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In:Ditransitives in Germanic Languages: Synchronic and diachronic aspects
Edited by Eva Zehentner, Melanie Röthlisberger and Timothy Colleman
[Studies in Germanic Linguistics 7] 2023
► pp. 56–79

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The Middle English prepositional dative

Contact with French

 | University of Westminster
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 8 August 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sigl.7.02ing
Abstract
The to-PP form of the dative alternation is argued to have arisen from contact with French rather than being linked to the loss of the Old English Dative case. It is shown to have been extended in ME to the experiencer argument of psych verbs, and to the recipient argument of some verbs of communication, but only to those whose French counterparts took the à-dative, regardless of OE case assignment. Where French equivalents of verbs in these classes did not take an indirect object, the Middle English verb took only a nominal object. Selectivity in to-PP use in ME, going beyond verbs of possession transfer yet showing a verb-specific restriction to source item argument realisation patterns, indicates that French provided a replication source for the to-PP form of the dative alternation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The spread of the to-PP to dative contexts
  • 3.Explaining the change
  • 4.Contact with (Anglo-)French in later medieval England
  • 5.Design of the study
  • 6.Verb profiles
    • 6.1Psych verbs
    • 6.2Verbs of communication
  • 7.Implications
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Data sources
  • References
References (49)
Data sources
AND: An Anglo-Norman Dictionary. Second Edition. 2005. William Rothwell, Stewart Gregory, and David Trotter (eds), with the assistance of Michael Beddow, Virginie Derrien, Geert de Wilde, Lisa Jefferson and Andrew Rothwell. [URL].
ASD: Bosworth, Joseph, and Thomas Toller. 1898. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
MED: Middle English Dictionary. 1954–2001. Hans Kurath and Sherman Kuhn (eds). Ann Arbor: Michigan UP.
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Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Colleman, Timothy
2025. A French connection?. In Constructions in Contact 3 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 40], ► pp. 179 ff. DOI logo

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