Changes in argument structure: developments in impersonal constructions since late middle English. A preliminary corpus-based study
This MA thesis is an investigation into the so-called impersonal construction (e.g. Me liketh nat to lye ‘I do not like to lie’), with a focus on the Late Middle English and Early Modern English periods. Morphosyntactically, impersonal constructions share the characteristic that they contain a finit...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis de maestría |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2015 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (USC) |
| Repositorio: | Minerva. Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Santiago de Compostela |
| Idioma: | inglés |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:minerva.usc.gal:10347/15140 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10347/15140 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Materias::Investigación::57 Lingüística::5702 Lingüística diacrónica::570201 Lingüística histórica Materias::Investigación::57 Lingüística::5705 Lingüística sincrónica::570513 Sintaxis, análisis sintáctico Materias::Investigación::57 Lingüística::5701 Lingüística aplicada::570104 Lingüística informatizada |
| Sumario: | This MA thesis is an investigation into the so-called impersonal construction (e.g. Me liketh nat to lye ‘I do not like to lie’), with a focus on the Late Middle English and Early Modern English periods. Morphosyntactically, impersonal constructions share the characteristic that they contain a finite verb inflected for the third person singular, but lack a subject marked for the nominative case controlling verbal agreement. In English, the impersonal construction has been lost, being replaced by personal patterns (e.g. ME hym nedde ‘[there] was need [to] them’ > ModE they needed) or by syntactic patterns with an expletive non-referential subject (‘dummy it’): OE sniwde ‘snowed’ > ModE it snowed, among others. The purpose of the thesis is: 1) to examine the frequency of the different syntactic patterns that came to replace the impersonal construction in the period of time from Late Middle English onwards; 2) to look into the different stylistic and discoursive factors involved in the change, as well as into the pace of the process of replacement; and 3) to explore the hypothesis posited in recent research on impersonals that the loss of the impersonal construction is connected with a large-scale readjustment of the taxonomy of transitive constructions. To achieve these goals, a corpus-based study was carried out, focusing on a selection of formerly impersonal verbs comprised in the semantic domain of emotion. |
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