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In:Lost in Change: Causes and processes in the loss of grammatical elements and constructions
Edited by Svenja Kranich and Tine Breban
[Studies in Language Companion Series 218] 2021
► pp. 75–100

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The impersonal construction in the texts of Updated Old English

Editor
 | Charles University
Published online: 16 June 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.218.03cer
Abstract
The main focus of this study is the so-adj-a construction seen as an instantiation of grammatical obsolescence in progress. Starting at where Klégr’s (2010) synchronic study of the construction’s local grammar and syntactic functions leaves it, the present work provides a diachronic account of changes in the frequency of use in the last two centuries; their implications; and an overview of possible causes that had led to the situation in which the construction became considerably rare in Present Day English. Methodologically, the paper features quantitative and statistical analyses of corpus data. The work uses the framework for the investigation of grammatical obsolescence designed in the author’s doctoral thesis (Rudnicka 2019). Additionally, the present chapter suggests extravagance as a cognitive motivation behind the emergence of the so-adj-a construction.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Updated Old English
    • 2.1Scribal practices followed in Updated Old English
    • 2.2The Updated Old English data for the present study
    • 2.3The data in their linguistic context
  • 3.The story of the impersonal construction
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Lexico-semantic characteristics of the impersonal verbs in the sample
    • 4.2Alterations in the record of the impersonal constructions in the sample
  • 5.Discussion and concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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