Adjective Phrase Complementation: The case of Germanic infinitives

Doctoral dissertation

2009

This thesis investigates the question of whether it is possible, or desirable, to use the comparative method as applied in phonological reconstruction to identify syntactic correspondences. I show that approaches proposed in the literature (e.g. by Lehmann 1974 or Harris & Campbell 1995) are problematic either because they do not follow the comparative method or because they do not do so in a principled enough fashion; objections raised in the literature (e.g. by Lightfoot 2002a) are then assessed, and I argue that most of these constitute no obstacle to syntactic reconstruction. I then sketch a method for applying the comparative method to syntactic reconstruction through comparison of the features of lexical items, including exponents of functional heads, applying an idea popular in current Minimalist thinking. This approach is then illustrated using examples drawn from the older Germanic languages: the Old Norse middle voice, the West Germanic inflected infinitive, and V-to-C movement. I suggest that pursuing an isomorphism between phonological and syntactic change has the potential to bear fruit in syntactic reconstruction, even if the parallels cannot be universally maintained.

2019

The monograph contains seven chapters. Chapter One provides a new insight into the origin of Germanic preterite-present verbs based on a comparative analysis of Old English, Gothic and Old High German with occasional references to ancient Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic and Polish. Chapters from Two to Seven, based on Old and Middle English data available in two electronic text corpora, i.e. the DOE Corpus (for Old English) and the Innsbruck Corpus (for Middle English), discuss each of the six verbs separately. These chapters consist of sections that correspond to the Old and Middle English periods, and subsections which present morphosyntactic and semantic characteristics of the analyzed verbs in the two periods. The sections labelled as Beyond Middle English show the consequences of the morhological and semantic overlap between preterite-present verbs in later periods, especially Present-day English. The analysis focuses on morpho-syntax (with elements of phonology) and semantics, also revealing the main synchronic and diachronic tendencies in the evolution of the mentioned verbs.

Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, Philology & Phonetics 11 (2006): 21–5

Oxford University Working Papers in Linguistics, …, 2006

2010

This article presents a diachronic corpus-based study of the distribution of mandative that-and toclauses complementing deontic adjectival matrices in the extraposition construction, as in It is essential to work upwards from easier workloads (CB). It shows that the to-infinitive encroaches on the that-clause from Early Middle English onwards and comes to predominate in Late Middle English. It thus adduces evidence for Los's (2005) account of the rise of the to-infinitive as verbal complement: against the generally held view that the to-infinitive replaced the bare infinitive, Los (2005) shows that it spread at the expense of the subjunctive that-clause in Middle English, e.g. after intention verbs and manipulative verbs. After considering various factors such as the distribution of the to-infinitive in the adjectival complementation system, the tense of the matrix of the adjectival constructions and the Anglo-Saxon versus Romance origin of the adjectives, I conclude that the rise of the to-infinitive with adjectival matrices in Middle English has to be explained by analogy between verbal and adjectival mandative constructions. In addition, this study shows that -unlike with the verbal constructions -the to-infinitive with adjectival matrices stabilizes at roughly a 3:1 ratio to the that-clause from Early Modern English onwards. For these later periods, finally, it is proposed that the clausal variation may be motivated by lexical determination, discourse factors such as information structure, and stylistic preferences.

PLEASE REFER TO CHAPTER 4 OF SEN (2015) WHICH SUPERSEDES THIS PAPER This is a very early version of Chapter 4 of my book 'Syllable and Segment in Latin' (see Books), which is much-revised and considerably more comprehensive. The core of the general argument remains the same.

This article gives a diachronic account of adnominal modification from Proto-Indo-European to present-day Dutch. The main conclusion is that through the ages, noun phrases appear to ''fold out'': they acquire their layered structure for di¤erent lexical modifiers over time. The latest stage in this process is the fairly recent development of a specific slot for interpersonal modification of the whole noun phrase. The di¤erent stages in the diachronic development are described with the layered and modular representation of functional discourse grammar (FDG).

VIEWS (Vienna English Working Papers), 2014

This paper aims to contribute to the discussion on the diachronic development of the present participle and the verbal noun in -ing in English as well as in Scots, a language very closely related to English. More specifically, the paper addresses the question of whether there is a correlation, or even a causal relationship, between the two main phenomena which have shaped the development of these forms. These are, one the one hand, the phenomenon of non-finite phrases developing into clauses (‘clausalisation’), and, on the other hand, the formal and functional collapse of the participle and verbal noun. Based on evidence gained from a quantitative study of the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (HCOS), it is suggested that there was a bi-directional impact of the two processes on each other.