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In:Developments in English Historical Morpho-Syntax
Edited by Claudia Claridge and Birte Bös
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 346] 2019
► pp. 35–56

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“Subsumed under the dative”?

The status of the Old English instrumental

Published online: 27 May 2019
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https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.346.03mid
Abstract
Most descriptions of Old English grammar do not count the instrumental as a separate case, since distinctly instrumental forms are not available for all lexical categories that are inflected for case in Old English. Assuming that the instrumental has been completely subsumed under the dative is misleading, however. In actual fact, any definite, quantified or adjective-modified masculine or neuter NP in the singular can be marked either dative or instrumental, and a clear functional difference emerges if we contrast noun phrases containing instrumental forms with those containing exclusively dative forms. Instrumental-case NPs are adverbials of time, manner and place, whereas dative-case NPs usually refer to persons and are often verbal arguments. This paper explores the extent to which the instrumental and the dative can be distinguished in Old English, the functional load of the distinction and the degree of its productivity, drawing on the results of collexeme analyses carried out on data from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.What is a “vestigial” case?
  • 3.Distributional analysis: Frequencies and collexemes
    • 3.1Overview
    • 3.2Instrumental-case determiners
    • 3.3Instrumental-case adjectives
    • 3.4Interim synthesis and discussion
  • 4.Fixed formulae or productive pattern?
  • 5.What influences the degree to which the instrumental is used?
  • 6.Conclusion: The instrumental as “vestigial”
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
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