THE LOSS OF THE CORRELATIVE SYSTEM OF EARLY ENGLISH AND ITS POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE OV - VO SYNTACTIC CHANGE

早期英语相关系统的丧失及其对OV-VO句法变化的潜在影响

• 批准号: 2710969
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Edinburgh
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2710969
• 关键词: LOSS; CORRELATIVE; SYSTEM; EARLY; ENGLISH

Old English made use of demonstratives for referent tracking and clause linking; the neuter demonstrative pæs in the main clause in (1), for instance, links to the following subclause, which starts with another neuter demonstrative, pæt: (1) & heo pa sona pæs gefægnode, pæt heo hæafde and she then at-once that-GEN rejoiced that she had ealles pæs gæres bigleofan all the year's livelihood 'and then she immediately rejoiced because she had an entire year's worth of supplies' (lit. 'and she immediatey rejoiced because of that, that she had an entire year's worth of supplies') Pæs precedes the verb and hence provides a crucial clue about OV-word order, as pronominal objects, unlike full NP-objects, rarely undergo extraposition in Old English. This system of clause linking piggy-backs on a referent tracking system that uses gendered demonstratives, as in (2): (2) & pa sealde he heom mid his agenre handa ane trywene flascan and then gave he them with his own hand a wooden bottle wines fulle [...]. Of pære hi druncon, oo pæt hi to rauennam of-wine full Of that they drank until-that they to Ravenna becomon. came 'and then he gave them with his own hand a wooden bottle full of wine [...]. They drank from it (meaning: this bottle lasted them) until they came to Ravenna.' Gender, unlike case, remains stable from one clause to the next, as gender is an inherent property of nouns. The feminine demonstrative pære in (2) refers back to the new information of the first clause, the feminine noun flascan 'bottle'. Given information is typically referred back to by personal pronouns ("Topic Continuity"), and new information by demonstratives ("Topic Shift"), as in (3), where the demonstrative pam successfully indicates Topic-Shift from the old topic hei to the newly-introduced topic sum manj. (3) hei sæde, pæt sum manj wære in pære ylcan mægoe, pamj/*i wæs he said that a man was in that same family DEM was nama Martirius 'He said that there was a man in that same family, whose name was Martirius'. This division of labour persists in the other West Germanic languages but is lost in Present-Day English. Such "stand-alone" demonstratives decline in Early Middle English (Allen 2016; Los & van Kemenade 2018), leading to the Present-Day English situation in which singular "stand-alone" this and that can no longer refer to human referents (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1405-6), and hence are no longer available as Topic Shifters. That the plurals these and those were not affected suggests a connection with the loss of gender: unlike the singular demonstratives, plural demonstratives were not gendered in Old English. The hypothesised chain of events is as follows: 1) The loss of morphological gender undermined a clause linking system that depended on demonstratives. 2) This clause linking system, no longer supported by the morphology, abruptly disappeared from the language (Lenker 2010) and hence removed clues in acquisition of the OV character of the language, accelerating the rise of VO. 3) Topic Shift was no longer supported, which had far-ranging consequences for the discourse, obscuring "who does what to whom" because now only personal pronouns are available for both shifted and continued topics. Word-order investigations in Early Middle English have always been hampered by a lack of data in the crucial period. A new resource, A Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (PLAEME; Truswell et al. 2019), has now become available to fill this data gap.

古老的英语使用示范来进行参考跟踪和子句链接； the neuter demonstrative pæs in the main clause in (1), for instance, links to the following subclause, which starts with another neuter demonstrative, pæt: (1) & heo pa sona pæs gefægnode, pæt heo haæafde and she then at-once that-GEN rejoiced that she had high quality pæs gæres bigleofan all the year's livelihood 'and then she immediately rejoiced because she在整整一年的用品中，她立即为此而欢欣鼓舞，她拥有整整一年的物资'）Pæs先于动词之前，因此提供了有关OV-word订单的重要线索，因为代表对象，因为与全np-objects不同，在旧英语中很少不及其外来。该条款在使用性别示范的参考跟踪系统上链接的条款系统，如（2）：（2）：（2）＆pa sealde heom在他的Agernre Handa ane Trywene Flascan中间，然后用自己的手给他一个木制的瓶装瓶葡萄酒[...]。 pærehi醉酒，哦，hi hi to rauennam of富含葡萄酒的葡萄酒[...]。来了。他们来自它（意思是：这个瓶子持续了他们），直到他们来到拉文纳。与情况不同，性别从一个条款到下一个条款保持稳定，因为性别是名词的继承属性。 （2）中的女性示范性pære回到了第一条款的新信息，即女性名词flascan'瓶子。给定的信息通常由个人代词（“主题连续性”）和示范（“主题换档”）的新信息转介给（3）中，其中示范性的PAM成功地表明了从旧主题HEI到新介绍的主题总和MANJ的主题转移。 （3）HeiSæde，pætsum manjwære在YlcanMægoe，pamj/*iwæs，他说一个男人在同一个家庭中是纳玛·马特里乌斯（Nama Martirius）。这种劳动分工在其他西日耳曼语中仍然存在，但在当今的英语中却丢失了。这种“独立”的示例在中英语早期的下降（Allen 2016; Los＆van Kemenade 2018），导致当今的英语状况，这种情况是单一的“独立”，而不再是指人类的参考人（Huddleston＆Pullum 2002：1405-6），因此不再是作为主题救助者。这些和不受影响的复数表明与性别的丧失有联系：与单数示范不同，复数示范词没有用古老的英语性别。假设的事件链如下：1）形态性别的丧失破坏了依赖于示范的子句链接系统。 2）本条款链接系统不再受形态支持，突然从语言中消失了（Lenker 2010），因此在获得该语言的OV特征时删除了簇，从而加快了VO的兴起。 3）主题转移不再得到支持，这对话语产生了极大的后果，掩盖了“谁对谁做的事”，因为现在只有个人代词可用于转移和持续的主题。在关键时期缺乏数据，中间英语早期的单词顺序调查一直受到阻碍。一种新的资源，是一种解析的早期英语语言图集（Plaeeme; Truswell etal。2019），现在已可以填补这一数据差距。