in the history of English 223
- Variation and change at the interface of syntax and semantics 247
- Further explorations in the grammar of intensifier marking in Modern English 269
- The rivalry between far from being + predicative item and its counterpart omitting the copula in Modern English 287
- Index 309
