Article Emergence in Old English : : A Constructionalist Perspective / / Lotte Sommerer.
This book investigates nominal determination in Old English and the emergence of the definite and the indefinite article. Analyzing Old English prose texts, it discusses the nature of linguistic categorization and argues that a usage-based, cognitive, constructionalist approach best explains when, h...
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Superior document: | Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DG Plus DeG Package 2018 Part 1 |
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Place / Publishing House: | Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter Mouton, , [2018] ©2018 |
Year of Publication: | 2018 |
Language: | English |
Series: | Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL] ,
99 |
Online Access: | |
Physical Description: | 1 online resource (XVII, 357 p.) |
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Other title: | Frontmatter -- Acknowledgements -- Contents -- Tables -- Figures -- List of Abbreviations -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Nominal determination and the articles in Present Day English -- 3. Article emergence in Old English -- 4. Diachronic Construction Grammar -- 5. Nominal determination in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle -- 6. Nominal determination in Old English prose -- 7. Article emergence: a constructional scenario -- 8. Conclusion -- 9. Appendix: manuscript and corpus information -- References -- Index |
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Summary: | This book investigates nominal determination in Old English and the emergence of the definite and the indefinite article. Analyzing Old English prose texts, it discusses the nature of linguistic categorization and argues that a usage-based, cognitive, constructionalist approach best explains when, how and why the article category developed. It is shown that the development of the OE demonstrative 'se' (that) and the OE numeral 'an' (one) should not be told as a story of two individual, grammaticalizing morphemes, but must be reconceptualized in constructional terms. The emergence of the morphological category ‘article’ follows from constructional changes in the linguistic networks of OE speakers and especially from ‘grammatical constructionalization’ (i.e. the emergence of a new, schematic, mostly procedural form-meaning pairing which previously did not exist in the constructicon). Next to other functional-cognitive reasons, the book especially highlights analogy and frequency effects as driving forces of linguistic change. |
Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
ISBN: | 9783110541052 9783110762488 9783110719550 9783110742978 9783110604252 9783110603255 9783110604078 9783110603170 |
ISSN: | 1434-3452 ; |
DOI: | 10.1515/9783110541052 |
Access: | restricted access |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Lotte Sommerer. |