Relevance Theory and Historical Linguistics: Towards a Pragmatic Approach to the Morphological Changes in the Preterite from Old English to Middle English

The aim of this paper is to suggest a pragmatic explanation for some of the morphological changes that occurred in the evolution of the preterite of both weak and strong verbs from Old English to Middle English. In order to do so, this work will be based on Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, Re...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autor: Padilla Cruz, Manuel
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2005
País:España
Institución:Universidad de La Laguna (ULL)
Repositorio:RIULL. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de La Laguna
OAI Identifier:oai:riull.ull.es:915/18852
Acceso en línea:http://riull.ull.es/xmlui/handle/915/18852
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:teoría de la relevancia
morfología verbal
pretérito
significado conceptual/ procedimental
explicaturas
Descripción
Sumario:The aim of this paper is to suggest a pragmatic explanation for some of the morphological changes that occurred in the evolution of the preterite of both weak and strong verbs from Old English to Middle English. In order to do so, this work will be based on Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson, Relevance (1986); Relevance (1995); Wilson & Sperber, “Rel- evance”) and will focus only on the weakening and subsequent loss of person and number inflections, as well as on the processes of analogical extension and paradigm levelling.