A Diachronic Analysis of English Impersonal Constructions with an Experiencer

A Diachronic Analysis of English Impersonal Constructions with an Experiencer PDF Author: Jerzy Krzyszpień
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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The Early English Impersonal Construction

The Early English Impersonal Construction PDF Author: Ruth Möhlig-Falke
Publisher: OUP USA
ISBN: 0199777721
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 565

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The Early English Impersonal Construction aims to demonstrate that an understanding of the functional and semantic aspects of impersonal verbs in Old and Middle English can shed light on questions that remain about these verbs today. The impersonal construction has been a topic of extensive research for over a hundred years. But three quandaries-their seemingly unsystematic development, the gradual loss of impersonal uses, and the difficulty of aligning this with structural changes in early English-have made explanations for their development unsatisfactory. Möhlig-Falke offers a detailed analysis of impersonal verbs within the framework of cognitive and constructional grammar. She focuses on the loss of the impersonal construction as a consequence of a redefinition of the grammatical categories of subject and object, and describes the diachronic development of impersonal verbs as a result of the complex interaction of verbal and constructional meaning. Her research comprises all verbs which are recorded in impersonal use in Old and Middle English, and takes account of their full range of syntactic uses. It is thus the most comprehensive investigation of the impersonal construction in early English available to date.

Middle English Verbs of Emotion and Impersonal Constructions

Middle English Verbs of Emotion and Impersonal Constructions PDF Author: Ayumi Miura
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Middle English Verbs of Emotion and Impersonal Constructions

Middle English Verbs of Emotion and Impersonal Constructions PDF Author: Ayumi Miura
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199947163
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Impersonal constructions in the history of English form a puzzling category, in that there has been uncertainty as to why some verbs are attested in such constructions while others are not, even though they look almost synonymous. In this book, Ayumi Miura tackles this under-discussed question with special reference to verbs of emotion in Middle English. Through a careful study of the behaviour of impersonal and near-synonymous non-impersonal verbs, she identifies the factors that determined the presence, absence, and spread of impersonal usage with the verbs concerned. Miura utilizes modern linguistic approaches, including theories and methodologies adopted in the study of psych-verbs in modern languages, which bear close relevance to impersonal verbs of emotion but have traditionally been researched separately. She also draws on categorizations in the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary and harnesses the online Middle English Dictionary in a novel way, demonstrating that dictionary materials are in fact a valuable tool in the study of early English syntax and semantics. Miura concludes that a range of factors - such as causation, transitivity, animacy of the target of emotion, and duration of the emotion - influenced the choice of impersonal constructions with Middle English verbs of emotion. We can therefore make reasonable generalizations about when impersonal usage was licensed in these verbs. This careful analysis of the correlation between Middle English verbs of emotion and use or non-use in impersonal constructions represents a new empirical and theoretical contribution to the busy research area of impersonal constructions in the history of English.

Middle English Verbs of Emotion and Impersonal Constructions

Middle English Verbs of Emotion and Impersonal Constructions PDF Author: Ayumi Miura
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199947155
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
With a careful use of dictionary materials and modern linguistic approaches, this book investigates why some Middle English verbs of emotion are attested in impersonal constructions while others are not, even though they look almost synonymous. A range of factors are identified that affected their behaviour.

Convergent Approaches to Mediaeval English Language and Literature

Convergent Approaches to Mediaeval English Language and Literature PDF Author: Andrés Canga Alonso
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443839280
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
The present volume is intended as a scientific conversation between pioneering research and the traditionally leading disciplines of medievalism. With that aim, the collection presents a selection of crucial essays to add to contemporary discussion which, however convergent and synchronous in approach, also pull in heterogeneous distinct ways and enhance the multiple perspectives which are currently embraced in the study of English medievalism. The chapters, fifteen in all, constitute a peer-reviewed selection of papers presented at the 22nd International Conference of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature (SELIM), which brought together a large number of scholars worldwide, and was held at the Department of Modern Languages of the University of La Rioja in 2010. A brief glance at the book’s contents evinces the manifestly plural ways in which the English Middle Ages, the mesmerising media tempestas, are being addressed in current critical debate, from the diverse areas of linguistics, literature, teaching methodology and translation. In all, the book becomes exceptional witness to all these developments, being not foolhardy to predict that the dark old ages provide, as ever, foundations for stimulating new highlights and ideas.

Impersonal Constructions in English

Impersonal Constructions in English PDF Author: Saranya Savetamalya
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 35

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Reanalysis and Actualisation

Reanalysis and Actualisation PDF Author: Stephen Zill
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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This study investigates the extension of nominative case to the experiencer argument of ME liken and selected other impersonal verbs. Using tokens from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English and the Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence as the primary database, the hypothesis is tested that this process is favoured by the experiencer's relative susceptibility to an agentive interpretation. While a regression model of the diachronic development does not confirm the hypothesis, distinct pragmatic functions for personal and impersonal constructions emerge, which continue to be exploited by language users into the late EModE period.

Impersonal Constructions

Impersonal Constructions PDF Author: Andrej Malchukov
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027287163
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 653

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Book Description
This volume offers a much needed typological perspective on impersonal constructions, which are here viewed broadly as constructions lacking a referential subject. The contributions to this volume deal with all types of impersonality, namely constructions featuring nonagentive subjects, including those with experiential predicates (A-impersonals), presentational constructions with a notional subject deficient in topicality (T-impersonals), and constructions with a notional subject lacking in referential properties (R-impersonals), i.e. both meteo-constructions and man-constructions. The typological discussion benefits from a good coverage of impersonality in European languages, but also includes considerations of several African, American, South-East Asian, Australian, and Oceanic languages. The variation in the cross-linguistic realization of impersonality and the diachronic pathways leading to and from impersonality documented in this volume point to a novel perspective on impersonals as transitional structures or an intermediate stage of a more basic diachronic change be it from transitive to intransitive, or from active to passive, or participant-to event-centered construction.

Moving Beyond the Pandemic: English and American Studies in Spain

Moving Beyond the Pandemic: English and American Studies in Spain PDF Author: Aitor Ibarrola Armendáriz
Publisher: Ed. Universidad de Cantabria
ISBN: 8419024155
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
"Moving beyond the Pandemic: English and American Studies in Spain" contains the Proceedings of the 44th AEDEAN (Asociación española de estudios anglo-norteamericanos) Conference held in November, 2021 at the University of Cantabria, Spain. The volume is structured into four different sections: “Plenary Speakers”, “Language and Linguistics”, “Literature and Culture” and “Round Tables”. The “Plenary Speakers” section includes papers written by two outstanding figures in the fields of Western Studies and Film Studies, respectively: Neil Campbell’s “An Inventory of Echoes”: Worlding the Western in Trump Era Fiction and Celestino Deleyto’s Transnational Stars and the Idea of Europe: Marion Cotillard, Diane Kruger. The “Language and Linguistics” section includes eleven papers that tackle a variety of issues concerning synchronic and diachronic phenomena in the English language of either native or non-native speakers at the phonetic, lexical, or grammatical level. These studies are indicative of the various current methodological approaches to research in subfields such as language teaching, contrastive linguistics, language contact or language variation, to name but a few. The “Literature and Culture Studies” section contains nineteen papers on topics as diverse as the field itself, ranging from Irish, Canadian, South African, Australian, American or English Literature to Film, Television and Cultural Studies. Finally, the “Round Tables” section comprises four round tables on Literature, Music, Film and Cultural Studies. The contributions included in this volume are a representative and significant sample of the quality of the research being carried out at present in Spanish Universities in the fields of English and American Studies, and are solid evidence that our field is moving beyond the pandemic and is in excellent health.