Cover not available

In:Information Structure and Syntactic Change in Germanic and Romance Languages
Edited by Kristin Bech and Kristine Gunn Eide
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 213] 2014
► pp. 111–140

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Tracing overlap in function in historical corpora

A case study of English object fronting and passivization

 | VU University Amsterdam
Published online: 7 May 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.213.05dre
This paper investigates an overlap in function between object fronting and passivization in Old English, based on observations that these constructions in Present-day English and Present-day verb-second languages both perform a function of restoring the unmarked given-before-new order of information in a sentence. A study of the information status of the relevant elements in these constructions in Old English shows that the majority of examples indeed show given-before-new order. Quantitative data on the frequencies of these constructions in later periods provide suggestive evidence that as object fronting is lost in the Middle English period, the use of passives increases. This, in turn, suggests that the information-structural function remains constant while syntactic options to express it change.
References (53)
References
Allen, Cynthia L. 1995. Case Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical Relations from Old to Early Modern English . Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bately, Janet (ed.). 1980. The Old English Orosius [Early English Text Society s.s. 6]. London: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Behaghel, Otto. 1932. Deutsche Syntax: Eine geschichtliche Darstellung , Vol. 4: Wortstellung. Periodenbau . Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Birner, Betty. 1996. Form and function in English by-phrase passives. In Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society , 23–31. Chicago IL: CLS.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Inferential relations and noncanonical word order. In Drawing the Boundaries of Meaning: Neo-Gricean Studies in Pragmatics and Semantics in Honor of Laurence R. Horn [Studies in Language Companion Series 80], Betty Birner & Gregory Ward (eds), 31–51. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Birner, Betty & Ward, Gregory. 1998. Information Status and Noncanonical Word Order in English [Studies in Language Companion Series 40]. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Birner, Betty, Ward, Gregory & Huddleston, Rodney. 2002. Information packaging. In The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey Pullum (eds), 1363–1447. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Bergen, Linda. 2003. Pronouns and Word Order in Old English, with Particular Reference to the Indefinite Pronoun man . New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bosworth, Joseph. 1859. King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of the Compendious History of the World by Orosius . London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace L. 1970. Meaning and the Structure of Language . Chicago IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Denison, David. 1993. English Historical Syntax: Verbal Constructions . Harlow: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dik, Simon C. 1981. On the typology of focus phenomena. In Perspectives on Functional Grammar , Teun Hoekstra, Harry van der Hulst & Michael Moortgat (eds). Dordrecht: ForisGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dreschler, Gea. 2010. Topic introduction in the by-phrase: Long passives in Early Modern English. In Linguistics in the Netherlands, Jacqueline van Kampen & Rick Nouwen (eds), 59–72. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. In prep. Passives and the Loss of Verb Second in English: A Study of Syntactic and Information-structural Factors. PhD thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen.
Evert, Stefan. 2006. How random is a corpus? The library metaphor. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 54(2): 177–190.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fischer, Olga, van Kemenade, Ans, Koopman, Willem, & van der Wurff, Wim. 2000. The Syntax of Early English . Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Gelderen, Elly. 2011. Valency changes in the history of English. Journal of Historical Linguistics 1(1): 106–143. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1979. On Understanding Grammar . New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: the functional domain of switch-reference. In Switch-Reference and Universal Grammar: Proceedings of a Symposium on Switch Reference and Universal Grammar, John Haiman & Pamela Munro (eds). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gregory, Michelle L. & Michaelis, Laura A. 2001. Topicalization and left-dislocation: A functional opposition revisited. Journal of Pragmatics 33: 1665–1706. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K. 1988. Universals of topic-comment structure. In Studies in Syntactic Typology [Typological Studies in Language 17], Michael Hammond, Edith Moravcsik & Jessica Wirth (eds), 209–242. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gundel, Jeanette K., Hedberg, Nancy & Zacharski, Ron. 1993. Referring expressions in discourse. Language 69: 274–307. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Halliday, Michael A.K. 1967. Notes on transitivity and theme in English, Part 2. Journal of Linguistics 3: 199–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1968. Notes on transitivity and theme in English, Part 3. Journal of Linguistics 4(2): 179–215. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney. 1984. Introduction to the Grammar of English . Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hundt, Marianne. 2007. English Mediopassive Constructions. A Cognitive, Corpus-Based Study of Their Origin, Spread and Current Status . Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kirkwood, Henry W. 1969. Aspects of word order and its communicative function in English and German. Journal of Linguistics 5: 85–107. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Komen, Erwin R. 2009. CorpusStudio . Nijmegen: Radboud University Nijmegen. [URL]
Krifka, Manfred. 2007. Basic notions of information structure. In The Notions of Information Structure , Caroline Féry, Gisbert Fanselow & Manfred Krifka (eds), 13–55. Potsdam: Potsdam Universitätsverlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony R., Santorini, Beatrice & Diertani, Ariel. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English . [URL]
. 2010. Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English . [URL]
Kroch, Anthony R. & Taylor, Ann. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edn. [URL]
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus and the Mental Representations of Discourse Referents . Cambridge: CUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2005. The Rise of the to-infinitive . Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2009. The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: information structure and syntax in interaction. English Language and Linguistics 13(1): 97–125. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mathesius, Vilém. 1928. On linguistic characterology with illustrations from Modern English. In Actes du Premier Congrès International de Linguistes , The Hague. Reprinted in Josef Vachek (ed.), 1964, A Prague School Reader in Linguistics, 59–67. Bloomington IN: Indiana University PressGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax, Vol. 1: Concord, the Parts of Speech, and the Sentence . Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen L. 1981. Towards a taxonomy of given-new information. In Radical Pragmatics, Peter Cole (ed.), 223–56. New York, NY: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1992. The ZPG letter: Subject, definiteness, and information-status. In Discourse Description: Diverse Analyses of a Fund Raising Text [Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 16], Sandra A. Thompson & William C. Mann (eds), 295–325. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rissanen, Matti. 1997. Whatever happened to the Middle English indefinite pronouns? In Studies in Middle English Linguistics, Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 513–529. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1974. Sekundaäre Subjektivierungen im Englischen und Deutschen: Vergleichende Untersuchungen zur Verb - und Ajektivsyntax . Bielefeld: Cornelsen-Velhaben & Klasing.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Seoane, Elena. 1999. The consolidation of the indirect and prepositional passive in Early Modern English: Evidence from the Helsinki Corpus. Estudios Ingleses de la Universidaad Complutense 7: 119–139.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. The passive as an information-rearranging device in Early Modern English. Studia Neophilologica 72: 24–33. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. Information structure and word order: the passive as an information rearranging strategy. In Handbook of the History of English, Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los (eds), 360–391. Oxford: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012. Givenness and word order: a study of long passives from Early Modern English to Present-Day English. In Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English, Anneli Meurman-Solin, Maria Jose Lopez-Couso & Bettelou Los (eds), 139–163. Oxford: OUP. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Siewierska, Anna. 1984. The Passive: A Comparative Linguistic Analysis . London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Skeat, Walter W. 1966 (1881–1900). Ælfric’s Lives of Saints [EETS 76, 82, 94, 114]. London: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Speyer, Augustin. 2010. Topicalization and Stress Clash Avoidance in the History of English . Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Taylor, Ann, Warner, Anthony R., Pintzuk, Susan & Beths, Frank. 2003. The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose . [URL]
Toyota, Juniuchi. 2008. Diachronic Change in the English Passive . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Warner, Anthony R. 1982. Complementation in Middle English and the Methodology of Historical Syntax . London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. Parameters of variation between verb-subject and subject-verb order in late Middle English. English Language and Linguistics 11: 81–111. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Weskott, Thomas. 2003. Information Structure as a Processing Guide: The Left Periphery of German V2 Sentences and its Interpretation in Context. PhD dissertation, University of Leipzig.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue