Variation and Change in English Grammar and Lexicon - Contemporary Approaches (Eds. R.a.cloutier&a M...

Studies in the History of the English Language V

Topics in English Linguistics68

Editors

Elizabeth Closs TraugottBernd Kortmann

De Gruyter Mouton

Studies in the Historyof the English Language VVariation and Change in English Grammarand Lexicon: Contemporary Approaches

Edited by

Robert A. CloutierAnne Marie Hamilton-BrehmWilliam A. Kretzschmar, Jr.

De Gruyter Mouton

ISBN 978-3-11-022032-2e-ISBN 978-3-11-022033-9ISSN 1434-3452

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Studies in the history of the English language V : variation and changein English grammar and lexicon : contemporary approaches / editedby Robert A. Cloutier, Anne Marie Hamilton-Brehm, William A. Kretz-schmar.

p. cm. � (Topics in English linguistics ; 68)Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-3-11-022032-2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. English language � History. 2. English language � Grammar,Historical. I. Cloutier, Robert A., 1979� II. Hamilton-Brehm,Anne Marie, 1970� III. Kretzschmar, William A. IV. Title: Stud-ies in the history of the English language 5. V. Title: Studies in thehistory of the English language five. VI. Title: Variation and changein English grammar and lexicon : contemporary approaches.

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Table of Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

English Grammar

Dialogic Contexts as Motivations for Syntactic Change . . . . . . . . . 11

Elizabeth Traugott

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Akiko Nagano

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Elizabeth Closs Traugott

Whatever Happened to English Sluicing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Joanna Nykiel

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Elizabeth Closs Traugott

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Joanna Nykiel

Notion of Direction and Old English Prepositional Phrases. . . . . . . 67

Olga Thomason

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Joanna Nykiel

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Olga Thomason

Survival of the Strongest: Strong Verb Inflection from Old toModern English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87

Sherrylyn Branchaw

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Sherrylyn Branchaw

Subject Compounding and a Functional Change of the Derivational

Su‰x -ing in the History of English . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111Akiko Nagano

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132

Olga Thomason

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136

Akiko Nagano

Bad Ideas in the History of English Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141Don Chapman

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Stefanie Kuzmack

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158Don Chapman

English Lexicon

The State of English Etymology (A Few Personal Observations) . . . 161

Anatoly Liberman

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183Ann-Marie Svensson

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186Anatoly Liberman

From Germanic ‘fence’ to ‘urban settlement’: On the Semantic

Development of English town. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187Ann-Marie Svensson and Jurgen Hering

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202

Don Chapman

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206

Ann-Marie Svensson

Celtic Influence on English: A Re-Evaluation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207

Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226Elisabeth Tacho

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola

When arı #ven Came to England: Tracing Lexical Re-Structuring by

Borrowing in Middle and Early Modern English. A Case Study . . . 231Elizabeth Tacho

vi Table of Contents

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257

Emily Runde

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261

Elisabeth Tacho

Reexamining Orthographic Practice in the Auchinleck ManuscriptThrough Study of Complete Scribal Corpora . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265

Emily Runde

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288Sherrylyn Branchaw

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291

Emily Runde

How Medium Shapes Language Development: The Emergence of

Quotative Re Online . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 293Stefanie Kuzmack

Commentary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311Anatoly Liberman

Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 314

Stefanie Kuzmack

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 317

Subject Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322

Table of Contents vii

Introduction

The conversation these days about the history of the English language(HEL) has changed from what it used to be. The historical linguistics

(viz. internal history) and cultural studies (viz. external history) that have

marked traditional research on HEL are alive and well, but they havebeen improved now by methods from corpus linguistics and sociolinguis-

tics. This collection shows how historical studies of English are increas-

ingly engaged with these contemporary trends in linguistics, and the vol-ume demonstrates how empirical and other methods can bring classical

philology fully into the sphere of contemporary linguistics without aban-

doning its traditional concerns. This volume has two sections, the first ongrammar and syntax and the following section on word-based studies. Of

course grammar and lexicon cannot be entirely segregated. Both sections

highlight the contributions that strong empirical research can make to ourknowledge of the development of English grammar, especially as realized

in lexical development. And both sections pay serious attention to the fre-

quencies and discourse characteristics with which particular words havebeen used at di¤erent times. Each essay will be followed immediately by

commentary from another of the authors in the cluster of papers, and

then the author will have the opportunity for a response to the commen-tary. In this way the collection will show the kind of discussion currently

obtaining in the field, and more specifically in the section of the field in

which the pairs of authors find themselves. The essays in this volume thusportray current research in HEL in the sort of conversations that in fact

actually characterize the field today. As Anatoly Liberman, known for

his classic work on historical etymology, writes in a commentary in thisvolume on Kuzmack’s essay about development of the word re on the

Internet in the last two decades, regarding such new additions to the house

we have known as HEL,‘‘Welcome to the housewarming party.’’

English Grammar

The first section challenges researchers to examine and re-examine histori-

cal developments in English syntax from new perspectives and multiplemethods, including quantitative studies. Traditional analyses of historical

developments in English have focused on phonological, morphological,

and syntactic motivations for change. The authors here expand the

approach to include consideration of pragmatic and semantic motivations

in qualitative and quantitative studies, complementing theoretical ap-proaches rather than competing with them. The evident benefits shown

here encourage viewing the historical development of English with a

multidisciplinary perspective.

In the lead article for the first section, Elizabeth Traugott demonstratesthe potential for new syntactic constructions to arise in dialogic contexts

by examining diachronic changes in the use of all- and wh- pseudo-clefts.

In a review of approaches to motivations for language change, Traugottexplains that invited inferencing motivates speakers to exploit language-

internal implicatures, which may become conventionalized. Traugott iden-

tifies several linguistic expressions that function dialogically, such as theconcessives although and however, which convey dissonance or incom-

patibility between two eventualities. Tracing the history of all- and wh-

pseudo-clefts, Traugott provides textual evidence that they were initiallyshaped in English by their use in argument refutation, progressing to

non-dialogic contexts after about fifty years in the historical record. Based

on the evolution of all- and wh- pseudo-clefts in dialogic contexts, Trau-gott argues for an interactional approach to the study of language change,

and challenges scholars to reconsider oversimplified monologic perspectives

and generalized notions of motivation in diachronic syntactic research. Inher commentary on Traugott, Akiko Nagano suggests three constructions

that would benefit from the interactional approach because they involve

speaker evaluation of an utterance or its context, including conversion inretorts, superlative adjectives, and speech-act conditionals. Responding to

Nagano’s discussion of conversions, Traugott agrees that some may have

arisen in dialogic and dialogual contexts of the type Nagano suggests, andexplains that because the histories of individual constructions di¤er, it is

important to consider the full range of interactional contexts in which

they arose and distinguish dialogic from dialogual contexts.Joanna Nykiel addresses the problem of syntactic, semantic, and prag-

matic involvement in English sluicing by examining the evolution of this

structure in the language’s history. Sluicing is defined as a surface anaphorwith a full underlying structure that goes unpronounced, which Nykiel

exemplifies in the title of her article, ‘‘Whatever happened to English sluic-

ing.’’ This structure was initially associated with a full underlying repre-sentation, an analysis that has persisted in later work. Through her dia-

chronic approach, Nykiel shows that sluicing is not such a purely

syntactic operation. In fact, despite drastic changes in the syntax and

2 Introduction

morphology of English, her data indicate stability in this structure over

time, with syntax being statistically much less of a factor than has been

assumed, a fact that in turn speaks against an internal divide between sur-face and deep anaphora. In its place, Nykiel proposes that an anaphor’s

features fall out from the number of syntactic and semantic clues it con-

tains that lead to successful resolution. Elizabeth Traugott then comments

on two points, what she calls the ‘‘Recency Illusion’’ and the stability ofconstructions over a millennium, and raises the further research question

of whether the discovery of stable variation requires the investigator to

posit a prior stage without such variation. Nykiel responds by suggestingthe necessity to go beyond individual languages under investigation, when

stability or change in the history of a given construction seems surprising,

to consider typological similarities and di¤erences.Olga Thomason examines Old English prepositional phrases that de-

note the general notion of direction, namely ‘to, toward,’ to gain greater

insight into the factors that contribute to the representation of this mean-ing. This particular group of prepositions is peculiar because of the num-

ber of prepositions designating this concept (four of which are examined

in this study: to #, wiþ, toge #an, and onge #an) and because of the variety ofcases most of these prepositions can govern while maintaining a direc-

tional reading (up to three). This contrasts with the other, more specific

directional notions of ‘into,’ ‘onto,’ and ‘up to,’ which generally havefewer prepositions designating the concept, and which are generally limited

to governing accusative case. Thomason explores each of the four preposi-

tions individually and demonstrates just how complicated their semanticscan be. She finds that a combination of the original semantics of the pre-

position, the semantics of the di¤erent cases, and the specific verbs with

which these prepositional phrases combine contributes to the variation inthis group. Joanna Nykiel’s commentary focuses on the puzzling variation

in distribution of cases. Thomason agrees with Nykiel’s suggestion to pre-

sent a chronological organization and statistical analysis of the data,which anticipated the next step of research, to add a diachronic spin to

the primarily synchronic study.

Sherrylyn Branchaw examines seventy-eight Modern English verbs thatto some extent retain strong verbal inflection to see which factors already

evident in Old English may have influenced such an outcome. She focuses

on four factors: the number of verbs with the same ablaut pattern (typefrequency), the number of occurrences of a particular verb in Old English

(token frequency), the shape of the root, and the e‰ciency of the ablaut

pattern. She assumes a correlation between a verb’s being fully attested

Introduction 3

(the vocalism of each of its four principal parts is attested) and its fre-

quency and hypothesizes that strong verbs that are not fully attested in

Old English, if they survive, will be weak in Modern English. Her resultssuggest that to varying degrees, all four of the factors investigated influ-

ence the outcome of strong verbs. A verb’s ablaut pattern seems to be a

very important factor in determining whether it will remain strong or

become weak: in almost all cases in Branchaw’s study, verbs with ablautpatterns where the vowels are less distinct mostly shift to the weak cate-

gory or more rarely select very distinct vowels for the present and pre-

terite. Token frequency also has an e¤ect: more frequent verbs are morelikely to remain strong. Type frequency, on the other hand, does not

seem to play as great a role – only if the number of verbs with a particular

ablaut pattern is extremely high or low is there any sort of predictivepower because the organization into classes changed dramatically in early

Middle English. Even at these extremes, however, type frequencies are

easily overridden by token frequency and ablaut pattern e¤ects. Commen-tary on Branchaw by Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola o¤ers the

caveats that the nature of the surviving OE textual evidence suggests cau-

tion regarding any quantitative generalizations based on the corpus, andthat non-standard varieties need to be considered as well as the standard.

Branchaw responds especially to the second point, on which she had written

elsewhere, and suggests that her practice helps to explain the origin ofstandard forms.

Akiko Nagano challenges the view that modern synthetic compounds,

such as city planning and housekeeping, can embody only the verb-objectrelationship. Nagano traces the diachronic development of -ing compound

nouns, showing that Old and Middle English -ing compound nouns

allowed a subject-verb relationship, and that some types of modern -ingcompound nouns still do. An example from Nagano’s corpus-based re-

search is the compound noun artery hardening, which has the subject-

verb interpretation ‘‘arteries harden.’’ Further, Nagano provides evidencethat the main function of the derivational su‰x -ing has shifted from nam-

ing in Old and Middle English to recategorization, where -ing nominals

are event nominals and inherit the argument structure of the base verb,while the naming function has remained the same since Old English and

has invariably produced result nominals. Nagano establishes a connection

between historical changes in the possibility of subject compounding in-ing and the function of -ing nominalization, asserting that the possibility

of subject compounding depends on the function of the nominalization. In

her commentary on Nagano, Olga Thomason questions the constitution

4 Introduction

of compounds of the ‘‘subject-compounding’’ type, the validity of the dis-

tinction between event and result nominals, and the morphological status

of the su‰x -ing. Thus, rather than accept the subject-verb interpretationof fruit-ripening as ‘fruit ripens,’ Thomason explains the construction

along nominal lines such as ‘the ripening of fruit,’ where attributive, rather

than verbal, semantics apply. Nagano responds by clarifying that her

research addresses the derivational su‰x -ing rather than the participialor gerundive -ing, which derives from a di¤erent inflectional su‰x in Old

English, arguing that the functional properties cited by Thomason do not

impair her claim.In the final paper of this section, Don Chapman considers prescriptive

language rules that appear in usage books only once, which he terms

‘‘one-o¤s.’’ Collecting one-o¤s from a number of popular usage guidesdating from 1770 to 2007, he shows that one-o¤s constitute a very high

percentage of the total number of prescriptions. Chapman categorizes

one-o¤s, according to the probable reason for their failure, such as rareconstructions which go unnoticed, rules lacking su‰cient justification,

and rules having arbitrary justification. He considers why rules with justi-

fication that appears to be less arbitrary, such as logic, may also fail. Inher commentary on Chapman, Stefanie Kuzmack supports the treatment

of usage rules as a form of etiquette for the purpose of explaining them to

the public in terms other than truth and falsity. She suggests that a factorworth considering in future research is that the e¤ectiveness of a type

of justification may vary with the audience in terms of era and region.

Kuzmack notes that while prescriptivism is viewed as a conservative prac-tice, the high percentage of one-o¤s in guides suggests that prescriptivists

are actually not conservative. Chapman responds favorably to Kuzmack’s

suggestions regarding the quantified aspects of his study, and agrees thatthe prescriptive tradition will continue to refresh its content in response

to new developments, noting that two recent usage manuals not included

in his study also have high percentages of one-o¤s. He observes that usagemanual editors, rather than being mere conservators of tradition, propose

new prescriptions on their own.

English Lexicon

The section on word-based studies invites readers to consider alternate ap-

proaches to diachronic study of lexical variants based on new discoveries

in linguistics and elsewhere and newly available technology. The research

Introduction 5

presented here encourages consultation of research written in languages

other than English and draws from both linguistic and non-linguistic

fields, such as socioeconomic and geographic history, archaeology, andlanguage-contact theory. In particular, the authors demonstrate the power

of computers and the Internet to enhance research and influence the de-

velopment of English. At the same time, the essays in the section do not

abandon traditional lexical research, such as the study of etymology inthe lead essay by Anatoly Liberman.

In his signature style that combines sharp wit with meticulous scholar-

ship, Liberman raises awareness of both historical problems in etymo-logical science and modern di‰culties in obtaining funding. Tracing the

evolution of English etymology from Minsheu’s 1617 dictionary, he illu-

minates the technological challenges which have limited accuracy andcomprehensive investigation of word histories. Pointing out the limitations

of etymological works, including the canonical Oxford English Dictionary,

and lauding the benefits of computerized storage, Liberman argues stronglyfor more rigorous research of word histories that have been ignored or

inaccurately derived from assumptions passed along from dictionary to

dictionary. Crucially, he points out the usefulness of etymological studiesprinted in languages other than English, which are often missed. Ann-

Marie Svensson draws attention to the importance of Liberman’s dis-

tinction between present-day etymological lexicology and the science ofEnglish etymology, noting Liberman’s characterization of the OED as

a historical rather than an etymological dictionary. In his response,

Liberman notes the disparity between the etymological information foundin dictionaries and the rich material in the accumulating corpus of articles

and books on Indo-European, Germanic, and English etymology and

looks forward to the establishment of an international center for Englishetymology.

Ann Marie Svensson and Jurgen Hering examine the evolution of the

word town in English throughout the Middle English period, tracing itsdevelopment from the meaning ‘fence’ to ‘urban settlement’ in ninety texts

between 1100 and 1500. By considering the size, importance, and location

(British or non-British) of the localities receiving the designation town,they are able to pinpoint the meaning of the word at various points in

time. They attribute the shift in meaning to various social, economic, and

political changes evident during the Middle English period, namely thegrowth in population and importance of places originally designated as

town and the restriction of the designation borough, which was previously

used for urban settlements, to places with representatives summoned to

6 Introduction

Parliament. In his commentary, Don Chapman aptly observes, ‘‘Who

would have suspected that town would be such an interesting word?’’

Chapman then focuses on context, and suggests that its importance sug-gests a core mechanism of semantic change: not only do words mean as

they are used, they change meaning as they are used in di¤erent contexts.

Chapman hopes that study of interesting words like town can help us to

better understand the mechanisms of semantic change. Svensson respondsin agreement, that only context can guide the modern reader to under-

stand the developing shades of meaning in the semantic field.

Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola challenge the traditional claimof Germanic genocide upon the British population, with the consequence

that Celtic had little influence on English. As a case study, they apply

archaeological, demographic and historical evidence, language-contacttheory, and areal evidence from modern dialect research to argue for a

Celtic origin for periphrastic do. Archeological and genetic evidence sup-

ports a process of acculturation lasting two centuries after the arrival ofGermanic tribes, during which linguistic contact influences were highly

likely. Filppula and Klemola suggest that during a period of extensive

bilingualism, the Britons shifted to English and were assimilated culturallyand linguistically into the Anglo-Saxon population. They point out that

the dearth of Celtic loanwords in English should not be viewed as evi-

dence against Celtic influence, because it is predicted by language-contacttheory. They also list a number of non-Germanic features shared by

English and Celtic that are di‰cult to dismiss as coincidental, including

periphrastic do, which is characterized by properties which sets Englishapart from other Germanic languages. Tacho commends Filppula and

Klemola on their interdisciplinary approach to the debate on Celtic influ-

ence. She raises the possibility that Anglo Norman and French loanwordsmay have contributed to the increased number of periphrastic do construc-

tions in Middle English. On the other hand, Filppula and Klemola provide

evidence that the earliest examples of periphrastic do found in thirteenthcentury southwestern verse show it was used with native verbs rather than

French loans. They further suggest a simple quantitative study calculating

the percentage of French loans associated with periphrastic do.Elizabeth Tacho examines the process of the borrowing of the Anglo-

Norman loan word arı #ven ‘to come ashore.’ By approaching this word

and meaning from both an onomasiological and a semasiological perspec-tive, she traces the lexical and semantic changes during the verb’s transi-

tion period from Middle English to Early Modern English, examining a

number of written and speech-based text types from the mid-twelfth to

Introduction 7

the fifteenth centuries. Arı #ven was borrowed in the course of the thirteenth

century, eventually rivaling and replacing synonymous ME le #nden ‘to

land.’ After spreading rapidly and extending its meaning beyond ‘tocome ashore’ in the first half of the fifteenth century, ME arı #ven has re-

mained largely stable henceforth. Emily Runde’s commentary generally

approves of what she calls a ‘‘meticulous semasiological study.’’ Runde

points out, however, that the paucity of early speech-based documentsmay call into question Tacho’s assertion that arı #ven was used first in

more literary texts, and that the views of one contemporary writer,

Mannyng, may contradict some of her findings. Tacho responds that, asregards the scarcity of early speech-based texts, we are indeed limited by

what survives (‘‘the bad data problem’’), and that the Mannyng issue is

one that deserves further study.Focusing on the Auchinleck Manuscript, Emily Runde tackles the

problem of scribal intervention in the transmission of medieval manu-

scripts. She narrows her study on the complete bodies of work of the twomost prolific Auchinleck scribes, commonly known as Scribes 1 and 3. She

traces the orthography of a number of words in the work of each of these

two scribes in order to determine their internal linguistic consistency aswell as the extent to which their practices throughout their complete cor-

pora reflect their linguistic profiles in LALME. She examines the consis-

tency with which initial <h-> is written, the spelling of words usuallyused to distinguish Types II and III (Samuels 1989), and the spelling of

words that usually used to distinguish various Middle English dialects.

Her study shows greater consistency of spelling than is generally attributedto Middle English scribes and fluctuation between Type II and Type III

spelling (challenging Samuels’ classification of these scribes as Type II) and

suggests a possible northern origin of two texts, namely Sir Tristem andHorn Childe & Maiden Rimnild, due to the prevalence of northern spell-

ings of certain words not present in the Scribe 1’s other texts. Sherrylyn

Branchaw’s commentary approves of Runde’s innovation that, instead oflooking at di¤erent scribes for the same text, she looks at di¤erent texts

prepared by the same scribe. This practice permits her to estimate the

overall consistency of a single scribe’s habits so that, for instance, it is pos-sible to say that Scribe 1 was unlikely to introduce northern forms in one

text when he had not introduced them in twenty-eight other texts. Runde

suggests in reply that she intends to extend her practice of using completescribal corpora to additional sets of manuscripts.

Stefanie Kuzmack considers the potential of the Internet as an environ-

ment for language change using the example of the quotative complemen-

8 Introduction

tizer re, which evolved c. 1990 in threaded discussions to set up response

to earlier discourse. The use of quotative re derives from and is semanti-

cally related to the English preposition re ‘about, regarding,’ from Latinin re (<res), used in the subject lines of memoranda and electronic mes-

sages, but di¤ers syntactically and pragmatically. Kuzmack notes, how-

ever, that quotative re’s meaning is not always salient and evidences

semantic bleaching. She argues that the unusual characteristics of re reflectthe influence of the online medium on its development, showing how the

online medium promoted such distinguishing characteristics as adjoint

complementation and noun phrase complementation, neither of whichare used with other English quotatives. Kuzmack concludes that quotative

complementizer re complements other English quotatives in both structure

and function, rather than competing with them. Reflecting on Kuzmack’sresearch, Anatoly Liberman notes that Kuzmack reminds us that study of

the history of English need not be relegated to study of the distant past.

He points out the importance of writing in literate societies and notesthat the Internet and chatroom have dissipated di¤erences between speech

and writing. Liberman observes that because the public nature of Internet

texts makes them readily available for research, e-mail and chat can bestudied using methods comparable to those used to study recorded and

overheard conversations. Liberman expresses amusement that the folk

etymology of re reflects modern di¤erences in education. Responding toLiberman’s observation that the Internet has brought written language

closer to spoken language, Kuzmack emphasizes that asynchronous com-

munication, an element of written register, was important to the develop-ment of re. The fact that re is used in asynchronous writing caused it to

develop as a way to refresh memory of what had been said previously.

Kuzmack agrees that folk etymologies of re may reflect changes in edu-cation, but suggests that even speakers who know Latin might conclude

that re is a new abbreviation since its use in subject lines is di¤erent from

previous uses.These twelve conversations about aspects of HEL demonstrate the state

of the art. They involve increasing use of technology and quantitative

methods from corpus linguistics. They incorporate insights from modernsociolinguistics and anthropology. And still they maintain the rigor and

scholarship that have long distinguished the tradition of study in HEL.

There are indeed new additions to the house that we celebrate in theseessays, while they also concern themselves with the regular maintenance

of HEL study.

Introduction 9

Dialogic Contexts as Motivations forSyntactic Change


1. Introduction

In recent years there has been considerable interest in accounting for moti-

vations for change: the ‘‘why’’ of change.1 Attention has been paid to vari-ous aspects of diagrammatic iconicity within the framework of synchronic

cognitive linguistics (e.g., Radden and Panther 2004) and historical mor-

phosyntax (Fischer 2007), and also to interactional motivations such asturn-taking and stance-taking (Waltereit and Detges 2007). In this paper

I will focus on the emergence of new syntactic constructions in the context

of interactional contesting or ‘‘dialogic’’ language use (Schwenter 2000),using the rise of ALL- and WH- pseudo-clefts as my case study.

The outline is as follows. I will briefly review di¤erent approaches to

motivation (section 2) and then discuss dialogicity (section 3). Section 4focuses on the linguistic contexts in which pseudo-clefts arose, and section

5 suggests questions for further research.

2. Approaches to motivations

There have been two main approaches to motivations, one focusing on

internal factors, the other on external as well as internal ones. Space per-

mits only the sketchiest of comments about theoretical stances that havewide-reaching implications for both theoretical explanation and practice.

1. Various aspects of the development of ALL- and WH-pseudo-clefts were pre-sented at IPra 10 (Traugott 2007) and in Traugott (2008). Many thanks toaudiences at IPra and at SHEL5 for comments. Most especially, thanks toScott A. Schwenter for drawing by attention to dialogicity, to Ruth Kempsonfor discussion of my analysis of WH-clefts, and to two anonymous reviewersof the present version. Needless to say, they are not responsible for any errorsthat remain or for points of view expressed here.

‘‘Internal’’ approaches include synchronic work on various types of

iconicity (e.g., Haiman 1980), and pattern match (e.g., Cuyckens, Berg,

Dirven, and Panther 2003, Radden and Panther 2004).2 Motivations maybe cognitive, experiential, perceptual, etc. and therefore, strictly speaking,

language-independent. But the approach is internal in the sense that they

are construed as arising from factors ‘‘inherent in, and arising out of,

any given synchronic state of the language system’’ (Gerritsen and Stein1992: 7).

Diachronic work in which change is construed as grammar change

(Kiparsky 1968) also involves an ‘‘internal’’ approach. For the most part,it is assumed that language change results from language acquisition, and

that acquisition is passive: ‘‘Language learning is not really something that

the child does; it is something that happens to the child placed in anappropriate environment’’ (Chomsky 1988: 134), ‘‘A grammar grows in a

child from some initial state (UG), when she is exposed to primary lin-

guistic data’’ (Lightfoot 2003: 107). Early proposals concerning competingmotivations (‘‘be clear’’ vs. ‘‘be quick/easy’’) by Langacker (1977) and

Slobin (1977) assume an internal perspective. In particular, Slobin pro-

posed a disembodied set of ‘‘ground rules,’’ ‘‘charges,’’ or ‘‘imperatives’’to ‘‘the semi-mythical being whom I’ll refer to simply as Language’’

(p. 186; italics original). Speakers are guided by maxims based in logic

and language-internal Gricean implicatures.‘‘External’’ approaches, by contrast, appeal to factors arising out of

human acts and actions, including language use in a community, contact,

and speaker-hearer negotiation of meaning. We may think here of inter-locutors building common ground (Clark 1996), and resolving the compet-

ing motivations (‘‘be clear’’ vs. ‘‘be quick/easy’’) as construed by Du Bois

(e.g., 1985). Speakers and hearers are actively engaged in interactionguided by maxims such as Keller’s (1994 [1990]), which are grounded in

the communicative dyad’s actions and purposes, e.g., ‘‘Talk in such a

way that you are not misunderstood’’ (p. 94), ‘‘Talk in such a way thatyou are noticed,’’ ‘‘Talk in an amusing, funny way’’ (p. 101), ‘‘Talk like

the others talk’’ (p. 100).3

2. Taylor (2006) provides a good summary of the cognitive linguistic approachto motivation, with a critique of possible circularity.

3. The first two types enable change, the third inhibits it. Grice’s (1989 [1975])Maxims also appeal to the communicative dyad, but focus on internal logicand implicatures.

12 Elizabeth Closs Traugott

In historical linguistics, language change is construed as change in use,

and speakers are envisaged as active, life-long learners (Milroy 1992,

Croft 2000). The hypotheses that grammaticalization is motivated by ‘‘ex-pressiveness’’ (Lehmann 1995 [1982], Hopper and Traugott 2003 [1993])

or ‘‘extravagance’’ (Haspelmath 1998) arise out of perspectives that are

at least partially externally-oriented.

While ‘‘internal’’ and ‘‘external’’ approaches are di¤erent in orientation,they are ideally integrated (Du Bois 1985, Joseph 1992, and more recently

Butler 2006, McMahon 2006):

To understand language change as well as we can, we have to deal with twodi¤erent levels all the time, that of the speaker, and that of the linguistic sys-tem. (McMahon 2006: 148)

Work on invited inferencing as a motivation for change combines both

external and internal perspectives. It is assumed that speakers act (invite

addressees to interpret) exploiting language-internal implicatures (Traugottand Konig 1991, Traugott and Dasher 2002). After becoming salient in

a community (a social factor), such implicatures may become conven-

tionalized (coded or semanticized) via semantic reanalysis (an internalmechanism). For example, speaker-based, subjective meanings may be-

come salient in certain types of communication as a result of certain inter-

actional practices, but the process of ‘‘subjectification’’ is the reanalysisor semanticization of speaker-based meanings, such as are expressed by

epistemic modality or discourse markers. It is an internal mechanism that

operates on outcomes of externally motivated interaction.Most hypothesized motivations are very general: conditions, not spe-

cific ‘‘why’s’’ for change. Recently Detges, Schwenter, and Waltereit in

a number of papers separately and together have explored more specificmotivations by correlating particular rhetorical strategies and stances

with the rise of particular usages. For example, Detges (2006) discusses

turn-taking and self-topicalization as motivations that were precursors ofthe development of subject-markers out of pronouns in French and other

languages. The ‘‘obligatorification’’ of the pronouns resulted, he argues,

from the overuse of optional first and second person pronouns, hencedevaluation of their pragmatic e¤ect, and eventual reanalysis as subject

markers. Also appealing to turn-taking, Waltereit (2006) discusses the

development of discourse markers out of imperatives, e.g., Italian Guarda!

‘look’ > ‘see’/‘self-selection marker’, Diciamo ‘(let’s) say.’ He argues that

speakers self-select by using attention-getters in ‘‘illegitimate’’ ways, e.g.,

Guarda! when there is nothing to look at, or Diciamo when interlocutors

Dialogic Contexts as Motivations for Syntactic Change 13

are not engaged in simultaneous talk. Waltereit and Detges (2007: 79) pro-

pose that the kinds of interaction that precede subjectification, pragma-

ticalization (of discourse markers), and grammaticalization, can be speci-fied in more detailed ways than has been usual in the past by appealing to

argumentation to a conclusion, and negotiation of viewpoints. They pro-

pose that the development of modal particles like French bien ‘indeed’

as in (1a) out of the manner adverb bien ‘well’ derives from ‘‘stereotypicalargumentational moves negotiating common ground (‘‘What do I believe

that you believe concerning the felicity of my speech act?’’).’’ On the other

hand, discourse markers such as Spanish bien ‘well’ as in (1b) arise out ofthe negotiating strategy of ‘‘further[ing] verbal interaction (‘‘What are we

going to do next’’)’’ (Waltereit and Detges 2007: 79).

(1) a. Vous avez bien recu mon message?

‘You did receive my message, didn’t you?’ (Ibid.: 63)

b. A. . . . todo ciudadano . . . tiene derecho a eas legıtima defensa

‘. . . every citizen . . . has the right to this self-defense’

B. Bien. Eh . . . creo que. . .‘Well. Eh . . . I think there. . .’ (Ibid.: 62)

A di¤erent motivation, that of presupposition accommodation, is pro-posed by Schwenter and Waltereit (forthcoming) to account for such

developments as use of additive too as a refutation marker. An early

example is:

(2) ‘‘Surely you can’t be thinking of marrying a man who wasn’t in

the army, who jeered at men who did enlist?’’

‘‘He was, too, in the army. He was in the army eight months.’’

(1936 Mitchell, Gone with the Wind [Schwenter and Waltereit,forthcoming])

As Waltereit and Detges show, in the case of Spanish bien the interactionis often one of disagreement (see (1b)). The same is true of the use of too in

(2). In other words, the context for their use is one in which multiple view-

points are expressed using a strategy that is contesting and refutational,oriented toward an alternative conclusion. In other words it is ‘‘dialogic.’’

3. Dialogic interactions

For over twenty years there has been considerable discussion, especially in

Europe, of the distinction between the number of speakers and the num-ber of points of view invoked (see Roulet 1984, Ducrot 1984, 1996; more


recently Schwenter 2000, 2007, Nølke 2006).4 A distinction is made

between ‘‘monologual’’ – ‘‘dialogual’’ interaction and ‘‘monologic’’ –

‘‘dialogic’’ interaction.5 The first, ‘‘monologual’’ – ‘‘dialogual,’’ refers tothe number of speakers (simplistically, one or two) and concerns absence

or presence of turn-taking. The second, ‘‘monologic’’ – ‘‘dialogic,’’ refers

to number of view points invoked (simplistically, one or two). Monologic

orientation concerns the extent to which speakers share common groundand build their argument toward the same or similar conclusions (e.g.,

and, which signals agreement or addition). Dialogic orientation concerns

the extent to which speakers contest, refute, or build an argument towardalternative or di¤erent conclusions (e.g., but, modal in fact). Monologicity

and dialogicity are on a continuum (Schwenter 2000) – very little language

use is purely monologic (Taavitsainen, Harma, and Korhonen 2006: 1).There are many linguistic expressions that index some degree of dialo-

gicity. Among them are:

a) Adversatives: these ‘‘[signal] a confrontation of ‘incompatible’ view-

points’’ (Schwenter 2000: 261), e.g., but, Spanish si.

b) Concessives: these convey the ‘‘implicature that there is a dissonanceor incompatibility between two eventualities’’ (Konig 1991: 134), e.g.,

although, however.

c) Negation: this has been conceptualized as denying or correcting the‘‘truth’’ of a prior proposition or utterance (Givon 1978), or of a pre-

supposition, implicature, etc. (Geurts 1998). While the extent to which

canonical negation is used this way has been challenged (e.g., Tottie1991, Thompson 1998), non-canonical negatives target a salient a‰r-

mative proposition in the ongoing discourse record, e.g., not . . . either,

OE na . . . wiht ‘no . . . thing’ (> not), Fr. ne . . . pas ‘no . . . step’

(Schwenter 2007) and are refutational.d) Epistemic modal adverbs: these invoke alternative worlds (Lyons

1977) and therefore doubt, e.g., surely, possibly.

e) Focus particles: these exclude alternatives and ‘‘carry an implicationof dissonance or incompatibility’’ (Konig 1991: 131; also Traugott

2006), e.g., even, only.

f ) Scalars in general since they invoke alternatives (Konig 1991).

4. Much of this work originates with Bakhtin (see Holquist 1981). Similar issuesare also central to much work on stylistics and types of ‘‘indirect speech’’ (e.g.,Leech and Short 1981).

5. Note, however, that ‘‘dialogic’’ is sometimes used to refer to dyadic inter-action, i.e. what is here called ‘‘dialogual’’ (e.g., Taavitsainen, Harma, andKorhonen 2006).


While synchronic studies of dialogicity have focused not only on expres-

sions of dialogicity but also on interactional stance, largely in conversa-

tion (e.g., Mann and Thompson 1992, Ford 1994, Couper-Kuhlen andKortmann 2000), most diachronic work has been devoted to the develop-

ment of expressions indexing dialogicity as instances of grammaticaliza-

tion or of subjectification. Dialogic expressions typically derive from non-

dialogic ones, e.g.: but < ‘except’ < butan ‘on the outside’ (Nevalainen1991), only ‘adversative conjunction’ (‘‘denotes the opposite of the conse-

quence or conclusion expected from the first,’’ Poutsma 1904–05: 385,

cited in Brinton 1998) < focus marker < anlic ‘singly’, instead < in stede

‘in place of ’ (Schwenter and Traugott 1995) to name only a few.

Relatively little attention has been paid to dialogic contexts for changes.

There is, however, some mention in Detges’ and Waltereit’s work, andSchwenter and Traugott argue that the dialogicity of adverbials like epis-

temic in fact arises out of the semanticization of dialogic contexts such as

are illustrated by (3):

(3) You were pleased before to make some reflexions on this custom,

and laugh at the irresolution of our free-thinkers: but I can aver formatter of fact, that they have often recommended it by their example

as well as arguments . . . In whatever light you may consider it, this

is in fact a solid benefit. But the best e¤ect of our principles is thatlight and truth so visibly spread abroad in the world. (1732 Berkeley,

Alciphron ii. sect. 24, p. 105 [Schwenter and Traugott 2000: 16])

Note here the prior context of alternative points of view (you were

pleased . . . but I can aver. . . , in whatever light you may consider it), as

well as the following one (But the best e¤ect. . .).

Here I argue in greater detail for the importance of paying attentionto evidence in texts for interactional goals involving contesting of prior

claims or introduction of alternative points of view, i.e. of dialogic con-

texts, in coming to grips with micro-changes with the example of thedevelopment of pseudo-clefts. In earlier work (Traugott, 2008) I tested

two hypotheses: i) that they might have arisen in primarily dialogual inter-

action, given that analyses of WH-clefts based on constructed data suggestthey are responses to questions (e.g., Higgins 1979 and many studies

building on his work), ii) that they might have arisen at turns, given that

other studies based on spontaneous conversation suggest they are used todelay an assertion at a turn (e.g., Hopper 2001). I found that the textual

evidence gave little support for turn-taking as a motivation for the devel-

opment of pseudo-clefts. Rather, dialogic contexts appear to have played


an important role, most especially in the case of ALL-clefts. This is con-

sistent with Kim’s (1995) finding that WH-clefts are used in conversa-

tion mainly to signal a counter-active, i.e. dialogic, stance in spontaneousconversation.

4. Contexts for the development of pseudo-clefts

Pseudo-clefts are constructions like:

(4) a. What Bruce ate was the crab. (WH-cleft)

b. What Bruce did was (to) peel the potatoes. (WH-cleft)

c. All/*Everything Bruce ate was the crab. (ALL-cleft)

d. All/*Everything that you have to do is (to) close the window.

(ALL-cleft)

They involve a string of the type WHAT/ALL – NP – V – BE – X (see

Prince 1978, Higgins 1979, Collins 1991, Lambrecht 2001, Delin andOberlander 2006, among many others) and:

a) Two clauses, one of which is a relative,6 one of which involves acopula.

b) Givenness: some part of the construction (typically the relative) must

be given or at least recoverable.c) Uniqueness and contrastiveness: the focus constituent is construed

as an exhaustive, exclusive listing (Bruce ate only the crab, not the

shrimp, squid, etc.).d) Specificational/identifying focus: the complement of the copula is

specific and referential (not ascriptive or non-referential) (see Patten

2007 for detailed discussion of specificationality).

Ball (1994) analyzed the history of IT-clefts, and showed that antecedentsof what Prince (1978) called ‘‘stressed focus’’ IT-clefts (but without it)

are attested in Old English; these require X to be given or at least in-

ferrable and salient in the discourse. What Prince called ‘‘informative-

6. However, den Dikken (2006) argues that they are interrogative. Carlson(1983) argues that in terms of use in dialogue, they ‘‘serve the purpose of arti-culating a sentence as an answer to a particular question’’ (p. 222) but arestructurally free relatives (thanks to Markku Filppula for this reference).


presupposition’’ IT-clefts arose around 1400; in this type X may be new.7

ALL-pseudo-clefts arose around 1600, and WH-pseudo-cleft around 1660.

All three clefts are examples of ‘‘grammaticalization without lexical bleach-ing’’ (Lehmann, 2008), and of constructionalization (Traugott, 2008).

4.1. Early examples of ALL-pseudo-clefts

Early examples in the data base8 with the string ALL – NP – V – BE – X

are ascriptive (5a; ‘everything I said was tricky/designed to trick’) or pur-

posive (5b). Here all means ‘everything’:

(5) a. I haue made him happie by training you forth: In a word, all Isaid was but a traine to draw you from your vow: Nay, there’s

no going backe.

‘I have made him happy by drawing you forth: in a word,everything I said was only a trick to draw you from your vow.

No, there is no going back.’ (1606 Chapman, Monsieur D’Oliue

[LION: EEBO]

b. I loue thee dearer then I doe my life,And all I did, was to aduance thy state,

To sunne bright beames of shining happinesse.

(1601 Yarrington, Two Lamentable Tragedies [Ibid.])

In (5a) the prior context is not obviously dialogic, but the following

context is contesting (Nay, there’s no going back). In (5b) one might infer

that the speaker is making such a strong claim because he fears he hasbeen misunderstood. Indeed, everything one person says or does may not

be enough for some other person or may be interpreted as mistaken or

at best inadequate (due to the quantificational meaning of all ), as ispoignantly expressed by Henry V in (6):

7. Interestingly, in Present Day English ALL-pseudo-clefts and WH-clefts insome contexts can be of either type. The pseudo-clefts suggest that at first Xwas given, but that as the constructions became conventionalized this restric-tion was relaxed.

8. I searched the Middle English Dictionary, LION: EEBO, LION: EarlyEnglish Drama (Jacobean and Caroline (1603–1660), and Restoration(1660–1700) periods), and trials as represented by the Old Bailey ProceedingsOnline from 1678 to 1743, and the Old Bailey Speech Set from 1732–1743.Each file was searched for all/what (that) I/you/he/she/it/we/they and said/did was (the latter to determine what subjects were selected in the earlyperiod).


(6) More will I do;

Though all that I can do is nothing worth,Since that my penitence comes after all,Imploring pardon. (1599 Shakespeare, Henry V IV.i.319 [UVa])

Ca.1600, strings of type ALL – NP – V – BE – X appear with the pseudo-

cleft meaning: all can be interpreted as ‘only’, not ‘everything’, and the

focus may be understood as exhaustive and specificational.9 Since thefocus is a clause in all early ALL-cleft examples, with a verb of speaking,

usually say (7a), or do plus infinitive marker (7b), the criterion used for

contemporary English that the focused NP should be definite does notapply. There are, however, examples like (7a) in which the focus of an

ALL-cleft with say is this, followed by a clause.

(7) a. [A ‘‘confutation’’ between a Jesuit (S.R.) and Bell]Our slanderous and rayling Iesuite, reporteth my wordes in this

manner; for saith Bell ) (sic), it is a thinge proper to God, to

make something of nothing in al cases, and at al times. So then,all that I said was this; (viz) That though man can at sometime insome cases, make one thing of another; yet to make of nothingsomething, is proper to GOD alone, neither is man able to per-forme the same. (1608 Bell, The Jesuits Antepast [LION: EEBO])

b. I was desir’d to put a stop to the Sedition of the People. I

answered, That all that I could do, was to give no Encouragementto it, but God only could appease it. (1693 Du Pin, History of

Ecclesiastical Writers [Ibid.])

Both examples are highly dialogic. In (7a) Bell draws attention to what he

actually said (though a man can at sometime. . .), as opposed to what others

construed him as saying (saith Bell: it is a thinge proper to God. . .). In (7b)Naylor foresees the impossibility of his addressee having any political suc-

cess, and proposes that he simply do good. Note that whereas the pur-

posive construction (5b) (all I did was for the purpose of Xing in the future)is future-oriented, the ALL-cleft with do is present-oriented (or, more spe-

cifically, is oriented to the event time). This is presumably what allowed

for the loss of to after do as in (8a) and the verbal gerund in (8b):

9. An anonymous reviewer asked whether there might have been influence ofFrench or Latin texts. Some of the earlier examples of ALL-clefts are in trans-lations from French, but whether or not there was direct influence remains tobe studied. Examples (7b) and (8b) are translations from French, but rela-tively late in the development of ALL-clefts.


(8) a. When any bow’d to me with Congees (¼ ceremonious bow) trim,

All I could do, was stand and laugh at him. (1681 Baxter, Poetical

fragments [LION: EEBO])

b. These words so resolute and kind, pierced my very heart, and

turned me into a Statue, leaving me without sense or motion. AllI could do, was embracing my dear Sultaness for a final Adieu.

(1686 Bremond, The Happy Slave, Part III [Ibid.])

(8) unequivocally shows that a new construction had come into being. Not

only does do not require to, but the context is no longer dialogic. The con-

struction in itself signals dialogicity. It puts the focus on a scale andsignals that it is the only alternative; it also signals that the speaker/writer

regards the focus as less than adequate (all is ‘‘downward inferential’’

in Horn’s (1996: 18) analysis), a meaning derived from interaction of thequantifier all with exclusivity and negation (see also albeit, all the same,

after all ). We may say that dialogicity has been semanticized into the con-

struction. This means it is understood as dialogic in non-dialogic contexts,

though such contexts tend to continue to be used.

4.2. Early examples of WH-clefts

As in the case of the ALL-constructions, prior to about 1660 the only

examples in data base with the structure WHAT – NP – V – BE – X are

ascriptive (9a), or purposive (9b):

(9) a. Then Sostratus taking the occasion to speake, said: ‘‘what I didwas of no great valour, and therfore not worthy the rehearsal’’

(1597 Tatius, Clitiphon [LION: EEBO])

b. Mistake mee not faire Knight, . . . what I did, was to deceiue the

Pagans, who are waking Dragons that neuer sleepe about mee

(1612 Markham, Meruine [Ibid.])

These examples have dialogic contexts, but not the specificational struc-ture of WH-pseudo-clefts, i.e. X is not a definite description. It was only

a short step to the pseudo-cleft construction, in which the dialogic contexts

were retained. As in the case of ALL-clefts, WH-clefts with do areoriented to event-time, not future (10b).

(10) a. I write not out of a designe to advance the repute of our West-Indy Commodities in the making Chocolata. What I say is theAssertion of others, who did not intend by their Writings to

serve the English Interest in Iamaica. (1662 Stubbe, IndianNectar [LION: EEBO])


b. If it be objected that I preached to separate Congregations; my

Answer is, That I preach’d only to some of many Thousands

that cannot come into the Temples, many of which never hearda Sermon of many years. And what I did, was only to preachto such as could not come to our Churches. (1697 Baxter,

Mr. Richard Baxter’s Last Legacy [LION: EEBO])

Like ALL-clefts, WH-clefts came within about fifty years to be used in

non-dialogic contexts. Here again we can say that the dialogic context

has been semanticized in the new construction. However, in the case ofWH-clefts there is no downward entailment:10

(11) I heard a Noise, and came down Stairs, but all the Things were

gone: I wash Linnen, and what I lost was the Property of Mr. Gold.(May 1736, Trial of Christopher Freeman and Samuel Ellard

[BAILEY: s17360505-463173605050])

5. Conclusion and further work

I have added to arguments that by bringing an interactional approach to

the study of change, and attempting to go beyond very general ideas about

motivations, we can reach a better understanding of how specific micro-changes come about. In particular I have suggested that dialogic contexts

deserve special attention.

Among future research questions is whether all expressions that inher-ently code dialogic meaning, such as those cited in section 3, arise in dia-

logic contexts. Other questions that deserve attention include how best to

refine the continuum from monologic to dialogic contexts and meanings

(Schwenter 2000), and further, how best to define the continuum withindialogicity (e.g., from quotation and scalarity to refutation). Since seman-

ticizing dialogicity involves semanticizing stance, a further question is how

degrees of subjectification intersect with these continua. And since contest-ing strategies are partly governed by conventions of interaction in specific

discourse contexts, we need also to understand how these factors relate to

register and genre and how there may be di¤erences over time due to shiftsin cultural norms (Biber 2004).

10. Carlson (1983: 223) points out that What David wants is his wallet ‘‘impliesthat his wallet is all David wants. This . . . is due to the fact . . . that the char-acter of free relatives is left open between existential and universal force.’’Here we must understand Carlson to be thinking of the exclusivity ratherthan downward entailment of all.


Sources

BAILEY The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London 1674 to 1834. Edited byTim Hitchcock and Robert Shoemaker. Used by permission of TimHitchcock and Magnus Huber. www.oldbaileyonline.org (accessedMarch–September 2007).

LION Chadwyck Healey website, http://lion.chadwyck.com.

UVa University of Virginia, Electronic Text Center, Modern English Collec-tion, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/modeng/modeng0.browse.html.

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Commentary on Traugott, Dialogic Contexts asMotivations for Syntactic Change11

Akiko Nagano

Traugott’s paper shows how the shift of viewpoint and the existence of

di¤erent viewpoints expressed by a dialogic context can be semantically

incorporated into a specific linguistic expression, and how the expressionis ‘‘constructionized’’ as a dialogic expression. The contribution of this

paper for the study of linguistic change lies not only in proving the signi-

ficance of interactional factors as vital motivations for change, but also inproviding a general format for locating a contextual source of a specific

construction. Thus, in addition to the pseudo-cleft construction examined

in her paper, several other constructions are likely to benefit from herinteractional approach; a detailed examination of texts in terms of how

a particular interactional goal is expressed linguistically will help to

delineate the process of a diachronic development and to account forwhy such a development has occurred. I would like to point out three

constructions that deserve study along this line.

The first case comes from the domain of word-formation. It is well knownthat conversion (or zero-derivation) has been productive since Old English

(Biese 1941: 18–49, Marchand 1969: 359–378, Pennanen 1971) and in

Present-day English it enjoys particularly high productivity (Bauer 1983:226–227, Plag 1999: 93–118). Unlike V-deriving su‰xes (e.g., -ate, -ify,

-ize), whose base is restricted to N or A of certain phonological patterns

(Plag 1999: 119–218), V-forming conversion accepts categorially, morpho-phonologically, and semantically various types of base, and the following

data show that even ‘‘utterances’’ can be the input to V-forming conversion:

(1) a. ‘‘I was explaining the Golden Bull to his Royal Highness.’’

‘‘I’ll Golden Bull you, you rascal!’’ roared the Majesty of Prussia.

(Jespersen 1942: 106)

11. In writing this commentary, I have greatly benefited from discussion of thematerial with Professor Masaharu Shimada. Of course, responsibility for anyinadequacies is my own.

b. ‘‘Honey’’

‘‘Don’t honey me,’’ she said.

(Raymond Carver, ‘‘Vitamins’’)

c. Nell: ‘‘Ling!’’Ling: ‘‘Don’t Ling me. I’m tired of being Linged around here.’’

(TV show, Ally McBeal)

Jespersen (1942: 105–107) calls this usage of conversion ‘‘retort,’’ because

in these instances ‘‘in anger one simply seizes one word or phrase in whatwas said by the other party, and repeats it as a verb in a scornful tone of

voice’’ (Jespersen 1942: 105).

The retort usage of conversion is possible only in a dialogue, and themeaning of the converted verb is not simply ‘to say base utterance’ but

includes the strong connotation of contesting such as ‘How can you use

such a word?’ or ‘How dare you use such a word to me?’ This meansthat retort is not a mere categorial change for word formation but a form

of refutation or ‘‘interactional contesting’’ (Traugott, this volume). There-

fore, it can be seen as a dialogic construction in a broad sense. Since con-verted verbs in general do not have any dialogic function, the conjecture is

possible that this construction should have developed in a dialogic con-

text; a converted verb used in a dialogic context has semantically incor-porated the dialogicity. To put it di¤erently, the usage of conversion has

changed (or extended) in such a way to deal with a shift of viewpoint.

If this conjecture is on the right track, Traugott’s paper suggests thatthere could be a stage in the history of English where the dialogicity of

converted verbs such as those in (1) had a separate expression in a neigh-

boring context and the verbs themselves expressed only the non-dialogic,transparent meaning ‘to say base utterance,’ as in Though you honey me,

I don’t like it, or You have just Golden Bulled me, but it is inappropriate.

In fact, some converted verbs based on an utterance do seem to be free

from any tone of anger or contestation and simply denote the act ofmaking that utterance, as follows:

(2) a. ‘‘Poor Robin.’’

‘‘What are you two girls poor Robining about?’’(Jespersen 1942: 107)

b. We don’t Mr. each other here.

(ibid.)

The second candidate for a dialogic construction also involves mor-phology: the superlative form of an adjective. Absolute superlatives are

Commentary on Traugott 29

often concerned with possible maximum or minimum degree (Huddleston

and Pullum 2002: 1167) and can be used as a construction semantically in-

corporating the focus particle even, as the following instances show:

(3) a. The ground was so soft that the lightest step made a deep

imprint.(Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 1167)

b. The slightest touch will break a soap bubble.

c. The best musician is liable to make a mistake when he is tired.

Traugott’s paper provides a new perspective on this type of grammaticali-zation and opens up a new research possibility for its motivation; this

usage of superlative could be preceded by the use of a superlative form

in a dialogic context that includes the focus particle even (e.g., Even the

slightest touch will break a soap bubble) or a concessive adverbial clause.

Lastly, Traugott’s research format could be applied to the development

of the (so-called) speech-act conditional sentences (Rutherford 1970: 109–110, Sweetser 1990: 113–144). The adverbial clauses of the following sen-

tences modify an unexpressed speech-act verb underlying the main clause

(see the underlined part of the parenthesized paraphrase):

(4) a. If you’re interested, Dick’s coming to the party too.(Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 740)

[If you’re interested, it is worth telling you that Dick’s coming tothe party too.]

b. Where did your parents go, if you know?(Quirk et al. 1985: 1097)

[If you know, tell me where your parents go.]

c. While we’re on the subject, why didn’t you send your children to

a public school?(Quirk et al. 1985: 1073)

[While we’re on the subject, tell me why you didn’t send your

children to a public school.]

The italicized adverbial clauses express the condition under which the

speaker makes the utterance, so they relate not to the proposition of the

main clause itself but to the speech act performed in uttering the clause.As a closely-related usage, the italicized if-clause in the following sentence

relates to an unexpressed epistemic modality:

30 Akiko Nagano

(5) If the key is not in my pocket, I have left it in the door.

(Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 740)

[If the key is not in my pocket, it must be the case that I have left it in

the door.]

This usage of an adverbial clause in the ‘‘speech-act domain’’ and the

‘‘epistemic domain’’ (Sweetser 1990: 113–121) is exhibited also by an

adverbial clause of reasoning (ibid.: 76–86), as shown below.

(6) a. What are you doing tonight, because there’s a good movie on.

(Sweetser 1990: 77)

[I ask you what you are doing tonight, because there’s a good

movie on.]

b. He’s not coming to class, because he just called from San Diego.(Rutherford 1970: 97)

[It must be the case that he’s not coming to class, because he just

called from San Diego.]

c. Since you don’t seem to know, all further negotiations have beensuspended.

(Quirk et al. 1985: 1073)

[Since you don’t seem to know, it is worth telling you that allfurther negotiations have been suspended.]

d. Since John isn’t here, he has (evidently) gone home.

(Sweetser 1990: 78)

[Since John isn’t here, it must be the case that he has gone home.]

To the extent that expressions of speech-act and epistemic modality con-

cern the dialogicity, it must be worthwhile entertaining the possibility

that dialogic contexts played a role for the development of the usage ofadverbial clauses discussed above.12

In fact, the speech-act and epistemic-modality expressions covert in

English adverbial clauses (e.g., the underlined parts of the parenthesized

paraphrases in (4), (5), and (6)) have to be realized overtly in Japanese(Sakahara 1985: 154, Nakau 1994: 103–106, Shizawa 2008). This cross-

linguistic di¤erence cannot be ignored in delineating the diachronic pro-

cess of grammaticalization of speech-act and epistemic modality, and

12. According to Traugott and Konig (1991) and Hopper and Traugott (1993:75–77), the causal meaning of since is developed from its temporal meaning.


o¤ers an interesting question of how such a ‘‘parametric’’ variation can be

accounted for by the interactional approach.

References

Bauer, Laurie1983 English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Biese, Y. M.1941 Origin and Development of Conversions in English. Annales Aca-

demiae Scientiarum Fennicae, B XLV, Helsinki.Hopper, J. Paul and Elizabeth Closs Traugott1993 Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huddleston, Rodney and Geo¤rey K. Pullum2002 The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press.Jespersen, Otto1942 A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles, Part 6:

Morphology. Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard.Marchand, Hans1969 The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation:

A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach. 2nd ed. Munich: C. H. Beck.Nakau, Minoru1994 Ninchi Imiron no Genri (Principles of Cognitive Semantics).

Tokyo: Taishukan.Pennanen, Esko V.1971 Conversion and Zero-Derivation in English. Tampere: Tampereen

Yliopisto.Plag, Ingo1999 Morphological Productivity: Structural Constraints on English

Derivation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geo¤rey Leech, and Jan Svartvik1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London:

Longman.Rutherford, William E.1970 Some Observations Concerning Subordinate Clauses in English.

Language 46: 97–115.Sakahara, Shigeru1985 Nichijo Gengo no Suiron (Inferences in Everyday Speech).

Tokyo: Tokyo University Press.Shizawa, Takashi2008 Conditionals Giving Reasons for Utterances: A Contrastive Study

of Japanese and English from the Viewpoint of Addressee-Orientedness. A paper read at the 26th Conference of theEnglish Linguistic Society of Japan.

32 Akiko Nagano

Sweetser, Eve E.1990 From Etymology to Pragmatics: Metaphorical and Cultural Aspects

of Semantic Structure. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Traugott, Elizabeth C. and Ekkehard Konig1991 The Semantics-Pragmatics of Grammaticalization Revisited. In

Approaches to Grammaticalization, edited by Elizabeth C. Trau-gott and Bernd Heine, 189–218. Amsterdam: John BenjaminsPublishing Company.


Response to Commentary by Nagano


Akiko Nagano presents three constructions that might fruitfully be inves-tigated to determine whether they arose in dialogic contexts: conversion in

retorts, use of [Definite Article Adjective-superlative N] constructions, and

speech act conditionals. All three involve speaker evaluation of some ele-ment in the utterance or its context: the first evaluates the validity of what

someone else has said, the second situates the complement on the extreme

end of a scale, and the third evaluates the upcoming utterance with respectto its relevance to the addressee or the speech situation. Here I will con-

sider only the first type, conversions.

The conversions Nagano cites exemplify ‘‘metalinguistic negation’’ inthe sense of Ducrot (1972) and Horn (1985), as they are devices ‘‘for

objecting to a previous utterance on any grounds whatever – including

its conventional or conversational implicata, its morphology, its style orregister, or its phonetic realization’’ (Horn 1985: 121). Most conversions

appear to be on-the-fly nonce uses that are not conventionalized as part

of a community’s linguistic system (i.e. they are innovations, not changes).However, it is clear that in some cases conversions do become con-

ventionalized, e.g. V-forming conversions of T/V pronoun distinctions

such as French tutoyer ‘to use/say ‘T’’, French vouvoyer ‘to use/say ‘V’’,English to thou, as in:

(1) None of hyghnesse schal thou another in spekynge, but eche schal

speke reuenrently to other ‘none of high position shall ‘thou’ another

in speaking, but each shall speak reverently to the other’ (c1450Aungier, Syon Monastery 287 [MED thouen, OED thou, v.])

(1) is dialogic, but not dialogual, as it does not involve turn-taking. Indeedmost citations in the MED and OED appear not to be dialogual retorts,

but regulatory, like (1), or invectives. Other conversions that quote utter-

ances include delocutive verbs such as Latin negare ‘to say nec ‘no’ ’,English hail ‘to say ‘Hail!’ ’, French (re)mercier ‘to say merci ‘thanks’ ’

(Benveniste 1971 [1958]). Some may well have arisen in dialogic and dia-

logual contexts of the type Nagano suggests, e.g. negare. However, as she

notes, not all V-forming conversions contest. By hypothesis, hail, (re)mer-

cier did not. The histories of individual micro-constructions within the

same set may be very di¤erent, e.g. a shred of is likely to occur in negativepolarity contexts, a bit (of) considerably less likely. While a shred of

favors positive complements (honor, truth), there is no such semantic

prosody (Stubbs 2001) for a bit (of). Therefore, to the extent that macro-

(parametric) changes may be said to be involved, the micro-changes andmicro-contexts that lead up to them may be very varied, as may also the

structure of any individual construction selected in a particular language.

In investigating the construction-types Nagano discusses, it will be impor-tant to consider the full range of interactional contexts in which they

arose, and to distinguish dialogic from dialogual contexts.

References

Benveniste, Emile1971 [1958] Delocutive Verbs. In Problems in General Linguistics, 239–246.

Trans. by Mary Elizabeth Meek. Coral Gables, FL: Universityof Miami Press. (Les verbes delocutifs, Problemes de Linguisti-que Generale, 277–285. Paris: Gallimard 1966; orig. publ. inA. G. Hatcher and K. L. Selig, eds., Studia Philologica etLitteraria in Honorem L. Spitzer, 57–63. Bern, 1958.)

Ducrot, Oswald1972 Dire et ne pas dire. Paris: Hermann.

Horn, Laurence R.1985 Metalinguistic Negation and Pragmatic Ambiguity. Language

61: 121–174.Stubbs, Michael2001 Words and Phrases: Corpus Studies of Lexical Semantics.

Oxford/Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Response to Commentary by Nagano 35

Whatever Happened to English Sluicing*

Joanna Nykiel

1. Introduction

We know from experience that an anaphoric construction usually allows

more than one kind of licensing context. Because we refer to entities inthe surrounding discourse, we expect to be able to do so whether the

selected entity is discourse- and hearer-old (linguistic antecedents) or

discourse-initial and hearer-old (situational antecedents). Hankamer andSag (1976), however, propose a distinction between surface and deep ana-

phors. They define surface anaphors as derived via deletion under identity

with the antecedent surface structure; surface anaphors are thus opposedto deep ones, which arise directly in the base. While this view necessitates

that surface anaphors accept only linguistic antecedents, it places no such

restrictions on deep ones. The distinction has been influential ever since it

was proposed, but it is now well established that surface anaphors arefreer in their choice of antecedent than Hankamer and Sag originally

assumed (cf. Webber 1978, Hardt 1993, 2005, Ginzburg and Sag 2000,

Kehler 2002, Culicover and Jackendo¤ 2005, Sag 2006, Stainton 2006).In this paper I o¤er insight about the history of sluicing. Since the time-

honored definition of sluicing classifies it as a surface anaphor with a full

underlying structure that goes unpronounced (Ross 1967, Hankamer andSag 1976, Sag and Hankamer 1984), it makes sense to verify whether this

elliptical construction has ever required structurally identical antecedents.

A fact of Present-day English (PDE) is that it does not place this con-straint on sluicing. This fact is evaluated against the data coming from

four periods: Old English (OE), Middle English (ME), Early Modern

English (ENE) and Late Modern English (LNE). When so cast into anempirical mode, sluicing proves to accept at least two di¤erent rela-

* I wish to thank Elizabeth Traugott, Ivan A. Sag, and two anonymous re-viewers for comments on earlier drafts of this paper. The research was madepossible by a grant from the Kosciuszko Foundation and by Stanford Univer-sity, which was the host institution.

tionships with its antecedents at any given point in time, with completely

or partially unidentical syntactic structure having a more pronounced

presence in the majority of the corpora than any other relationship. Theintuitive idea is, therefore, that sluicing is a case of apparent stability.

How much stability there really is in languages remains an open ques-

tion. Some linguists have argued for immediate change (cf. Lightfoot

1979); others support an initial reanalysis whose actualization is gradualand thus gives an impression of stability (cf. Timberlake 1977, Langacker

1977). Whether the use of sluicing in fact is a stable feature or the first

small steps on the way of an on-going, and indeed very gradual, changeis yet to be determined. At this point, I show records that reveal hardly

any drift. Further, I demonstrate that because the relaxation of structural

identity found in modern sluicing has persisted ever since OE, sluicingcannot be so far removed from deep anaphors or subject to a purely deri-

vational strategy. Instead, such data seem to reduce sluices, along with

other anaphors, to directly generated fragments. To take these ideas astep further, I propose that for any sluice, it is only required that the link

with its antecedent be based on coherence and that to tease apart surface

and deep anaphors was misleading because di¤erences between them haveindependent motivation.

2. Basics

The story begins with Ross (1967), who o¤ers a strategy for the resolution

of sluicing – a stranded wh-phrase illustrated in (1)–(3).

(1) I was afraid of something that day, but I didn’t know of what.

(2) A: You want a massage?B: By who?

(3) Pssst. Wanna copy contacts over to yahoo!? Here’s how.(www.yahoo.com)

Following the convention established in the (linguistic) literature, I willhenceforth refer to a stranded wh-phrase as a sluice and the preceding

material that supports its interpretation as an antecedent.

Ross shows that clear syntactic e¤ects cluster around sluicing, pointingto a pre-deletion structure beyond what is visible. For one thing, a case-

marking language like German or Old English will require that the case

of a wh-phrase be in correspondence with its counterpart in the ante-cedent, as illustrated in (4) and (5).

38 Joanna Nykiel

(4) Er will jemandem schmeicheln, aber sie wissen nicht,

he wants someone.DAT flatter but they know not

*wer / *wen / wem

who.NOM who.ACC who.DAT

‘He wants to flatter someone, but they don’t know who.’

(5) Er will jemandem loben, aber sie wissen nicht,

he wants someone.ACC praise but they know not

*wer / wen / *wem

who.NOM who.ACC who.DAT

‘He wants to praise someone, but they don’t know who.’

(Lasnik 2007: 144)

OE records an analogous e¤ect, as seen in (6). Here the case of the wh-phrase (hwilcum deaþe) corresponds to that of an implied adjunct in the

antecedent.1

(6) Ða befran Iohannes færlice, and cwæð: Hu ys he la dead oððe

then asked John quickly and said: How, is he dead and

hwilcum deaþe?

what death.INSTR?

‘Then John asked quickly: What! Is he dead and (by) what kind ofdeath?’2

(c1000 Ælfric: Letter to Sigeweard [On the Old and New Testament])

To this, Merchant (2004, 2006, 2007) adds another observation. Pre-

positions can apparently be omitted under sluicing only if prepositionstranding produced by wh-movement is a feature of the language, e.g.,

English but not German.

(7) Peter was talking with someone, but I don’t know (with) who.Who was he talking with?

(8) Anna hat mit jemanden gesprochen, aber ich weiss nicht

Anna has with someone spoken but I know not

*(mit) wem.

with whom.

*Wem hat sie mit gesprochen?

(Merchant 2006: 666–667)

1. This example is the only illustration of case dependencies in the OE corpus.2. The interpretation of Hu as a pragmatic marker was suggested to me as the

more plausible by Matti Kilpio. If taken to be a question word, Hu would bethe explicit referent of hwilcum deaþe.

Whatever Happened to English Sluicing 39

This correlation, if correct, provides strong support for pre-deletion

structures.

Early generative grammar has a straightforward means of handlingthese e¤ects: phonological deletion under identity with the antecedent.3 A

sluice thus represents a full syntactic structure whose interpretation is

recoverable from the antecedent. The idea carries over into later work,

notably that by Hankamer and Sag (1976) and Sag and Hankamer (1984).Both additionally note a fine line between what surface anaphors, like sluic-

ing, can do as opposed to deep anaphors, like do it or Null Complement

Anaphora (NCA). In short, the approach makes a strong commitment tothe fact that only linguistic antecedents may license surface anaphors while

deep anaphors accept linguistic and non-linguistic ones alike.

This initial solution has long since been questioned – most recently byGinzburg and Sag (2000), Culicover and Jackendo¤ (2005) and Stainton

(2006) – not least because modern sluicing seems to be growing less and

less like a surface anaphor, if it has ever been one. Consider the naturallyoccurring examples in (9)–(13).

(9) A: I’d like to take Katie on weekends.

B: Why?

(10) My first impulse was to run away, up or down stairs, I wasn’t quitesure which.

(11) [Cab driver to passenger on their way to the airport:]

‘Which airline?’

(12) [Someone stands before the scene of some awful event and

exclaims:] ‘Why, oh why? I dunno.’

(Ivan Sag, personal communication)

(13) A: Tell me!

B: What?

Because in each case the relationship between the sluice and the ante-

cedent is partially or entirely non-syntactic, additional factors have beenposited beyond structural identity (structural identity will henceforth be

referred to as merger, a term due to Chung et al. 1995). Specifically, the

recent literature (cf. Ginzburg and Sag 2000, Merchant 2001, Kehler2002, Culicover and Jackendo¤ 2005) lists a semantic relationship that

allows syntactic mismatches of two kinds:

3. This view has been rivaled by an alternative in which pre-deletion structuresare made available at the level of LF; see Williams (1977), Kitagawa (1991),Fiengo and May (1994).

40 Joanna Nykiel

– sprouting, in which a sluice builds on the argument structure of the

predicate embedded in the antecedent, pointing to an implied argu-

ment (13). Beyond implied arguments, implied adjuncts may be pointedto as well (2, 9).

– how-mismatch, where an antecedent does not provide the to required

by the structure howþ to-infinitive understood at ellipsis site (3).

Further, sluicing is licensed when a pragmatic relationship is operativebased on inference (10). Here the pragmatic status of a sluice is attributed

to the fact that no element of the structure of the antecedent, whether

overt or implied, motivates its use.Along pragmatic lines again, a sluice may be used discourse-initially

and so may be situationally-controlled (11, 12).

Now the questions are: Are the above passages due to changes inEnglish sluicing, or have they always been around? Is a sluice a directly

generated fragment (cf. Ginzburg and Sag 2000, Culicover and Jackendo¤

2005, Stainton 2006) or a product of derivation (cf. Merchant 2004, 2006,2007)? I turn to these questions in the next section.

3. What the history has to say

One negative aspect of a historical analysis is that, although its frequency

data may reflect processing costs associated with particular structures,it often su¤ers from incompleteness or reduced reliability. Historical

records – by definition written – have yet another disadvantage when it

comes to ellipsis. It can reasonably be expected that spoken language willbear more characteristics of elliptical expression or, at a minimum, that

it will host a greater variety of antecedents. Therefore, even the most

detailed results are best treated as (strong) tendencies though, of course,the more diverse the records, the closer we come to the ideal.

I now o¤er statistical data from OE, ME, ENE and LNE, with text

types addressed as required. For clarity of presentation, I reiterate thatsluicing can accommodate the following relationships with apparently

varying degrees of felicity:

– merger, as in (1)– syntactic mismatch (sprouting, as in (2), (9) and (13) above, and how-

mismatch, as in (3))

– pragmatic control/situational context, as in (11) and (12)– inference, as in (10)


For each of the relationships, if present in the data, I give its number ofoccurrences relative to the total number of sluices in each corpus ex-

amined. These figures then serve as a basis for identifying diachronic

developments in sluicing, if any. An initial answer to this question maybe fashioned from the material in Tables 1–3.

In Table 1, the OE data signal a heavy reliance on syntax in terms of

merger (14). Sprouting (15–17), with its availability of simultaneous syn-tactic and semantic e¤ects, could be equated with evidence against pre-

deletion structures. However, 18% throughout the period is not much

to build on yet. (16) and (6), repeated as (17) below, illustrate syntactice¤ects, that is, case and preposition choice, next to implied referents that

sprouting always picks up. Such syntactic e¤ects are discernible in each

corpus I have analyzed, and I return to them later in this section.

(14) Canst þu ænig þing? ænne cræft ic cann. Hwylcne?

Can you anything? one thing.ACC I can. What?

‘Can you do anything? I can do one thing. What?’

(Ælfric, Colloquy: Garmonsway 1939, 18–49)

(15) Gea, butan nettum huntian ic mæg. Hu?

Yeah, without net hunt I can. How?

‘Yeah, I can hunt without a net. How?’

(Ælfric, Colloquy: Garmonsway 1939, 18–49)

(16) Stranguilio cwæð: Hwa fordemde þe?

Stranguilio said: Who condemned you?

Apollonius cwæð: Antiochus se cyngc.

Apollonius said: Antiochus the king.

Stranguilio cwæð: For hwilcum intingum?

Stranguilio said: For what reasons?

(Vision of Leofric: Napier 1907–10, 182–6)

Table 1. Timeframe: Distribution of sluicing in the Dictionary of Old English(DOE) based on relationship between sluice and antecedent

Period Merger Sprouting Total

Early OE 27 (81.82%) 6 (18.18%) 33 (100%)

Late OE 107 (81.06%) 25 (18.94%) 132 (100%)

Total 134 (81.21%) 31 (18.79%) 165 (100%)

42 Joanna Nykiel

(17) Ða befran Iohannes færlice, and cwæð: Hu ys he la dead

then asked John quickly and said: How, is he dead

oððe hwilcum deaþe?

and what death.INSTR?

‘Then John asked quickly: What! Is he dead and (by) what kind ofdeath?’

(Ælfric: Letter to Sigeweard [‘On the Old and New Testament’])

Cumulatively, these facts are perhaps not totally unexpected and seem to

point in the direction of a change along the way insofar as we are missingthree further licensers.4 At the same time, the strength of this conclusion is

limited by a bias toward an exclusively written style, though, as Allen

(1980) argues, this style is not quite out of touch with patterns found inspeech. It is possible to minimize the potential incompleteness of these

data if they are addressed together with the results for ME because ME

contributes rich resources of formal and informal varieties, including per-sonal correspondence. For its temporal adjacency to OE, early ME (1150–

1350) in particular provides a fine insight about sluicing.

Table 2 gives the figures for sluicing in early and late ME, and in thetransition between the two periods (third row). Sprouting in early ME

(and later on) shows a dramatic rise in frequency over merger (69% vs.

21%), which suggests that in OE, syntactic relationships too may haveplayed a less important role than indicated by the data in Table 1. Fur-

ther, the sprouting column includes nine mismatches. These are simply

4. For a full review of OE sluicing, see Nykiel (2007).

Table 2. Timeframe: Distribution of sluicing in the Middle English Compendium(MEC) based on relationship between sluice and antecedent

Period Merger Sproutingincluding9 (Late ME)mismatches

Merger/sprouting

Total

Early ME 34 (21.8%) 108 (69.23%) 14 (9.00%) 156 (100%)

Early/late ME 8 (17.02%) 35 (74.5%) 4 (8.51%) 47 (100%)

Late ME 50 (11.82%) 326 (77.06%) 46 (10.9%) 423 (100%)

Total 92 (14.7%) 469 (74.9%) 64 (10.22%) 626 (100%)


how-mismatches that always co-occur with sprouting in late ME; hence, I

collapsed both categories. Since these mismatches do not have any e¤ect

on the statistics at this point, I discuss them later in this section wherethey may be treated as an independent category.

That ME sluicing tolerates non-syntactic relationships other than

sprouting is suggested by one instance of inference given in (18).

(18) And he shal han Custaunce in mariage

And he shall have Custanuce in marriage

And certeyn gold. I noot what quantitee

And certain gold. I know not what quantity.

‘And he shall have Custaunce in marriage, and certain gold. I donot know what quantity’

(14c. Hengwrt Manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales)

This single occurrence is statistically insignificant although it allows us to

hypothesize that the conditions on sluicing are, and always have been, tiedto the participation of the various relationships in it rather than to their

presence or absence. As we saw in section 1, inference, unlike sprouting,

only indirectly relies on linguistically overt antecedents for resolution.Therefore, it is a relationship relatively di‰cult to interpret, thus some-

what less frequent than sprouting.

Note that there is another new, unique to ME, relationship betweenantecedent and ellipsis here, which I dubbed merger/sprouting. The rela-

tionship is partly semantic and partly syntactic in that an ellipsis has a cor-

relate in its antecedent, of which it is a semantic paraphrase. A paraphraseis usually richer in information content than the correlate, as illustrated

by (19).

(19) Of whens y am and what men clepe me

of whence I am and what men call me

And where y was borne and in what cuntre.

and where I was born and in what country

‘Where I am from and what I am called, and where I was born andin what country’

(15c. The Romance of Guy of Warwick)

Merger/sprouting does not occur outside of the ME corpus and correlateswith verse more often than it does with prose (4% di¤erence, see Table 3).

If the purpose of merger/sprouting was only to satisfy metrical considera-

tions, however, we might expect more of a bias toward verse. With the

44 Joanna Nykiel

actual distribution, the purpose could be tied to discourse instead. Forexample, forty-seven out of sixty-four instances appear in foregrounded

clauses, that is, in dialogue and narrative. I leave open the question of

what exactly supports this relationship.The interest in Table 3 for this discussion is that it points to an almost

even distribution of the relationships under sluicing in both prose and

verse. The latter genre is poorly represented in OE while in ME it hoststhe majority of sluices. This fact together with the distribution predicts

that the results in Table 3 impart reliability to the OE data. Whether text

types influence sluicing in the later periods of English will be addressedagain as more data are investigated.

If, as we move on, we could find some marked departure from the OE

and ME distribution, we would stand a good chance of strengthening ourassumptions about what development there has been. This is not the case,

however. Consider the ENE data in Tables 4–7. Table 4 gives a general

Table 4. Text types: Distribution of sluicing in the ENE part of the Helsinki Cor-pus based on relationship between sluice and antecedent

Genre Merger Sproutingincluding1 (Prose)mismatch

How-mismatch

Inference Total

Prose 27 (38.02%) 42 (59.15%) 0 2 (2.81%) 71 (100%)

Drama 3 (37.5%) 4 (50%) 1 (12.5%) 0 8 (100%)

Table 3. Text types: Distribution of sluicing in the Middle English Compendium(MEC) based on relationship between sluice and antecedent

Genre Merger Sproutingincluding2 (Prose),6 (Verse),1 (Drama)mismatches

Merger/sprouting

Inference Total

Prose 35 (13.4%) 206 (78.6%) 21 (8.01%) 0 262 (100%)

Verse 56 (15.9%) 253 (71.7%) 43 (12.2%) 1 (0.3%) 353 (100%)

Drama 1 (9.1%) 10 (90.9%) 0 0 11 (100%)


statement of the data, with only a distinction between prose and drama.

Clearly, sprouting remains the dominant relationship in both genres.Tables 5–7 separate out very specific text types, ranging from drama

(Table 5) to correspondence (Table 6). This is to ensure a fair assessment

of the phenomenon under discussion. Among the available records,Shakespeare’s drama (Table 5), under the standard assumptions, is fairly

close to speech and richest in dialogue, with an economy of expression

specific to it. So, as predicted, the varying frequency of sluicing in the cor-pora is due to text type and corpus size because the Shakespeare corpus is

the largest and four times the size of the CEECS (Table 6). Interestingly,

the participation of the di¤erent antecedents in sluicing varies somewhatunexpectedly between the tables. Note that sprouting remains constant

at about 50% in Shakespeare’s (Table 5) and other drama (Table 4). In

written correspondence (Table 6), however, it reaches 56% and in prose59% (Table 4). The percentage of merger only exceeds 40% in Shake-

speare’s drama, otherwise remaining at about 30%. Thus compared to

drama, the percentage of sprouting rises at the expense of merger in prose.

Within this genre, fiction reaches a high of 80%, a significant di¤erence ifwe remember that fiction is also speech-related (Table 7). In the same

table, there is another representative record of speech – the State-Trials.5

Table 5. Distribution of sluicing in the corpus of William Shakespeare’s playsbased on relationship between sluice and antecedent

Merger Sproutingincluding 6mismatches

How-mismatch

Inference Total

148 (44.18%) 180 (53.73%) 2 (0.6%) 5 (1.49%) 335 (100%)

Table 6. Distribution of sluicing in the Corpus of Early English CorrespondenceSampler (CEECS) based on relationship between sluice and antecedent

Merger Sprouting How-mismatch Inference Total

8 (34.78%) 13 (56.52%) 1 (4.35%) 1 (4.35%) 23 (100%)

5. This is A Complete Collection of State-Trials and Proceedings for High-treason, and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors; From the Reign of King RichardII to the End of the Reign of King George I.

46 Joanna Nykiel

Here we have a reversal of frequencies: sprouting covers 35% of the total

and merger 58%, which seems highly inconsistent compared to the resultswe obtained for fiction. Hence, a clear development is doubtful. Thus far,

the only safe conclusion is that sluicing minimally admitted merger and

sprouting early on, as indicated by the temporal factor included in Table1.6 On a theoretical note, even in the absence of other non-syntactic rela-

tionships sprouting still shows that syntax and semantics are both involved

because only part of the antecedent structure is visible to and made use ofby the hearer. This in turn suggests the possibility that no pre-deletion

structure underlies a sluice.

Another candidate for signaling a potential change is how-mismatchand inference. If lack of the former in OE and early ME is no surprise

because the howþ infinitive structure was non-existent until the twelfth

century (cf. Oxford English Dictionary), in late ME we find a single

instance of inference.7 I leave the detailed discussion of these two relation-ships until later. At this point, just notice that their numbers are con-

spicuously low and that how-mismatch sometimes overlaps with sprouting

(indicated as required in the tables).Next I turn to the ARCHER corpus, which brings data from LNE with

some PDE attestations, all supplemented with yet more evidence from

Table 7. Prose: Distribution of sluicing in the ENE part of the Helsinki Corpusbased on relationship between sluice and antecedent

Genre Merger Sproutingincluding1 (Prose)mismatch

How-mismatch

Inference Total

Fiction 1 (16.66%) 5 (83.33%) 0 0 6 (100%)

Trials 10 (58.82%) 6 (35.29%) 0 1 (5.88%) 17 (100%)

Other Prose 16 (33.33%) 31 (64.58%) 0 1 (2.08%) 48 (100%)

6. The introduction of sluicing into English is very much unclear inasmuch as wecannot rule out that Latin played a part in it. OE texts translated from Latindo not in fact reveal much of a departure from genuine ones and thus stopshort of enabling valid conclusions (cf. Nykiel 2007).

7. An interesting consequence of the rise of the howþ infinitive structure isthat syntax itself introduced a new – problematic for syntactic accounts –relationship into sluicing.


ENE. The results come in Tables 8–9 addressing the relevant criteria of

timeframe and text type. For ease of interpretation, I separate the ENE

data out from that of LNE and the twentieth century in Table 9.First, English seems to have shifted in a surprising direction. Prose

shows a drop in the percentage of sprouting from the previous 56–59%

(Table 8) as does drama, remaining now at 46%. Fiction, separated outfrom the rest, drops to 50% while merger remains stable in both prose

and drama. It is sprouting, then, that gives way to how-mismatch, infer-

ence, and a new antecedent – pragmatic control.The application of pragmatic control seems somewhat limited, even

to speakers of PDE. This fact straightforwardly falls into place if we

remember that the former surface anaphors typically accommodate fewdiscourse-initial positions. Thus both Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) (They

might) and sluicing (Guess who!) would be less felicitous in response

or reaction to non-linguistic antecedents than to linguistic ones (cf.Hankamer 1978, Pullum 2000, Stainton 2006). The low frequency of

pragmatic control is expected although it is di‰cult to explain its apparent

non-appearance until ENE.8 Pragmatically controlled sluices could haveexisted in speech without being preserved in written records though this

Table 8. Text types: Distribution of sluicing in the ARCHER corpus based onrelationship between sluice and antecedent

Genre Merger Sprouting

including

4 (Prose),

2 (Fiction),

2 (Drama)

mismatches

How-

mismatch

Inference Pragmatic

control

Total

Prose 25 (37.88%) 36 (54.54%) 1 (1.52%) 4 (6.06%) 0 66 (100%)

Fiction 41 (39.05%) 53 (50.48%) 1 (0.95%) 7 (6.66%) 3 (2.86%) 105 (100%)

Drama 129 (44.33%) 135 (46.39%) 1 (0.34%) 23 (7.90%) 1 (0.34%) 291 (100%)

8. This prediction is consistent with the absence of pragmatically controlledsluices in the Dictionary of Old English and Middle English Compendium. Acautionary note is in order, however. There are phrases in ME that look likesluices, e.g., What chere?, spoken discourse-initially. Given their meaning ofHow do you feel?/How are you? (cf. Middle English Dictionary), they shouldbe viewed as formulas instead.

48 Joanna Nykiel

seems unlikely, given the variety of the available data. Alternatively, they

could have evolved as an option secondary to linguistically controlled

sluices. The latter prediction is supported by a similarly late arrival ontothe scene that a¤ects pragmatically controlled VPE (cf. Gergel 2004,

Nykiel 2006) despite syntactic di¤erences between the two constructions.

I return to the problem of pragmatic control and a possible explanation

for it in the next section.From Table 8, it emerges that inference comes to license more sluices

than either how-mismatch or pragmatic control. However, sprouting and

how-mismatch can go together, and so, where it is the case, mismatch isincluded in the Sprouting column in the tables. Consider the examples

below:

(20) In all instances he knows what is best to decree, and what is best to

command, and what is best to do; and in all instances he decrees, he

commands, and he conducts, as well as he knows how.

(1762. Bellamy, Joseph. An Election Sermon. In B. Kuklick (ed.),

the Works of Joseph Bellamy, vol. I)

(21) and therfore, whan they be drye, they muste be sore brused and

broken, the wiues knowe howe, and than winowed and kepte drye,tyll yere-tyme come

(Fitzherbert. The Book of Husbandry (1534). English Dialect

Society, 37. Ed. W. W. Skeat. Vaduz: Kraus Reprint LTD.,

1965 (1882))

Upon closer inspection, therefore, how-mismatch and inference have com-

parable incidences. Is there any movement, though? ENE gives the highest

numbers for inference in correspondence and the State Trials (Tables 6and 7); later on drama becomes dominant (Table 8), but fiction and other

prose are not far behind. Table 9 in fact gives a neat statement of how the

rate of inference-based sluices rises by about 1% over the period of some400 years. How-mismatch, if we include the cases listed in the Sprouting

column, is strongest in Period II (3.3%) and then drops to 1.35%, a rather

non-directional change. There is a di¤erence of less than 1% across texttypes except for prose (Table 8).9 Checked against the ENE tables, how-

mismatch su¤ers a considerable blow in LNE and the twentieth century.

(Recall that the rate of how-mismatch reaches 12% in ENE drama).

9. Including the four instances listed in the Sprouting column.


For lack of space, I have not included more detailed tables showing

the distribution of sluicing in the ARCHER corpus, but even from Tables8–9, it is evident that the previously identified preference for sprouting

weakens with time, even in fiction, which seemed to favor it most. In

sum, sprouting has an initial rising tendency only to eventually fall to40–50%; merger has an initial falling tendency but then continues at

a stable rate of about 40%. Of the minor relationships, only inference

gradually rises uniformly in all the genres considered, as already noted.Upon closer inspection then, applying text type and temporal criteria

points to little directional movement within the range of the antecedents

or to consistent variety between written and speech-related genres. Per-haps this in turn indicates that we should not worry too much about the

diminished accuracy of the extant texts with respect to the genres and

time periods they represent.

3.1. Syntactic e¤ects in sprouting

Syntactic and semantic involvement in sprouting was emphasized in theprevious section. I reiterate that syntactic e¤ects connect a sluice to its

antecedent via identity of preposition, case, or both. Such e¤ects are also

operative under merger, but the more interesting of the two, and poten-tially problematic, is sprouting.

(22) Thanks, Si.

{¼ m SIMON} What for?

{¼ m STEPHEN} Sharing my triumph with me.

(Gray, Simon. 1975, Otherwise engaged: A play)

Table 9. Timeframe: Distribution of sluicing in the ARCHER corpus based onrelationship between sluice and antecedent

Period Merger Sprouting

including

1 (Period I),

5 (Period II),

2 (Period III)

mismatches

How-

mismatch

Inference Pragmatic

control

Total

I 1600–

1700

9 (27.27%) 21 (63.63%) 0 2 (6.06%) 1 (3.03 %) 33 (100%)

II 1701–

1900

84 (40.57%) 103 (49.75%) 2 (0.97%) 15 (7.24%) 2 (0.97%) 207 (100%)

III 1901– 102 (45.94%) 100 (45.04%) 1 (0.45%) 17 (7.65%) 1 (0.45%) 222 (100%)

50 Joanna Nykiel

There is nothing in the antecedent structure that licenses the use of the

preposition. Therefore, an ellipsist account like Ross’s runs into trouble.

And yet, among the corpora, inclusion of ‘‘unlicensed’’ prepositions covers4% of the OE data, 42% of the ME data, 25% of the ENE data, and 12%

of the LNE data. Viewed as a directly generated fragment instead, a sluice

that needs to point to a salient, though implied, argument PP, cannot do

so without su‰cient content. In (22), the preposition is thus licensed byvirtue of being part of the predicate’s (thank) argument structure. I take

these sprouting facts to be a compensation strategy, a necessity that

follows from prior manipulation of antecedent structure, as discussed inthe next section.

4. Where to go next

Much more remains to be said about the history of sluicing, not becauseit seems ‘‘uneventful’’ so far while a linguist’s ambition is to look for

‘‘action.’’ If there were big changes, there would also be explanations for

them; if there are few changes but a problem exists, it is even more tempt-ing to find out why.

Below, I sketch a potential solution that draws upon the proposals

by Ginzburg and Sag (2000), Kehler et al. (2006, 2007), Culicover andJackendo¤ (2005), and Stainton (2006a, b). The data point to a diachroni-

cally stable link that ties sluices to their antecedents. While the link can be

anything from syntactic to pragmatic, it obviously needs to remain basedon coherence. Imagine now that the only requirement we place on a sluice

is that it be coherently related to some salient antecedent without having a

pre-deletion structure.10 This is where my analysis meets Kehler et al’scoherence-driven approach to pronoun resolution in which use of referring

expressions is dictated by expectations about what can coherently come

next in a given speech situation. In fact, Merchant (2004) too talks aboutanaphors and antecedents being ‘‘appropriately related’’ if somewhat

vaguely. Once coherence has been established between sluice and ante-

cedent, the former will undergo integration into the proposition carriedby the antecedent. It will have access to such corresponding syntactic fea-

tures of the antecedent as case and preposition, together with any argu-

ments or adjuncts implied by the antecedent, that is, it will be indirectlylicensed by the antecedent (cf. Ginzburg and Sag 2000, Culicover and

10. What I mean by salient here is recently brought into focus (cf. Ward et al.1991, Ginzburg and Sag 2000).


Jackendo¤ 2005). This now reduces to the issue of why the various links

have the distribution that we saw in the corpora. A principle that is likely

to be operative is one of ease of integration. The more clues a sluice o¤ers,the faster and more e‰ciently it finds its place in the antecedent proposi-

tion. What kind of clues are they? They are necessarily semantic but even

more importantly syntactic. It is no big surprise that a sluice preserving

the antecedent structure, or at least part of it, is more frequent. But theantecedent structure can be manipulated – just as long as coherence is

maintained. This move comes at a cost, though, in that fewer clues will

be available and so lower frequencies of use follow for mismatches andinferences. Sprouting seems to su¤er less from loss of clues. It has a way

of repairing the loss, however. Consider how speakers compensate for

manipulating the antecedent structure in (2) repeated as (23).

(23) A: You want a massage?B: By who?

(24) A: You want a massage?

B: Who?

For lack of the preposition, the sluice in (24) can only refer to the subjectwhile that in (23) refers to whoever does the massage. Thus, speakers have

to add the relevant preposition as an extra clue that helps trigger the

intended interpretation. Of course, ambiguities may result where no pre-position is available as in (25), which is potentially ambiguous between

subject and implied object interpretation.

(25) A: She called.

B: Who?

In this approach, deep anaphora, like do it or NCA, are by definition

richer in clues, so however we manipulate an antecedent structure, inter-

pretation will still be relatively easy. There is, therefore, no surface/deepdichotomy. Rather, the apparent di¤erence straightforwardly falls out

from how much actual semantic and syntactic information an anaphor

contains. Certainly, this solution should also explain why sluicing andVPE are taken to mostly resist discourse-initial use. Merchant (2004)

notices this ever-problematic e¤ect and so does Stainton (2006). But the

answer may be simpler than expected. VPE stands out as a recalcitrantanaphor and with good reason. If the modals began to lose their indepen-

dent predicate status already in late OE (cf. Nagle 1989, Harris and

52 Joanna Nykiel

Campbell 1995), speakers could not freely use them discourse-initially for

their degraded semantic content. As the modals progress into replacing the

OE morphological subjunctive, some remnants of their former meaningslinger on. It is no accident that among the primary auxiliaries – marked

just for tense and aspect – only do is attested discourse-initially (cf. Pullum

2000). Modal use is conceivably more informative if not su‰cient in itself.

It is only after the auxiliaries become associated with precise meaningsthat they can refer to situational contexts. Note also that for an anaphor

to so refer, we need appropriate clues. This process could well have taken

some time, delaying the appearance of pragmatic control as a legitimaterelationship in VPE and fixing its formulaic status.

Now, is sluicing like VPE? Not quite. Other e¤ects that Merchant and

Stainton point to in connection with sluicing are considerably less con-strained use of stripping, Bare Argument Ellipsis, or simply fragments.

We naturally evoke them discourse-initially to identify, explain, or request

things, or to indicate location, destination, and manner.

(26) [(From The Hudsucker Proxy.) Barnes gets o¤ an elevator, looking

for Mr. Musburger’s o‰ce. He addresses Al, who is working in thehallway:]

Barnes: Mr. Musburger’s o‰ce?Al: [Points]

Al: Not that way. Through the door.

(Stainton 2006a: 109)

Predictably, there is a preference for PPs and NPs over bare nouns – if

only because they o¤er more clues. Sluices can be viewed as interrogative

counterparts of such fragments. If so, we would expect more informa-

tive wh-phrases, i.e., a pattern along the lines of (P)þ wh-phraseþN.11

Indeed, of the four instances I identified in the ARCHER corpus, three

follow this pattern; the fourth uses where.

11. Here and throughout, I adopt the terminology used in Hofmeister et al.(2007), Arnon et al. (in press) and Sag et al. (2008) in place of D-linkedphrases (Pesetsky 1987). It has been demonstrated that D-linking is irrele-vant to processing di‰culty (Hofmeister et al. 2007). The distinction betweenD-linked and non-D-linked phrases is just as irrelevant to sluicing in thatdiscourse-initial use admits more informative sluices, which are clearly notD-linked; see example (28).


(27) I left her with a porter on the Pennsylvania side.

[‘‘Good-by, sid, dear,’’] she said, and though I was startled when she

called me ‘‘dear,’’ I felt that I had known her for a long, long time.

[‘‘Where to now, sir?’’] Williams asked me.

It was ten minutes before twelve but Dottie Peale had asked me to

meet her at the o‰ce early. It was always a part of Dottie’s stagee¤ect to show o¤ that o‰ce of hers at Peale House.

(1951. Marquand, John Phillips Melville Goodwin, U.S.A.)

(28) There was a sense of Christmas about the travellers and the people

who were at the terminus to meet them. The porter who came to thecarriage door reminded Trefusis by his manner and voice that the

season was one at which it becomes a gentleman to be festive and

liberal.

[‘‘What luggage, sir? Hansom or fourwheel, sir?’’]

(1887. Shaw, George Bernard. An Unsocial Socialist. 7/3/91.)

Far from being a troublesome exception to my view, where, and possibly

why, have solid enough meanings of destination/location and explanation,

respectively, that we can use them unambiguously. You might now askwhy the number of discourse-initial sluices is so low if they are reasonably

productive. The productivity of sluicing and Bare Argument Ellipsis

should be checked against that of do it and NCA. The former are produc-tive for as few clues as they make available.

The approach suggested is well supported by the data in that at least

60% of the relationships are totally or partially non-syntactic in all theperiods except for OE. This fact leaves little reason to insist on any more

structure in a sluice than is visible. Instead, what seems promising is an

inquiry into both the distribution of bare wh-phrases versus the (P)þ wh-phraseþN patterns and the relationships that support their use in order

to better evaluate the claims made here.

5. Conclusion

I have reported on a phenomenon that may turn out to show a distinct

stability throughout its history. So far it has. Such evidence requires a revi-

sion of the prior notions of anaphora and the dichotomies therein. To theextent that anaphors vary in the amount of information that they make

available, they cannot be expected to show the exact same patterns of

54 Joanna Nykiel

behavior across the set. Nothing more is needed by way of explanation; a

forced distinction would indeed cloud the picture.

The second argument presented in this paper is more challenging. Thederivational/non-sentential debate has a long history. Both Ross and Mer-

chant o¤er compelling counter-evidence to my analysis, but wherever a

sluice copies the case that the corresponding argument in the antecedent

carries, it does not necessarily pick it up from its pre-deletion structure. Itis even di‰cult to imagine that, in coherent discourse, speakers would

alter the case when referring back to an argument embedded in a certain

proposition unless they wish to introduce another proposition. But thatwould not be sluicing. My solution correctly captures this, and as long as

an antecedent can license the case of a sluice, there is no diachronically

justified need for positing a full syntactic structure.There remains one problem to be solved. Recall Merchant’s insistence

on a connection between omission of prepositions in sluicing and avail-

ability of preposition stranding. By my rough estimates, these e¤ects donot go together. Rather, presence of a preposition is a conscious move to

reduce confusion; its absence – definitely also possible in non-preposition-

stranding languages – removes redundant clues.

References

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<http://www.oed.com/>.

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Commentary on Nykiel, Whatever Happened toEnglish Sluicing


My comments will focus on two issues raised in the introduction to

Joanna Nykiel’s very rich paper on the history of sluicing since they frame

her interpretation of the findings. The first, which I touch on only briefly,is the ‘‘Recency Illusion’’; the second is stability over a millennium.

It appears that the title ‘‘Whatever happened to English sluicing’’ and

some of the assumptions in the introduction arise out of a conflation oftwo things. One is that in the history of research on sluicing in contem-

porary English and other languages, there has been a shift away from

viewing it as a strictly syntactic phenomenon to viewing it as a partiallypragmatic one. This is the kind of development that often occurs as re-

searchers elaborate on the larger picture. The other is that this history of

research results is projected onto the history of the linguistic structureitself so that there is an assumption that a ‘‘relaxation of structural iden-

tity’’ will be found in the historical data. The outcomes of research should

without question guide hypotheses about the history of the constructionunder consideration. Assuming that they will be parallel is, however,

what Zwicky (2005) has called the ‘‘Recency Illusion,’’ whereby people

believe that ‘‘things YOU have noticed only recently are in fact recent.’’This assumption is often mistaken, e.g., the claim that adverbial all as in

She was all sad is recent (Waksler 2001) as discussed in Buchstaller and

Traugott (2006). Any such assumption should be converted into a hypo-thesis to be tested, and test the hypothesis is what Nykiel’s paper essen-

tially does in the rest of the paper.

Nykiel’s prime objective is to show that the choice of antecedents undersluicing is not, and has never been, as constrained as has been assumed by

generative grammarians and that sluicing has more parallels with other

kinds of anaphors than has usually be recognized. She demonstrates thatthere is corpus evidence from Old English that sluicing has had both syn-

tactic and pragmatic characteristics, specifically ‘‘merger’’ and ‘‘sprout-

ing.’’ The ratio of merger to sprouting is very di¤erent in Old Englishand later periods. In Old English, over 80% of the examples are of merger,

the rest of sprouting, whereas the ratio is almost reversed in Middle

English, and somewhat leveled out in the Early Modern period. It ap-

pears therefore that merger and sprouting have always been available in

English, and, from the perspective of English as a whole, there has beenrelative stability from Middle English on. Nykiel raises the question how

much stability there is in language. It appears that there is in fact quite a

lot if one cares to look for it (for early investigations beyond Timberlake

and Langacker, which she cites, see Romaine 1982, Milroy 1992). Ofstable sociolinguistic variation Labov has said:

Stable, long-term variation that persists over many centuries in much thesame form is perhaps even more common than changes which go to comple-tion . . . [F]rom the sociolinguistic point of view . . . the absence of changehas the most important consequences for our understanding of linguisticstructure. (Labov 2001: 75, 85)

The stability that Nykiel has uncovered in the history of sluicing is a

case of persistence (Milroy 1992). She did not investigate age, social class,or style (nor indeed would the data allow this), so we do not have a case of

stable variation in the traditional sociolinguistic sense. In the latter the

expectation is that:

each age cohort of the same class, gender, ethnic background, and othersocial characteristics, will be similar to older and younger groups in the useof variants and the amount of style-shifting. (Chambers 1995: 107, cited inRaumolin-Brunberg 2002: 102)

Raumolin-Brunberg (2002) tests claims like these, which are based on age-

grading, against evidence from real time provided by historical data, andfinds that they can be supported, despite the many problems attendant on

historical corpora (written rather than spoken, often only partially repre-

sentative of language-users of the time, etc.).Studies of sociolinguistic variables have tended to highlight regular

stratification (see Labov 2001). By contrast, Nykiel’s study of sluicing sug-

gests that variation is much less regular when measured against genre.This is no doubt in part because very di¤erent conventions arise at dif-

ferent times with respect to genres (see e.g., Culpeper and Kyto 2000,

Fitzmaurice and Taavitsainen 2007). In Nykiel’s data, fiction favorsmerger least (Tables 7 and 8). This seems hardly surprising considering

that fiction often includes dialogue and is generally considered closer to

spoken language and, therefore, more likely to evidence pragmatic factorsthan many other genres (e.g., Biber 1988, discussing twentieth century

Commentary on Nykiel 61

fiction). However, Culpeper and Kyto (2000) found that fiction tended to

have fewer oral characteristics than trials in their data (which is limited to

the period 1600–1720). They speculated that this might be because fiction,at least at that period, tends to require a significant amount of information

about character and plot to be conveyed (p. 195). In future work it would

be worthwhile to develop diagnostics for, and characterizations of, the

kinds of stable variation that can be correlated with genres where expres-sions like sluicing that operate at the interface of syntax and pragmatics

are concerned.

What seems striking to me is the fact that there is so little sluicing in thefiction represented in the Early Modern English part of the Helsinki

corpus (in Table 7 16.66% merger and 83.33% sprouting disguise the raw

figures of 1 and 5 respectively). Possibly sluicing was simply not regardedas a feature to be exploited – as Culpeper and Kyto point out (2000: 195),

authors select di¤erent features to convey ‘‘spokenness’’ in di¤erent genres.

A further research question is whether the discovery of stable variationrequires the investigator to posit a prior stage without such variation.

Absent data prior to Old English, it does not appear necessary in the case

of sluicing to posit a stage in which merger alone can be identified, eventhough over 80% of the examples show this use in Old English. Likewise,

although object-clause zero complementizer (‘‘that-deletion’’) is very rare

in Old English, its presence in texts nevertheless suggests it was always invariation with that. Its dramatic increase in frequency in later Middle

English is highly dependent on factors such as the verb, personal pronoun,

and text type (Rissanen 1991). Therefore, issues of saltation (macro-change) or gradualness (micro-change) that Nykiel raises in the introduc-

tion appear not to be particularly relevant. What is relevant is that, when

correlated with genre, stability may show considerable frequency fluctua-tions over time.

Various types of more highly pragmatic sluicing appear during the his-

tory of English. Inference without any syntactic antecedent appears first inLate Middle English, how-mismatch and pragmatic control in the Early

Modern period, as evidenced by ARCHER. All three are of low fre-

quency. They may perhaps be seen as competing with sprouting since thepercentages of sprouting are lower than in the earlier periods. Nykiel com-

ments, ‘‘English seems to have shifted in a surprising direction,’’ without

giving reasons for the surprise. Perhaps she has in mind arguments fromGivon (1979: 209) on developments from ‘‘discourse > syntax. . . .’’ It

is true that structurally English became more ‘‘syntacticized’’ in Middle

English, if we measure syntacticization by such phenomena as the shift


from topic-focus structuring to obligatory use of a subject or subject-slot

filler. However, it is also the case that there has been a tendency in writing

for certain sub-domains of grammar to become less formal over time (seeBiber and Finegan 1989, Mair 2006). It might be worth investigating

whether the modest rise of more pragmatic uses of sluicing is correlated

with changing practices associated with writing or with specific genres.

References

Biber, Douglas1988 Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.Biber, Douglas and Edward Finegan1989 Drift and the evolution of English style: A history of three

genres. Language 65: 487–517.Buchstaller, Isabelle and Elizabeth Closs Traugott2006 ‘‘The lady was demonyak: Historical aspects of adverb ALL’’.

English Language and Linguistics 10: 345–370.Chambers, J. K.1995 Sociolinguistic Theory: Linguistic Variation and its Social Signi-

ficance. Oxford: Blackwell.Culpeper, Jonathan and Merja Kyto2000 Data in historical pragmatics: Spoken interaction (re)cast as

writing. Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1: 175–199.Fitzmaurice, Susan M. and Irma Taavitsainen, eds2007 Methods in Historical Pragmatics. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Givon, Talmy1979 On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press.

Labov, William2002 Principles of Linguistic Change, Vol. 2: Social Factors. Malden,

MA: Blackwell.Mair, Christian2006 Twentieth-century English: History, Variation and Standardiza-

tion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena2002 Stable variation and historical linguistics. In Helena Raumolin-

Brunberg, Minna Nevala, Arja Nurmi, and Matti Rissanen,eds., Variation Past and Present. VARIENG Studies on Englishfor Terttu Nevalainen, 101–116. Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique.

Rissanen, Matti1991 On the history of that/zero as object clause links in English. In

Karin Aijmer and Bengt Altenberg, eds., English Corpus Linguis-tics: Studies in Honour of Jan Svartvik, 272–289. London:Longman.

Commentary on Nykiel 63

Romaine, Suzanne1982 Socio-historical Linguistics: Its Status and Methodology. Cam-

bridge: Cambridge University Press.Waksler, Rachelle2001 A new ALL construction. American Speech 76: 128–138.

Zwicky, Arnold2005 More illusions. Language Log, August 7th. <http://listserv.

linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0508a&L=ads-l&P=16478>.


Response to Commentary by Traugott

Joanna Nykiel

In her commentary, Elizabeth Traugott first notes that the recognition ofa hitherto unnoticed phenomenon may lead linguists to misinterpret the

phenomenon as a recent one. To prevent such misinterpretation we ought

to test every hypothesis formulated in this way. But beyond exploring thehypothesis that sluicing has over time become a less syntactic construc-

tion, my research seeks to answer a rather di¤erent need.

Analyses of sluicing, and indeed of elliptical constructions, have alwayssu¤ered from lack of an empirically adequate account of the facts.1 It

comes as little surprise that without statistics on what kinds of sluicing

appear in actual use, a few scattered examples could be easily dismissedas infrequent and insignificant or used to counter a previously established

line of argument. In bridging this gap, my purpose was three-fold: (i) to

provide statistical evidence for and an account of the distribution of sluic-ing, (ii) to verify whether there ever was any basis for teasing apart surface

and deep anaphora, and (iii) to indeed test the hypothesis mentioned

above.I have no quarrel with Traugott’s second comment that the stability in

the behavior of sluicing could be investigated via analysis of sociolinguis-

tic variables and writing conventions. This kind of endeavor would, how-ever, encounter the usual problems that beset investigation of the oldest

sources: a bias toward the written variety, male authors and sometimes

toward prose, as is the case with Old English. My analysis of sluicingshows that with the transition from Old English to Middle English comes

a drastic change in the ratio of merger to sprouting, clearly the most intri-

guing of the few shifts. An explanation may lie in the fact that social strataand genres are poorly represented by the available Old English material

as compared to the relative richness of the Middle English data. Un-

fortunately, a truly sociolinguistic comparison of the two periods remainsproblematic.

1. Beecher’s (2006, 2007) investigation of sluiced prepositional phrases in present-day American English is the closest I know of to a corpus-based analysis.

What issues like this illustrate is the necessity to go beyond English,

and any individual language under investigation, whenever stability or

change in the history of a given construction seems surprising. A discoveryof what typological similarities and di¤erences there are can help us better

understand the historical conditions and discourse contexts which might

favor a particular construction. Some researchers (cf. Bybee 2008, Hopper

2008) already emphasize that connections between constructions and thediscourse contexts in which they arise should be explored across a variety

of languages. Typological research in turn avoids the danger of modeling

the architecture of grammar on English; this danger is real since Englishexhibits a high degree of exceptionality (Traugott 2008).

References

Beecher, Henry2006 Pragmatic licensing of sluiced prepositional phrases. Research

paper II. Available at:<http://idiom.ucsd.edu/~hbeecher/PLSPP.pdf>

Beecher, Henry2007 Pragmatic inference in the interpretation of sluiced prepositional

phrases. In Proceedings of the Fifth Cambridge PostgraduateConference in Language Research, 9–16.

Bybee, Joan2008 Formal universals as emergent phenomena: the origins of struc-

ture preservation. In Linguistic Universals and Language Change,edited by Je¤ Good, 108–124. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Good, Je¤, ed.2008 Linguistic Universals and Language Change. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.Hopper, Paul J.2008 Emergent serialization in English: pragmatics and typology.

In Linguistic Universals and Language Change, edited by Je¤Good, 253–286. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs2008 Presidential address. International Society for the Linguistics of

English Inaugural Meeting. Freiburg, Germany.

66 Joanna Nykiel

Notion of Direction and Old EnglishPrepositional Phrases

Olga Thomason

Since prepositions present a versatile lexical category, interest in them and

especially their semantics is steadily growing (Luraghi 2003, Tyler andEvans 2003, Segen 2001). In the present paper, we take a closer look at

Old English constructions that designate direction. There are several pre-

positional phrases that mark direction in Old English:

‘into’ inþAcc, onþAcc, binnanþAcc, innanþAcc

‘onto’ onþAcc, oferþAcc

‘up to’ ætþAcc or oþþAcc (rare oþþDat)

‘to, toward’ to #þAcc/Dat/Gen, wiþþAcc/Dat/Gen, onge #anþAcc/Dat,

to #ge #anþDat.

It is the last group of prepositions, designating a more general notion ‘to,toward,’ that is the scope of this study. The questions that this investiga-

tion will try to answer are: why does Old English reserve so many pre-

positional phrases to mark such a general concept as ‘to, toward’ andwhat are the possible reasons for such diversity in case governance of these

prepositions?

The vast majority of research analyzing prepositional semantics is con-ducted using Present Day English data as a base. Semantic investigations

that examine materials of earlier stages of language development (e.g.,

Old English or Middle English) are less common. Textbooks on Old andMiddle English often give a brief list of prepositions with some short notes

on their usage, referring readers to glossaries and dictionaries for fur-

ther information simply because the study of prepositional semantics isnot seen as being necessary when one introduces a new language (Baker

2003: 101–2). These facts are unfortunate since detailed and well-balanced

synchronic and diachronic explorations of data from earlier periods oflanguage development (and of the English language in particular) could

shed more light on such a complex notion as prepositional semantics. For

example, diachronic study of prepositional meanings shows that spatial

roles develop earlier than other semantic functions (Luraghi 2003: 18).

The present study joins those that are making every e¤ort to fill this gap

and add to the knowledge of prepositional semantics and usage.Spatial meanings deserve special attention not only because they tend

to be the original semantics of prepositions but also because they fre-

quently present a background for structuring many other conceptual

domains. It has already been pointed out that speakers use spatial expres-sions in constructions that designate temporal concepts, kinship relations,

body parts, and some others (Levinson 2003: 16–8). For example, the

English prepositions in and on are often used to mark spatial and tempo-ral concepts: cf. in the classroom versus in the evening and on the plate ver-

sus on Sunday.

Linguistic discussions of prepositional semantics often focus on rela-tions between prepositional meanings and human physical experience of

the surrounding world. Researchers attempt to find a cognitive stimulus

for the use of prepositions. In the course of their everyday life, humansinterrelate in and with the surrounding world. Recurring events, struc-

tures, arrangements, etc. become encoded in the human mind as abstract

notions and concepts. As a consequence, several linguists argue that thesemantic structure of prepositional phrases arises from human conceptual

structure or mirrors it (Cienki 1989, Cuyckens 1997, Kemmerer 2005,

Tyler and Evans 2001). Some linguists employ geometric or functionalspecifics of constructions in which spatial prepositional phrases are

used in order to pinpoint certain semantic particulars (Coventry 2001).

Throughout our discussion, we will strive to show in which mannervarious cognitive stimuli trigger or support particular semantic develop-

ments of the prepositional constructions designating the notion ‘to,

toward’. We will pay particular attention to the functional and syntag-matic specifics of these prepositions in our attempt to show that even

though in Old English spatial relations are primarily coded in the seman-

tics of prepositions, some spatial information is derived from the meaningsof verbs with which these prepositions are used and from the functions of

cases which these prepositions govern.

The domain of spatial prepositional semantics is characterized by ahigh level of variation found in means of expressing spatial concepts

(Coventry 2001, Rudanko 1995, Van der Zee and Slack 2003). It is com-

mon for the same spatial notion to be expressed by a variety of preposi-tional phrases. On the other hand, many languages demonstrate that the

same prepositional phrase can designate a number of spatial concepts.

Despite the fact that languages have a finite number of spatial preposi-tions, it is often problematic to isolate exact rules for their usage. Old

68 Olga Thomason

English is not an exception in this case; variation of prepositional phrases

is expected in this language. However, it does demonstrate a particularly

high level of variation among prepositional constructions denoting themeaning ‘to, toward’. This study o¤ers a detailed examination of this

variation and attempts to find potential reasons for such diversity.

Even if we do not take into consideration more abstract extensions of

the directional concept, such as purpose, order/command, instruction,management, result, etc., and concentrate only on spatial characteristics

of this notion, they are still exceptionally complex and di‰cult to describe

precisely. Direction is considered to be one of the basic spatial notions (inline with location and source). Direction is commonly thought of and

represented as a line or an arrow along which something moves, but it

is also a point, area or region toward which some entity is heading. Inthis light, it is not surprising that many prepositional phrases chosen to

mark direction also designate a static location. In fact, it is sometimes dif-

ficult to draw a definite border between these two concepts since in manylanguages, the same prepositional phrase can designate both direction and

location. Cases of such syncretism have already been documented. Silvia

Luraghi o¤ers a good summary of investigations that depict loss or pre-servation of distinction among the three concepts – direction, location,

and source (Luraghi 2003: 20–2).

The notion of direction is multi-layered and closely connected with theconcept of containment (the meaning ‘into’), the concept of surface (the

meaning ‘onto’), and the concept of proximity (the meaning ‘up to’): cf.

jumping into the box, jumping onto the box, jumping up to the box. Thefirst two notions presuppose the presence of contact while the third one

marks instances when a moving object does not come into a full contact

with its final goal. All these notions are distinct in Old English.In the case where the concept of direction is connected with the notions

of containment and surface, Old English responds with a well established

set of prepositional phrases where the di¤erence between location anddirection is marked with the help of the dative and accusative cases (with

minor variations in case forms): cf. ‘in’ inþDat, onþDat, binnanþDat,

innanþDat versus ‘into’ inþAcc, onþAcc, binnanþAcc, innanþAccand also ‘on’ onþDat, oferþDat versus ‘onto’ onþAcc, oferþAcc.

These are not the only prepositional phrases that are used to mark the

stated notions (e.g., to #þDat can also designate the locations ‘in’ and‘on’), but they are the primary ones. Such a way of marking is expected

since it reflects not only the primary meanings of the prepositions per se

but also the original semantics of cases: the designation of destinationfor the accusative case and the designation of static location for the

Notion of Direction and Old English Prepositional Phrases 69

dative case. Due to syncretism in Old English (as in all other Germanic

languages), the dative case has a variety of functions, reflecting the seman-

tics of the original Indo-European cases dative, ablative, locative, andinstrumental.

The meaning ‘up to,’ usually marked in Old English with ætþAcc or

oþþAcc (rare oþþDat), presupposes the absence of contact, the con-

cepts of containment and surface do not play any salient role and, thus,are not marked. These prepositions govern the expected accusative

case, which rea‰rms the designation of direction. In this light, the more

general direction notion ‘to, toward’ is problematic since these preposi-tions govern a diversity of cases: to #þAcc/Dat/Gen, wiþþAcc/Dat/

Gen, onge#anþAcc/Dat, to #ge #anþDat.

But the three concepts discussed above may not be the only ones thata¤ect the semantics of the prepositional phrases denoting direction. The

pragmatic nature of the directional concept is more multifaceted. Con-

sidering that this notion is associated with the motion in the direction ofsomething which is in the area or vicinity of, near, close to, or facing

something, the spatial notions ‘in,’ ‘near, next to,’ ‘opposite to, against,’

and ‘before, in front of ’ should be salient and have influence on the choiceof the prepositional phrases.

Let’s take a closer look at the prepositional phrases that denote the

meaning ‘to, toward’ in Old English, focusing only on literal spatial usagesof these constructions. The prepositional phrase to #þDat is the one that

is used primarily to mark a general direction ‘to, toward’. It commonly

occurs in combination with motions of coming, running, falling, etc. aswell as with verbs of bringing, taking, sending, etc. (in these instances

the directional semantics of the prepositional phrase are reinstated by

a verb).

(1) God him com to # (Gen 20, 3 Mk. Skt. 5, 21)

‘God came to him’

Sende se Fæder his sunu to # cwa #le (Homl. Th. ii. 6, 17)

‘Father sent his son to death’

In the spatial usages of to #þDat, the object toward which a motion/action

is directed could be reached or not:

(2) Bryne stigeþ to # heofonum (Exon. Th. 233, 7; Ph. 521)

‘Flame reaches heaven.’

Hie onhnigon to # ðam herige (Cd. Th. 227, 3; Dan. 181)

‘They bowed to the altar.’

70 Olga Thomason

There are also instances where to #þDat, designating direction, is com-

bined not with motion verbs but with verbs whose semantics imply a cer-

tain motion. For example, we find cases like this in instances whereto #þDat becomes a complement to verbs that denote looking or listening.

(3) Beseoh to # me # (Ps. Th. 12, 3.)‘Look at me.’

These verbs do not mark a motion per se, but it is implied that in order for

somebody to look in a certain direction or listen to somebody, one has to

turn toward this direction/this person.The question to answer here is why the preposition to # governs the

dative instead of the expected accusative. It is plausible that the semantics

of to #þDat receive the extension to a directional meaning only because ofthe meaning of these verbs since the designation of directionality is in-

herent to their semantics. Propositions of this kind have been made earlier

by those researchers who believe that it is the semantic and syntacticqualities of verbs that dictate what kind of meaning a nominal or a pre-

positional phrase would have (Fillmore 1968: 10–3). Another way to

explain the extension to a directional meaning is to derive it from themeaning of the dative case that the preposition to # governs in such pas-

sages. It has been already mentioned that the Old English dative is an

amalgamation of a number of Indo-European cases, the locative beingone of them. There are known instances when the locative case expresses

direction (without a preposition): cf. Skt. papa#ta medinya #m (MBh.) ‘he fell

to (so as to be upon) the earth’ (Whitney 1993: 103). Thus, it is the seman-tics of the Old English dative case that could condition the location-to-

direction semantic development of to #þDat. On the other hand, the

meaning ‘toward’ seems to be original for the preposition to # as it ispreserved and evidenced by several Indo-European cognates of this pre-

position: cf. Germ. zu ‘to’, L. do-nec ‘as long as’, Gk. -de, O.Ir. do, Lith.

da- ‘to, toward’ (Holthausen 1963: 350). Therefore, one can argue (and weare in favor of this argument) that there was no location-to-direction

extension here and the notion of direction is already at the core of the

semantics of the preposition itself and this concept is simply reinforced byother members of collocations (i.e. verbs and case forms). Any proposition

made seems to be speculative at this point; however, one thing is certain:

directionality is the primary function of to #þDat be it due to the originalmeaning of the preposition itself or due to a mixture of factors.

There are many instances where to #þDat designates static location

specifying such meanings as ‘near, next to,’ ‘by,’ and even ‘in,’ ‘on’:


(4) Hı # man bebyrigde to # hyre were (Homl. Th. i. 318, 1: ii. 188, 5)

‘She was buried next to her husband.’

He # gesette Iudas to # bisceope to # Godes temple (Elen. Kmbl. 2114;

El 1058)

‘He made Judas to sit down next to the high priest in the God’stemple.’

To # horse (Exon. Th. 298, 7; Cra. 81)‘on horseback’

Since in the majority of cases where to #þDat marks a static location

notion it specifies the meaning ‘near, next to’, one can talk about saliencyof the proximity notion for the semantics of this prepositional phrase.

Even though we do find examples where it marks the location of an

object/person within or on top of the boundaries of some locations (see

the last two passages in (4)), such instances are rare and could be con-sidered the result of secondary development.

In some cases, the semantics of to #þDat are extended even to the

designation of source where it is combined with verbs denoting seeking,expectation, or attainment:

(5) To # eorðan æ #tes tilian (Cd. Th. 94, 5; Gen. 1557: 59, 31; Gen. 972)

‘to obtain from the earth of food’

This function is probably secondary, acquired on the basis of the location

usages of to #þDat creating, consequentially, the following chain of exten-sions: ‘next to the area’ > ‘at, in the area’ > ‘from the area’. The seman-

tics of to #þDat are an interesting example demonstrating syncretism of

all three basic spatial roles – direction, location, and source.

The construction to #þGen can also mark the direction ‘to, toward’although not as frequently as to #þDat and only in combination with a

demonstrative or interrogative pronoun:

(6) To # ðæs gingran þider ealle urnon ðæ#r se e #ca wæs (Cd. Th. 298, II,

Sat. 531)

‘Thither all the disciples ran, to the place where the Eternal were.’

To # hwæs hı # gearwe bæron (Cd. Th. 190, I; Exod. 192.)‘Whither they should bear their arms.’

We also find several instances where to #þGen designates location. How-

ever, in the majority of such instances, to #þGen is part of a bigger adver-

bial construction to # middes ‘in the midst’:

72 Olga Thomason

(7) He # wæs to # middes wætres (Homl. Skt. ii. 30, 176)

‘He was in the midst of the stream.’

In instances such as these, to #þGen becomes a part of a set construction,

and it is hard to make judgments about the original location meaning of

this phrase and its conceptual connections since its semantics are alreadyfossilized in the semantics of the whole construction.

The only spatial meaning that to #þAcc has is the designation of the

direction ‘to, toward’. Such instances are notably less frequent than simi-lar directional occurrences of to #þDat. This situation is surprising since

the semantics of the accusative are regularly connected with the desig-

nation of direction, and it is probably for this reason that we do not findany passages where to #þAcc comes to mark a static location:

(8) He # leat to # ðæs ca #seres eare (Homl. Th. i. 376, 28)

‘He leaned toward the ear of the emperor.’

To # is an excellent example that demonstrates the complexity of preposi-

tional semantics at its best. The explored material shows that to #þDat is

the primary construction among those with to # that is used to denote thedirection ‘to, toward’ due to a combination of factors: the original mean-

ing of the preposition and the semantic support from motion verbs and the

dative that also express directionality. The main static location meaning ofto #þDat – ‘next to’ – suggests that the notion of proximity is a salient one

for the speakers of Old English. This prepositional phrase exemplifies syn-

cretism of the three basic local semantic roles – designation of direction,location, and source. To #þAcc, the phrase that is expected to be a pri-

mary one for the denotation of direction, is in fact a less frequent variant

even though its semantics are limited to the designation of this notion.To #þAcc and to #þDat are probably in free variation at this stage of lan-

guage development. Despite the fact that to #þGen can mark location and

direction, its usage is restricted to a few syntactical constructions.The preposition wiþ is similar to the preposition to # as far as its gover-

nance and some semantic functions are concerned. It governs the dative,

the accusative, and the genitive. In combination with all of these cases,wiþ can express directionality just like to #. Let’s take a closer look at the

semantic specifics of wiþ and try to establish reasons why all three phrases,

namely wiþþDat, wiþþGen, and wiþþAcc, came to designate thedirection ‘to, toward,’ and why Old English preserves these prepositional

phrases even though it already has to #þDat/Acc/Gen, which is versatile

in itself.


Once again, governance of the dative case greatly enriches the preposi-

tional semantics (compare examples (1)–(5) of to #þDat discussed earlier).

Just like in the case with to #þDat, wiþþDat can designate spatial rela-tions specifying the notion ‘near’:

(9) Hire lı #chama resteþ wið Ro#mebirig on ðam wege ðe man nemneþ

Latina (Shrn. 31, 28)‘Her body rests near the city of Rome on the way which one calls

Latin.’

But in addition to this meaning, wiþþDat can also denote the locationnotion ‘against, opposite to’:

(10) Sæweall uplang gesto #d wið Israhe #lum (Cd. Th. 197, 8; Exod. 303)‘A high sea-wall stood against Israel.’

The meaning of wiþþDat in this passage is not connected with hostility

but rather once again with the concept of proximity as if stating thatwhatever is against/opposite to someone/something is necessarily next to/

near someone/something. Therefore, this passage could easily be under-

stood as ‘a high sea-wall stood next to/near Israel’. But compare thispassage with the following sentence:

(11) Se wið mongum sto #d (Exon. Th. 121, 26; Gu # 294)‘That one stood against many.’

In this instance, wiþþDat does have a meaning that has a close associa-

tion with the notion of hostility. The question is: is the designation of

opposition an inherent feature of the semantics of this preposition, or is ita secondary development? Before we answer this question, let’s look at

those instances where wiþþDat expresses direction:

(12) Scearp cymeþ sceo wiþ o#þrum, ecg wið ecge (Exon. Th. 385, 8;Ra. 4, 41)

‘A pointed cloud comes toward/against another, an edge toward/

against an edge.’

Streamas wundon sund wið sande (Beo. Th. 431; B. 213)

‘Streams whirled water toward/against the sand (¼ the sandyshore).’

Ongan ic steppan forð a#na wið englum (Cd. Th. 280, 1; Sat 249)

‘I alone stepped forth against the angels.’

Bordrand onswa#f wið ðam gryregieste (Beo. Th. 5113; B. 2560)

‘Shield swung forward against the terrible stranger.’

74 Olga Thomason

In the first two examples, wiþþDat could be rendered as both ‘toward’

and ‘against’ whereas in the second two passages, the interpretation is

clearly ‘against’. It is important to note that in the last two sentences,there are other members (aside from the analyzed prepositional phrases)

that also express the meaning ‘against’: ongan ‘towards, against’ and

onswifan ‘turn against’ (the preposition/prefix on can also express the

meaning ‘against’ in line with its more frequent senses ‘on’, ‘upon’). It ispossible that it is these elements that ensure the correct reading of the

construction as ‘against’ as if the usage of wiþþDat alone is not enough

to take care of this meaning. On the other hand, multiple cognates of wiþpreserve the meaning ‘against,’ thus showing that the notion of opposition

(and proximity) is salient for the semantics of this preposition: cf. Goth.

wiþra ‘against, opposite,’ OCS. vutoru ‘other, second,’ Skt. vi ‘asunder,’Avestan vi- ‘asunder’ (Holthausen 1963: 401). Since the primary function

of wiþþDat is to mark a static notion, namely opposition, the location-

to-direction semantic development is most likely made possible by the syn-tagmatic features of this preposition, namely by its repeated occurrence in

combination with motion verbs and by the inherited location function of

the dative case that this preposition governs (see the discussion of thedirectional usages of to #þDat above).

Taking into consideration all of the discussed directional and location

usages of wiþþDat, one can suppose that the notion of opposition (sepa-ration) in connection with the concept of proximity is original for the

semantics of wiþþDat in Old English. But the notion of hostility is sec-

ondary and often reinstated in passages by elements other than wiþþDat.Such instances demonstrate a complex interface between the semantic and

syntactic characteristics of various members of a sentence in general and

prepositional phrases in particular. Compare also the occurrences ofto #þDat that also mark hostility but only in combination with words

that designate hostility:

(13) Monige ðe to # me # feohtaþ (Ps. Th. 55, 3)‘Many who fought against me.’

WiþþGen can also mark an object toward which a motion or an actionis directed. The meaning ‘toward’ is its primary function.

(14) Fleogan wið ðæs holtes (Byrht. Th. 131, 14; By. 18)

‘To fly to the forest’

There is also a rare case where this construction designates location that

could be understood as both ‘next to, near’ and ‘opposite to’:


(15) Sætt se Hæ #lend wið ðæs dores (Mk. Skt. Lind. 12, 41)

‘The Savior sat next to/opposite to the gate.’

However, this passage does not hold a great value for our discussion sinceit is a translation from the Latin version of the Bible and might simply

mirror the corresponding construction of the original: Et sedens Jesus

contra gazophylacium Mk.12, 41 (Itala 1970, II: 119).WiþþAcc unexpectedly shows a particular productivity in the designa-

tion of location (despite the fact that the accusative case usually marks

direction). It is probable that the semantics of the preposition itself prevailhere. Since the concept of proximity is prominent for this prepositional

phrase, it allows wiþþAcc to denote the location ‘near’ repeatedly:

(16) Wið ðæt do#msetl ic sitte (Æfc. Gr. 47; Zup. 269, 16)‘I sit near the tribunal.’

He # gesto#d wið steapne rond (Beo. Th. 5126; B. 2566)

‘He stood near the high edge.’

Just like in the instance with wiþþDat, wiþþAcc expresses the meaning‘against’ where it is combined with words marking hostility:

(17) Ic eom fa #h wið God (Cd. Th. 270, 28; Sat 97; Beo. Th 1627; B. 811)‘I am hostile toward/against God.’

In the instances where wiþþAcc expresses direction, it merely specifies

the meaning ‘to, toward’:

(18) Se Hæ #lend eode wið ða sæ # (Mt. Kmbl. 4, 18)

‘The Savior went to the sea.’

This prepositional phrase is rarely associated with a contrary motion or

action:

(19) Æ#r ge # sceonde wið gesceapu fremmen (Cd. Th. 149, 4; Gen. 2469)‘Before you injure (¼ drive against) the creatures, they will do (so).’

All of the discussed passages show that in Old English, wiþþDat,

wiþþAcc and wiþþGen often share the same or similar functions. Onseveral occasions these constructions express the same meaning within

one clause, therefore presenting a case of free variation:

(20) Breostnet wið ord and wið ecge ingang forsto #d (Beo. Th. 3102;B. 1549)

‘Coat of mail defended the entrance against a spear-point and

against a sword.’

76 Olga Thomason

The semantics of wiþþDat, wiþþAcc and wiþþGen emphasize the

salience of the two senses ‘near’ and ‘against’, thus designating the concep-

tual importance of these notions for the concept of directionality. It isbecause of this double-sided nature (together with the frequent occur-

rence of these prepositions in combination with words denoting opposite

entities/motions/actions) that it becomes possible for the semantics of

wiþþDat, wiþþAcc, and wiþþGen to be extended to designate suchnotions as hostility versus protection, exchange, address, etc. Directional

usages of these constructions are made possible by syntagmatic properties

of prepositions – their regular occurrence in combination with motionverbs.

To #ge #anþDat and onge#anþAcc/Dat are also found to express direc-

tions ‘to, toward’ and ‘against’. This is expected for these prepositionalphrases since they are compounds in which one of the components is a

preposition whose rich semantics already encompass a variety of direc-

tional notions including the meaning ‘against’ (the second unit is a formof ge #n, which is a rare word that is sometimes used as an adverb with the

meanings ‘yet,’ ‘still,’ ‘again,’ ‘further’ and sometimes used as an adjective

denoting ‘direct’).Onge#anþDat and onge #anþAcc are both found to designate static and

dynamic spatial notions (location and direction). In instances where these

constructions mark location, they specify only the meaning ‘opposite,against’:

(21) Ða # arn he # and gesto #d ongean ðam le #ge (Gen. 221, 11)

‘The he ran and stood against the bed.’

He # sæt ðæ #r him getæ#ht wæs ongean ðone cyngc (Ap. Th. 14, 13)

‘He sat there where it was instructed to him, against the king.’

Furthermore, both these phrases can express direction, marking the mean-

ings ‘to, toward’ and ‘against’:

(22) Him com seo menio ongean (Jn. Skt. 12, 18)‘The host came toward him.’

Fe #rdon ongean ðæ #m he #ðnum (Blickl. Homl. 203, 2)‘They marched against heavens.’

Hı # fe #rdon onge #n ðone bry #dguman (Mt. Kmbl. 25, I, 6)

‘They marched toward the bridegroom.’

Ongean stream (Cod. Dip. B. i. 502, 3: ii. 374, 10)

‘Against the stream (¼ against the direction of the stream flow)’


It is interesting to see how the meaning ‘against’ is promoted in the seman-

tics of onge #anþDat/Acc since we do not find any location meanings for

these phrases other than the ones designating ‘against’ even though theyboth still express the directional meanings ‘towards’ and ‘against’ with

similar frequencies. Since these prepositional constructions occur in com-

bination with similar (and sometimes the same) words (see examples

above), they are most likely in free variation.The semantics of to #ge #anþDat are limited to directional values and are

not extended to any other spatial notions (e.g., location). It can designate

both directional values ‘to, toward’ and ‘against’:

(23) Foerdon to #gægnes him (Jn. Skt. Lind. Rush. 12, 13)

‘They marched toward him.’

Hı # fe #rdon to #geanes ðæ #m he #ðenum (Homl. Th. i. 504, 27)

‘They marched against heavens.’

The concept of meeting plays an important role for the semantics of

to #ge #anþDat since it is frequently found in combination with verbs mean-

ing ‘to march, go (to meet)’. It is understood that when two people/objectsmove toward each other to meet at a certain point, they will be opposed to

each other (with or without hostility toward each other).

As the present study demonstrates, there is a great deal of overlap insemantic fields that these prepositional phrases cover. Practically all ana-

lyzed prepositional phrases are used to designate location and direction

values. Only the semantics of to #ge #anþDat and to #þAcc are limited to

the denotation of direction. The semantics of to #þDat are extended evenfurther, resulting in constructions where this phrase marks source. Such

divisions of semantic space create favorable conditions for a high level of

prepositional variation.As far as prepositional governance and its influence on prepositional

semantics goes, we find a variety of instances ranging from those where

the meaning of a prepositional phrase is an expected result (e.g., to #þAccdesignating the direction ‘to, toward’) to those where it is an outcome

opposite of the expected one (e.g., wiþþAcc marking the location

‘near’). These results are due to interplay among the semantics of a prepo-sition itself, meanings of verbs in collocation, and functions of cases which

these prepositions govern. Thus, in the case with to #þDat it is the seman-

tics of the preposition that promote the directional meaning. On the otherhand, the examples with wiþþDat show that the directional meaning is

primarily derived from the semantics of motion verbs.

78 Olga Thomason

Some combinatory properties of prepositional phrases create limitations

for these constructions. Thus, to #þGen has restricted usage occurring pri-

marily in combination with a demonstrative or interrogative pronoun. Asa consequence, it has a semantic range more limited than to #þDat, for

example.

The semantics of the investigated Old English data show a continuous

interplay among three concepts: directionality (the meaning ‘to, toward’),proximity (the meaning ‘next to, near’) and opposition (the meaning

‘against, opposite to’). It is obvious that for speakers of Old English, the

notions of proximity and opposition have close links with the notion ofdirection. We can even talk about di¤erent degrees of salience of the

notions of proximity and opposition for the Old English prepositional

phrases. Thus, we find prepositional phrases of three kinds: those forwhich the concept ‘against’ is the most important one (e.g., to #ge #anþDat),

those that present the salience of the notion ‘next to, near’ (e.g., to #þDat),

and, finally, those whose semantics comprise both of these meanings (e.g.,wiþþDat). It is important to note that the salience of a given concept (or

both) is retained by a preposition no matter what case it governs (cf. both

wiþþDat and wiþþAcc can designate the meanings ‘near’ and ‘against’).

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80 Olga Thomason

Commentary on Thomason, Notion of Direction andOld English Prepositional Phrases

Joanna Nykiel

This paper suggests a wider landscape in which to locate Thomason’s dis-

cussion of English prepositional phrases (PPs). Thomason points out that

there has been little work on the semantics of PPs beyond present-dayEnglish. Her data are intended to redress this imbalance by o¤ering insight

into the phrases expressing direction in the Old English (OE) period. The

study shows that the traditional correlation between the accusative caseand the sense of direction does not always apply in OE. The accusative

may in fact carry a location meaning when in a construction with preposi-

tion wiþ. Further, the dative, normally associated with location, is alsofound in phrases that denote direction. This e¤ect is strongest in sequences

headed by preposition to #, where the accusative is an option too, though a

‘‘notably less frequent’’ one.Assuming that it is possible to identify OE cases by nominal su‰xes, it

would have been helpful to see numerical data along with a chronological

organization of the results. Allen (1995) and more recently Krygier (2002)have argued that the case system breaks down already in OE, sometimes

leaving the dative and accusative forms identical. The data seem particu-

larly dubious to me where one relies on final -e as an indicator of thedative because it might just as well be the accusative, as is the case with

strong feminine nouns, e.g., cwalu in example (1). The inclusion of the

temporal factor in particular would have imparted more precision toThomason’s findings and helped warrant a more detailed analysis of

them. Suggesting an approach is, inasmuch as the results allow it, my pur-

pose in what follows. Thomason’s data raise two general issues: repeateduse leading to entrenchment and a possible fit of the data with the con-

structional framework. I address them in this order.

I find it indeed puzzling that the distribution of cases is so variableacross phrases. But perhaps there is an explanation for the variety. Central

to Thomason’s discussion is the contrast between the behavior of Ps in, on,

binnan, innan and ofer on the one hand and that of to #, wiþ, onge#an andto #ge #an on the other. She notes that the former set selects the dative for

location and the accusative for direction in the context of containment and

surface. The latter set appears to somewhat randomly select the dative or

accusative with respect to both direction and location. Part of the explana-tion may lie in frequency of occurrence, to which I now turn.

It has been recognized that grammar is shaped by speakers’ linguistic

experience: strings of words experienced more often will have stronger

mental representations than those that are only sporadically encountered.This recognition is formalized in usage-based models with an emphasis

on how particular exemplars may guide semantic change (Barlow and

Kemmer 2000, Langacker 2000, Bybee 2001, 2006). Because speakers arebelieved to keep a mental record of all the contexts associated with a given

string, that string’s representation is variable to the extent that it may

accommodate new contexts and meanings or lose previous ones if theybecome too infrequent. It could be that the division of labor between

the dative and accusative in surface/containment contexts arose through

repetition (entrenchment); if there was prior variation, it might have beeneliminated due to insu‰cient frequency.

With respect to other contexts, Thomason argues that directional uses

of the dative may be supported by aspects of the string it is part of: thesemantics of the verb or that of the governing preposition. For exam-

ple, motion verbs impose a direction meaning on the following PP. If the

preposition is to #, a direction meaning receives additional support. But thesequence to #þ dative can indicate location and source as well – are these

its basic meanings? It is possible that the meaning of direction was inferred

for to #þ dative and added to its representation as a result of frequent usewith motion verbs. The accusative could then be the case originally asso-

ciated with direction, and continue to be used so, presumably at a rate

that still allows it to exist as an alternative. The preference for the stringto #þ dative with the meaning of direction, however, does not yet solve the

issue of whether to #þ accusative antedates it, leading to a later extension

to the dative, or whether the reverse is true, or whether both phrases oc-curred in parallel. What would help us decide between these scenarios is

considering the temporal factor because a rise in frequency may often

reflect a new use developing out of an earlier one, pushing it into a second-ary role (see, for example, Bybee (2006) on the development of the be

going to construction).

Whatever the scenario, it emerges for the data that directional mean-ings are best taken to derive from accessing an entire verb phrase as a

unit and not as individual constituents, which enables a constructional

treatment in the sense of Croft (2001), Goldberg (2006) and De Smet and

82 Joanna Nykiel

Cuyckens (2007). In the formalism of construction grammar, strings form

micro-constructions (‘‘individual construction-types’’) based on their con-

texts of use; these may then align to form higher-level structures: meso-and macro-constructions (Traugott 2008a,b, Trousdale 2008). OE may

have seen formations along these lines. As long as the accusative is

selected, a directional meaning is arguably constructed out of the con-

stituents of a verb phrase; an extension to the dative, though, signals apartial loss of constituent transparency. If this were the case (cf. first

scenario), a micro- (or meso-) construction formed in OE. In fact, such a

construction would have formed even if the second and third scenariosturned out to be true, only it must have formed prior to OE. It would be

interesting to know whether Old English PPs may be recast as part of

direction (or location) constructions. This possibility would bring asolution to the otherwise puzzling variation.

References

Allen, Cynthia1995 Case-Marking and Reanalysis: Grammatical Relations from Old

to Early Modern English. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Barlow, Michael, and Suzanne Kemmer, eds.2000 Usage-based Models of Language. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publica-

tions.Bybee, Joan2006 From Usage to Grammar: The Mind’s Response to Repetition.

Language 82(4): 711–733.Bybee, Joan2001 Phonology and Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press.Croft, William2001 Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological

Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press.De Smet, Hendrik, and Hubert Cuyckens2007 Diachronic Aspects of Complementation: Constructions, En-

trenchment, and the Matching Problem. In Studies in the Historyof the English Language III: Managing Chaos: Strategies forIdentifying Change in English, edited by Christopher M. Cainand Geo¤rey Russom, 187–213. Berlin/New York: Mouton deGruyter.

Goldberg. Adele2006 Constructions at Work: The Nature of Generalization in Lan-

guage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Commentary on Thomason 83

Krygier, Marcin2002 A Re-classification of Old English Nouns. Studia Anglica Posna-

niensia 38: 311–319.Langacker, Ronald2000 Grammar and Conceptualization. Berlin/New York: Mouton de

Gruyter.Traugott, Elizabeth Closs2008a ‘All that he endeavoured to prove was’: On the Emergence of

Grammatical Constructions in Dialogual and Dialogic Contexts.In Language in Flux. Dialogue Coordination, Language Varia-tion, Change and Evolution Volume 1, edited by Robin Cooperand Ruth Kempson. London: College Publications.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs2008b Grammaticalization, Constructions and the Incremental De-

velopment of Language: Suggestions from the Development ofDegree Modifiers in English. In Variation, Selection, Develop-ment. Probing the Evolutionary Model of Language Change,edited by Gerhard Jaeger, 219–250. Berlin/New York: Moutonde Gruyter.

Trousdale, Graeme2008 Constructions in Grammaticalization and Lexicalization: Evi-

dence from the History of a Composite Predicate Constructionin English. In Constructional Approaches to English Grammar,edited by Graeme Trousdale and Nikolas Gisborne, 33–67.Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

84 Joanna Nykiel

Response to Commentary by Nykiel

Olga Thomason

Nykiel o¤ers a thorough and insightful commentary to the article. Thisresponse is organized around the main points which were brought up in

her discussion. The first argument is connected with the syncretism of the

case system in Old English and grammatical and semantic ambiguity ofwords (like strong feminine nouns) that have identical forms in the dative

and accusative. This argument is reasonable, however, not all nominals

have lost their distinctions in these cases (see example (2)), and some pre-

serve it in plural even though they lost it in singular (like strong femininenouns). Preserved dative/accusative distinction in third-person singular

pronouns (example (1)) and demonstrative pronouns makes the posited

problem even more tangible (example (2)). Thus, it is still plausible totalk about the designation of direction by to #þDat.

Answering Nykiel’s question about the basic meaning of to #þDat, we

would like to stress that it is precisely the fact the basic meaning ofto #þDat is direction (and not location or source, which this construction

also marks albeit less frequently) that initially triggered this study. This

meaning could be a result of frequent use with motion verbs (as suggestedby the reviewer and mentioned in the article). It could also be due to the

case syncretism and broadening of semantic range of the Old English

dative (see the discussion in the article). However, the opinion is main-tained that the denotation of direction is inherent to the semantics of to #since there is an abundance of Indo-European cognates of this preposition

that retain the directional value (see examples in the article).It is agreed that any semantic analysis should be derived from an entire

construction including its verbal and nominal components (as we hoped to

show in the article). However, we are not eager to treat them as a one-wayrelationship where a verbal head dictates the choice of a preposition and a

preposition, in turn, rules the selection of case. The relationship is much

more complex. There are instances where the semantics of a prepositionhas a decisive value (directional usages of to #þDat, in our view) and ex-

amples where it is the meaning of a motion verb that prevails (directional

usages of wiþþDat). The role of the accusative case whose primary func-

tions are connected with the designation of direction are exemplified by

means that are used in Old English to express the meanings ‘into’

(inþAcc, onþAcc, binnanþAcc, innanþAcc) and ‘onto’ (onþAcc,oferþAcc). In addition, one has to keep check with conceptional spe-

cifics. In our case the notion of direction is connected with the concepts

of proximity and opposition as exemplified by the Old English data. This

cognitive complexity adds to the level of variation found in Old Englishtexts.

Nykiel’s perceptive suggestion to present a chronological organization

and statistical analysis of the data anticipates the next step of our research,which intends to add a diachronic spin to a currently primarily synchronic

study and hopes to mark the exact course and stages of semantic develop-

ment of prepositional phrases denoting direction in Old English. This, ofcourse, should make possible the explanation of the distinction between

direction and location usages with the help of the frequency of occurrence

suggested by the reviewer.

86 Olga Thomason

Survival of the Strongest: Strong Verb Inflectionfrom Old to Modern English

Sherrylyn Branchaw

Old English had a relatively robust system of strong verbs, 367 that the

extant corpus allows us to count. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries,

the system began to break down in a serious way, leaving us in ModernEnglish with 72 of these inflected as purely weak and 78 inflected with at

least some strong forms.1 The forces behind the weakening process have

been treated in detail by Marcin Krygier (1994) among others; the ques-tion I address here is why those specific 78 verbs, and not others, remained

strong to the present day. Because the eleventh century, immediately pre-

ceding the breakdown, is one of the worst-attested periods in English his-tory, I find it most useful to look at the verb system of Old English to see

what factors already present then allowed certain verbs to resist the regu-

larizing tendencies of Middle English. Where the Old English data areinsu‰cient to explain the modern outcome of a verb, I examine the state

of the language at the relevant later period.

Since the weakening process is still ongoing, the status of some verbs inthe present day is uncertain. For example, dive has as a preterite only dove

for some speakers, only dived for other speakers, and variation for other

speakers. I have, therefore, included three categories in defining themodern outcome of a verb: strong, weak, and uncertain. With the under-

standing that usage will vary slightly from speaker to speaker, assignment

of verbs to the categories has proceeded according to my own usage,which is American and is rather conservative, retaining e.g., sank, trod,

and throve.

The major factors I examine are type frequency, by which I mean thenumber of verbs with the same ablaut pattern; token frequency, by which

I mean the number of occurrences of that specific verb in the Old English

corpus; the shape of the root, not including the vowel; and the e‰ciency ofthe ablaut pattern in making distinctions among principal parts.

1. I count using the list in Quirk et al. (1985).

A cautionary note on token frequency: due to the nature of the searches

I was able to perform on the online Dictionary of Old English Corpus,

these numbers should be viewed as ballpark figures only, and no statisticalanalysis should be attempted on them. They are solely for the purpose of

determining which verbs were more or less common than others, not how

much more or less common. Further research will be done to obtain

figures with higher accuracy and precision so that more detailed conclu-sions can be drawn.

For some forms, I was unable to obtain even ballpark figures in the

time available due to homography with much more common words, suchas the past tense of etan, æt, meaning ‘ate,’ and the far more common

preposition æt, meaning ‘at.’ These forms simply have no number beside

them in the tables. The absence of any number is to be distinguishedfrom the presence of a 0 in the following way: no number means that the

search was unsuccessful due to homography. A 0 means that a search was

successfully carried out, and no instances of the form in question werefound.

The size of the data set can be reduced somewhat by eliminating a

group of certain infrequent verbs in the following manner. Looking atTable 1, I define a ‘‘fully attested’’ verb as one for which the vocalism of

each of its four principal parts is attested in Old English, according to the

compilation of data in Krygier (1994), with modern surviving verbschecked using a search on the electronic corpus. In the first row, Old

English had 367 strong verbs, of which 224 were fully attested, which

Table 1

# verbs # fullyattested

% fullyattested

Old English strong 367 224 61

Modern English descendants 150 120 81

MdE weak 72 52 72

MdE strong 62 55 89

MdE uncertain 16 13 81

MdE at least some strong(uncertainþ strong)

78 68 87

88 Sherrylyn Branchaw

comes to 61%. Of those 367 verbs, 150 survive in Modern English, and

120 of those, or 80%, were fully attested in Old English. Of those 150 sur-

viving verbs, 72 are now inflected as weak, and 62 as strong. Of those 62strong verbs, 89% were fully attested in Old English.

If we assume a correlation between ‘‘fully attested’’ and ‘‘frequent,’’ we

can conclude that in the very broadest sense, the frequency of the verb

was a significant factor not only in determining its lexical fate in thelanguage – in other words, whether the word survived at all – but also in

determining the survival of its strong inflection.

My conclusion is therefore that any verb not fully attested, if it survivesat all, will survive as weak, unless special conditions prevail, namely that it

can be easily fit into one of the most productive strong patterns, as in the

case of slink. Therefore, I reduce the set of verbs I am considering to thefully attested verbs as well as to those handful of surviving strong verbs

that were not fully attested. To investigate the e¤ects of type frequency, I

sorted these verbs into groups with identical ablaut. I refer to these groupsas ‘‘series’’ to avoid confusion with the traditional grouping into ‘‘classes.’’

The tables in this paper are grouped in series according to Old English

type frequency, from highest to lowest, with some mergers I will talkabout. The first column contains the modern descendant of the Old

English verb, which may or may not have the same meaning, and the sec-

ond through fifth columns contain the four principal parts – infinitive,preterite first and third singular, preterite plural and second singular, and

past participle – along with the ballpark token frequency counts of each

form where obtainable from the corpus search.For the first two series, I have given only lists for the outcomes of

verbs, which seemed the most e‰cient method of presentation given the

minimal impact of token frequency and the large number of survivingverbs. Including each verb on a table line would have added very little

information in a great deal of space.

The Old English type frequencies are given in parentheses in the head-ing of each series, e.g., Series I (28). Modern English verbs that are

italicized were not fully attested in Old English but survive as strong

nonetheless.

Series I (28)

Strong: bind, drink, find, grind, begin, run, shrink, spring, spin, sting, sing,

sink, swim, swing, wind, win, wring, stink, cling, slink

Weak: burn, climb

Survival of the Strongest 89

Series II (28)

Strong: bite, drive, ride, rise, shrive, smite, write, shine, stride, strike

(transferred to Series I)

Weak: glide, gripe, slide, writhe

Uncertain: bide, shit, cleave

Series III (26)

Table 2. Strong Outcome

Modern English Infinitive Pret. sg. Pret. pl. Past participle

fly1 fle #ogan 63 fle #ah 190 flugon 118 flogen 13

choose ce #osan 42 ce #as 322 curon 79 coren 859

freeze fre #osan 2 fre #as 2 fruron 4 froren 6

shoot sce #otan 30 sce #at scuton 19 scoten 31

1 Three principal parts of fly and flee are identical.

Table 3. Weak Outcome


chew ce #owan 8 ce #aw 5 cuwon 2 cowen 5

creep cre #opan 3 cre #ap 5 crupon 5 cropen 6

flee2 fle #on 229 fle #ah 190 flugon 118 flogen 13

lie le #ogan 19 le #ah 12 lugon 27 logen 19

reek re #ocan 14 re #ac 2 rucon 0 rocen 1

seethe se #oðan 3 se #að 4 sudon 4 soden 162

2No figures were obtainable for mete due to excessive homophony.

From the first three series, it emerges that type frequency was not the most

important factor. Here we have three series with nearly identical frequencycounts, yet the percentage of verbs surviving as strong is dramatically

lower for Series III. To explain this phenomenon, we must remember that

the nature of the strong verb is to indicate grammatical changes through achange in the root vowel. If the vowels in the principal parts of a verb are

not easily distinguishable from one another, then the grammatical changes


are indicated only weakly and, from a perceptual point of view, such an

ablaut pattern will be disfavored.

The robustness of the ablaut pattern correlates well with the outcomesof the first three series. [i]P[a]P[u], the well-known vowel triangle, are

maximally distinct and [i:]P[a:]P[i] moderately so. In Series III, however,

[eo] spelled <e #o> and [æa] spelled <e #a> underwent a near merger in early

Middle English to [e:] and [�:] (Lass 1992: 42–45) and in some dialects hadbecome homophonous already in Old English. Because [e:] and [�:] are sosimilar to each other, as a pair they do a poor job of distinguishing a past

tense from a present. I conclude that Series III verbs were more susceptibleto the use of the dental preterite than they would have been had the two

vowels been more distinct from each other. Taking into account this

greater (relative to Series I and II) tendency to become weak, the verbsfrom Series III survive as weak or strong according to their relative token

frequency in Old English, in general. I must leave freeze, with its low

token frequency, for further research.At least three pieces of evidence make it clear that root shape had some

impact in Series I. Series I had a high survival rate of verbs without fully

attested vocalism in Old English, such as stink, cling, and slink. As men-tioned above, when the concept of ‘‘fully attested’’ was introduced, verbs

not fully attested in English continued as strong to the present day only if

they could be fit into a very productive series such as this one. Further-more, both denominal verbs such as ring and string and Norse verbs such

as fling were transferred into this series in Middle English.

By the sixteenth century (OED), a critical mass had been reached, andthe final velar became the most salient part of the root without requiring

the presence of a nasal. An initial consonant cluster, especially one begin-

ning with [s], was helpful but not necessary.Evidence for the importance of the velar in defining this series is found

in the reassignment of certain verbs into this category (Bybee 2001: 126).

The verbs stick and dig ought to be weak, but because of their final velars,they became conjugated like slink in Middle English even though they had

no nasal. Similarly, strike ought to be conjugated strikePstrokePstricken

but because of its final velar was susceptible to being conjugated strikePstruck. In the case of stick and strike, the consonant cluster beginning with

[s] made them even more similar to many verbs in this series, and thus

they transferred more easily. From strike especially we see the importanceof root shape since the word properly belongs to Series II, which has

always had relatively high type frequency, and the vowel of strike does

not even match the usual vowel of Series I, which is [I]. In a product-


oriented schema, this mismatch is not as surprising as it might be in other

theories because inputs need not be identical in form. So if the presentform allows for the creation of a preterite that follows the type of Series

I, the di¤erences in the vowels are not problematic. In Modern English,

Bybee points out that the e¤ects of the root shape are felt even morestrongly, as seen in the nonstandard preterites snuck and drug of sneak

and drag, respectively (2001: 126).

Table 4 shows the factors that influenced the outcome of verbs in thefirst three series. Series I was favored by high type frequency, optimal

vowel distinctness, and easily definable root shape, and accordingly it has

the largest percentage of verbs surviving as strong. Series II was favoredby type frequency and by vowel distinctness, and accordingly it has a

lower percentage of verbs surviving as strong compared to Series I but

relatively high compared to other series. Series III was favored by type fre-quency alone, and accordingly it began to break down both earlier and

more thoroughly than the first two series, leaving Modern English with a

still lower percentage of surviving strong verbs.In Series IV and IX, the importance of the function of ablaut over type

frequency also appears clearly. Here the two series, with identical vocalism

in the first three principal parts, merged their past participles in favor of

the vowel /o/ from Series IX. This process began in Old English (Krygier1994: 54), and I therefore categorize them into a single series by the time

of the great shift to weak verbs in early Middle English. The [o] participles

in Series IX had a lower type frequency, but [o] is more distinct from [e]and [æ] than is [e], and the more distinctive participle was extended, not

the more frequent one. Furthermore, all verbs from these series that

remain strong to the present day now have preterites in [o] taken fromthe past participle. This pattern reinforces the conclusion that distinctness

of vowel quality heavily favors survival. Due to the scarcity of surviving

weak verbs from this class, it is di‰cult to analyze the e¤ects of token fre-quency, but wreak looks oddly frequent for a weak verb. It may have been

Table 4. Factors A¤ecting Series I-III

Type Frequency Consistent Root Shape Vowel distinctness

Series I þ þ þSeries II þ � þSeries III þ � �


due to analogy with work if metathesis is applied often enough to the

[wr] cluster2.

Back-up support for the survival of strong verbs in IV and IX is foundin the root structure. Krygier finds a 90% correlation between preservation

of strong verbs in the 12th century and the presence of a single root-final

sonorant (1994: 248–249). The transfer of wear from the weak system to

the strong on the analogy of bear and tear (OED) is also evidence for thee¤ects of root structure here. Also transferred to this series was wake from

Series VI based on the analogy of break and speak (OED), all of which

sounded a great deal more alike in the sixteenth century than they donow. In Table 7, I use Leith’s table showing the sociolinguistic distribution

of vowels for mate, meat, and meet in 1600 to show what the possibilities

for our verbs are. The reader is advised to keep in mind that as their spell-



speak sprecan 276 spræc spræcon 310 sprecen 53

tread tredan 19 træd 28 trædon 14 treden 21

weave wefan 10 wæf 1 wæfon 1 wefen 26

bear beran 333 bær 336 bæron 127 boren 532

break brecan 142 bræc 221 bræcon 96 brocen

steal stelan 43 stæl 47 stælon 17 stolen 48

tear teran 6 tær 17 tæron 17 toren 15



mete2 metan mæt mæton meten

wreak wrecan 112 wræc 80 wræcon 7 wrecen 68

quell cwelan 5 cwæl 1 cwælon 4 cwelen 1

2No figures were obtainable for mete due to excessive homophony.

2. Suggested to me by Donka Minkova.


ings suggest, break and speak were once pronounced identically, and theirmodern pronunciation reflects the selection of an unshifted break from a

dialect that did not undergo the stage of the Great Vowel Shift that raised

the vowel of speak (Lass 1999: 96–98).

The same product-oriented schema that allows us to expect dug, struck,and even snuck to match swung and stung allows woke to match broke

despite di¤erences in the infinitive. Wake, much like shit, had only two

principal parts attested in Old English and now has a preterite fromanother series and an unexpected infinitive (OED). In the case of wake,

the infinitive comes from the weak verb. Shit we will return to later.

In Series IV, like VI and IX, the survival of verbs as strong or weakcorrelates reasonably well with their token frequency. These three series

have in common relatively high type frequency and good vowel distribu-

tion. For the figures of Series VI, see Tables 8 through 10. The outstand-ing exceptions to survival based on token frequency are wreak and fare.

The OED attributes the weakening of fare to confusion with its weak

counterpart, and the weakening of wreak, as mentioned above, may havebeen due to confusion with work. It still remains to be asked, of course,

why these particular verbs were more susceptible to confusion with their

weak counterparts than other similar verbs such as steal, and that willrequire further investigation.

Few verbs survive from Series VII. None retains the original strong

inflection; three are unequivocally weak, and one, namely dive, hesitatesbetween strong and weak, but the strong inflection is that of another

series. The figures appear in Tables 11 and 12, and individual verbs are

discussed following the tables. Bow, according to the OED, began toabsorb the meanings of its weak causative bey in the 13th and 14th cen-

turies, and simultaneously it became weak. Its weak outcome is therefore

like fare and possibly wreak, which as seen above also became confusedwith weak counterparts. Brook has no attested strong forms in Middle

English (Krygier 1994: 257), so we can conclude that it was not robustly

strong even in Old English. Dive, the one verb from this series with strong

Table 7. Wake, break, speak c. 1600. (Leith 1983: 148–9)

Aristocracy Bourgeoisie Lower Class

meet [i:] meet [i:] meet [i:]

break/speak meat [�:]/[e:] meat [e:] meat [i:]

wake mate [æ:]/[�:] mate [e:] mate [e:]


forms, takes its infinitive from the weak system and its strong preterite and

participle from Series VII to create a paradigm that fits nicely into Series

II (OED).The fact that so few verbs from this series survive into Modern English

should not, of course, be taken to say anything about the type frequency

of the series in Middle English. The Middle English type frequency num-

bers will need to be computed separately, relative to those of all the otherseries. I point this out because of the disparity between the similar Old

English type frequencies of Series VI and VII and the number of modern

survivals. The disparities are presented in Table 13.There were two other series, V and VIII, that merged the last principal

part that kept them separate, this time for a phonological reason. In the

early part of the Middle Ages, [a:w] and [o:w] regularly became [ou]. I



(for)sake sacan 130 so #c 139 so #con 29 sacen 22

shake sceacan 21 sceo #c 80 sceo #con 3 sceacen 25

stand standan 473 sto #d 766 sto #don 296 standen 80

draw dragan 7 dro #h 2 dro #gon 11 dragen 21

wake wo #c 41 wo #con 14



fare faran 573 fo #r fo #ron 291 faren 291 [sic]

wade wadan 13 wo #d wo #don 2 waden 4

wash wascan 6 wo #x 2 wo #xon 1 waxen 2

Table 10. Uncertain Outcome


grave grafan 8 gro #f 9 gro #fon 2 grafen 28

lade hladan 12 hlo #d 9 hlo #don 8 hladen 27

shave scafan 3 sco #f sco #fon 0 scafen 4


therefore think it fair to consider these as one class with high type fre-

quency by the time of the breakdown of the strong verb system. However,

unlike in most series, including the otherwise similar IV/IX, the survivalof strong versus weak verbs in V/VIII does not evidently follow token

frequency lines. Figures are presented in Tables 14, 15, and 16. Grow

and throw have inexplicably low token frequencies to survive as strongalthough with the proviso that homophony prevented counts of the pre-

terite of throw. If these two survive as strong, one would expect flow to

do so as well with the same root shape, ablaut, and type frequency, and

significantly higher token frequency, which is not the case. The verbs ofthis series remain a mystery to me.

All verbs in Series X and above have low type frequencies, and several

have frequencies as low as 1, meaning they are unique patterns. Accord-ingly, they have a low survival rate of strong verbs, and generally only

verbs with very high token frequencies survive. Verbs belonging to a series

higher than X have type frequencies of no more than 7, and it is at thispoint that I have grouped all the remaining verbs together rather than

giving separate tables for each. Because of the high numbers of verbs sur-

viving as weak, I give only a selection of those in Table 23.



brook bru #can 189 bre #ac 50 brucon 13 brocen

bow bu #gan 271 be #ah 138 bugon 111 bogen 43

shove scu #fan 30 sce #af scufon 14 scofen 40



dive du #fan 12 de #af dufon 1 dofen 3

Table 13

Old English type frequency # of Modern English survivals

Series VI 11 11

Series VII 10 4




grow gro #wan 15 gre #ow 10 gre #owon 3 gro #wen 3

blow bla #wan 16 ble #ow 57 ble #owon 2 bla #wen 40

know cna #wan 242 cne #ow 341 cne #owon 96 cna #wen 82

throw ðra #wan 2 ðre #ow ðre #owon ðra #wen 15



flow flo #wan 24 fle #ow 51 fle #owon 24 flo #wen 22

row ro #wan 9 re #ow 8 re #owon 3 ro #wen 3

mow ma #wan 2 me #ow me #owon 2 ma #wen 2



sow sa #wan se #ow 26 se #owon 9 sa #wen 6



fall feallan 91 fe #oll 209 fe #ollon 184 feallen 86

hold healdan 828 he #old 1047 he #oldon 256 healden 473



fold fealdan 3 fe #old 19 fe #oldon 2 fealden 21

wield3 wealdan we #old 67 we #oldon 8 wealden 25

wax weaxan 62 we #ox 126 we #oxon 25 weaxen 53

3Wield is a result of the merger of strong wealdan and weak wieldan according tothe OED.


Series XI and greater

Sorting out the relative impacts of root shape, token frequency, and

vowel distinctness is interesting. In general, verbs with high token fre-

quency, in particular of the preterite singular, survive as strong. As weexpect, the lower the type frequency, the higher the token frequency needs

to be for a verb to come out as strong. Consider for example step as com-

pared to weave in Series IV above. There are no root shape e¤ects, nearlysimilar ablaut pattern once the participial [o] of weave was transferred to

the preterite in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and a much more

frequent preterite for step, yet the preterite of step has been stepped sincethe Middle Ages (OED; Krygier 1994). The lower type frequency of step

was obviously what disfavored it for survival. In many cases, however,

a type frequency of less than 10 overlaps with the presence of a liquid-

consonant cluster, which Krygier finds a significant factor in the weaken-ing process during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (1994: 248).


ModernEnglish

Infinitive Pret. sg. Pret. pl. Past participle

slay sle #an 281 slo #h >365 slo #gon 325 slagen 355

lie licgan 76 læg 440 lægon 11 legen

sit sittan 164 sæt 663 sæton 309 seten

give4 giefan 16 geaf 785 ge #afon 50 giefen 20

get4 gietan 75 geat >345 ge #aton 170 gieten 65

eat etan 206 æt æton 146 eten 9

swear swerian 40 swo #r 174 swo #ron 30 sworen 28

come cuman 826 co #m 6050cwo #m 425

co #mon 1023cwo #mon 65

cumen 580

fight feohtan 89 feaht 269 fuhton 230 fohten 19

see se #on 803 seah 1691 sa #won 728 sewen 613

4 The Old Norse borrowings account for the initial [g] in Modern English, whichwould have been [ j] if from Old English.


Two cases where verbs with high token frequency failed to remain

strong are outstanding: let and read. Both have low type frequency, high

token frequency – unfortunately due to homophony I was unable toobtain figures for the preterite singular of either – limited vowel distinct-

ness, especially after [æ:] became [�:], and both end in dentals.


A selection of carve, starve, warp, help, melt, swallow, leap, flay, sleep, read,let, burst, braid, ban, span, step, yield, yelp, weep, shed, shape, delve, spurn,thresh/thrash


carve ceorfan 59 cearf 47 curfon 19 corfen 69

help helpan 106 healp 9 hulpon 2 holpen 36

melt meltan 13 mealt 6 multon 5 molten 13

swallow swelgan 33 swealh 45 swulgon 15 swolgen 10

leap hle #apan 6 hle #op 17 hle #opon 3 hle #apen 1

sleep slæpan 2 sle #p 56 sle #pon 31 slæpen 1

read rædan 159 re #d re #don 2 ræden

let lætan 512 le #t le #ton læten 360

burst berstan 25 bærst 79 burston 36 borsten 16



shear scieran 1 scear scearon scoren 31

heave hebban 104 ho #f ho #fon 14 hafen 7

hang ho #n he #ng 3 he #ngon 11 hangen 1

swell swellan 2 swealh 43 swullon swollen 38

beat be #atan 18 be #ot be #oton 22 be #aten 31

hew he #awan 19 he #ow he #owon 11 he #awen 29

bid biddan 579 bæd 1068 bædon 330 beden 105


Now, Krygier finds a strong enough correlation between dental-final

verbs and the shift to weak in the twelfth century for him to conclude

that root-final dentals triggered the disintegration. His explanation forthe phenomenon is that the Norman French speakers, using English as a

second language, reinterpreted the root-final dental as the dental preterite.

Anglo-Saxons, with native-speaker intuitions about which verbs were

weak and which were strong, interpreted that as the speakers of the pres-tige dialect inflecting strong verbs as weak, and they generalized it to the

weakening but the most salient strong verbs (1994: 148).

Although relatively little e¤ect by the Normans on the English gram-mar has been demonstrated3, weakening of strong verbs is a move in the

direction of simplifying the grammar, and therefore I consider it at least

possible that once the Normans triggered the change, the Anglo-Saxonsmight have continued to carry it out. I am not committed to his explana-

tion, but I would like to point out that no matter who or what triggered

the change, if the shift from strong to weak indeed began among dental-final verbs, several of these verbs ablauted with vowels of a low degree of

perceptual distinctness. Examples include let, read, shed, and beat. In each

case, the vowel of the preterite was a front mid vowel or diphthong thatbecame a front mid vowel in Early Middle English, and in each case the

vowel of the present tense was a front mid vowel or diphthong that

became a front mid vowel. If Norman speakers, or even native speakers,could hardly hear the di¤erence between the root of the strong past and

of the present, and if the preterite already had a dental at the end, they

might all the more easily have been reinterpreted as weak.In contrast, verbs ending in dentals with distinctive vowels in the pre-

sent and preterite or participle, such as writePwrotePwritten and sitPsat

survive as strong. Their survival indicates that the dental alone did notfate a verb to become weak and that additional explanation, such as vowel

distinctness, is called for.

Sit is perhaps the strongest of the strong verbs. Despite its dental andlow type frequency, sit had a high enough token frequency to continue to

3. There is more evidence for Norse influence on the grammar of English, butin most cases where the OE verb is strong, the Norse cognate is also strong.In fact, in some cases where the Norse verb is weak, e.g., fling, the OE verbis strong and remains so. Whether the interaction between two languageswith robust strong verb systems but with di¤ering vowel qualities in manypreterites – e.g., OE bær and ON bar – would be enough to trigger a generalshift toward weakening verbs, I cannot answer definitively, but I doubt it.


be inflected as strong, which itself is not surprising. What may come as a

surprise, depending on the framework in which one operates, is that sit

must have been largely responsible for the preterite shat of shit and prob-ably the preterite spat of spit. Shit should conjugate shitePshote, and spit

was originally weak (OED). The problem is that the process of analogy is

not well understood by linguists. In a nearest neighbor model, the most

similar form already present in the lexicon, in this case sat, provides thetemplate for the new form being produced, in this case the preterites of

shit and spit.

Other findings, though, including those of Bybee (2001: 124), suggestthat a type frequency of more than three verbs should be necessary for

productivity. Furthermore, even if one counters that other verbs, such as

bidPbad, display the same pattern, Moder (1992) finds that ‘‘as hightoken frequency leads to greater autonomy, items with high token fre-

quency have weaker connections to related forms and thus are more likely

to become independent and less likely to contribute to the formation ofproductive classes’’ (Bybee 2001: 136). According to this principle, a type

including sitPsat and bidPbad, for example, should not take in new

members like spit and shit because sitPsat should be treated as an isolate.A resolution may lie in the use of a framework that allows for analogies

to multiple neighbors. If in the sixteenth century, spit was perceived as

closely resembling both sit and spin in di¤erent respects, then the preteritessat and span might both have contributed to the formation of the preterite

spat. Then, by the nineteenth century, speakers of the language have sitPsat, spitPspat, and spinPspan, which would all tend to contribute towardshat as one of the options for the preterite of shit. However, the jury is still

out on whether this sort of multiple analogy e¤ect is possible in grammars:

Albright and Hayes (2003: 152) are rather emphatic that it is not.From the results obtained in this paper, I conclude that the single most

important factor in preserving the strong inflection of a verb was the per-

ceptual ease of distinguishing the vowels of the principal parts. Tokenfrequency and root shape are hard to rank with respect to one another.

Within series of all type frequencies, with isolated exceptions, token fre-

quency was responsible for selecting which survived as weak and whichas strong. Root shape was definitely responsible for the transfer of a verb

from one series to another or from outside the strong verb system into it.

Root shape played a significant role in holding existing strong verbs in thesystem, which is especially visible when the verb was poorly attested in

Old English. Type frequency seems less important than the other factors

as type of high frequencies might have low survival rates, and isolated


type frequencies might have robust strong inflection, depending on the

other factors. It is certainly not unimportant, however, as reflected in the

organization of this paper. The lower the type frequency, the greater theother factors, especially token frequency, must be in order to keep a verb

strong.

Regarding the more general theoretical implications, the strong verbs

support a product-oriented schema in which a preterite of a desired shape,such as struck and dug is derived from inputs of di¤erent shapes – strike

and dig. There is also some evidence for multiple analogies in which one

new form may be produced by analogy with multiple existing forms.Much work, however, remains to be done on the development of the

strong verbs. I intend to do a more accurate and precise token frequency

count of forms in Old English using the searchable corpus and to ob-tain frequency counts from Middle English and perhaps Early Modern

English. Toward that end, there exist searchable parsed corpora from

those periods from the Penn Helsinki project, as well as other resources,such as Long’s dissertation The English Strong Verb: From Chaucer to

Caxton. Once the numbers are more reliable, statistical analyses can be

carried out to find the answer to the question ‘‘How frequent is frequentenough?’’

The verbs that are historically weak but synchronically strong, verbs of

the leadPled type, and historically weak but synchronically partiallystrong verbs of the keepPkept type, must be included in the study. Such

verbs both provide further examples in the language of indicating gram-

matical change through a change in the vowel, which must have beenimportant in the preservation of the historically strong verbs, and they

provide analogies for specific strong verbs, such as readPread.

Di¤erent models of analogy will be tested to see how well they predictthe outcomes of these data. Hayes and Albright (2003), among others,

have done a study with modern native speakers to see how they handle

nonce verbs and have produced a model based on their study, but to myknowledge, no one has investigated the success of di¤erent analogical

models in explaining the data of Middle English.

I intend to quantify statements about vowel distribution with as muchprecision as possible. Flemming’s dissertation Auditory Representations in

Phonology explores the spread of vowels within the space of the mouth

and the number of distinctions that can be made and perceived. I will seehow his model applies to the data of verbs losing ablaut because their

vowels were too close together. I also intend to quantify the ‘‘critical


mass’’ reached in Middle English when Series I verbs no longer required a

nasal, allowing the past tense of strike to be struck.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to my advisor, Donka Minkova, for guidance in writing

this paper and to the students and professors in the Program in Indo-European Studies at UCLA for feedback on drafts.

References

Albright, Adam and Bruce Hayes2003 ‘‘Rules vs. Analogy in English Past Tenses: A Computational/

Experimental Study.’’ Cognition 90: 119–161.Bybee, Joan2001 Phonology and Language Use. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, ‘‘Dictionary of Old English Corpus in ElectronicForm.’’ February 11, 2005. Antonette di Paolo Healy Centrefor Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. <ets.umdl.umich.edu/o/oec/>

Flemming, Edward S.2002 Auditory Representations in Phonology. New York: Routledge.

Krygier, Marcin1994 The Disintegration of the English Strong Verb System. University

of Bamberg Studies in English Linguistics, vol. 34. Frankfurt amMain: Peter Lang GmbH.

Lass, Roger1994 Old English: A Historical Linguistic Companion. Cambridge

University Press.Lass, Roger1992 ‘‘Phonology and Morphology.’’ In The Cambridge History of the

English Language, Volume II: 1066–1476, edited by NormanBlake, 23–155. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lass, Roger1999 ‘‘Phonology and Morphology.’’ In The Cambridge History of the

English Language, Volume III, 1476–1776, edited by Roger Lass,56–186. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Leith, Dick1983 A Social History of English. London: Routledge and Kegan

Paul.


Long, Mary McDonald1994 The English Strong Verb from Chaucer to Caxton. Menasha,

Wisc.: Banta.Moder, Carol Lynn1992 Productivity and Categorization in Morphological Classes. Bu¤alo,

NY: SUNY dissertation.Oxford English DictionarySeptember2007

John Simpson. Oxford University Press. <www.oed.com>

Quirk, Randolph et al.1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London,

New York: Longman.Welna, Jerzy1996 English Historical Morphology. Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu

Warsawskiego.


Commentary on Branchaw, Survival of the Strongest:Strong Verb Inflection from Old to Modern English


Sherrylyn Branchaw’s article focuses on the diachronic development of

strong verb inflection from Old English to Modern English and, spe-

cifically, on the question of why some verbs have remained strong to thepresent day while others have become weak.

The method Branchaw has chosen for her study is sound: she uses the

OE verb system as her starting point and sets out to find what kind offactors could explain survival of certain kinds of strong verbs into the

ME period and beyond. The factors examined include type frequency

(the number of verbs with the same Ablaut pattern), token frequency (thenumber of occurrences of a specific verb in the Dictionary of Old English

Corpus), shape of the root of the verb, and e‰ciency of the Ablaut pattern

in making the distinctions. All these are relevant and yield interesting re-sults despite the fact that the statistics are not yet completely accurate as

the author herself points out. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind

that the nature of the surviving OE textual evidence is such that any quan-titative generalizations based on the corpus must be treated with caution.

The method used in the study has another potentially major limitation:

Branchaw compares her OE data only with standard present-day Englishand totally disregards the evidence o¤ered by non-standard dialects. The

English Dialect Dictionary (EDD), for example, provides ample evidence

of extensive variation in the past and past participle forms in most if notall of the ‘series’ of strong verbs discussed by Branchaw. To give but some

examples, the following verbs from Branchaw’s Series I, which she con-

siders to survive as strong only, are attested in nineteenth-century dialectswith weak outcomes: bind, drink, run, spring, swim, swing, wind, slink. The

preterite and past participle forms for drink serve as an illustration of the

considerable range of variability in the dialect data:

pret. drak, drenk, drenked, drinked, dronk, druck, drunk

pp. dhrunken, drank, drinked, dronken, drucken, druckin, druken,

drukken, drunk, drunken

In Branchaw’s Series III, in turn, all of the four verbs with strong out-

comes ( fly, choose, freeze, shoot) are also found with weak outcomes in

the EDD. To give an idea of the broad range of variability found in thedialectal data, we list in the following the di¤erent preterite and past par-

ticiple forms recorded for the verb freeze in the EDD:

pret. fraaz, fraaze, fraze, frez, friz, frore, fruize, fruz, vreezed, vriz, vrore

pp. frawn, freezen, frez, friz, frizzent, froan, froar, froaz, froozed, fror,

frore, froren, frorn, frown, froze, frozed, frozzan, frozzen, fruozen,

fruz, fruzzen, vraur, vreezed, vriz, vroar, vror, vrore

Taking these dialectal data into consideration would not necessarily have

a¤ected the overall conclusions reached by Branchaw, but it would havebrought to light some of the complexities involved in assessing the relative

weight of each of the factors examined here.

The otherwise clear exposition of the data and the argumentation suf-fers somewhat from the abrupt transition from Series I to III to IV and IX

in the description of the types of strong verbs. This is aggravated by the

lack of explanation in the previous text about the number of the ‘series’ –as Branchaw calls them – and their distinguishing features. The reader

would also have benefited from some kind of an introduction to Tables 5

and 6. Other shortcomings include a rather heavy reliance on work byothers (especially Krygier 1994 and Bybee 2001) in matters relating to fac-

tors influencing survival of (types of ) strong verbs. ‘Multiple analogy’ is

suggested as an explanation for some individual verbs (shit, spit), but thementioned counterarguments to multiple analogies by Albright and Hayes

(2003) remain unexplained.

Despite the mentioned shortcomings, Branchaw has made an im-portant contribution to the field by showing, first, that a multiplicity of

factors need to be considered in trying to explain why some strong verb

forms have survived up to the present day, and, second, that some of thesefactors have been more influential than others. According to her results,

the perceptual ease of distinguishing the vowels of the principal parts

turned out to be the most important factor in preserving the strong inflec-tion of a verb. Token frequency and shape of the root were next in the

hierarchy whereas type frequency had less of an e¤ect on the survival rates

than the others. Branchaw’s results are persuasive, notwithstanding theaforementioned limitation concerning the evidence from dialectal forms

of English.

106 Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola

Response to Filppula and Klemola

Sherrylyn Branchaw

I would like to thank the reviewer of my paper for the helpful commentsprovided, and here I will respond to points made about dialect forms and

about multiple analogy.

Data forms from dialects other than what is now the American stan-dard are of course invaluable. Their importance is hinted at in my paper

in this volume in the use of the forms drug and snuck, and they are used

more crucially in my talk at ICEHL 15 (Munich, August 2008). It is not

my goal to explain all forms in any dialect of the English language,though that is a valuable endeavor, for that would make the task of this

particular project too large, but to use them both to explain the origin of

standard forms and as evidence for linguistic phenomena.As an example of the former, the OED explains the preterite drew for

draw as a form that arose in the Middle English dialect of the north of

England where a phonological change that occurred in the south did nottake place, and therefore in the north draw and blow continued to resem-

ble each other closely. The analogy blow : blew :: draw : X, where X is

drew, was therefore more apt in the north than in the south, and the formdrew spread until it entered what would become the standard dialect. The

north, therefore, is indirectly responsible for other preterites such as slew

and flew. Those forms probably arose when the past tense morpheme<ew> became associated with present tenses in both <aw> and <ow>

thus making it a product-oriented schema. Because <ew> tense form no

longer occurred only with present tenses of a single form, it was free tobecome more productive and expand to verbs of still other vowels such

as slay and fly. Nonstandard forms in modern American English such as

drug and snuck provide still more evidence for product-oriented schemassince drag and sneak do not share the vowel of sting and the other mem-

bers of its class. Examples such as these abound.

Furthermore, as my reviewers point out, one can imagine that OldEnglish might predict the outcomes of some dialects better than it does

standard American English, or, for that matter, standard British English.

In that case, the dialects will form a backdrop against which to evaluate

other factors that have been at work in the standard language, one of

which might be the influence of grammarians.As for multiple analogy, the debate is still open, and further research

will be required before I can assert a belief in its existence or non-

existence. Hayes and Albright test their learner models against predictions

that would be made if multiple analogy, which they call variegated anal-ogy, held true. They identify the kinds of patterns in English that their

model, programmed not to use variegated analogy, would fail to identify,

but they do not find their model failing to identify these patterns. Theyconclude that variegated analogy adds nothing to their model and there-

fore that it is not at work in the grammar of speakers.

Still other scholars, such as Bybee and Hay, have models where eachword has phonological, morphological, and semantic connections of vary-

ing strengths with other words. Such models would allow spit to have pho-

nological connections with the -it of sit and with the spi- of spin. Becausethe ablaut of sat and span is a morphological connection between them,

the morphological pattern could be extended analogically to create spat.

I am interested in evaluating this possibility because the rest of theverbs4 that form their past tense with /æ/ end in nasals, velars, or nasal

velars. Much work has been devoted to characterizing this class, to which

swimPswam and singPsang belong.It is hard for me to see how spit could have been generated without the

existence of sat since spit does not end in a nasal or velar, and the gram-

mar of modern English by Quirk et al. (1985) places sit and spit into a sub-category to which no other verbs belong. Yet a popular claim asserts that

high frequency words with unique morphology remain idiosyncratic and

do not form the basis for analogy. If this assertion is true, sit alone makesa poor model for spit. This claim itself, however, has also been called into

question. Hare and Elman (1995) report an experiment in which speakers

pronounced the nonce-word vone to rhyme with the idiosyncratic gone

rather than bone. Nevertheless, it remains to be seen if indubitable exam-

ples in natural language can be found.

The case of spat, then, will make an interesting test case for the claimsabout the existence of multiple analogy and about the existence of analo-

gizing based on a single, high-frequency item. If neither of those phenom-

ena exists, then it is necessary to re-evaluate the criteria of the class of sing

4. With the exception of (for)bidP(for)bad(e), for speakers who have /æ/rather than /ei/.


and swim to admit a verb ending in a dental stop. In any case, the English

strong verb preterites, both of the standard American English and of other

dialects, form a fertile testing ground for morphological theory.

References

Hare, M. & J.L. Elman1995 Learning and Morphological Change. Cognition 56.1: 61–98.

Quirk, Randolph et al.1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London,

New York: Longman.

Response to Filppula and Klemola 109

Subject Compounding and a Functional Change of theDerivational Su‰x -ing in the History of English*

Akiko Nagano

1. Introduction

In the literature on Present-day English (PE) word formation, compound

nouns of the form [Nounþ Verb-ing] (e.g., city planning, housekeeping,

letter writing) and compound nouns of the form [Nounþ Verb-er] (e.g.,

dish washer, taxi driver, watchmaker) are often called ‘‘synthetic com-

pound nouns.’’ The possible grammatical relation between the first Nounand the second Verb in these constructions has constituted an important

topic of discussion. For example, Bloomfield (1933: 231–232) claims that

synthetic compounds embody the verb-object relationship, and Marchand(1969: 15–19) also defines synthetic compounds in terms of the verb-object

relationship. To state simply the most generally held view, PE synthetic

compounds are based on the verb-object relationship and exclude thesubject-verb relationship (Adams 2001: 78–79, Lieber 2005: 381).

Against this background, this paper will examine -ing compound nouns

diachronically and will argue that -ing compound nouns in Old English(OE) and Middle English (ME) allowed the subject-verb relationship and

that certain types of PE -ing compound nouns do as well. The aim of this

paper lies in elucidating the relationship between the possibility of ‘‘subjectcompounding’’ (SC hereafter) and a functional change of the derivational

su‰x -ing. In short, I will argue that the possibility of SC in -ing changes

throughout the history of English and that this change can be accountedfor in terms of a functional change of the derivational su‰x -ing.

* I would like to thank the audience at the 5th meeting of the Studies of the His-tory of English Language (SHEL) for their helpful comments. I am alsoindebted to Elizabeth Traugott and two anonymous reviewers for their valu-able comments and suggestions. Thanks also go to Molly Bassett and KurtSpurlock for stylish improvements. Needless to say, responsibility for anyerrors is my own. This work is financially supported by Grant-in-Aid forYoung Scientists (B), No. 19720115, from the Ministry of Education, Culture,Sports, Science and Technology in Japan.

2. Subject Compounding in PE

Consider the representative examples of PE -ing compound nouns cited in(1). The derivational su‰x -ing forms a deverbal compound noun. The

acceptability di¤erence between (1a) and (1b) indicates that, unlike an

object, the subject of a head verb cannot be compounded as the non-head

of an -ing deverbal compound. For instance, the non-head noun of theacceptable compound noun car-driving is interpreted as an object of the

head verb, while the compound noun *girl-swimming is unacceptable if

the non-head is interpreted as a subject of the head verb.

(1) a. car-driving, carol-singing, fruit-devouring, pasta-eating

e.g., Bicycle-repairing went on in the back room.(Adams 2001: 78)

Taxi-driving by John can be dangerous.

(Di Sciullo 1992: 65)

Flower-arranging by experts is preferable to do-it-yourself.

(ibid.)

b. *child-devouring (of fruit) ‘a child devours fruit,’ *dog-running,

*girl-swimming, *rain-falling, *sunrising, *weather changing

e.g., *Unexpected guest-arriving is a nuisance. (Adams 2001: 78)

*Man-sleeping is sometimes noisy. (Di Sciullo 1992: 65)

*Sun-rising is nice to watch. (ibid.)

This fact is considered to be a general property of PE -ing compoundnouns, as Adams (2001: 78–79) shows:

Compounded process nominalizations cannot easily exhibit relationshipsother than that of verb-object: compare the subject-verb expressions in*‘unexpected guest-arriving is a nuisance’, *‘frequent dog-barking disturbsthe neighbors’, *‘mechanic-repairing of bicycles’, *‘tycoon-evasion of taxes’.Adjuncts and complements of the verb other than direct objects also appearstrange when compounded with process nominalizations: *‘guest-cooking ofmeals’, *‘council-sending of letters’.

Unacceptable -ing compound nouns such as (1b) and those found in the

above citation led some researchers to propose general principles toexclude SC in -ing. Roeper and Siegel’s (1978) First Sister Principle and

112 Akiko Nagano

Selkirk’s (1982) First Projection Principle are probably the most famous

examples of such general principles on compounding.1

Interestingly, PE allows SC when the head verb is nominalized by a suf-fix other than -ing. For example, the non-heads of the deverbal compound

nouns in (2a) and (2b) below can be interpreted as subjects of the head

verbs. In these cases, the head verbs are nominalized not by the su‰x

-ing but by conversion or by nominalization su‰xes of lesser productivitylike -al.

(2) a. baby-step, bee sting, earthquake, heart-ache, lion attack, theMitterrand visit, mouse-squeak, rainfall, sunset, weather change

e.g., One of the best-known episodes of repeated lion attack

occurred in Kenya in 1898. Rail construction was going

on about 40 miles north of Tsavo National Park when twolions began killing the workers. Twenty-six Indians and a

similar number of Africans lost their lives before the lions

were shot. (www.webcorp.org.uk)

There is concern that a weather change in South Australia

may do little to help the fight against big bushfires onKangaroo Island. (www.webcorp.org.uk)

b. consumer choice,2 dust accumulation, population growth,train-arrival

e.g., Consumers choose products based on various tangible andintangible attributes. Previous research has shown that there

is a di¤erence between appearance-based and word-based

evaluations of wood species. However, little research hasbeen done on how this di¤erence a¤ects consumer choice.

(www.webcorp.org.uk)

As Bauer and Renouf (2001: 117–120) claim, conversion gives rise to

numerous examples of SC. Along with instances of object compounding

(e.g., handshake, pay raise, tax cut), there are many instances, such asbee sting and weather change, where the subject of an intransitive verb

is compounded. Additionally, there are some instances, such as lion

1. See Lieber (2005: 380–383) for an up-to-date survey of the development ofthis discussion in generative-linguistic word-formation theories.

2. Strictly speaking, the head noun of this deverbal compound is nominalizednot by su‰xation but by vowel alternation (choosePchoice).

Subject Compounding and a Functional Change 113

attack, where the subject – rather than the object – of a transitive verb is

compounded.

In the literature, the acceptability di¤erence between (1a) and (1b)seems to be taken as a universal fact about -ing deverbal compounds in

PE; however, my corpus-based research (Nagano 2007) has found that

PE does allow SC in -ing to a limited extent, as the -ing compound nouns

in (3) below show. For example, the compound noun fruit-ripening in thesample sentence in (3a) has the subject-verb interpretation ‘‘fruit ripens.’’

One might argue that the compounds in (3a, b) are object compounds

and their category is adjective. Of course, as PE -ing compounds, theymight be used as object-incorporating compound adjectives (e.g., a fruit-

ripening factor, milk-souring bacteria), but the sample sentences cited in

(3a, b) clearly show that they can also be used as subject-incorporatingcompound nouns. In fact, since these -ing compounds all describe a

natural phenomenon that is not caused volitionally by an external agent,

the subject-verb reading is much more frequent and easier to induce thanthe verb-object reading.

(3) a. artery-hardening, fruit-ripening, gap-widening, muscle softening,poverty deepening, skin-darkening, world-flattening

e.g., Lower blood sugar (by natural means or with insulin ifnecessary) according to the condition. This will decrease the

blood sugar in the body e¤ectively, control the diabetes and

thus prevent or postpone the occurrence of artery hardeningindirectly. (www.webcorp.org.uk)

Because ethylene is the main trigger for fruit ripening,

several genetic engineering strategies involve the reduction

or prevention of ethylene production. Tomato fruits that donot produce ethylene develop fully on the plant and then

stop before ripening and turning red. (www.webcorp.org.uk)

b. airway-narrowing, hair-thinning, milk-souring, muscle thinning

e.g., In exercise-induced asthma, the airway narrowing beginswithin 5 to 15 minutes after initiating physical exercise.

(www.webcorp.org.uk)

Unfortunately there is no one simple explanation as to

why hair thinning occurs as it may be down to a medicalcondition or it may be the type of lifestyle a person is

leading. In fact the only real way of determining the cause

of hair thinning is for a person to visit their doctor.(www.webcorp.org.uk)

114 Akiko Nagano

The absence of these female hormones after menopause may

lead to . . . hair loss, skin coarsening, decrease in breast size

and support, and bone thinning. (www.webcorp.org.uk)

Notice that the head verbs of the -ing compounds in (3a, b) cannotbe nominalized by conversion. As Marchand (1969: 276–277) observes, a

derived verb, whether a su‰xed one (e.g., to widen) or a converted one

(e.g., to thin), cannot be converted into a noun (e.g., *[widen]N, *[thin]N).3

Due to this morphological restriction, the converted versions of the SC

compounds in (3a, b) (e.g., *[gap-widen]N, *[hair-thin]N) are systematically

impossible. This is why -ing SC in PE is exceptionally allowed in (3); inPE, SC is realized by conversion or by non-productive a‰xes as discussed

above, but the unavailability of these options ‘‘forces’’ the exceptional use

of -ing compounding. My observation that conversion and -ing formsconstitute an almost complementary distribution in SC, with conversion

forms being unmarked options, is confirmed by the contrast between the

unacceptable instances in (1b) and the acceptable instances in (2a). Forexample, compare the unacceptable -ing form *rainfalling with the accept-

able conversion form rainfall and the unacceptable *weather-changing

with the acceptable weather change.It should be noted that we do not see this distributional fact as conver-

sion forms blocking -ing forms in SC. Rather, we will claim in section 5

that -ing SC is very di‰cult in PE as a result of the ‘‘recategorization’’function of the su‰x -ing, while conversion allows SC because it does not

have that function. See section 5 for details.

In sum, PE uses conversion or less-productive su‰xes than -ing forSC, and SC in -ing is exceptionally allowed when these options are

unavailable.

3. Subject Compounding in OE and ME

In OE and ME, SC in -ing occurred more frequently than in PE, and its

possibility was independent of the existence of conversion counterparts.

3. This restriction on the morphological property of a base word seems to applyto conversion in general, independently of syntactic category. A derived nounor adjective cannot be converted into a verb either (e.g., *to arrival, *to free-dom, *to guidance, *to idleness, *to piggy, *to spoonful ) (Bauer 1983: 223–227,Marchand 1969: 372–373).


For instance, OE compound nouns in (4)4 and ME compound nouns in

(5) given below are just a few of many instances of -ing SC. These in-

stances suggest that many of PE conversion instances of SC, such as (2a),originally had an -ing form. For instance, the PE conversion compound

earthquake had the -ing form erthe-quakinge in ME.

(4) eorþbeofung ‘earthquake,’ feaxfallung ‘shedding of hair,’sæ-ebbing ‘ebbing of the sea’ (Kastovsky 1992: 367)

(5) dai-dauing ‘day-dawning ¼ daybreak,’ drope-falling ‘drop-fall,’

erthe-moving ‘earth movement,’ erthe-quakinge ‘earthquake,’sun-rising ‘sunrise’ (Kageyama 1985: 14)

cok crowynge ‘cock-crow,’ day-springyng ‘day spring,’ hart stangyng

‘heart sting,’ sonne rysyng/arising ‘sunrise,’ son settyng/doun gang-

ing ‘sunset’ (Tajima 1985: 125)

SC by conversion was also allowed in OE and ME, and, as in PE, it seems

to have been a rather productive process. ME produced instances like (6)

below.

(6) earthquake, earthquave, herte-bren ‘heartburn,’ nosebleed, sunne

sine ‘sunshine,’ sunrise, sunset, toth-ake ‘tooth-ache’(Marchand 1969: 76)

In short, the -ing SC was rather freely allowed in OE and ME, but, in

PE, its productivity has dropped. Instead, the rival conversion form hasgained productivity.

4. Functional Change of the Derivational Su‰x -ing

Kastovsky (1985, 1986) claims that a derivational a‰x has two main func-tions: ‘‘recategorization’’ and ‘‘naming.’’ Recategorization refers to the

fact that a derivational su‰x usually changes the syntactic category of a

word as required by its syntactic environment. Naming describes the pro-cess through which derivation yields a new name or label for an extra-

linguistic entity. For instance, compare the meanings of curiousness and

4. The su‰xes -ung and -ing were the same su‰x in OE. Kastovsky (1985: 241)treats -ung as an alternant of his -ing1 and groups the following OE derivativesinto the same action noun category:(i) binding ‘binding,’ delfing ‘digging,’ brastlung ‘rustling,’ huntung ‘hunting’

116 Akiko Nagano

curiosity and those of callousness and callosity. The -ness form is a pure

transposition from adjective to noun,5 while the -ity form can refer to

an entity as a countable noun (e.g., They admired his dress, but only as a

curiosity/ Callosities can be so painful as to a¤ect a person’s gait). Thus, in

Kastovsky’s terms, -ness tends toward a recategorization su‰x, while -ity

tends toward a naming su‰x.

In the domain of nominalization, these two derivational functions cor-respond to Grimshaw’s (1990) distinction between ‘‘event nominals’’ and

‘‘result nominals.’’6 An event nominal is a nominalization that changes

only the category of a base verb and inherits its argument structure, as in(7) below. A result nominal is a nominalization that refers to a concrete

entity and does not inherit the argument structure of a base verb, as in

(8) below. An event nominal has an ‘‘Event argument (Ev)’’ as its externalargument and suppresses the original external argument of a base verb (as

indicated by ‘x ¼ 0’), while a result nominal only has a non-thematic argu-

ment R, which binds a specific LCS-argument of a base verb (as indicatedby ‘R ¼ y’).7

(7) assignV <x <y>> ! assignmentN <Ev <x ¼ 0 <y>>

e.g., (John’s) assignment of di‰cult problems always causes

problems.

The assignment of that problem too early in the course always

causes problems. (Grimshaw 1990: 54)

5. The su‰x -ness changes only the syntactic category of a base word, so, forinstance, the sentence in (i a) is synonymous with the sentences in (i b, c)(Arono¤ 1976: 38).(i) a. His callousness surprised me.

b. The fact that he was callous surprised me.c. The extent to which he was callous surprised me.

6. To avoid unnecessary complications, I ignore here Grimshaw’s distinctionbetween complex event nominals and simple event nominals. A complex eventnominal has an argument structure to be realized syntactically (e.g., Theexamination of the patients took a long time), whereas a simple event nominal,though it similarly expresses an event, does not (e.g., The examination took along time).

7. For a more detailed comparison of the lexical representations of event andresult nominals, see Grimshaw (1990: section 3.3). The suppression of theoriginal external argument in event nominalization is explicated and empiri-cally confirmed in Grimshaw (1990: chapter 4).


(8) assignmentN (R ¼ y) such that x assigns y (Grimshaw 1990: 67)

e.g., The assignments were long.

They study the/an/one/that assignment.

*The assignments of the problems took a long time.(Grimshaw 1990: 54)

Major distinctive properties of event nominals are listed in (9) below.

These properties function as criteria for distinguishing event nominalsfrom result nominals.

(9) a. An event nominal has to realize the argument structure inherited

from its base verb.

b. Occurrence with an adjective such as constant and frequent

forces an event-nominal reading.

c. An event nominal from a transitive verb cannot realize itssubject argument without realizing its object argument.

d. An event nominal cannot take a determiner other than the.

e. An event nominal cannot be plural.

f. An event nominal cannot occur in a predicative nominal

position.

First of all, these criteria clearly show that PE nominalizations by the

su‰x -ing are always event nominals (except lexicalized instances such asbuildings, happenings, paintings), while nominalizations by conversion are

almost always result nominals. Notice the examination of -ing nominals in

(10) and of conversion nominals in (11) below. The numbering in these ex-amples corresponds to the numbering of the criteria in (9). For example,

we can see in (10d and e) that -ing nominals meet the criteria in (9d and

e). However, we can see in (11d and e) that conversion nominals do not.

(10) a. the felling *(of the trees), the destroying *(of the city)

b. Constant shooting *(of rabbits) should be prohibited.

c. The government’s raising *(of taxes) will invite endlesscriticism.

The raising *(of taxes) by the government will invite endless

criticism.

d. *A/one/that shooting of rabbits is illegal.

e. *The shootings of rabbits are illegal.

f. *That was the destroying of the city.

118 Akiko Nagano

(11) a. *John’s hit of Mary, *the drive of this car, *the break of

the vase

b. *John’s frequent hit of Mary,

*the constant break of the vase (is a nuisance)

c. John’s random hit, the kick by Bill

d. take a long walk, I enjoyed that walk along the shore.

e. Who’s the TV comedian who does funny walks?

f. That was John’s great hit.

Notice that the most important and conspicuous di¤erence between -ing

nominalization and conversion nominalization in PE is that an -ing nomi-

nal always inherits the argument structure of a base verb, as in (10a), but

a conversion nominal does not, as in (11a).8 In Kastovsky’s terms,these observations mean that, in PE, -ing functions primarily as a recate-

gorization su‰x, while the chief function of the verb-to-noun conversion is

naming.9

Interestingly, in the OE and (at least) early ME periods, the su‰x -ing

was used more as a naming su‰x than as a recategorization su‰x, and

-ing nominals of these periods were predominantly result nominals.

Koma (2000) examines -ing nominals in OE data (Ælfric’s Catholic Homi-

lies and Orosius) on the basis of the list in (9) and concludes that OE -ing

nominals were result nominals. Although there is not enough space here to

review his results in detail, below is some of his clearest evidence for this

8. Citing the following instances, Borer (2003: 54) argues against this view:(i) a. a good living, a strong craving, a strong beating, a reading

b. Women are reared not to feel competent or gratified by the questing,the competing, the outbidding that collecting. . .

c. (this kind of) fighting, fraternizing, parenting, writing(ii) a. My constant change of mentors from 1992–1997

b. The frequent release of the prisoners by the governorc. The frequent use of sharp tools by underage children

However, these instances are in a small minority and should be consideredexceptional.

9. As discussed in Kastovsky (1986), the two functions of a derivational su‰x,recategorization and naming, are not an either-or matter, but rather twoopposite ends of the same scale. Each su‰x finds itself somewhere betweenthose two ends. Even the su‰x -ing and the conversion (or the zero su‰x)sometimes exhibit the combination of these two functions, as the data (i, ii)in Note 8 suggest. However, their positions on the scale should be extremelyclose to the two opposite ends.


conclusion. Compare the following four pieces of data in (12a–d) with the

criteria in (9a, c, e, f ) respectively:

(12) a. Pilatus he hæfde on þreatunge. . .[þreatunge < ðreatian ‘to threaten’]

‘He held Pilatus in threatening. . .’ (Orosius 136/1)

ðonne he mid geniðerunge fram geferrædene his gecorenra

hi totwæmð[niðerung < niðerian ‘to accuse, condemn’]

‘when he, with condemnation, shall separate them from the

fellowship of his chosen’ (Homilies 1/412/17–18)

b. An event -ing nominal from a transitive verb could realize its

subject and object arguments in one of the following three

patterns in OE, but no such instance can be found in the data.

i) *the enemy’s destruction the city’s

[Genitive] [Genitive]

ii) *the city’s destruction the enemy’s

[Genitive] [Genitive]

iii) *the city’s destruction through the enemy[Genitive] [Accusative]

*the city’s destruction from the enemy

[Genitive] [Dative]

c. for hiora mægdena o¤runga[o¤rung < o¤rian ‘to o¤er’]

‘on account of the o¤erings of their maidens’ (Orosius 2/9–10)

d. þære lufe fandung is þæs weorces fremming.[fremming < fremman ‘to accomplish’]

‘The proof of love is the performance of work.’

(Homilies 2/314/26–27)

In (12a), we have OE -ing nominals that are derived from transitive verbs

but that do not realize the object arguments of the verbs. Also, as stated in(12b), no instance of an -ing nominal that realizes both subject and object

arguments was found. The -ing nominal in (12c) takes a plural form, while

that in (12d) occurs in a predicative position.Parallel instances have been found for early ME -ing nominals. Below

are the most explicit pieces of evidence of their result nominal status: the

120 Akiko Nagano

occurrence with an indefinite article [cf. (9d)] and the occurrence in a

plural form [cf. (9e)].10

(13) a. And certes every man, mayden, or wyf

May understonde that Jhesus, hevene kyng,Ne wolde nat chese a vicious lyvyng.

(The Canterbury Tales, WB 1180–1182)

‘And surely every man, maiden, or wife can understand that

Jesus, heaven’s king, would not choose sinful living.’

b. And over alle the houses angles

Ys ful of rounynges and of jangles

(The House of Fame 1959–1960)‘and all the house’s corners are full of whispers and gossips’

Although it is virtually impossible to prove that -ing event nominals did

not exist in the OE and ME periods, -ing instances like (12) and (13) –

especially the existence of indefinite and plural forms – prove that -ing

result nominals were produced rather productively in OE and ME. Fur-

thermore, in these periods, the naming function of the derivational su‰x

-ing was active.Finally, let us take a look at OE and ME conversion nominals. The cri-

teria in (9), especially (9d) and (9e), suggest that conversion nominals

started as result nominals and remain so in PE as well. As Kastovsky(1985: 246–253) shows, OE produced many conversion nominals like (14)

below, and they all had plural inflected forms. Instances in (15a–c) below

show that ME conversion nominals were indefinite [cf. (9d)], took a pluralform [cf. (9e)], and occurred in a predicative position [cf. (9f )].

(14) Strong masculines: drepe ‘slaying’ < drepan ‘to strike’

Weak masculines: hopa ‘hope, expectation’ < hopian ‘to hope’

Strong feminines: faru ‘journey, going’ < faran ‘to go’

Weak feminines: swinge/swynge ‘strike’ < swingan ‘to strike’

Strong neuters: beorc ‘bark(ing)’ < beorcan ‘to bark’(Kastovsky 1985: 247–248)

10. The data in (13) are taken from Yonekura (2006: 85–87).


(15) a. O Thow . . . which . . . tornest the heuene with a Rauessyng sweyh

‘Oh you, who turn the heaven with a powerful motion’

(Biese 1941: 98)

But swich a cry and swich a wo they make,

‘But they made such a cry and woe’(The Canterbury Tales, Knight’s T. 900)

b. That for the swough and for the twigges,This hous was also ful of gigges,

And also ful eek of chirkinges.

‘so that with the gusts and the whirring of the twigs, this housewas full of squeaks and creakings (The House of Fame 1942)

And with a sorwful noyse he seyde thus,

Among his sobbes and his sykes sore.‘and he said in a husky voice amid his sighs and sobs’

(Troilus and Criseyde IV375)

c. Quod tho this sely man, ‘‘I nam no labbe.’’‘The silly fellow answered, ‘‘I’m no blab.’’ ’

(The Canterbury Tales, Miller’s T. 323)

In summary, this section has shown that the main function of the deri-

vational su‰x -ing has changed from naming in OE and ME to recatego-

rization in PE. To put it di¤erently, -ing nominals in OE and ME wereresult nominals and did not maintain the argument structure of the base

verb, while -ing nominals in PE are event nominals and inherit the argu-

ment structure of the base verb. On the other hand, the derivational func-tion of the verb-to-noun conversion, the naming function, has remained

the same from OE to PE, and it has invariably produced result nominals.

5. The Correlation between Compounding and Nominalization

We have seen that the possibility of SC in -ing has changed from OE to

PE and also that the function of the -ing nominalization has changed

from OE to PE. This section will establish a correlation between thesetwo historical changes.

Grimshaw (1990) and Oshita (1995) claim that the -ing nominalization

in PE derives an event nominal by suppressing the external argument of abase verb, as depicted in (16) below, and an -ing deverbal (or synthetic)

compound occurs when an -ing event nominal projects its argument struc-

122 Akiko Nagano

ture thus formed word-internally. For example, the event nominal raising

has an argument structure like (17a) below, and it is realized either on the

phrasal level as in (17b) or word-internally as in (17c). In (16), x is anexternal argument of the base verb, and y is an internal argument.

(16) a. base verb: <x <y> > ! -ing nominal <Ev <x ¼ 0 <y> >

e.g., (John’s) observing of the phenomenon

b. base verb: <x> ! -ing nominal <Ev <x ¼ 0 > >e.g., (John’s) swimming

c. base verb: < <y> > ! -ing nominal <Ev <y> >e.g., the ripening of the fruit

(17) a. raising: <Ev <x ¼ 0 <y> >

b. the raising of the fund

c. fund-raising

This analysis accounts for why SC in -ing is basically impossible in PE. As

a result of the external-argument suppression, an -ing event nominal does

not inherit an external argument of the verb (i.e., the subject of the verb),so it cannot be realized in an -ing compound. To use the example in (17),

the y argument of the event nominal raising can be realized in a com-

pound, such as fund-raising, but the suppressed x argument cannot. Toput it more simply, the -ing compounding in PE cannot incorporate a sub-

ject because it is sensitive to the organization of the argument structure of

an -ing event nominal.On the other hand, -ing in OE and ME derives a result nominal as

shown in section 4, and, since a result nominal does not have an argument

structure, it enters a compound through the N-N compounding. For

example, the ME -ing nominal quakinge does not inherit the argumentstructure of the base verb, so the -ing compound erthe-quakinge is formed

through the N-N compounding, simply connecting the two nouns erthe

and quakinge as in (18a) below. This compounding is no di¤erent fromthe compounding of two simple nouns depicted in (18b), which produces

the ME compound nouns schoolmaster and bloodhound, for instance.

(18) a. [erthe]N þ [quakinge]N ! [erthe-quakinge]N

b. [school]Nþ [master]N ! [schoolmaster]N

Significantly, the N-N compounding is insensitive to argument structureconsiderations, so a result nominal can be compounded not only with the

object (or internal argument) of a base verb but also with its subject (or


external argument). This is why SC in -ing was allowed in OE and ME as

we saw in section 3. That is, it was allowed because the subject status of

the non-head noun had nothing to do with the N-N compounding.Exactly the same account applies to the data of conversion. We saw

that, from OE to PE, deverbal compound nouns with a converted head

exhibit SC, as the data repeated in (19) show:

(19) ME: earthquake, earthquave, herte-bren ‘heartburn,’ nosebleed,

sunne sine ‘sunshine,’ sunrise, sunset, toth-ake ‘tooth-ache’

(¼(6))

PE: baby-step, bee sting, earthquake, heart-ache, lion attack, the

Mitterand visit, mouse-squeak, rainfall, sunset, weather

change (¼(2a))

These instances can occur because converted nominals are invariably

result nominals, and, therefore, they form a compound through the N-Ncompounding, just like OE and ME -ing nominals.

Finally, let us take a brief look at the -ing compound nouns in (3) in

section 2, which are repeated below.

(20) a. artery-hardening, fruit-ripening, gap-widening, muscle soften-

ing, poverty deepening, skin-darkening, world-flattening (¼(3a))

b. airway-narrowing, hair-thinning, milk-souring, muscle thinning

(¼(3b))

We saw that these SC -ing compound nouns are exceptionally allowed in

PE due to the lack of conversion counterparts. Under the present analysis,

it should be noticed that these PE -ing compounds are based on intransi-tive verbs of the ‘‘unaccusative’’ type (Perlmutter 1978: 162–163). For

instance, the head intransitive verbs ripen and widen in (20a) and narrow

and sour in (20b) are all unaccusative verbs, describing a natural, non-volitional change of state. If we adopt the view that subjects of unaccu-

sative verbs are internal arguments,11 we could say that these -ing

compounds are possible because the subject arguments are not externalarguments and are thus not suppressed by the -ing nominalization. The

relevant argument structure change is the one given in (16c).

In sum, this section has claimed that the possibility of SC depends onthe function of the nominalization involved. That is, event nominals do

not allow SC due to the organization of their argument structures, while

11. This view is first proposed as the Unaccusativity Hypothesis by Perlmutter(1978) and defended by Burzio (1986).

124 Akiko Nagano

result nominals allow it because they form a compound through the N-N

compounding. Due to the functional change of the su‰x -ing, PE -ing

compounds are of the former type, while OE and ME -ing compoundsare of the latter type. Since the function of the conversion nominalization

is invariably naming from OE to PE, compounds with converted heads

always allow SC.

6. One Factor for the Functional Change of the Derivational Su‰x -ing

In this last section, I am going to point out one factor that seems to under-

lie the functional change of the derivational su‰x -ing that we saw above.

One of the most significant historical events for the derivational morphol-ogy was the introduction of various Romance derivational su‰xes in the

ME period. This event changed not only the number of derivational suf-

fixes in English but also the quality of Germanic su‰xes that OE origi-nally had. For example, the corpus-based study by Dalton-Pu¤er (1996)

reveals how the introduction of Romance su‰xes led to ‘‘semantic special-

ization’’ of Germanic su‰xes. Notice the two diagrams in Figure 1 below,which are taken from Dalton-Pu¤er (1996: 124). These represent form-

meaning mappings of nominalization su‰xes in two stages of ME: ME 1

in (a) from 1150 to 1250 and ME 3 in (b) from 1350 to 1420. On the leftside, we see newly introduced Romance su‰xes, while on the right side are

Germanic nominalization su‰xes. Specific meanings of nominalization

su‰xes are given in the middle,12 and the line indicates that the su‰x in

12. The six categories in the middle stand for the following six semantic groups ofderived nominals:(i) a. NActionis: Nomina Actionis ‘act(ion) of V-ing’

e.g., adaptation, resentment, arrival, departure, coverage, acceptance,merger, launch

b. NEssendi: Nomina Essendi ‘quality of being A’e.g., freshness, hostility, cruelty, elegance, accuracy, exactitude, precision

c. Instrumental: Instrumental Noun ‘thing with which one V-s’e.g., eraser, perforator, stimulant, lift

d. Objective: Objective Noun ‘thing that is V-ed’e.g., deposit, transplant, clipping, attachment, enclosure

e. Locative: Locative Noun ‘place of V-ing/related to N’e.g., storage, anchorage, refinery, dump

f. Collective: Collective Noun ‘aggregate of Ns’e.g., jewellery, pottery, clientele, readerage/ship, priesthood(Dalton-Pu¤er 1996: 121)


a. form-meaning mapping of nominalization su‰xes in ME 1

(1150–1250)

b. form-meaning mapping of nominalization su‰xes in ME 3

(1350–1420)

Figure 1.

126 Akiko Nagano

question can express that particular meaning. For instance, these diagrams

show that, in the ME 1 period, the Germanic su‰x -ness semantically de-

rived four types of abstract nouns, Nomina Actionis, Nomina Essendi,Objective Noun, and Locative Noun, but, in the ME 3 period, it semanti-

cally specialized in the Nomina Essendi type.13

This comparison of the two stages of ME reveals that, as more and

more Romance su‰xes were introduced, the form-meaning mapping onthe Germanic side became simpler. Each Germanic su‰x came to spe-

cialize in one or two meanings.14

My suggestion is that this kind of semantic specialization in Germanicsu‰xes was closely related to the functional change of the Germanic su‰x

-ing from a naming su‰x to a recategorization su‰x. Although the seman-

tic variety of the su‰x -ing (UNG) itself did not change from ME 1 toME 3, the gradual enrichment of the form-meaning mapping on the

Romance side and its concomitant simplification on the Germanic side

suggest a general tendency through which a Romance su‰x becamesemantically heterogeneous, while a Germanic su‰x became restricted to

one or two specific meanings. In the case of -ing, it came to specialize in

the action meaning (Nomina Actionis), as is evidenced by the productivity

13. Unlike the one in PE, the su‰x -ness in OE and ME derived a noun from averb (Kastovsky 1985: 244–246, Dalton-Pu¤er 1996: 111–112). Below aresome examples of OE and ME deverbal -ness nominals.(i) a. OE: blinness ‘cessation’ (<blinnan ‘to cease’),

brecness ‘breach’ (<brecan ‘to break’),ymbceorfness ‘circumcision’ (<ymbceorfan ‘to circumcise’)(Kastovsky 1985: 244)

b. ME: ales(end)nesse ‘deliverance,’ asolknesse ‘laziness,’drednesse/dradnesse ‘dreadfulness,’ druncnesse ‘drunkenness,’forgefenesse/forgifnesse ‘forgiveness’(Dalton-Pu¤er 1996: 112)

14. The form-meaning mapping simplification in Germanic su‰xes is exhibited byagentive noun su‰xes more explicitly than nominalization su‰xes. Dalton-Pu¤er (1996: section 7.4) shows that, in the ME 1 period (1150–1250), Ger-manic agentive noun su‰xes (e.g., -ere, -end, -ling, -estre, -ild, -el) expressedvarious meanings including Agent, Instrument, Location, Female, Attributive,Diminutive, and Pejorative, but such a complex form-meaning mapping onthe Germanic side was gradually simplified. In the ME 3 period (1350–1420),Romance agentive noun su‰xes (e.g. -ard, -esse, -ary, -erel, -our) began toexhibit a similar complex mapping instead. For the relevant diagrams of theform-meaning mappings of agentive noun su‰xes, see Dalton-Pu¤er (1996:161).


change of each semantic group of -ing; in OE, the su‰x -ing productively

derived not only action nouns but also objective/instrumental/locative

nouns (Kastovsky 1985: 241–243), but, in ME, -ing instances as actionnouns became dominant, and fewer and fewer instances of the other

semantic types were produced. In fact, according to Dalton-Pu¤er (1996:

93), the ME -ing instances of the semantic groups other than the action

group can be listed exhaustively as follows:

(21) a. Result Ns: fyndynges ‘findings,’ grauyngges ‘diggings,’ o¤ringes

‘o¤erings,’ peyntynggs ‘paintings,’ ri‰tinges ‘rules,’ schauynges‘shavings,’ wrytynges ‘writings’

b. Locative Ns: hidinges ‘hiding place, nooks’

c. Collective Ns: bygynnynges ‘beginnings,’ doinges ‘doings,’

noryssynges ‘nutriment,’ worchynges ‘workings’

d. Material Ns: enarmynges ‘armor,’ norysschynges

‘nourishment’

The fact that the meaning of -ing became restricted to pure action is

basically equivalent to its functional change from a naming su‰x to arecategorization su‰x. Then it seems safe to say that one factor for the

functional change of -ing lies in the introduction of various Romance

su‰xes in the ME period, and a hypothesis such as the one below could

be advanced.

(22) With new Romance su‰xes taking on a naming function, -ing,

originally a naming su‰x itself, gradually developed into arecategorization su‰x due to its high productivity as well as its

parallel development as an inflectional (gerundive) su‰x.

OE originally had several nominalization su‰xes, but why did the su‰x-ing, instead of others, develop into a recategorization su‰x? This ques-

tion must have to do with the high productivity of this su‰x and its

development as an inflectional or gerundive su‰x, as pointed out in thehypothesis (22). Its detailed examination, however, must be left for

another occasion.

7. Concluding Remarks

This paper has attributed the changing possibility of SC to the functional

change of the derivational su‰x -ing. Compared with the development of

128 Akiko Nagano

-ing as an inflectional or gerundive su‰x, the development of -ing as

a derivational recategorization su‰x has received little attention in the

literature and awaits much more detailed examination. Traditionally,the rise of the gerund has been accounted for as follows: the su‰x of the

present participle, -inde, was morphologically and phonologically merged

into -ing, the derivational su‰x of the action nominal, with the result that

the former gave the latter some verbal properties (Mustanoja 1960: 566–573). Although this account concerns the development of the so-called

verbal gerund from the so-called nominal gerund, it might also be

conceivable that the functional change of -ing from a naming su‰x toa recategorization su‰x as well benefited from the merger of -ing with

the present participle su‰x. This functional change is equivalent to the

increase of verbal properties of the -ing nominal, and in this sense, it ison the same diachronic line as the development of the (verbal) gerund.

References

Adams, Valerie2001 Complex Words in English. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Arono¤, Mark1976 Word Formation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press.Bauer, Laurie1983 English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bauer, Laurie, and Antoinette Renouf2001 A Corpus-Based Study of Compounding in English. Journal of

English Linguistics 29: 101–123.Biese, Y. M.1941 On the Origin and Development of Conversions in English.

Helsinki: Annales Academiæ Scientiarum Fennicæ, B XLV.Bloomfield, Leonard1933 Language. New York: Holt.

Borer, Hagit2003 Exo-skeletal vs. Endo-skeletal Explanations: Syntactic Projec-

tions and the Lexicon. In The Nature of Explanations in Linguis-tic Theory, edited by John Moore and Maria Polinsky, 31–67.Stanford: CSLI Publications.

Burzio, Luigi1986 Italian Syntax: A Government and Binding Approach. Dordrecht:

Reidel.


Dalton-Pu¤er, Christiane1996 The French Influence on Middle English Morphology: A Corpus-

Based Study of Derivation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Di Sciullo, Anna-Maria1992 Deverbal Compounds and the External Argument. In Thematic

Structure: Its Role in Grammar, edited by Iggy M. Roca, 65–78.Berlin: Foris Publications.

Grimshaw, Jane1990 Argument Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kageyama, Taro1985 Configurationality and the Interpretation of Verbal Compound.

English Linguistics 2: 1–20.Kastovsky, Dieter1985 Deverbal Nouns in Old and Modern English: From Stem-

Formation to Word-Formation. In Historical Semantics, His-torical Word-Formation, edited by Jacek Fisiak, 221–261. Berlin:Mouton Publishers.

Kastovsky, Dieter1986 The Problem of Productivity in Word Formation. Linguistics 24:

585–600.Kastovsky, Dieter1992 Semantics and Vocabulary. In The Cambridge History of the

English Language: Volume I, The Beginnings to 1066, edited byRichard Hogg, 290–408. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Koma, Osamu2000 A Descriptive Study of Deverbal Nouns in Old English, a Re-

port of a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (Grant No.10610462). Tokyo: Tokyo Gakugei University.

Lieber, Rochelle2005 English Word-Formation Processes: Observations, Issues, and

Thoughts on Future Research. In Handbook of Word-Formation,edited by Pavol Stekauer and Rochelle Lieber, 375–427.Dordrecht: Springer.

Marchand, Hans1969 The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation:

A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 2nd ed. Munchen: C.H. Beck.Mustanoja, Tauno1960 A Middle English Syntax. Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique.

Nagano, Akiko2007 Subject Compounding in English -ing Verbal Compounds. In

Lexicon Forum 3, edited by Taro Kageyama, 315–334. Tokyo:Hituzi Syobo.

Oshita, Hiroyuki1995 Compounds: A View from Su‰xation and A-structure Alterna-

tion. In Yearbook of Morphology 1994, edited by Geert Booijand Jaap van Marle, 179–205. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

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Perlmutter, David1978 Impersonal Passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. In Pro-

ceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Berkeley LinguisticSociety, 157–189. Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistic Society, Univer-sity of California.

Roeper, Thomas, and Mu¤y Siegel1978 A Lexical Transformation for Verbal Compound. Linguistic

Inquiry 9: 199–260.Selkirk, Elizabeth1982 The Syntax of Words. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Tajima, Matsuji1985 The Syntactic Development of the Gerund in Middle English.

Tokyo: Nan’un-do.Yonekura, Hiroshi2006 Word-Formation in Old English, Middle English, and Early Modern

English. In Eigo no Gokeisei (Word-Formation in English), editedby Hiroshi Yonekura, 2–207. Tokyo: Eichosha.


Commentary on Nagano, Subject Compounding anda Functional Change of the Derivational Su‰x -ingin the History of English

Olga Thomason

Akiko Nagano o¤ers an interesting argument for one of the most widelydiscussed topics in English morphology – the nature and functions of the

su‰x -ing. The productivity of this su‰x and its role in the history of the

English language has stimulated a number of debates reflecting the syntac-tic, semantic, and morphological particulars of this morpheme. Nagano

considers compound nouns of the form [Nounþ Verb-ing], focusing on

those that express a subject-verb relationship, and argues that even thoughsuch formations are thought impossible by some linguists, they exist as a

trace of the rich functional history of the su‰x -ing. One of the strengths

of this investigation is that Nagano takes a praiseworthy stand based on amulti-disciplinary approach examining the issue in question both syn-

chronically and diachronically and employing the achievements of modern

theories in syntax, semantics, and morphology to explain changes thatoccur in the history of the su‰x -ing.

I o¤er a word of caution regarding such statements as ‘‘the non-heads

of the deverbal compound nouns [like baby-step and bee sting] can be in-terpreted as subjects of the head verbs.’’ I am hesitant to call such words

deverbal compounds and units like step in baby-step and sting in bee sting

head verbs. I would argue that the morphological process was as follows:

at first, step and sting became nouns by conversion and only then werewords like baby-step and bee sting created by compounding. In this case

the verbal nature of the nouns step and sting was greatly reduced, and, as

a result, one can no longer talk about subject-verb relationships in thecompound since these words are composed from two nouns even though

one of the components is a deverbative. This hesitation leads to my unwill-

ingness to accept the subject-verb interpretation of fruit-ripening as ‘fruitripens.’ I would argue in favor of treating fruit not as an object but as an

attribute (as suggested by Nagano herself ) and would explain the con-

struction along nominal lines, for instance, ‘the ripening of fruit.’ Suchtreatment would fit perfectly in with the morphosyntactic relationship

demonstrated by many synthetic languages where one of the components

in noun combinations corresponding to the fruit-ripening type is expressed

in the genitive case – a default nominal case for such constructions thatexpresses possession and does not normally indicate an argument of the

verb. The semantic nature of deverbatives suggested in examples (3) and

(4) also play an important role here. Not all of them designate an action

per se but rather name a process through which a certain quality or attri-bute is achieved. Thus, once again, attributive (and not verbal) semantics

are in question here. The sample sentences cited in (3a) and (3b) do not

simplify the matter since the compounds in all of them can easily beunderstood attributively, e.g., the hardening of an artery, the thinning of

hair, etc.

The Old English examples should be given special consideration sincethe English language was still synthetic in nature at this stage and the dis-

tinction between verbal and nominal morphosyntactic features was more

obvious. For instance, example (4) presents Old English data as follows:eorþbeofung ‘earthquake,’ feaxfallung ‘shedding of hair’ and sæ-ebbing

‘ebbing of the sea.’ Even if one examines closely just the semantic relation-

ships between morphemes in these compounds (as they are actually repre-sented in the last two nouns) and pays no attention to additional syntag-

matic particulars of these words (which are of no less importance), the

attributive semantics becomes visible and should be accounted for (seethe discussion above). However, Nagano does not always include exam-

ples from OE. For instance, examples of conversion are limited to ME

(e.g. (6)) in spite of the fact that Nagano says that ‘‘SC by conversionwas also allowed in OE and . . . it seems to have been a rather productive

process.’’

The examination of PE -ing constructions as event nominals and con-version nominals as result nominals would perhaps be more comprehensi-

ble if the distinctive properties of event nominals (and their absence) were

explained with the help of one construction for (10) (e.g. shooting (of

rabbits)) and another for (11) (e.g. hit (of Mary)). The way this contrast

is presented in the article leads native speakers to make grammaticality

judgments which are based not only on the immediate particulars of -ingor conversion nominals themselves, but on some other factors. For exam-

ple, several native speakers of English with whom I have consulted did not

like examples in (10a), claiming that they would not use these nominals(the felling, the destroying) whether they had a complement (of the trees

and of the city, respectively) or not. Thus, the problem here is not a type

of nominalization, but in derivation itself. Furthermore, there seems to be

Commentary on Nagano 133

a disagreement on whether to consider the sentence in (10b) a grammatical

one or not. Thus, some speakers said that both Constant shooting of

rabbits should be prohibited and Constant shooting should be prohibited

are grammatical and presence/absence of the complement does not play

any role here. Some believed that Shooting of rabbits should be prohibited

is grammatical while Constant shooting of rabbits should be prohibited is

not (note that this opinion goes against the criteria (9b) which proposesthat event nominals (exemplified by PE -ing constructions) can occur

with modifiers like constant or frequent). When asked about the source of

the problem, these speakers stated that they believe that the phrase con-

stant shooting of rabbits does not make any sense (due to various prag-

matic reasons). Existence of such discrepancies evidently means that the

criteria used to distinguish between event and result nominals are still inneed of further clarification.

Comprehensive and early treatment of postulates addressed in the con-

cluding remarks, connected with the historical development of -ing su‰xand nature of participial forms, would have benefited Nagano’s discus-

sion. The morphological peculiarities of the English gerund and its history

are at the core of the problem which is being investigated by Nagano (dueto a dual nature of participles which convey both nominal and verbal

characteristics), and it is surprising that it is addressed only at the end of

the whole discussion.All IE languages have traces of -nt- participles (Szemerenyi 1990: 317–

9). Sihler in his discussion of PIE participles calls forms in *-nt- ‘active

eventive participles’ (cf. classification event/result nominals used by Na-gano) and claims that ‘‘the original meaning of the a‰x was essentially

that of the NE participle in -ing: functionally, the noun modified by the

pple. [participle] corresponds to the noun that would stand in subject rela-tion to a finite verb’’ (Sihler 1995: 613) (cf. the main hypothesis in (22)).

Sihler also adds that participles formed to a transitive verb preserve

the argument structure of this verb (ibid.) – an assertion that practicallymirrors the criterion (9a) which is used to distinguish event and result

nominals and supports one of Nagano’s main claims connected with the

relationship between subject compounding and argument structure ofevent nominals. Szemerenyi notes that without a doubt the su‰x -nt-

is closely connected with the present active stems and aorist stems of

verbs, but it is also used to form noun derivatives in several IE languages(Szemerenyi 1990: 317–8). This observation creates problems for the main

hypothesis formulated by Nagano in (22) where -ing is taken as an origi-

nally ‘‘naming’’ su‰x. In addition, after examining the multifaceted nature

134 Olga Thomason

of the su‰x -ing and its role in the IE languages one would be more cau-

tious in morphological characterization of this su‰x and would not rigidly

classify it as a derivational morpheme.Overall, Nagano successfully illuminates the complex interplay of syn-

tactic, morphological and semantic particulars of the su‰x -ing and how

this multilayered relationship is projected diachronically and synchroni-

cally. Without a doubt, one can and should talk about functional shiftsin the history of this su‰x. However, the exact stages and directions of

the development of the su‰x -ing remain in need of further scrupulous

examination.

References

Sihler, A. L.1995 New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. New York/

Oxford: University Press.Szemerenyi, Oswald J. L.1996 Introduction to Indo-European Linguistics. London: Oxford Uni-

versity Press.

Commentary on Nagano 135

Response to Commentary by Olga Thomason

Akiko Nagano

Olga Thomason raises mainly three questions about my paper: the mor-phological status of the su‰x -ing, the validity of the distinction between

event and result nominals, and the constitution of compounds that I call

‘‘subject-compounding (SC)’’ type. I will answer them in this order.First of all, I should make it clear that the topic of my paper is the

change of the V-to-N derivational su‰x -ing (OED -ing1), not the par-

ticipial or gerundive -ing (OED -ing2). According to Kastovsky (1985:

241–243, 1992: 388), -ing and -ung were the same su‰x in OE and formedderived nouns from both strong and weak verbs, -ung primarily occurring

with weak class 2 verbs and -ing elsewhere. Semantically, derived -ing/-ung

nouns in OE are classified into the categories of Action, Agent (collec-tives), Object/Result, Instrumental and Locative, showing the same output

semantics as many other nominalization su‰xes. Marchand (1969: 302)

also says that ‘‘-ing is historically an alternant of OE -ung (which had dis-appeared by about 1250) and thus a morpheme of deverbal substantives.’’

On the other hand, the participial -ing in PE traces back to the OE inflec-

tional su‰x -ende, which is the -nt- participle common to IE languagesthat Thomason discusses in the second to the last paragraph. These two

su‰xes, derivational and participial, were overtly distinct in OE and ME,

and only after their forms became identical due to their ‘‘entirely pho-netic’’ merger (OED 2nd, -ing2), did the gerundive function, or the noun-

verb duality start to manifest itself in -ing (see also Mustanoja 1960: 566–

573). Therefore, the functional properties of the su‰x -nt- (OE -ende)pointed out by Thomason do not impair my claim that the derivational

su‰x -ing was a naming su‰x in OE. This claim concerns not the di¤er-

ence between the derivational and participial su‰xes, but the di¤erencebetween the derivational su‰x -ing/-ung in OE (and ME) and the deriva-

tional su‰x -ing in PE. In other words, the fact that ‘‘participles formed to

a transitive verb preserve the argument structure of this verb’’ (Thomason’scitation from Sihler 1995: 613) does not exclude in any way the possibility

that OE -ing/-ung derivatives, unlike PE -ing derivatives, did not preserve

the argument structure (AS) of their base verbs. Section 4 of my paper

demonstrates the validity of this possibility, and the interaction between

the participial or gerundive su‰x and the derivational su‰x -ing is of

secondary importance for my claims; in my view, as stated in (22),it may account for the functional change of the derivational su‰x -ing

from a naming (or non-AS-preserving) su‰x to a recategorizing (or AS-

preserving) su‰x.

The distinction between naming and recategorizing su‰xes concernsthe second question raised by Thomason, namely the validity of the dis-

tinction between result and event nominals. Based on her own informant

checking, she claims that native speakers do not use such sentences asthose given in (10) of my paper. However, my interest lies not in their

pragmatic plausibility but in their grammatical well-formedness. The

grammaticality judgments of the sentences in (10) are given by Grimshaw(1990: chapter 3). Moreover, the contrastive behaviors of the derivational

su‰x -ing and (V-to-N) conversion in terms of the criterion in (9a),

i.e. the inheritance of the AS of the base verb, have been su‰ciently de-fended by various researchers in the generative field (e.g., Roeper 1987,

Grimshaw 1990: ibid., among others). They demonstrate that in PE,

-ing nominalization inherits the AS of the base verb, while V-to-N conver-sion does not. The inherited argument is realized by an of-phrase, or more

accurately, of is inserted as a case-assigner to the argument (Chomsky

1970: 204). Thus, even if the criteria in (9) need further clarification intheir details (see, for example, Snyder 1998 for such an attempt), the

most important observation they are intended to capture, i.e. the existence

of two types of nominalizations, the one with high nouniness and theother with high verbiness, remains undisturbed. My own claim in this

scenario is that -ing derivatives have changed from the former type to

the latter type, while conversion nominals have been the former type allthe time.

Lastly, my term ‘‘subject compounding (SC)’’ seems to cause misunder-

standing about my claims about OE/ME -ing SC (e.g., (4) (5)), PE -ing SC(e.g., (3)), OE/ME conversion SC (e.g., (6)), and PE conversion SC (e.g.,

(2a)). I use this term to refer to compound nouns whose nominal element

and verbal element have the subject-verb relationship rather than thecanonical object-verb relationship, and the term itself does not entail the

realization of an AS. Since OE/ME -ing derivatives and OE/ME/PE con-

version nominals are result nominals, as shown in section 4, compoundnouns based on them are N-N compounds. Thus, my claim is that OE/

ME -ing SC, OE/ME conversion SC, and PE conversion SC allow the

subject-verb interpretation due to the interpretive freedom of N-N com-

Response to Commentary by Olga Thomason 137

pounds in general (e.g., Downing 1977, Ryder 1994, Adams 2001: section

6.2). On the other hand, since PE -ing derivatives inherit the AS of their

base verb (see (16)), PE -ing SC realizes the ‘‘subject’’ argument of the(16c) type of -ing derivative, word-internally. Therefore, Thomason’s

claim that my SC examples are not verbal but nominal compounds does

not contradict my claims. Except for PE -ing SC examples, I claim

that they are nominal (N-N) compounds. As for PE -ing SC, the factthat the compounds in (3) (e.g., fruit-ripening, artery-hardening) are para-

phrased by the NP ‘‘the Ving of N’’ (e.g., the ripening of fruit, the hardening

of an artery) does not prove their nominal nature, for this of is inserted toassign case to the argument of the -ing derivative, as already discussed

above.

References

Adams, Valerie2001 Complex Words in English. Harlow: Pearson Education.

Chomsky, Noam1970 Remarks on Nominalization. In Readings in English Transfor-

mational Grammar, edited by Roderick A. Jacobs and Peter S.Rosenbaum, 184–221. Waltham: Ginn and Company.

Downing, Pamela1977 On the Creation and Use of English Compound Nouns. Lan-

guage 53: 810–842.Grimshaw, Jane1990 Argument Structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Kastovsky, Dieter1985 Deverbal Nouns in Old and Modern English: From Stem-

Formation to Word-Formation. In Historical Semantics, His-torical Word-Formation, edited by Jacek Fisiak, 221–261. Berlin:Mouton Publishers.

Kastovsky, Dieter1992 Semantics and Vocabulary. In The Cambridge History of the

English Language: Volume I, The Beginnings to 1066, edited byRichard M. Hogg, 290–408. Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress.

Marchand, Hans1969 The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Forma-

tion: A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach, 2nd ed. Munchen: C.H.Beck.

Mustanoja, Tauno1960 A Middle English Syntax. Helsinki: Societe Neophilologique.

138 Akiko Nagano

Roeper, Thomas1987 Implicit Arguments and the Head-Complement Relation. Lin-

guistic Inquiry 18, 267–310.Ryder, Mary Ellen1994 Ordered Chaos: The Interpretation of English Noun-Noun Com-

pounds. Berkeley: University of California Press.Snyder, William1998 On the Aspectual Properties of English Derived Nominals. MIT

Working Papers in Linguistics 25, 125–139.Sihler, Andrew L.1995 New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin. Oxford: Oxford

University Press.

Response to Commentary by Olga Thomason 139

Bad Ideas in the History of English Usage

Don Chapman

With a title like ‘‘Bad Ideas in the History of English Usage,’’ you would

expect a long paper – at least if it is written by a linguist. Linguists have

acquired a reputation for rejecting all things prescriptive – a reputationthat is not altogether fair, but not altogether unfounded, either. But this

paper is not about the entire prescriptive tradition. It is not even about

the silly rules that keep getting repeated in usage books, even though theyhave no real validity – rules like a proscription against using aggravate

to mean ‘annoy’ or Frankenstein to refer to the monster instead of the

creator. Instead this paper is about those prescriptions that seem to havebeen bad ideas even within the prescriptive tradition, since they are only

recorded one time; apparently no other usage books think them worth

repeating.There are a surprising number of such prescriptions, or ‘‘one-o¤s’’ as I

will call them in this paper, borrowing a term from British English to indi-

cate a one-time occurrence. It is the abundance of such one-o¤s thatpoints to the main reasons for studying them in this paper. Not every pre-

scription ever proposed can be said to be part of a canon; there must still

be a selection process. But what are the constraints used in that process?More particularly, is there any way of telling which potential prescriptions

will and which will not become part of the prescriptive tradition? Perhaps

by examining those that did not become part of the tradition, we will gainsome clues about how prescriptions come to be included.

The notion that usage prescriptions constitute a tradition is not new.

But the nature of that tradition – especially how it is maintained andperpetuated – has received little scholarly attention. John Algeo (1991: 3)

is one of the clearest in pointing out the self-referential nature of the

tradition:

The tradition of what is or is not a usage problem has been largely parthe-nogenic. That is, the tradition of usage study creates usage problems tostudy. A writer on usage becomes exercised about some option, often anold option whose frequency of choice is changing, and that writer begins tocomment upon the option unfavorably.

Very often those unfavorable comments get picked up by other usage

books and practically acquire their own authority, simply by their being

included in usage books. Peters and Young (1997: 317) registered this

phenomenon in their review of fifty usage books:

This and other Fowlerian prescriptions seem to persist in an independentusage tradition, a kind of ‘paralexicography’ which is untouched by descrip-tive lexicography or the discipline of grammar. Certain topics indeed havebecome conventional for usage books, and the commentators note withoutjustification what is ‘right’/ ‘wrong,’ ‘preferred’/ ‘to be avoided.’

Later Peters and Young (1997: 322) suggest that ‘‘the conservative tradi-

tion is self-sustaining and tends to insulate and isolate its protagonistsmore than they realize.’’ Similarly, Geo¤rey Nunberg (1990: 475) notes

that ‘‘the rules have been ossified as a body of traditional yore’’ and that

‘‘usage has become a matter of simple etiquette, and in such matters, pre-cisely because they are unimportant, we submit to arbitrary precedent.’’

Nunberg’s connection of usage rules and etiquette is apt, since in many

ways the prescriptive tradition derives its authority and perpetuates itselfmuch like instructions on etiquette. In both, the ‘‘facts’’ (of usage and

etiquette) derive their authority mainly from being part of a tradition, not

from any independent validation. We might call such traditions canonical,in that their tenets are inherited and received, rather than questioned and

proved. The authority of a canonical tradition depends simply on its

acceptance, not necessarily on any outside criteria. Canonical traditionsare not common today, given our manifest preference for evidence and

argument supporting our systems of knowledge, but they do exist in vari-

ous degrees, in such realms as etiquette, and perhaps in religion and law.Acknowledging usage advice as constituting a canonical tradition ought to

clarify any principled discussion of prescriptions and prescriptivism.

But such acknowledgment of a canonical usage tradition has not beenforthcoming from either the linguists attacking the prescriptive tradition

or the prescriptivists defending it. The apologists for a prescriptive ap-

proach to usage would certainly not relish such a characterization of theirtradition; not a few have claimed to be nobly saving the English language

and preserving it from the ignorance and carelessness of the masses. How

could their e¤orts possibly be characterized as perpetuating a circular,self-referential system? And while linguists may have recognized the circu-

lar nature of the canonical tradition, they have not really taken the tradi-

tion seriously, since it is patently inadequate in the face of the knowledgeof language they have gained from more careful, systematic study of

language.

142 Don Chapman

But in ignoring or dismissing the canonical nature of prescriptivism,

both sides have missed one of the chief strengths of a canonical system –

whatever else can be said about a canonical system, it is robust. Of coursea canonical system has nothing to say about anything except itself, but the

advantage it has is that its ‘‘facts’’ cannot be gainsaid. That is likely a

large reason that the prescriptive tradition has stood practically imper-

vious to the attacks of linguists for decades. It does not matter, for exam-ple, whether linguists demonstrate that educated people frequently write

‘‘third century A.D.’’ Within a canonical tradition, the validity of that

proscription has nothing to do with actual usage; instead, the more im-portant point is the extent to which the proscription of using A.D. with

centuries has become part of the tradition. Yet the process by which a

prescription becomes part of a tradition has hardly been studied. Thispaper represents an initial attempt: perhaps one way of understanding

how prescriptions enter that tradition is to examine those prescriptions

that failed. Hence the investigation into one-o¤s.The one-o¤s for this study have been taken from comparing the follow-

ing usage guides: American Heritage 1996, Brians 1997, Wilson 1993,

Grammar Slammer 2006, Lynch 2007, Vidrine 2006, Hutchinson, Merriam-Webster 1994, Fowler 1926, Burchfield 1996, Bernstein 1965, and Copperud

1970. A list of these works and the number of one-o¤s found in each one

can be seen in Table 1. It is possible that some of these one-o¤s could havebeen included in a manual not examined for this study, but they still will

have been at most infrequently repeated. These one-o¤s have been supple-

mented by entries from Baker 1770, Ayres 1881, and Hodgson 1889 thathave been compared against the manuals just listed. They have also been

supplemented by entries from Merriam-Webster (1994) that give only one

citation. Of course this manual is not exhaustive in its citation, so that anentry with only one citation may not have truly been a one-o¤, but I have

tried to include only those that appear to have limited circulation and that

are not mentioned by the other manuals in this study.

Unnoticed Constructions

A prescription will less likely be repeated if others do not notice the con-

struction. This is probably the soundest principle for telling whether a pre-scription will be picked up by others. Having a prescription attract notice

takes just the right amount of exposure of the construction. If a construc-

Bad Ideas in the History of English Usage 143

tion rarely occurs, a prescriber will either not have noticed the con-struction or not have thought it su‰ciently widespread to deserve com-

ment. As the examples below show, a construction may be rare because it

is on its way out of the language, as in the case of thou (#1) or becauseit has yet to become established, as with dynamitard (#4).

1. ‘‘The using you and thou together in the same period (and more espe-

cially so very close together) is an unnatural way of writing.’’ (Baker1770)

2. ‘‘The word hit is commonly used in Oxfordshire and some of the adja-

cent counties, even by people of good education, to signify toss, throwor fling. It is necessary to inform them, that to hit signifies to strike,

and not to toss or to throw.’’ (Baker 1770)

3. ‘‘do(e)st. In modern, though not in older, use the auxiliary has dost

only, & the independent verb doest only.’’ (Fowler 1926)

4. ‘‘dynamiter, -tard. Use -er.’’ (Fowler 1926)

5. ‘‘pawn o¤. This is a peculiar expression. None of the usual dictionariesof slang mentions it, and neither do any of the usual usage books,

except Harper 1985.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)

Table 1.

Total entries One-o¤s Percent

Brians 1997 1101 392 35.6%

Fowler 1926 6321 1918 30.3%

Hutchinson 1300 362 27.8%

Wilson 1993 4721 906 19.2%

Grammar Slammer 167 26 15.6%

Bernstein 1965 1298 145 11.2%

Vidrine 2006 58 6 10.3%

Burchfield 1996 1105 89 8.1%

American Heritage 1996 691 49 7.1%

Lynch 2007 270 11 3.9%

Merriam-Webster 1994 2306 6 0.2%

Copperud 1970 1475 0 0.0%

144 Don Chapman

Occasionally a construction drops out of the language because it is essen-

tially topical for a particular time. As times and fashions change, the con-

struction becomes little used. Prescriptions that treat such topical con-structions would not be expected to be repeated, once the construction

has lost its currency.

6. ‘‘It is customary at the playhouse, at the conclusion of The Beggar’s

Opera, if the same be intended to be acted again the next night, for

one of the actors to advance and say Tomorrow will be performed this

opera again. He ought to say this Comedy, not this Opera: for thoughThe Beggar’s Opera be the name of the piece, it is not an opera.’’

(Baker 1770)

On the other hand, a prescription may fail to be repeated if the construc-tion that it treats occurs too frequently. Frequent constructions may well

appear natural, and therefore unobjectionable:

7. ‘‘raise the rent. An expression incorrectly used for increase the rent.’’

(Ayres 1881)

8. ‘‘settle. This word is often inelegantly, if not incorrectly, used forpay.’’ (Ayres 1881)

Insu‰cient Justification

Beyond whether a construction is noticed, we might also expect that pre-scriptions will more likely be repeated if the justifications for those pre-

scriptions are more compelling. We may infer that for those prescriptions

that fail to be repeated, the justification apparently does not reach a

threshold of plausibility or importance for others judging the construction.In discussing justifications, we may profit from the list of first principles

that Bryan Garner (2003: xii) uses for evaluating a prescription. This

list looks reasonably accurate when compared with the justifications orexplanations for prescriptions that show up in usage handbooks. Most

prescriptions are indeed justified by an appeal to one or more of these

principles.

1. Purpose. The purpose of a usage dictionary is to help writers, editors,

and speakers use language e¤ectively: to help them sound grammati-cal but relaxed, refined but natural, correct but unpedantic.

2. Realism. To guide users helpfully, recommendations on usage must

be genuinely plausible. They must recognize the language as it cur-


rently stands, encourage reasonable approaches to editorial prob-

lems, and avoid refighting battles that were long ago lost.

3. Linguistic Simplicity. If the same idea can be expressed in a simpleway or in a complex way, the simple way is better – and, parado-

xically, it will typically lead readers to conclude that the writer is

smarter.

4. Readers’ Reactions. Generally, writing is good if readers find it easyto follow; writing is bad if readers find it hard to follow.

5. Tightness. Omitting needless words is important. As long as it’s accu-

rate, the briefest way of phrasing an idea is usually best because thebrevity enhances speed, clarity, and impact.

6. Word-Judging. A word or phrase is somewhat undesirable if it has

any one of the following characteristics, and is worse if it has two ormore:

(a) it sounds newfangled;

(b) it defies logic;(c) it threatens to displace an established expression (but has not yet

done so);

(d) it originated in a misunderstanding of a word or its etymology;(e) it blurs a useful distinction.

7. Di¤erentiation. If related words – especially those di¤ering only in

the su‰x – begin to take on di¤erent senses, it’s wise to encouragethe latent distinctions when they’re first emerging and then to follow

them once they’re established.

8. Needless Variants. Having two or more variant forms of a word isundesirable unless each one signals a distinct meaning.

9. Conservatism. If two constructions are current, and one of them has

been widely condemned by authorities whose values are in line withthose outlined in #6, the other construction is better.

10. Actual Usage. In the end, the actual usage of educated speakers and

writers is the overarching criterion for correctness. But while actualusage can trump the other factors, it is not the only consideration.

It will also be useful to discuss these justifications under two broad divi-

sions: those justifications that are more arbitrary and those that are lessarbitrary.

Justifications that are more arbitrary

Several justifications for prescriptions are based on criteria that can onlyseem arbitrary, or at least very close to arbitrary. Prescriptions depending

146 Don Chapman

on appropriateness are a prime example. In principle #1, Garner states

that usage advice should help people sound ‘‘grammatical but relaxed,

refined but natural, correct but unpedantic.’’ Yet when one tries to devisecriteria for determining whether a construction is natural, refined, or un-

pedantic, one ends up mainly with the prescriber’s preference. There is

very often little else to help determine such prescriptions. Since only the

prescriber’s preference justifies the prescription, others may feel less aptto repeat it. Judgments about whether a form is outdated, cliche, informal,

pretentious, overused, and so on, seem especially hard to establish.

9. ‘‘retire. It is only the overnice that use retire in the sense of go to

bed.’’ (Ayres 1881)10. ‘‘splendid. This poor word is used by the gentler sex to qualify well-

nigh everything that has their approval, from a sugarplum to the

national capitol. In fact, splendid and awful seem to be about theonly adjectives some of our superlative young women have in their

vocabulary.’’ (Ayres 1881)

11. ‘‘beau Harper 1975 tells us that beau is obsolescent, if not obsolete,and that the plural beaux is obsolete in the U.S. Harper is wrong on

both counts.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)

Similarly, Garner explicitly notes that a word should be avoided if it is

newfangled (#6a), but determining whether a word sounds newfangled

is di‰cult. Such judgments have more of arbitrariness than principle tothem.

12. ‘‘ageism Simon 1980 asperses ageism as an illiteracy. He also pur-

ports, ironically, not to understand its meaning.’’ (Merriam-Webster

1994)13. ‘‘commonality Howard 1978 seems to be the only commentator to

take exception to the modern and predominantly American use of

commonality.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)14. ‘‘imbecile, imbecilic Simon 1980 says in passing that imbecilic is ‘a

substandard adjective derived by faulty analogy.’ We do not know

on what basis this assertion is made, but the formation from thenoun imbecile and the adjective ending -ic, as shown in the OED

Supplement, is entirely regular. (Merriam-Webster 1994)

15. ‘‘prewar Prewar is used primarily as an adjective, but it is also some-times used as an adverb. . . . It was criticized by Fowler 1926, but it

has never caught on as a popular target among usage commentators.

The probable reason is that it is too uncommon to attract muchnotice.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)


Another area of prescriptions whose justifications end up being largely

arbitrary are judgments about which adverbial/prepositional complements

should be used with particular words. These fit Garner’s recommenda-tion in principle #8 to avoid needless variants. The variants are needless

largely because the di¤erent adverbs and prepositions hardly change the

meaning of the construction. But since they do not a¤ect the meaning,

the judgment of which one to use becomes arbitrary. Apparently a judg-ment can be felt to be su‰ciently arbitrary, that there is little compelling

reason to repeat it.

16. ‘‘crushed out. ‘The rebellion was finally crushed out.’ Out of what?

We may crush the life out of a man, or crush a man to death, and

crush – not crush out – a rebellion.’’ (Ayres 1881)17. ‘‘demanding According to Bernstein 1965, demanding is idiomatically

followed by of. However, we find demanding very seldom used with a

complement introduced by a preposition, and we have no exampleswith of. While demanding of certainly sounds idiomatic, the only

preposition we have recorded is in.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)

18. ‘‘dismayed Colter 1981 recommends with after dismayed, which is alittle surprising, as by is the usual preposition. With and at may also

be used.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)

Justifications that are less arbitrary

Several other justifications are less arbitrary, at least insofar as the prin-

ciple undergirding them can be more easily enunciated and illustrated.Constructions can at least be explained to be redundant or illogical, for

example, whether or not those explanations are convincing. The justifica-

tions rest on reasons besides the prescriber’s preferences. The problemcomes, then, in gauging whether the prescriber’s arguments are indeed

convincing. Just because a justification is made, it does not mean that the

prescription is desirable. The one-o¤s in this category apparently failed tomeet the necessary level of desirability.

Logic

Garner’s principle #6c holds that a word or phrase is less desirable if it

defies logic. But logic is a di‰cult criterion to apply to language, because

language is not logic. Language can be used to state logical relationships,

148 Don Chapman

but language states many other relationships as well. The term illogical is

best applied to entities that indeed involve logic, such as propositions or

steps of an argument. Calling a word or phrase illogical makes consider-ably less sense. When an appeal to logic is used as a justification for a pre-

scription, the prescriber often means that the words in a phrase, if taken in

their most prominent acontextual sense, do not add up to what the writer

really wants to say, or they introduce an inconsistency or impossibility.Since language works on principles extending beyond logic, prescriptions

that try to reduce language to logic are not always convincing. If the

logical inconsistency is harder to see than the meaning of a construction,the prescription will be less likely deemed valuable enough to be repeated.

And if the construction is idiomatic, the senses of its constituents are

irrelevant.

19. ‘‘neither read nor write. This is a common way of speaking, but it is

certainly wrong, it being much more proper to say He can neither

write nor read, than He can neither read nor write.’’ (Baker 1770)

20. ‘‘as the result of. The phrase is usually inexact. For example: ‘Two

persons were killed and three injured as the result of a collision oftwo cars on Highway 5 this morning.’ Obviously there were other

results: The cars were damaged, the road was probably blocked,

and perhaps an ambulance driver was called away from an interest-ing poker game. What was meant in the sentence was a result of or

one result of.’’ (Bernstein 1965)

21. ‘‘parallel Simon 1980 finds fault with Joyce Carol Oates for havingwritten ‘Nor do the parallels between the two American women

become too aggressively pointed.’ According to Simon, ‘Parallels

are lines that run side by side; in no sense can they be pointed.’ ’’

(Merriam-Webster 1994)

Redundancy

Garner’s principle #5 claims that omitting needless words is important

and that ‘‘brevity enhances speed, clarity, and impact.’’ This seems likesound advice. But redundancy also serves a useful purpose in language,

namely making a message robust (see Merriam-Webster 1994: s.v. redun-

dancy). Just because a word or phrase repeats an idea in discourse, doesnot mean that it is useless. Redundancy allows a message to be under-

stood, even if parts of it are missed. That is probably why redundancy is

a natural feature of language and permeates it at all levels. At some point,


however, redundancy can pass from being helpful to being tedious. If the

message is reasonably clear without the repeated element (e.g. phrase,

word, clause), the repeated element runs the danger of becoming simplyobtrusive and annoying. The task, then, is to gauge whether a particular

phrase or word that is claimed to be redundant stands a greater chance

of being annoying on one hand, or useful or merely harmless on the other.

Apparently some decried redundancies do not rise to the level of beingannoying.

22. ‘‘collaborate Einstein 1985 calls collaborate together redundant. Itrepresents an intensive use of the adverb, or would if actually so

used. We have no evidence of its use in print. What we do find is

that collaborate is frequently used with in, on, and with.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)

23. ‘‘coequal Bryson 1984 disparages this word as ‘a fatuous addition to

the language.’ But coequal was actually added to the language in the14th century and has been found useful now for about 600 years.’’


Etymology

Garner’s principle #6d holds that a word or phrase is less desirable if

it originated from a misunderstanding of the etymology of a word. But

etymology is an unsure guide of a word’s meaning. There is no reason tosuppose that a word means what it used to mean, unless the etymology

has persisted to the present. The real question, then, is whether an older

meaning has persisted long and widely enough that it should be taken

into account when judging a newer sense. Since etymology by itself is notsu‰cient as a criterion for a prescription, it should not be surprising to see

prescriptions based on them being rejected. If an etymology is long-buried

in the word’s history, an appeal to it will smack of over-refinement andpedantry.

24. ‘‘equanimity of mind. This phrase is tautological, and expresses nomore than does equanimity (literally ‘equal-mindedness’) alone; hence

of mind is superfluous, and consequently inelegant.’’ (Ayres 1881)

25. ‘‘abortive A love of etymology and the consequent dismembering ofEnglish words into their presumed constituent parts has led many a

usage commentator down the primrose path of error. Safire 1982

seconds a correspondent’s objection to the use of abortive to describe

150 Don Chapman

a failed mission to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran in 1979. Safire claims

to see in the su‰x -ive an implication of continuation or permanence,

and he maintains that abortive must therefore ‘suggest a continuousprocess of aborting.’ This is, of course, a conclusion that could only

be reached by ignoring the use of the whole word in English in favor

of speculating about what it might mean.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)

Useful Distinction

Garner, like many other prescribers, appeals to the notion of a ‘‘useful

distinction’’ (#6e). It is a handy justification for a prescription, since all it

really requires is for a distinction to be spelled out. But just because adistinction can be made does not mean that a distinction should be made.

When gauging the usefulness of a distinction, we need to keep track of two

questions: 1) is it really a distinction, or how easy is the distinction tograsp; 2) is it actually useful, or how often do speakers really use the

distinction. The first question acknowledges that some distinctions are

easier to state and grasp than others. Often the claim that a distinction isuseful seems to rest on little more than this: if the prescriber can state a

clear distinction, the distinction is considered to be desirable ipso facto.

But how easy is the distinction to maintain in actual language use? Pre-scriptions that depend on fine-grained distinctions would seem less likely

to be repeated.

Yet even fine-grained distinctions are easy to use if speakers sense aneed for them. That is why the question of usefulness is also important.

Probably the best gauge of usefulness comes from actual use of the distinc-

tion: if speakers maintain the distinction, it must be useful. This last claimis more than a resort to empirical evidence, though it is that; it is also an

acknowledgment that a distinction will be easier to grasp the more it is

used. In this regard a ‘useful distinction’ is like a distinctive feature inarticulatory phonology. A phonetic feature is distinctive only if speakers

use it to make meaningful di¤erences. Speakers can readily apprehend dis-

tinctive features, but have a much harder time grasping phonetic featuresthat are not distinctive, no matter how pronounced their properties are.

Whether the distinction in the sound is easy to identify depends entirely

on whether it is used to make a distinction in meaning. Similarly, thosemeaning distinctions expounded in prescriptions – even the fine-grained

ones – will be easier to grasp if speakers actually use the distinctions

as prescribed. A proposed ‘useful distinction’ has less chance of being


repeated if speakers are not already making the distinction. The following

prescriptions are probably too fine-grained or too little observed to be

useful enough to be repeated:

26. ‘‘calamity. This word is sometimes misused by careless writers in the

sense of loss, whereas properly it should be used in an abstract sense,

meaning source of misery, or of loss. To call a loss a calamity isas absurd as it would be to call a loss an inundation, a famine, or a

plague.’’ (Ayres 1881)

27. ‘‘deceiving. ‘You are deceiving me.’ Not infrequently deceiving is usedwhen the speaker means trying to deceive. It is when we do not sus-

pect deception that we are deceived.’’ (Ayres 1881)

28. ‘‘conquer. This word is often employed when the better word wouldbe overcome or vanquish. The leading idea in conquer is that of get-

ting; in overcome and vanquish, that of getting the better of.’’ (Ayres

1881)29. ‘‘completed. This word is often incorrectly used for finished. That is

complete that lacks nothing; that is finished that has had all done to

it that was intended.’’ (Ayres 1881)30. ‘‘proof. This word is much and very improperly used for evidence,

which is only the medium of proof, proof being the e¤ect of evi-

dence. ‘What evidence have you to o¤er in proof of the truth of yourstatement.’’ (Ayres 1881)

31. ‘‘news. This word is very often improperly used instead of tidings.

The di¤erence between the two words lies therein that to news wemay be indi¤erent, while in tidings we are always interested. News is

of public, tidings of individual interest.’’ (Ayres 1881)

32. ‘‘despondent can only apply to people (Simon 1980)’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)

33. ‘‘attain, says Bryson, ‘suggests the reaching of a desired goal.’ ’’


Di¤erentiation

Following Fowler, Garner recommends di¤erentiation between similar

constructions where possible (principle #7). As with ‘useful distinctions,’however, it is always possible to create distinctions that are too subtle or

too contorted to recognize or remember. Unless speakers already recog-

nize the di¤erence between two similar constructions, it will probably

152 Don Chapman

be too much to expect di¤erent su‰xes, spellings, or particles to maintain

di¤erences in sense.

34. ‘‘He [Janis 1984] says that collectable is being used more as an adjec-

tive in relation to bills, while collectible is being used as a noun

for things like glassware, furniture, political campaign buttons, and

posters that are collected.’’ (Merriam-Webster 1994)35. ‘‘Foster 1968 discusses a British concern of the earlier 20th century to

restrict the transitive verb [approve] to the ‘o‰cial sanction’ sense,

and the ‘favorable view’ sense to the intransitive [approve of ]. Thetransitive verb, however, had been in use in the ‘favorable view’ sense

earlier than the ‘o‰cial sanction’ sense, so it is not surprising that the

urged distinction failed to make much headway.’’ (Merriam-Webster1994)

Conclusion

This paper has tried to illustrate the ways that a prescription can fail totake hold. In general terms, a prescription fails to be repeated if it does

not cross a threshold of noticeability, plausibility, or importance. But

where to locate that threshold remains a question, especially since fornearly every principle discussed above, we can find many prescriptions

that have crossed the threshold and have entered into the canonical tradi-

tion, even though the prescribed constructions do not seem much di¤erentfrom those that have not been repeated. Whereas collectable/collectible

has not gained much traction as a species of di¤erentiation within the

usage handbooks, further/ farther and uninterested/disinterested have. Whilecompleted/finished did not become an issue, convince/persuade did. And if

we find no references to The Beggar’s Opera in usage books today, we do

find references to Frankenstein. It is hard to say what makes uninterested/disinterested, convince/persuade, and Frankenstein more worthy of repeti-

tion. Perhaps they seem more plausible or important mainly because they

occur more often in actual language use, giving speakers enough experiencewith the constructions for the arguments to make sense. Perhaps the dis-

tinction between disinterested and uninterested is repeated in prescriptions

because the ‘impartial’ sense of disinterested is used often enough forspeakers to grasp the prescribed distinction. We may not care about The

Beggar’s Opera anymore, but Frankenstein’s monster has become a fixture

in our popular culture. Perhaps the main principle for repeating a prescrip-


tion after it is first proposed boils down to exposure: a prescription acquires

its appeal as it accounts for actual language use.

What further factors would account for the inclusion or exclusion ofprescriptions in the canon remain to be identified in future research. This

paper has shown reasons that one-o¤s could be expected to occur for most

justifications that have been advanced for prescriptions. The obvious next

step is to sort each of the one-o¤s according to the justifications given inthis paper, to see if indeed some justifications are more likely to produce

one-o¤s. We might expect that the more arbitrary justifications (like pro-

scriptions against old-fashioned or pretentious words) are more likely tostall than less arbitrary ones (like those appealing to logic or etymology).

We should know better with further research. At least now we have some

categories and conjectures for that research.

References

Algeo, John1991 Sweet Are the Usages of Diversity. Word 42: 1–17.

American Heritage Book of English Usage1996 Boston: Houghton Mi¿in.

Ayres, Alfred1881 The Verbalist. New York: Appleton.

Baker, Robert1770 Reflections on the English Language in the Nature of Vaugela’s

on the French. London: Printed for J. Bell.Bernstein, Theodore1965 The Careful Writer. New York: Atheneum.

Brians, Paul1997 Common Errors in English. http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/

index.html.Burchfield, Robert W.1996 The New Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon.

Copperud, Roy H.1970 American Usage: The Consensus. New York: Van Nostrand

Reinhold.Fowler, H. W.1926 A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon.

Garner, Bryan A.2003 Garner’s Modern American Usage. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Grammar SlammerOn-line http://englishplus.com/grammar/mistcont.htm.

Hodgson, William B.1889 Errors in the Use of English. Edinburgh: David Douglas.

154 Don Chapman

Hutchinson Dictionary of English Usagehttp://www.tiscali.co.uk/reference/dictionaries/english/.

Lynch, Jack2007 Guide to Grammar and Style. http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~

jlynch/Writing/index.html.Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of English Usage1994 Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster.

Nunberg, Geo¤rey1990 What the Usage Panel Thinks. In The State of the Language,

edited by Christopher Ricks and Leonard Michaels, 467–482.Berkeley: University of California Press.

Peters, Pam, and Wendy Young1997 English Grammar and the Lexicography of Usage. Journal of

English Linguistics 25: 315–331.Vidrine, Rachel2006 English Grammar Gone Awry. http://www.grammarerrors.com/

index.html.Wilson, Kenneth G.2001 The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. http://

www.bartleby.com/68/.


Commentary on Chapman, Bad Ideas in theHistory of English Usage

Stefanie Kuzmack

Don Chapman’s paper takes an interesting approach to prescriptivism.

Rather than examining the prescriptive rules that have caught on and are

now widely accepted, he looks at the rules he terms ‘‘one-o¤s’’ – rules thatappeared in a usage manual once, but that were not repeated by other

authors. In taking this approach, he explores how these rules are justified,

and how those justifications can fail. It is also enlightening just to see aportion of the rules that did not make it into the canon of accepted rules,

and to see how they compare to the ones we encounter regularly.

The idea raised here that usage rules are a form of etiquette is anintriguing alternative to viewing them in terms of truth and falsity. As

Chapman suggests, discussions of these rules with non-linguists might be

made more productive by keeping that perspective in mind. The authorsof usage guides, admittedly, are too invested in the belief that usage is a

matter of right and wrong to welcome such a comparison, but people

who are less invested in the matter might take a di¤erent view, even ifthey do believe in the validity of prescriptive rules. By giving people a

di¤erent form of ‘‘correctness’’ to hold onto, presenting prescriptivism as

etiquette might make it easier to encourage people to rethink such ideasas ‘‘two negatives must logically make a positive.’’

Comparing usage rules to etiquette rules might also let us avoid the

apparent contradictions that often arise in discussions of prescriptivism.In formal written language, certain usage rules do matter, just as rules of

etiquette matter more in formal social situations. There is technically

nothing wrong with ending a sentence with a preposition in English, butit is still a construction to avoid in formal writing since the rule against it

is so widely accepted. Presenting this as a matter of etiquette would pro-

vide a coherent explanation that would account for both the arbitrarinessof the rules, and the value in taking them into account under certain

circumstances.

For future research, Chapman proposes to organize the one-o¤s dis-cussed here according to the types of justification used to support them,

and to investigate whether some types of justification work better than

others. He writes, ‘‘We might expect that the more arbitrary justifications

(like proscriptions against old-fashioned or pretentious words) are more

likely to stall than less arbitrary ones (like those appealing to logic oretymology).’’ However, there is another factor that may also be worth

considering: the e¤ectiveness of a type of justification may vary depending

on the audience. The present paper already examines usage guides from

multiple decades; one could assess the e¤ectiveness of certain justificationsat di¤erent times – for example, describing words as old-fashioned or

newfangled might well more e¤ectively encourage a prescriptive rule

against those words during some times than others. If some usage guideswere only sold in one region, that would provide another di¤erence in

audience to examine, as well.

Although we associate prescriptivism with conservativism, the preva-lence of these one-o¤s (over a fourth of the rules in some guides) suggests

that prescriptivists are less conservative than they appear. Furthermore,

while some of the justifications used are inherently conservative, othersare not. ‘‘Newfangled’’ expressions tend to be proscribed, and etymology

is given more weight than current usage: these are unquestionably con-

servative traits. However, usage guides also appeal to brevity, logic, andavoiding redundancy to support their rules, and those are not uniquely

conservative values. Based on the dates of the manuals used in this study,

the percentage of one-o¤s included appears to be fairly consistent overtime, so it is safe to say that prescriptivism is in no danger of becoming

obsolete due to a lack of innovation.

Commentary on Chapman 157

Response to Commentary by Kuzmack

Don Chapman

I began this paper as a qualitative study, partly because I did not thinkthat I would find enough one-o¤s for quantification. Most of my paper,

therefore, is devoted to forwarding the idea that prescriptivism can be

seen as a canonical tradition and to examining the kinds of justificationsgiven for introducing new items into the tradition. I am gratified that

Stefanie Kuzmack found interest in those parts.

I am also grateful for the insights and suggestions that Kuzmack givesconcerning the quantified aspects of the study. It was only after submitting

the paper that I came up with any quantified data, and the table of one-

o¤s was a last-minute insertion. The table invites several questions, andin the future, I plan to present a quantitative study of these one-o¤s. For

now, I can at least respond tentatively to a couple of Kuzmack’s insights. I

take Kuzmack’s point that the prescriptive tradition may not be as conser-

vative as we thought, if a quarter of the entries in several usage manualsare one-o¤s. I was genuinely surprised at the number of one-o¤s. Perhaps

the large number of one-o¤s partly owes to the relatively small number of

usage manuals that I surveyed. Perhaps with more usage manuals, wewould have more repetitions. But even so, that would still mean that the

tradition is still more di¤use than expected. Even if some of these one-o¤s

turn out to be repeated in other manuals, they have not been repeatedoften enough to make it into more than one of the sixteen well-known

usage manuals surveyed in this study. As Kuzmack points out, the tradi-

tion is not sclerotic, as it can continue to refresh its content. In fact, tworecent usage manuals not surveyed in this study have some of the highest

numbers of one-o¤s: Peters 2004 has 28% and Garner 2003 comes in with

a whopping 41%. Apparently usage manual editors do not see themselvesas merely conservators of a tradition, but instead are willing to propose

new prescriptions as they see fit.

It is also worth considering Kuzmack’s suggestion that the types mightvary according to the time that they were introduced. It certainly is the

case that di¤erent manuals favor di¤erent types of one-o¤s, but without

more manuals per period, it would be hard to tell whether the di¤erencesowe to diachronic trends or to idiosyncratic preferences of the editors. The

latter looks more likely: Bernstein 1965, for example, favors prescriptions

involving complementation, while Fowler 1926 has an unusual number of

prescriptions about plural formation.Finally, even for a qualitative study, I can give a few more examples

than I gave in the paper:

complementation: charged with/by, obsessed with/by, scruple infinitive/gerund; sensitive to/of;

dialect di¤erences: spelling of estrogen/oestrogen; first floor/ground floor;

di¤erentiation: carbolic/carbonic; collaborator/collaborationist; evasion/evasiveness; potency/potence; populous/populace; roundel/roundelay;

chanty/shanty; dolly/handcart;

meaning distinctions: law/theory; underneath/below/beneath; vicar/rector;

etymology: fill/fit the bill; just assume/just as soon; next door/next store;

old-timer’s disease/Alzheimers disease; op-ed ¼ opposite, not opinion;archaic: derring-do; boon; ergo; tilth; withal;

cliche: aborning; between a rock and a hard place; bound and determined;down and out;

newfangled: overthrowal; revisal;

pretentious: intermediary; network (vb); streamlined; terrain;

principal parts: sleep; slink; strew;

plurals: fibula; fibroma; florilegium; lamprey; latifundia; miasma.

References

Bernstein, Theodore.1965 The Careful Writer. New York: Atheneum.

Fowler, H. W.1926 A Dictionary of Modern English Usage. Oxford: Clarendon.

Garner, Bryan A.2003 Garner’s Modern American Usage. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Peters, Pam.2004 The Cambridge Guide to English Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

Response to Commentary by Kuzmack 159

The State of English Etymology(A Few Personal Observations)

Anatoly Liberman

1. The Beginning: From Minsheu to Wedgwood

The first dictionary of English etymology appeared in 1617 (Minsheu

1617), and this is the conventional date marking the emergence of Englishetymology as an independent branch of scholarship. In European lexi-

cography, Minsheu was preceded only by Kiliaen (1599; Dutch). Both

authors wrote their works in Latin. During the pre-Rask-Grimm epoch,researchers made useful etymological discoveries either by chance or

when correct conclusions could not be missed. For example, no one

doubted that Latin was the foundation of the Romance languages. Weadmire Socrates’ insights, as we know them from Plato’s Cratyllus, but

the truly interesting part of the dialogue is devoted to the perennial ques-

tion about the relation of sign and meaning. The etymologies o¤ered thereare indefensible. Socrates and his interlocutors in Cratyllus knew only

Greek and some Phrygian. seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scholars

were aware of the multitude of languages around them, but their evolu-tionary model held out little promise. Debate centered on whether Latin

arose from Greek or was a language in its own right. Hebrew enjoyed the

status of a protolanguage. Hardly anyone doubted that Gothic gave birthto German, and in the second half of the nineteenth century Skeat still

kept reminding his readers that German is not the progenitor of English.

The greatest handicap in the work of early etymologists was their igno-rance of sound correspondences and, as a result, their dependence on

near identical forms.

Yet in one respect their comparison of modern languages with Hebrew,Greek, and Latin is instructive: it reminds us of how much in the history

of words depends on chance and thereby teaches us caution. Unbelievably

many look-alikes are almost too good to be wrong. Junius (about whommore will be said below) derived stubborn from Greek stibarov ‘firm,

strong,’ but stibarov is not allied to stubborn. The coincidence is strik-

ing. Stubborn is related to Icelandic þybbin (the same meaning). The di¤er-

ence between the su‰xes – the rare -orn versus -inn – remains a puzzle.

Perhaps stubborn is related to Latin tu #ber ‘swelling’ (for details see the

entry on stubborn in Liberman 2008: 203–05). In any case, it is notstubþ orn. Even the Hebrew words cited generously by the earliest ety-

mologists are of some value. Since ancient ties between Indo-European

and Semitic are indubitable, the Hebrew material in Minsheu and others

may occasionally be put to use. The oldest dictionaries exist in modern re-prints. If they were indexed for words, the Hebrew list might show how

often modern linguists hit upon the forms mentioned in similar contexts

by their distant predecessors. A typical example is English lad, which hasbeen erroneously referred to Hebrew yeled ‘boy’ (some etymologists still

defend this comparison despite the evidence to the contrary), though it is

almost certainly of Scandinavian origin.However dedicated Minsheu and his contemporaries might be to Hebrew,

Greek, and Latin as the presumable sources of modern languages, they

had to deal with many words so obviously recent (slang, for example) thatprojecting them to antiquity was out of the question. Minsheu told an

anecdote about cockney being a fusion of cock and neigh. The anecdote

can be found in both the OED and The Century. When Casaubon (1650:218, 308–9) compared cockney and Greek oi �kogenhv ‘born and bred

at home’, no one followed him. (The origin of cockney is still debatable;

there is an entry on this word, too, in Liberman 2008.) Yet an atten-tive etymologist will find some stimulating ideas in seventeenth- and

eighteenth-century dictionaries. Not all of them are wrong.In addition to the arguments advanced above (coincidences and non-

trivial suggestions about late words), it should be borne in mind that the

science of etymology, this mixture of rigor, inspiration, and good luck, is,

unlike phonetics, grammar, and semantics, often ignorant of its history.This is particularly true of English. When people approach a word of

yet undiscovered origin, some associations are predictable. On hearing

English strumpet, an Icelander will think of strympa ‘bucket, virago, etc.’;and a German, of Strumpf ‘stocking, hose.’ Scholars and amateurs o¤er

the same conjectures again and again, including those that have been re-

jected on good grounds. Has the comparison between strumpet – strympa

and strumpet – Strumpf been investigated? If so, is it valid? The answer to

the first question is no, and to the second yes. The main reason for the

‘‘eternal return’’ of both silly guesses and promising hypotheses is thelack of reference tools English etymologists can use. What are they ex-

pected to do once dictionaries tell them that the origin of strumpet is

unknown/disputable/obscure? Who has the time, patience, and resources

162 Anatoly Liberman

to look through all the volumes of the Year’s Work type and myriad

popular books with the prospect of coming away empty-handed? And

should the same search be repeated for every word? (I keep referring tomy dictionary not for the sake of promoting it or self-aggrandizement.

Quite naturally, I cite the words that I have researched; strumpet will also

be found in Liberman 2008. Its origin does not seem to have been dis-

cussed outside dictionaries.)For over two decades I have been putting together a bibliography of

English etymology. My database contains about 20,000 articles, reviews,

and notes featuring close to 14,400 words of Modern English, from themost common (like man, boy, girl ) to the rarest ones (regional, archaic,

and exotic). Its publication (2009) will facilitate answers to questions like

those given above about strumpet. However, every bibliography containsnumerous gaps. Some omissions are due to bad luck, others are inten-

tional. For example, Kennedy (1927) compiled a superb bibliography of

writings on the English language but ignored thousands of contributionsto Notes and Queries, both London-based and local. My database is all-

inclusive to the extent that I was able to make it such. Yet (to give a single

example) I found it unnecessary to cite works on the etymology ofGreek anQrohov because English has anthropology and misanthrope. By

contrast, nectar, shaman, and viking, all borrowed, are there. In Liberman

2008, early etymologists (beginning with Leibnitz) feature prominently,and the reader will be able to see whether some of the most tempting

modern ideas, tenable or untenable, occurred for the first time centuries

ago (they sometimes did).We can now return to the seventeenth century. Minsheu’s book was a

blend of an etymological dictionary and a synonym finder in about a

dozen languages. The next two dictionaries are those by Skinner (1671)and Junius (1743); both were written in Latin and published posthu-

mously. Many of Skinner’s guesses make sense. Junius, a native speaker

of Dutch, noticed numerous convergences between his native languageand English (for details on these and later dictionaries, as well as on books

of word histories, see Liberman 1998, 24–30).

A major figure in the history of English etymology is Horne Tooke, theauthor of a two-volume book on ‘‘winged words’’ (epea pteroenta: Tooke

1798–1806). Today his influence on contemporary thought looks like one

of history’s unpredictable moves. A noted radical, an admirer and oppo-nent of John Locke, Tooke belonged to the Age of Reason, and we

may appreciate him for his philosophical acumen, but his derivations of

English words will not bear scrutiny, even though he had some familiarity

The State of English Etymology 163

with Middle English and some knowledge of the older period. Nor can we

generate su‰cient enthusiasm while debating whether all words are trace-

able to nouns, for, using his dictum, ‘‘words are things.’’ It is enough toobserve Tooke’s influence on the young Samuel Coleridge (cf. Jackson

1983) to see how little a word historian at any time could learn from

Epea pteroenta. By the forties of the nineteenth century, German philolo-

gists had discovered a good deal of what has not been superseded by laterresearch, but in England Tooke still had staunch supporters, as evidenced

by Edward Johnson, the author of a once well-known book (Johnson

1842; like a few other fellow etymologists of that period, Johnson was amedical doctor). Epea pteroenta was for the last time reprinted in 1860;

now there is a facsimile reprint of the original edition.

I fully agree with Dolezal (1997: 262):

In North America it is a commonplace to assert a Kuhnian influenced anal-ysis of linguistic history that creates a revolution of thought that not onlymarginalizes, but trivializes most, if not all, work before the publication ofNoam Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures. There should be no wonder, then,that historical linguistics itself does not hold a central position in the dis-cipline today. In order to hold a place in the present episteme, stalwarts ofdiachronic studies will place the ground work of the revolution at the timeof Bopp, Rask, and the Grimms; to admit any work beyond that wouldinvite the ridicule of the standard bearers.

The disrespect in which pre-Rask scholarship is held not only in North

America (a fact strangely at odds with multiple publications on the his-toriography of linguistics) has been nearly as detrimental to modern

linguistics as the conservative thinking of the British in the nineteenth

century. Dolezal finds it unfair that Tooke is mainly remembered for his

fanciful etymologies. But since etymology is the subject of this paper, Ihave no other choice than to dismiss those etymologies as indeed fanciful.

Tooke’s emphasis on nouns in the development of language has been men-

tioned; however, he derived many words from imperatives (if from give!,yet from get!, and so forth) and past participles. These derivations are no

longer even ‘‘thought provoking.’’

With regard to the history of English lexicography, I would like to setthe record straight on one minor point. Dolezal remarks (1997: 278):

It is also worthy of note that two dictionaries were published that weredirectly influenced by Tookian etymologies (and perhaps other principles):Richardson (1835) and Noah Webster (1828). The former is now just acuriosity, the latter stands for the highest authority of North Americanlexicography.


Only the name connects ‘‘the highest authority of North American lexi-

cography’’ with Webster’s 1828 work. Webster’s etymologies, an embar-

rassment to later scholars, remained unchanged until Mahn, a Germanexpert in Romance linguistics, revised them. His input was treasured so

much that the 1864 edition became known as Webster-Mahn. The etymol-

ogies in the dictionary gained a measure of respectability, but too little

fieldwork had been done by 1864 for Mahn to be able to o¤er somethingdurable. Richardson’s dictionary (see Richardson 1858 for the final ver-

sion) is a treasure trove of ingenious definitions and excellent citations.

His etymologies are a waste, but he summarized the earlier conjectureson the origin of words, and this is a useful feature of his entries. All in

all, his dictionary is not ‘‘just a curiosity.’’

With the appearance of Junius’s Etymologicum (the last dictionary ofthis type written in Latin) English etymology of the ‘‘premodern’’ period

reached its peak. However far Minsheu, Skinner, and Junius may have

been from understanding what we call the comparative method, theywere no longer medieval scholars, whose arbitrary etymologies aimed at

supporting preconceived ideas. In the Middle Ages, god would be equated

with good not because their kinship could be shown by referring to linguis-tic rules but because God is good. Unlike such practitioners of etymology,

Minsheu and others studied the history of words (as best they could). At

present we accept the medieval idea that homo ‘man, human being’ isallied to humus ‘earth’ not simply because many religions share the myth

of the human being’s creation from earth but because the vowels and

consonants in homo and humus match according to our rules. By thesame token, we reject the proposition that English man is derived from

Latin humanus: the similarity between them is fortuitous. (Latin hu#ma #nus‘human’, a derivative of homo, has nothing to do with the Germanicdivine name Mannus, the most likely etymon of man).

The literature on European etymology from Isidore of Seville through

Leibnitz to the end of the eighteenth century is not vast, if we disregardthe treatises on the origin of language and the diversity of languages (the

Tower of Babel). As pointed out above, the first etymological dictionary

of a new language (Dutch) appeared in 1599. Minsheu’s was the second.The third, by Helvigius (1620), was of German. At that period, etymology

was guesswork, inspired or foolish, as the case might be. Despite the

polemical spirit informing some works, the authors usually followed a cer-tain protocol, preserved by Richardson: before embarking on one’s own

theory, the predecessors’ suggestions were discussed. This is the title

of the least successful eighteenth-century etymological dictionary (in thebibliography appended to this paper, the title will not be reproduced in


full): G. W. Lemon, English Etymology; or Derivative Dictionary of the

English Language: In Two Alphabets, Tracing the Etymology of those

English Words that are derived I. From the Greek, and Latin Languages:

II. From the Saxon and other Northern Tongues. The whole compiled from

Vossius, Meric Casaubon, Spelman, Sommer, Minsheu, Junius, Skinner,

Verstegan, Ray, Nugent, Upton, Cleland, and other Etymologists (Lemon

1783). Lemon attempted to trace as many words as possible to Greek,but not all his authorities were of one mind: Minsheu turned to Hebrew

for the origin of English, Cleland preferred Celtic, and so forth, while

Sommer and Ray were lexicographers, not etymologists. Lemon’s erudi-tion cannot be doubted, yet he missed not only Kiliaen and Helvigius but

also Ihre (1769), the author of a deservedly influential Swedish dictionary.

Since etymology is based on a broad comparison of languages, itcannot a¤ord being only Dutch, English, German, or Swedish. For in-

stance, in all those languages the word for ‘hand’ sounds alike. English

hand, German Hand, and so forth must have developed from the sameprotoform: Gothic had handus, a u-stem (< *handuz), in accord with Old

Icelandic hond (o from a by u-umlaut). Our task consists in discovering

why *handuz designated the body part we still call ‘hand’. Consequently,if the origin of this word in Gothic, Dutch, German, Icelandic, or Swedish

happens to be explained, the problem of its etymology elsewhere in

Germanic will also be solved. This is why the bibliography of Englishetymology is a field with blurred contours and why the state of English

etymology should be viewed in conjunction with the state of etymology

in the other Germanic languages and to some extent in the rest of Indo-European (and occasionally in Semitic and Finno-Ugric).

Between 1822 (the year the second edition of Jacob Grimm’s Deutsche

Grammatik came out) and the emergence of the Neogrammarians, Ger-man historical linguistics made great progress, and etymological studies

in other countries either shone with a reflected light or lagged behind (the

usual case). English scholars were slow in realizing what was happeningon the continent, and serious conclusions about the origin of English

words can be found almost only in articles and books by German lin-

guists. The first Old English (Anglo-Saxon) grammar was written bySievers (1882). Germans also brought out the first dictionary of Middle

English (Stratmann 1867). Only in the area of Old English Englishmen

(Sommer 1659; Bosworth 1838) left the Germans Ettmuller (1851) andMatzner (1878–85) behind. For years Diefenbach (1851) remained the

best comparative dictionary of Gothic. All those books are, naturally,

outdated, but they ushered in a new era of English philology and con-


tain much that is still usable. It is no wonder that in 1891 Henry Bradley

saw fit to revise Stratmann’s dictionary. In the early eighties of the

nineteenth century, Skeat mentioned a single English etymological dic-tionary with approval, namely Mueller’s (or Muller’s) Etymologisches

Woerterbuch der englischen Sprache (1865–67; 1878), now completely

forgotten.

Meanwhile, in England a plan for a new dictionary (the future OED)was inaugurated. The designated etymologist for that dictionary was

Hensleigh Wedgwood. Year after year, from the early eighteen-forties on,

Wedgwood’s articles appeared in the volumes of the Transactions of the

Philological Society. Between 1859 and 1865 his etymological dictionary

was being published in installments (Wedgwood 1859–65). It ran into

three more editions, and a revised American edition was launched, butonly the first volume (the letters A through D) appeared. Like Webster,

Wedgwood knew many languages, including some non-Indo-European

ones. His etymologies are much more realistic than Webster’s, but heoften ruined them by adhering to the idea that words usually go back

to onomatopoeia or interjections. He was aware of major sound laws,

but since expressive words need not obey them, he did not bother aboutphonetics. Like no one else, he managed to string look-alikes of near

homonyms from di¤erent, sometimes unrelated languages, once again

highlighting the riddle and danger of chance coincidences. Serious scholarsdisapproved of Wedgwood’s conclusions, but some of them admitted that

the pseudocognates he paraded could not always be dismissed out of

hand. For instance, English chide (from cı #dan) resembles Finnish kidata

‘creak; shrink; press together’. True to this guiding principle, Wedgwood

believed that chide was sound imitative (< *‘make a lot of noise’). He

was probably wrong, but the sound complex kid does often turn up inwords for creaking, shrieking, screaming, and the like. Before rejecting

Wedgwood’s etymology, I investigated it in detail. This example is far

from unique. Wedgwood’s dictionary changed little from edition toedition, and this circumstance doomed it, for what appeared controversial

in 1865 must have looked like an anachronism in 1888.

Thus, by the early eighties English etymologists had at their dispo-sal Minsheu, Skinner, Junius, Tooke, Webster-Mahn, Wedgwood, and

Mueller – not an impressive list. But even German etymological dic-

tionaries (Kaltschmidt 1839; Schwenck 1839 and later) were antiquated.Only Kluge (1884) struck a modern note, though the first edition of his

dictionary was a modest venture by today’s standards. In other countries

the situation was even worse.


2. The ‘‘Middle Period’’: From Skeat to Weekley

The Reverend Walter W. Skeat planned to spend his life serving hisparishioners, and only an illness that a¤ected his voice made him turn to

academic pursuits. In 1879 he began to publish an etymological dictionary

and completed it in three years (Skeat 1882). The Clarendon Press did not

want to tamper with the original text, so that the second and the thirdedition di¤er minimally from the first, and only in the fourth (the last) he

could expunge, add, and modify some of his statements. The progress of

his scholarship can be traced through the several versions of his A Concise

Etymological Dictionary of the English Language.

In one respect Wedgwood and Skeat share common ground. Their

predecessors, as already pointed out, first summarized other solutionsand only then o¤ered their own. One can call such dictionaries analytic.

Wedgwood dispensed with the history of research. Skeat referred to the

most important compendia and dictionaries and occasionally to an articlethat contained a definitive answer to an etymological puzzle, but his

entries are summaries of the relevant facts and his conclusions. Beginning

with Wedgwood, English etymological lexicography became dogmaticand anonymous. In Germany, Kluge followed the same format (Schwenck

was not di¤erent in that regard). The undesirable consequences of the

‘‘dogmatic trend’’ are easy to see. The briefest comparison between Skeat’sor Kluge’s dictionary with Feist’s (to give an almost random example:

Feist 1939) will show how much more useful information one gets from

Feist, who cites thousands of works in many languages and unfolds amulticolored picture, where Skeat and Kluge allow us to see the top of

the building and to assume that its foundation is solid. We cannot even

judge how well-read they were. Wedgwood did without a bibliography.The dictionary by Skeat opens with a long list of other dictionaries

and editions, but it remains unclear how closely he followed journals and

Festschriften.

As time went on, European etymological lexicography began to gra-

vitate toward Feist’s model, whereas English lexicography remained

dogmatic. Skeat’s dictionary is still the best we have for English, but itdoes not encourage research. One example will su‰ce. According to

Skeat, bigot, from French, is a word of unknown origin. Everybody will

concur with his verdict even today. Yet by 1910 the most distinguishedRomance scholars had had a chance to discuss the history of bigot more

than once. In England, Wedgwood wrote about its etymology several

times. Skeat dismissed Wedgwood’s derivation on chronological grounds


(no reference is given) and produced the impression that no one else had

dealt with the problem. However, Wedgwood’s etymology (in this case

not based on sound imitation) convinced no one and occupied an insigni-ficant place in the long polemic.

Two years after the appearance of Skeat’s dictionary the first volume of

the NED (later renamed as the OED, though even Murray did not know

when O substituted for N ) went into print. The last volume came out in1928. A supplementary volume followed. After World War II, four more

supplementary volumes were published. Then they were all merged, and

now the OED, with regular additions, is available online. It is a historical,not an etymological dictionary, but etymology constitutes an important

part of every entry. Murray and Bradley, the first two editors, were out-

standing etymologists and kept abreast of German scholarship, oftenthrough personal correspondence. Craigie, Onions, and Burchfield were

more interested in the development of English words than in their origins.

Until today the state of English etymology is defined by two works:the last edition of Skeat’s dictionary (1910) and the OED (1884–1928).

As we will see, there is great discrepancy between what has been achieved

by several generations of scholars who have worked since roughly theend of World War I and what one finds in the post-1910 etymological

dictionaries.

The last etymological dictionary with a discernible imprint of individ-ual research was written by Ernest Weekley (1921), a distinguished spe-

cialist in onomastics and the influence of French on Middle and Modern

English. His popular books, now seldom consulted despite their merits,and numerous articles bear witness to his resourcefulness and courage in

o¤ering original solutions. Yet his dictionary is less innovative than his

scholarly publications and makes it clear that after Skeat and the OED,attempts to produce a run-of-the-mill dictionary of English etymology

should be abandoned. Being able to explain several hundred words better

than it was done by Skeat, Murray, and Bradley does not justify such aventure.

English vocabulary contains words with ramified Indo-European con-

nections (for instance, numerals and kin terms), words attested in all theGermanic languages (sometimes without Gothic; dwarf is a typical exam-

ple) or only some of them, words without established cognates outside

English (not necessarily slang: consider bird, cub, boy, girl, rabbit, toad,ever, yet, and so forth), and loanwords from about every language of

the world (but predominantly from Old Norse, French, and Latin). An

etymological dictionary cannot be all-inclusive: 10,000 entries are usually


more than enough to satisfy anyone’s curiosity about word origins. After

the enormous work done by philologists in the course of two centuries (if

we begin with Rask, Grimm, and Bopp, rather than Minsheu, Skinner,and Junius), the incontestable etymologies have become common pro-

perty. Every obscure word poses a problem. Monographs have been writ-

ten on the history of words ranging from ginger to shyster. Attempts to

explain the origin of god, man, wife, and other universally known butetymologically opaque words continue with unabating vigor, but more

often than once we seem to be facing a blind wall: no recorded evidence,

no established cognates, no associations.An ambitious lexicographer with an interest in etymology is expected

to shed light on god, man, wife, and the rest, for otherwise why bother?

Even a detailed history of attempts to solve the riddle is useful: in such asurvey all the relevant literature is presented and evaluated, demonstrably

mistaken solutions are weeded out, promising approaches are highlighted,

and the door is open for the next round, as it were. In search of illumi-nation we open Weekley and find the following: god: ultimate origin

unknown; man: a few cognates and a lengthy disquisition on usage; wife:

perhaps ultimately the veiled being, in allusion to marriage custom (thusuncritically repeating the hypothesis o¤ered in the dictionary by Falk-

Torp and not even explaining which word for the veil is meant), and so

it goes. It would have been more to the point to write a book titled New

Solutions to Old Problems: An Etymologist’s Musings, but such a book

would have had a limited market, and dictionaries are published to be

sold. The sales of Weekley’s dictionary must have been good, for he puttogether a concise version (1923), and more recent reprints are available

today. Although in many entries revealing suggestions turn up, they are

buried in a mass of the familiar and the trivial. Let me repeat: the timefor another traditional one-volume dictionary of English etymology is

over. It is characteristic that no one dared to revise Skeat’s master-

piece. The German scene is di¤erent. After Kluge’s death, slightly or radi-cally revised editions were brought out, and the dictionary is no longer

dogmatic.

3. The Present Period

The di‰culties outlined above did not deter publishers from further

attempts to replace Skeat (which, incidentally, is available in a modern

reprint). Two etymological dictionaries – by Partridge (1958) and Klein


(1966) – seem to have been a commercial success. Yet Partridge repack-

aged (often ineptly) the information from a few earlier dictionaries, and

Klein set out to present the history of civilization by adding entries onscientific terms. Neither was trained to deal with the history of English,

and neither examined the special literature on the subject. The Oxford

Dictionary of English Etymology (ODEE, 1966) filled a long deplored gap

(everybody wished for a compact up-to-date dictionary with Oxford’simprimatur), but it did not tell anyone anything new either. A digest of

the OED (without citations), it showed at its birth every sign of old age.

Later a concise version of ODEE came out (Hoad 1988). The most recentetymological dictionary of English is Barnhart (1988; 1995, concise). Care-

fully written and cautiously worded, this team work contains neither new

material nor original solutions.So far, in this paper the science of English etymology has been equated

with English etymological lexicography. In a brief outline of the subject

this equation was hard to avoid. To get an idea of what was known aboutthe origin of English words at the end of the seventeenth century, we turn

to Skinner. Our window to the state of the art two hundred years later

is Skeat. Unfortunately, that window is not fully transparent. In foot-notes to treatises on Old Indian religion, in countless articles with the

titles ‘‘Etymologisches’’ and ‘‘Etymological Notes’’ gracing journals and

Festschriften, presentations at philological congresses (of which often onlysummaries are extant), and reviews, one encounters ingenious compari-

sons and bold conjectures; most probably, Skeat, Murray, and Bradley

were unaware of some of them. But only an exhaustive bibliography andan analytic (as opposed to dogmatic) dictionary based on it can do justice

to the achievement of etymologists from Norway to Japan. Feist’s dic-

tionary mirrors the state of Gothic etymology in 1939, whereas Skeat’sdictionary reflects only his own (profound but, of necessity, limited)

understanding of the subject.

Throughout the nineteenth century, historical linguistics was the mostprestigious area of language study. The rise of structuralism pushed it

to the background. The post-1956 trend, mentioned by Dolezal, made

etymology even more marginal in the profession and curricula. Yet it sur-vived. As noted in connection with the word hand, a relevant work need

not be devoted to English to deserve the attention of an English etymolo-

gist. A true measure of the level reached by English etymology is not thecollective wisdom of Skeat, the OED, and Weekley (with Junius and

Wedgwood thrown in for good measure), but a critical synthesis of every-

thing ever said on the origin of English words and their cognates. An


almost random example will show how much lower the level of our

current dictionaries is than that of the science of English etymology. To

make my point especially clear, I have chosen a word coined in the fulllight of history and having no cognates outside English. In our search we

will therefore be untrammeled by hints from Tocharian, Hittite, Greek,

Latin, and so forth.

The origin of the word cocktail has puzzled English speakers for a longtime. Evidently, we have a sum of cock and tail, but whence the resulting

meaning? The earliest dated citation of cocktail in the original edition of

the OED goes back to 1809. The volume of the OED with the word cock-

tail appeared in 1893. The examples are preceded by the comment: ‘‘A

slang word, of which the real origin appears to be lost.’’ Note the amusing

epithet ‘‘real.’’ However, one fact is incontestable: cocktail, wherever itshome might be, spread to the rest of the world from the United States;

it designates ‘‘an American drink.’’ The explanations pertaining to the

‘‘unreal’’ origin of cocktail are many. The folk-etymological and otherfantasies summarized here have been culled from Notes and Queries for

the eighteen-nineties. ‘‘. . . the term was suggested by the shape which

froth, as of a glass of porter, assumes when it flows over the sides of atumbler containing the liquid e¤ervescing’’; ‘‘The old doctors had a habit

of treating certain diseases of the throat with a pleasant liquid, applied

with the tip of a long feather plucked from a cock’s tail. . .’’ (the liquidallegedly consisted of bitters, vermouth, and other appetizers); ‘‘The Aztec

word for ‘pulque’ is pronounced much like octail, and General Scott’s

troops called the liquor ‘cocktail’ and carried the word back to the UnitedStates’’; we also read that coquetel (whatever its origin), a mixed drink

known in the vicinity of Bordeaux for centuries, was introduced to

America by French o‰cers during the Revolution and that the first cock-tails were served from eggcups, with the French for ‘‘eggcup’’ being

coquetier (the custom originated in New Orleans soon after 1800); the

etymon of cocktail may presumably be either of those French words.Additionally, a beverage called cock ale existed. This ‘‘ale mixed with

the jelly or minced meat of boiled cock, besides other ingredients’’ has

been traced to the middle of the seventeenth century (OED). Anothercock ale is defined as ‘‘a mixture of spirits and bitters fed to fighting cocks

in training.’’ Those who derived cocktail from cock ale had no qualms

about t in the middle of cocktail but noted instead that in the daysof cock fighting the spectators used to toast to the cock with the most

feathers left in its tail after the contest, and the number of ingredients in

the drink corresponded to the number of feathers left: hence cocktail.Cocktails are inseparable from bars and restaurants, and it was sug-


gested that the word may be an abridged form of cock tailings, the name

of a mixture of tailings from various liquors, thrown together in a com-

mon receptacle and sold at a low price. It is reported, as a slightly di¤er-ent version of the bar-and-restaurant etymology has it, that in the early

American days they used to empty the last ounce or so of miscellaneous

bottles of liquor into one bottle, the cork of which was decorated with a

cock’s tail feathers. In this etymology, cocktail emerged as cockcork.Most of the aforementioned conjectures with reference to cock, whether

nonsensical or ringing true at first sight, are hopeless by definition. If any

of them had any foundation in reality, the drink would have been calledcock’s tail (cf. coxcomb, that is, cock’s comb). Some people realized this

and suggested a connection with the adjective cock-tailed. They were close

to the truth, but cock-tailed means ‘‘having the tail docked so that theshort stump sticks up like a cock’s tail,’’ and it remains unclear where the

beverage comes in. The missing link was provided by Laftman (1946). He

read attentively the relevant entries in the OED and explained the originof cocktail. It was customary to dock the tails of horses that were not

thoroughbred (for example, of hunters’ and stagecoach horses). They

were called cocktailed horses, later simply cocktails. By extension, theword cocktail was applied to a vulgar, ill-bred person raised above his sta-

tion, assuming the position of a gentleman but deficient in gentlemanly

breeding. Laftman also unearthed an 1806 citation in which cocktail isdefined as a stimulating liquor, composed of spirits of any kind, sugar,

water, and bitters. Of importance is not the fact of antedating (1806, as

opposed to the OED’s 1809) but the mention of water as an ingredient.According to an 1836 anecdote, a wounded duelist was carried into a

tavern and revived by a mixture of liquor, egg yolk, sugar, lemon, and

crushed ice (presumably, a cocktail); ice, it will be remembered, is frozenwater. Laftman concluded that cocktail was an acceptable alcoholic drink,

but diluted, not a ‘‘purebred,’’ a thing ‘‘raised above its station.’’ Hence

the highly appropriate slang word used earlier about inferior horses andsham gentlemen.

Laftman wrote his article in Swedish, which did not redound to its

popularity, but it could not have been lost in the bibliographical junglethanks to its title (‘‘Cocktail’’). Also, the journal (Moderna sprak) was

and is well known. The Supplement to the OED incorporated the 1806

citation, possibly from that article. No one seems to have paid attentionto it, and under Burchfield old etymologies in the OED were not revised.

The statement ‘‘a slang word, of which the real origin appears to be lost’’

remained unchanged.Those who should have read Laftman’s explanation did not read it,


though his hypothesis is worthy of celebration. The next cocktail decoder

was Buyssens who wrote about this word four times: three times in

English (1959, 1961, 1964) and once in French (1961). He must havebeen very proud of his discovery. He did not appreciate the value of the

1806 citation, but even without it he o¤ered the same etymology as did

Laftman. Finally, Messing (1978) contributed an ebullient paper to the

Hill Festschrift. At last, he announced, the riddle of cocktail is solved.The same etymology was advanced for the third time.

Do we now know the origin of cocktail ? Etymologies are not theorems,

they cannot be proved; at best, they can be made highly probable. This, Ibelieve, has happened to cocktail. It is also significant that three scholars

reached identical conclusions, a rare case in the field of reconstruction.

Unlike wine, beer, and ale, the word cocktail is late. Its use has been docu-mented. Despite such great advantages, we have only a persuasive hypo-

thesis. In this case, the search did not require deep thoughts on ablaut,

laryngeals, or the structure of the Indo-European root. It is rather thestraightforward nature of the question (‘‘Where did American slang cock-

tail come from?’’) that turned out to be a trap.

In 1946 Laftman assumed (correctly) that the OED’s verdict (‘‘the realorigin . . . is lost’’) still stands. Buyssens could not imagine that he had

been anticipated. Messing, who also let himself be guided by the OED,

repeated Buyssens’s mistake. In 1978 a specialist writing on cocktail

should have screened bibliographies, and a foray into a territory con-

quered five times and trod nearly barren has no excuse. But the most curi-

ous thing is that Buyssens’s and Messing’s papers written in Englishelicited no remonstrance and for some time joined Laftman’s in the mass

grave of English etymology. Nor were they appreciated, even when noticed,

by dictionary makers in England or the United States. In Germany andFrance, Buyssens’s, not Laftman’s, explanation attracted the attention of

those who studied borrowings from English into their languages (see

Seibicke 1964, Knobloch 1971, and Seebold’s edition of Kluge: 1989,1999, 2002). Knobloch knew Buyssens’s work, Seibicke referred for

‘‘brevity’s sake’’ only to a derivative article in Sprachdienst, but as late as

1987 the second edition of Random House Unabridged said that the originof the word is obscure and that none of numerous attempts to explain its

relationship to cocktail ‘a horse with a docked tail; a horse that is not a

thoroughbred; a man of little breeding who passes for a gentleman’ hadwon general acceptance (where were the dissenting voices?). The ODEE

made do with the statement ‘‘of obscure origin.’’ The 2000 edition of The

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language has a questionmark in the rubric for etymology.


It was therefore a pleasant surprise to find a slight deviation from the

beaten track in the first edition of The New Oxford American Dictionary

(2001): ‘‘. . . perhaps analogous [to not a thoroughbred horse], from theidea of an adulterated drink’’ (the same in the second edition, 2005). This

is correct, but too timid and too vague. Since today one can enjoy a

shrimp cocktail and even a cocktail of drugs, the phrase ‘‘adulterated

drink’’ (why adulterated?) had to be explained. If Laftman’s article nevermade it to the top, one can imagine how little chance of attaining visibility

observations in reviews and fugitive papers have in the boundless sea of

linguistic information. The cocktail saga is a typical example of the riftbetween the state of English etymology as a science and as it is reflected

in English etymological dictionaries and dictionaries with a significant

etymological component.The earliest modern popular book of word histories is nearly two hun-

dred years old (Taylor 1818). Later the genre of ‘‘rambles among words’’

and ‘‘word gossip’’ gained strength, and now publishers churn out suchbooks at top speed. The Internet added numerous blogs to this stream.

Among their authors the only professional etymologist was Ernest Weekley.

The others have been journalists, editors (occasionally editors of dic-tionaries), and well-meaning amateurs dedicated to language study. Their

work, as far as it is done with care and is not intent on pursuing a crazy

agenda (for instance, to prove that all English words go back to Hebrewor Arabic), feeds the public with easily digestible gruel, providing at the

same time a modicum of ‘‘fun.’’ Their content is usually derived from the

OED, an inestimable source of information, but, as noted, it is a historicalrather than an etymological dictionary, full of inconclusive statements

about the derivation of English words.

It may perhaps be appropriate to say a few words about the metho-dology of the work that is expected to result in a viable etymological dic-

tionary of English, though the same methodology is applicable to any

other language with a richly documented history and a long history ofresearch. It follows from the cocktail saga that etymology as an area of

knowledge did not begin yesterday and that the price for neglecting this

fact is failure. However, the literature on word origins is notoriously hardto find. Even nineteenth-century luminaries sometimes needed a disclaimer

to the e¤ect that in o¤ering their proposals they may have been antici-

pated. Their fears were not groundless.Cocktail, an isolated and a fairly recent English word, poses few dif-

ficulties, but if the object of study is wife (with cognates in West Ger-

manic and, less obviously, Scandinavian), dwarf (recorded in all theOld Germanic languages except Gothic), man (Germanic-Indo-Iranian),


or daughter (occurring in most Indo-European languages), the search be-

comes almost endless. Apparently, we need comprehensive bibliographies

of many ‘‘national’’ etymologies. I am publishing (2009) a voluminousbibliography of English etymology, but this is a drop in an almost bottom-

less bucket.

Numerous dictionaries, books, and articles have to be screened before

the first word in an entry can be written. More than once this giganticwork will result only in an informative state of the art report. If the author

of such a report (which will serve as the starting point for later re-

searchers) is a scholar of Feist’s or Jan de Vries’s caliber, a survey willnot be a mean achievement, for all the conjectures will be ordered and

evaluated by a great expert. The origin of some words will, of necessity,

remain undiscovered, but every now and then a thorough knowledge ofthe literature will provide a clue. Thus, while reading an old article on

the impact of Italian on Middle High German, I guessed the origin of

galoot (the material suggested an easy answer), and a forgotten book bya Dutch linguist on Dutch etymology made the origin of yeoman, another

seemingly impenetrable word, clear. Such incidents are not too rare.

We all use ‘‘how-to’’ books. So here is a recipe for writing a goodetymology of English.

1. Have at your disposal all the editions of all the etymological dic-tionaries of the Germanic languages and of serious dictionaries with

an etymological component. You will also need etymological dic-

tionaries of many other languages. Collect books on word histories.Many of them are repetitive and trivial, but quite a few are useful.

Consulting books on the history of English is taken for granted. Those

that have no word indexes should be indexed.

2. Amass and read everything that has been written about your wordand its cognates, secure or putative.

3. Evaluate the conjectures. Some are probably fanciful; others, though

wide of the mark, may contain a reasonable idea. Still others maylook promising or acceptable. Write a critical overview of what you

have read.

Needless to say, my dictionary (Liberman 2008) is the product of the

cookbook, as it is presented above. A new convincing solution (the coveted

aim of every entry) is a matter of luck, even inspiration. No recipes willhelp here. But even if the author of an etymological dictionary worthy of

its name combines superhuman diligence, analytic skills, and imagination,

in the twenty-first century such a dictionary must be team work. The bane


of all great lexicographic projects is the volume of preparatory work. (See

the more technical details of etymological methodology in Liberman 2008:

xxv–xxix).

4. Conclusion: The Prospect

In my opinion, the future of an analytic dictionary of English etymology

(and, consequently, the science of English etymology) is not rosy. For two

decades my o‰ce has served as a clearing house for the materials on theorigin of English words. About a hundred people have worked for me:

undergraduate and graduate students and volunteers. My funding came

from my university, a philanthropist with strong ties to the University ofMinnesota, a few minor grants, an out-of-state private foundation, and

an out-of-state philanthropist. All my attempts to get a grant from NEH

failed. The objections have been of a type that would be hard to counterby means of ‘‘pure reason.’’ Here are some of them.

– A person without a strong background in Sanskrit and Classics cannot

be entrusted with writing a dictionary of English etymology.– The principal investigator divided the vocabulary of English into

several groups and plans to begin with words lacking established

cognates. By definition, such words are of no importance to Indo-European linguistics, for the only aim of etymology is to advance

comparative studies and provide researchers with reconstructed proto-

forms.– The first volume (words without established cognates outside English)

is expected to contain about 2000 words, so that if the proposal is

funded, how much will taxpayers have to cough up for every word?– It remains unclear how the monuments of Old and Middle English

literature (such as Beowulf and Canterbury Tales) will be used in the

prospective dictionary.– Nothing is said in the proposal about the treatment of words like uncle

in idioms of the cry uncle type.

– A consistent survey of old dictionaries and early etymologies is a wasteof time, for, as everybody knows, those sources contain nothing of

value for a modern scholar.

– The principal investigator wants to write the entire dictionary himself.There is no guarantee that he won’t merely promote his views. A team

of specialists is needed to exercise control, the more so as his research

is not on the cutting edge of modern linguistics.


– This dictionary will never be finished.

– Here is one more project that will result in a heap of Xeroxed paper.

– The principal investigator admits that we already have many etymo-logical dictionaries, so why write one more?

In 2007 the verdict was: ‘‘Has merit, does not deserve funding.’’

It is only fair to say that some suggestions were useful (and every nextapplication incorporated the improvements I owed to them) and that

many were encouraging and even laudatory, but I did not succeed in gen-

erating the required state of unanimous academic ecstasy. One or twosnide remarks may have been directed at me personally, but, on the whole,

anyone else in my place would probably have been dismissed with the

same show of hostility and tired disdain. In retrospect, I am even gladthat the critics of my project have been so unkind. The grant period lasts

two years (it used to be three), and writing an application is a time con-

suming process. To continue work, I need financial security, not constantdistractions, and the certainty that for ten years or so I will have a modest

annual sum for assistants who will run errands, screen journals, enter the

articles marked for words into the computer, and prepare the work forpublication. At the moment, the largesse of another friend of historical

linguistics and the English language provided me with coveted security

for the next several years.

There is no public awareness of the fact that a state-of-the art etymo-logical dictionary of English is a project worthy of support. Yet the sad

fact remains that the English speaking world, which has the best historical

dictionary ever written, the great and incomparable OED, does not possessan up-to-date etymological dictionary. Excellent analytic dictionaries (in

some cases multivolume ones) have been written for Sanskrit, Classical

Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Gothic, Old Icelandic, Dutch, Russian,Lithuanian, Old Irish, Finnish, partly for Polish, and a few other lan-

guages. The etymological dictionaries of German and Italian are less

detailed but in every respect superior to anything we have for English.First-rate analytic etymological dictionaries of Hittite and Old High

German are in the making. If some semblance of a center for English (or

better for Germanic, ideally for Indo-European) etymology, perhapsunderwritten by a consortium of influential publishing houses, becomes

a reality, the present situation will be remedied: we will get the desired

analytic dictionary and an exhaustive bibliography. Otherwise, we willbe doomed to reading digests of the OED, with a few antedatings,


more illustrative examples provided by modern search machines, and a

sprinkling here and there from Skeat and others, until the proverbial

cows come home.

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Commentary on Liberman, The State ofEnglish Etymology

Ann-Marie Svensson

Recently, historical linguistics and etymology, much too often seen as

inferior to other fields within linguistics, have enjoyed a resurgence, and

new theories and etymologies are being presented at conferences and inarticles.

Anatoly Liberman’s article on the state of English etymology discusses

on the one hand the history of etymological lexicology and also his ownwork with the Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, begun in 1987.

An extremely interesting part of Liberman’s article is the description of

the work with the dictionary, which began with construction of a databasecontaining about 20,000 articles, reviews, and notes featuring close to

14,400 words of Modern English. The first volume, An Introduction, was

published in the spring of 2008 and discusses 55 words with unknownetymology, e.g. cub, girl, slang, and an extensive bibliography that covers

80 pages. Fascinating articles on the origins of common words like cub

and cockney will stimulate the interest in digging deeper into etymology.The dictionary will be an invaluable resource for researchers and students

working with etymology and will definitely help to enhance interest in

historical linguistics.One of the key issues in Anatoly Liberman’s article is the importance of

making a distinction between present-day etymological lexicology and the

science of English etymology. Liberman finds that ‘‘[u]ntil today the stateof English etymology is defined by two works: the last edition of Skeat’s

dictionary (1910) and the OED (1884–1928),’’ so that there is a dis-

crepancy between what is found in etymological dictionaries based onthese two and what has later been achieved by generations of scholars.

Furthermore, although the OED is invaluable as an historical dictionary

with its numerous citations illustrating the di¤erent uses of words, it isnot primarily an etymological dictionary.

It is interesting to see how the story of cocktail, a random example with

no cognates outside English, illustrates the risk that a great many articles

on word origin are lost or forgotten, so that the same discoveries are made

over and over again. As Liberman comments:

A true measure of the level reached by English etymology is not the collec-tive wisdom of Skeat, the OED, and Weekley (with Junius and Wedgwoodthrown in for good measure), but a critical synthesis of everything ever saidon the origin of English words and their cognates.

Cocktail thus illustrates in a clear way the rift between the state of etymol-

ogy as a science and its reflection in etymological dictionaries. ‘‘Originunknown’’ is an etymology often given in dictionaries, both old and new.

It was around the turn of the twentieth century that historical linguis-

tics, and with it etymology, lost ground to other linguistic fields, and thisa¤ected etymological lexicology in a negative way. As the dictionaries of

English etymology printed after the 1920s are generally reprints or sum-

maries of the prestigious old dictionaries, the research and achievementsof contemporary scholars will easily be forgotten or lost in the same

way as the cited article on cocktail by the Swedish linguist Emil Laftman.

Liberman asserts that:

the time for another traditional one-volume dictionary of English etymologyis over. . . . [O]nly an exhaustive bibliography and an analytic (as opposedto dogmatic) dictionary based on it can do justice to the achievement ofetymologists from Norway to Japan.

A bibliography of English etymology is, however, a wide field, as other

languages, not only Germanic but also other Indo-European languagessuch as French, Italian, Spanish, etc. are important for determining the

origins of English words, and the collection of material thus involves an

enormous amount of work.Liberman’s survey of the history of etymological lexicology shows that

dictionaries of English etymology have been published since the seven-

teenth century, and an interesting point in the history of English etymol-ogy is how much work in this field has been done by Germans. Also, in

this context it can be mentioned that a considerable number of Old and

Middle English texts were edited by German linguists, e.g. Kolbing,Horstmann, and published in Germany in the nineteenth century.

It may be argued that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century etymologists

were ignorant of the regular sound changes and correspondences chartedby Rask and Grimm, and that their dictionaries are of little or no value

today, but nevertheless they present interesting ideas and citations, and,

184 Ann-Marie Svensson

as pointed out by Liberman, they also summarize earlier conjectures,

which can be of interest even for a modern reader. These early dictionaries

were analytic, but from the middle of the nineteenth century dictionariesbecame dogmatic and anonymous instead of analytic, and therefore it is

unclear how much the authors followed recent research.

Liberman’s thought-provoking article strongly clarifies ‘‘how much

lower the level of our current dictionaries is than that of the science ofEnglish etymology’’ and how badly a bibliography of English etymology

and a new analytic dictionary are needed. He also points to the sad fact

that the English language, in contrast to several other languages, doesnot have an up-to-date analytic etymological dictionary and that such a

dictionary is not regarded as a project worthy of support. It is uplifting

to see how, in spite of all the di‰culties involved, Liberman’s work onthis much needed etymological dictionary is progressing.

Commentary on Liberman 185

Response to Commentary by Svensson

Anatoly Liberman

I was very glad to read Dr. Svensson’s friendly comments on my presenta-tion. They bore out my conviction that specialists have no di‰culty appre-

ciating the usefulness of my project. Like me, they have probably spent

countless hours trying to find the relevant publications on the origin ofEnglish words and realize how helpful it would be to have ‘‘an English

Feist,’’ and, like me, they noticed the disparity between the skimpy infor-

mation one finds in dictionaries and the richness of material and ideas inthe ever-growing corpus of articles and books on Indo-European, Ger-

manic, and English etymology. They do not ask how many dollars each

etymology in a dictionary costs or why it is important to have a completecritical summary of everything done in the course of several centuries.

During the short period that has passed since the publication of my An

Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction, I have reada half-dozen reviews, and their tenor is very much like that of Dr.

Svensson’s comments. Even if we stay with isolated English words, which

need special attention, the amount of work to be done is huge, but giventhe support of the profession, the task I set before me is not utopian.

Perhaps one day my main dream will come true (then, of course, it will

be called ‘‘vision’’), and we will have an international center for Englishetymology. The money spent on it will not be wasted.

From Germanic ‘fence’ to ‘urban settlement’:On the Semantic Development of English town

Ann-Marie Svensson and Jurgen Hering

As a language is integrated with the society ‘‘in which it operates’’ (Lyons1977: 248), changes in society are likely to create lexical deficiencies as

new concepts need new names. A gap in the vocabulary can be filled either

by borrowing a word from another language or by adding new meaningsto an already existing lexeme (cf. Aitchison 2001: 125, Nevalainen 2006:

65). The latter option of making up for deficiencies in the language will

lead to polysemy, which may in turn lead to the loss of the original sense

of the word. In order to illustrate some of the factors that may lead topolysemy and semantic change in a period of social and economic transi-

tion, this paper focuses on the occurrences and referents of one English

word, town, in texts written in the Middle English period.Common Germanic tu #n-, possibly related to Celtic du#n ‘fortified place,

castle, camp,’ originally denoted ‘a fence’ or ‘a hedge’ (as does Modern

German Zaun). Sometimes the Germanic word could also include thepiece of land surrounded by the fence. Thus Old High German zun and

Old Low German tun could mean ‘enclosure’ as well as ‘fence, hedge,’

and Middle Low German tun meant ‘garden,’ which is also the sense ofModern Dutch tuin (Pfeifer 1999, OED). Swedish tun, a fairly frequent

place-name element, is obsolete as a common noun in Modern Swedish

but is still used dialectally in the sense of ‘enclosure’ (Hellquist 1939:1243).

As for Old English tu #n, Pfeifer 1999 and Duden 2001 give ‘fence’ as one

of the uses of the word here as in the other Germanic languages; Smithfinds that ‘‘the derivative verb ty #nan . . . points to some such meaning’’

(1956: 188); Ekwall gives ‘fence’ or ‘enclosure’ (1960: 482), while the

OED claims that the original Germanic sense of ‘fence, hedge’ never oc-curred in early Old English.

Contrary to the uses of tu #n in the other Germanic languages, English

tu #n (town in the following discussion) came to include the house(s) on theenclosure. As more people settled on the enclosed land the sense of rural

community developed, and eventually, as these communities grew and

became more organized, that of ‘urban settlement’ or, as the OED defines

the modern meaning of the word, ‘inhabited place larger and more regu-

larly built than a village, and having more complete and independent local

government.’In place-names from the Old and early Middle English periods, town,

in the form -ton, is a frequent English place-name element and is ‘‘[e]asily

the most common of all last elements’’ (Room 1988: xxvi) but was proba-

bly not active as a name-forming element when town had developed urbanconnotations. The -ton element was thus usually given to farms and vil-

lages (cf. Smith 1956: 188–193). Ekwall finds that many of the names end-

ing in -ton denoted villages but that many of these may have developedfrom homesteads (1960: 482).

Old English town was generally applied to enclosures, house(s) on the

enclosed land, a king’s residence (e.g., þæs cyninges tune in the Saxon

Chronicle) or to the rural communities that had developed from the

original homesteads. Germanic burh and the Latin loan ceaster (Modern

English borough and chester, respectively) were the established OldEnglish words for ‘urban settlement’; for instance, both burh and ceaster

are applied to Arles (in Areela þære byrig and to Arela þære ceastre) in

The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, and Canterburyis called both burh and ceaster (in þa burg and in þære ceastre) in the

Saxon Chronicle.

The Middle English period, here regarded as the years between c. 1100and c. 1500, was a period of social, economic and political changes, which

involved the growth of trade and the break-up of the feudal system (cf.

Fennell 2001: 96–97). These factors are likely to have a¤ected the placescalled town, and in order to establish how the changes in society con-

tributed to the semantic change of town, the di¤erent uses of the word

in literature written in the Middle English period will be examined (seeFigure 1).

Method and Material

This study of the Middle English uses of town is based on the occurrencesand referents of the word found in ninety texts (c. 1.5 million words),

prose and end-rhymed and alliterative verse, chosen to cover the four

centuries between 1100 and 1500. The text material includes chronicles(e.g., The Peterborough Chronicle, Layamon’s Brut), Biblical paraphrases

(e.g., Cursor Mundi, The Passion of our Lord ), homilies (e.g., Sawles

Warde, Old Kentish Sermons), legends (e.g., The Life of Saint Katherine,

188 Ann-Marie Svensson and Jurgen Hering

Canticum de creatione), romances (e.g., Roland and Vernagu, The Wars of

Alexander), lyrics (e.g., The Poems of John Audelay, The Middle English

Lyrics of MS. Harley), proverbs (e.g., Poema Morale, The Proverbs of

Alfred ) and debates (e.g., The Owl and the Nightingale, Vices and Virtues).

The chronological classification is based on the dates of the manu-

scripts and not the originals. As originals are often lost, the date of com-position is not always known, and, furthermore, in a copy written at a

later date, the wording may have been changed by the scribe so that it

agreed better with the language spoken by his contemporary readers.All the occurrences of town have been recorded and classified according

to uses (as in Figure 1). The contexts and topics of the texts have given

guidance in the classification of uses. When possible, the referents of theword have been identified and examined according to size, importance

and locality, i.e., British or non-British. Also, when relevant, the instances

Figure 1. Uses of English town

From Germanic ‘fence’ to ‘urban settlement’ 189

of city, borough and village found in the same texts, possible synonyms or

antonyms of town, have been compared with those of town.

Town in Early Middle English (twelfth and thirteenth centuries)

From the data collected in this study, we find that while the Modern

English sense of town as urban settlement developed during the MiddleEnglish period, the original Old English meaning of ‘enclosure, field’ may

have survived into the thirteenth century, which can be seen for instance in

the passage about the fox in the Bestiary:

husbondes hire haten/ for hire harm dedes:/ ðe coc and te capun/ ge

feccheð ofte in ðe tun,/ and te gandre and te gos,/ bi ðe necke and bi

ðe nos,/ haleð is to hire hole;

‘‘Husbandmen hate her/ for her deeds of harm./ For the cock and thecapon/ She often seizes/ as well as the gander and the goose,/ by the

neck and by the nose,/ and takes them to her hole.

(Bestiary 391; translation from EETS edition)

In the translation given in the EETS edition of the Bestiary, the phrase in

ðe tun is not translated at all. The OED places this occurrence of town in

the Bestiary in the category ‘enclosed land surrounding or belonging to asingle dwelling . . . the enclosed land of a village community.’ However,

even if ‘enclosed land’ is a likely interpretation, the author may still refer

to the village itself or farms in the village and not only to the enclosedland around the village as the fox may be regarded as daring enough to

seize cocks ‘in the village’ as well as ‘in the enclosure.’ This demonstrates

the ambiguity in the use of this word.The sense of twelfth-century town is generally ‘rural community’ as

in the following lines from The Peterborough Chronicle where cattle and

ploughs are mentioned:

Ðes ilces geares wæs swa micel o’er’fcwalm . . . þet wæs on næt 7 on swin

swa þet, on þa tun þa wæs tenn ploges oðer twelfe gangende, ne belæf þær

noht an;

‘‘In the course of this same year, there was such a great cattle plague . . .that was among cattle and pigs, so that in a village that had ten or

twelve ploughs in action, there was not one left.’’

(Peterborough Chronicle 1131: 7; translation by Whitelock 1961)

Whitelock 1961 uses ‘in a village’ for on þa tun in her translation of

the text.


Likewise, ‘rural community’ appears to be the sense of town in the

following passages from The Peterborough Chronicle:

Hi læiden g[æ]ldes o’ n’ the tunes æuere um wile . . . þa þe uurecce men ne

hadden nammore to gyuen, þa ræueden hi 7 brendon alle the tunes, ðatwel þu myhtes faren al a dæis fare, sculdest thu neuere finden man in tunesittende ne land tiled.

‘‘They levied taxes on the villages every so often. . . When the wretchedpeople had no more to give, they robbed and burned the villages, so

that you could easily go a whole day’s journey and never find anyone

occupying a village, nor land tilled.’’

Gif twa men oþer iii coman ridend to an tun, al þe tunscipe flugænfor heom,

‘‘If two or three men came riding to a village, all the villagers fledfrom them.’’

(Peterborough Chronicle 1137: 37–41, 51; translation by Whitelock

1961)

Whitelock 1961 has ‘village’ in her translation. The OED gives these in-

stances of the word as ‘urban settlement,’ i.e., ‘an inhabited place larger

and more regularly built than a village,’ but this interpretation is hardlylikely as the writer points out that the tunes were deserted and that the

land had not been tilled. It seems unlikely that the deserted places referred

to here were urban settlements. However, a medieval urban settlement isnot easily distinguished from a rural community as inhabitants in both

types of places were occupied in agriculture.

Thus, how can a medieval urban settlement, a ‘town’ in the modernsense of the word, be separated from a ‘rural community’? Reynolds de-

fines a medieval town as an inhabited place having two essential features:

‘‘that a significant proportion (but not necessarily a majority) of its popu-lation lives o¤ trade, industry, administration, and other non-agricultural

occupations’’ and ‘‘that it forms a social unit more or less distinct from

the surrounding countryside’’ (1977: ix). The twelfth-century place thatsatisfied these criteria was called borough. ‘Boroughs’ like Gloucester or

Rochester were originally fortified places of defence, but during the Old

English period, many of these ‘boroughs’ had developed as commercialand administrative centres. Even if twelfth-century town was developing

more urban connotations, the named referents of town in the MSS.

from this century are clearly small, seemingly unimportant and possibly


unknown places. Westbourne in West Sussex is one of the British places

referred to as town in The Peterborough Chronicle :

þis wæs don on þære tuna þa men cleopa[ð] Burne,

‘‘this was done in the town that people call Burne’’

(Peterborough Chronicle 1114: 27)

The phrase þa men cleopa[ð] Burne ‘that people call Burne’ indicates

that the writer of the passage in The Peterborough Chronicle did not

regard Westbourne (Burne), which was part of an estate held by the king(Domesday Book), as a well-known place.

Normally, named Biblical places, such as Jerusalem or Bethlehem,

mentioned in the twelfth-century texts are called borough. The exceptionhere is Cana:

Ure Hælend com hwilon to Chanan, þam tune on Galileiscre scire,

ðær ðær he swyðest bodede; 7 on þam tune he awende hwilon water to

wine, six fate fulle mid þam fyrmestan wine.

‘‘Our Saviour came once upon a time to Cana, the town in the districtof Galilee, where he used to preach very much; and in that town he

once changed water into wine. – six vessels full of the best wine.’’

(Bodley Homilies 22: 8–9; translation in the EETS edition)

The scribe probably regarded Cana as a small place as he felt the need to

explain where it was: on Galileiscre scire.Peterborough, on the other hand, should have been regarded as a well-

known and important place by the writers of The Peterborough Chronicle,

but the place is consistently called town in the chronicle in spite of the factthat the twelfth-century name of Peterborough was Burh (the Peter-prefix

of the modern name was added later, in the fourteenth century (Room

1988: 274)):

on þisum ylcan geare bærnde eall þet mynstre of Burh . . . 7 þærto eac

bærnde eall þa mæste dæl of þa tuna.

‘‘In this same year all the monastery of Peterborough was burnt . . . and

in addition most of the town was burnt.’’

(Peterborough Chronicle 1116/18–19; translation by Whitelock (1961))

In the MSS. from the thirteenth century, however, town and borough canboth be applied to important places like London:


he wende riht to Lundene; þe burh he leoue[de] swiðe,/ He bigon þer ane

ture; þe strengeste of al þe tune.

‘‘He went right to London, the borough he loved very much./ There hebegan to build a tower; the strongest of all the town.’’

(Layamon (MS. Caligula) 3018–19)

Likewise, both town and borough are used with reference to Biblical places

like Jerusalem:

As he com in-to þe bureh. so rydinde./ þe children of þe tune. comen

syngynde.

‘‘As he approached the city/ the children of the town came singing’’(Passion of our Lord 69–70; translation in EETS edition)

Thirteenth-century town had thus acquired more urban connotations,probably a result of the medieval changes in society as trade was increas-

ing, and many of the small communities that had been called town (and

often had town in the form -ton as the last part of the name) had grownand developed as market places so that a new type of ‘‘town’’ was de-

veloping. These new ‘‘towns’’ were often small but were clearly separated

from the country by the occupations of their inhabitants.Also, towards the end of the thirteenth century, the word borough

seems to have developed the meaning ‘place with certain privileges’ as

many of the important places had acquired liberties and won a degreeof independence during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and, even

though these borough privileges varied widely, there were certain features

expected from a place called borough, for instance royal charter andadministrative separation from the country (Stenton 1965: 181).

In the reign of Edward I (1272–1307), the term borough had to be

clearly defined as ‘‘boroughs’’ were taxed at a higher rate than the countiesand, even more important, borough representatives were summoned to

Parliament (Stenton 1965: 191). Borough became a restricted term and

thus less frequently used in texts not dealing with administration orgovernment. As the small places that had been called town had grown

and developed urban connotations, the focus of the term town shifted

downwards on the list of uses of the word in Figure 1 above, and theearlier uses of town, ‘enclosure’ and ‘house(s) on the enclosed land,’ were

gradually lost.


Town in Late Middle English (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries)

As the data from the thirteenth century suggest, town had thus developed

the sense of ‘urban settlement in general’ and filled the gap in the lexiconcreated when borough became restricted to ‘parliamentary borough’ around

the turn of the fourteenth century. There are two ways of filling gaps in lan-

guages: ‘‘by borrowing words from other languages . . . or . . . by associatinga new meaning to an already existing lexeme’’ (Lyons 1977: 236). As for

borrowing, the French loanword city was introduced into the English lan-

guage towards the end of the thirteenth century, a period of massive Frenchinfluence on the English vocabulary following the Norman Conquest and

subsequent French rule in England. City was a new word for ‘urban settle-

ment’ but did not replace borough as the word for ‘urban settlement ingeneral’ as it was initially a dignified title with foreign connotations,

mainly used in translations (cf. Svensson 1997: 148).

In texts written in the fourteenth century, town does not appear to beused with reference to enclosures or single dwellings but only to collections

of dwellings of all sizes. For instance, London is called town in the follow-

ing passage from the Handlyng Synne. Here town is added after the place-name in opposition, a usage that appears in texts from the late fourteenth

century:

Yn Londun toune fyl swyche a chek,/ A ryche man and pore were at

cuntek,/ And pleted a-boute a lytyl land

‘‘In London town such an incident occurred,/ a rich man and a poor

man were debating/ and pleaded about a little land’’

(Handlyng Synne 2699–2701)

Town can also be applied to important non-British places such as Jerusalem:

Right fra þe tun of ierusalem/ It ledd þam in-to bethleem,

‘‘Right from the town of Jerusalem/ it led them to Bethlehem’’

(Cursor Mundi (MS. Cotton) 11, 487–8)

Even if town could still be applied to small places, there seems to be a clear

distinction between the word town and ‘the country.’ It appears that townhad become the hypernym that covered the whole of the semantic field of

‘town’ but at the same time also its own hyponym (cf. Figure 2 below).

As the hypernym of the semantic field, fourteenth-century town and city

could be applied to the same places, e.g., Biblical places like Jerusalem or

to important British places like Winchester as in the lines from Sir Orfeo

below, where city is used the first time the place is mentioned and town isused when the place is later referred to:


Þat was a cite of noble defens;

‘‘That was a city of noble fortifications’’

O way! what þer was wepe & wo/ When he þat hadde ben king wiþ croun/

Went so pouerlich out of toun.

‘‘Oh woe! what weeping and woe there was/ when he that had been

king with a crown/ went out out of town in such poverty.’’

(Sir Orfeo 48, 234–236)

On the other hand, as the hyponym of the field, town could also be

contrasted with city as in the following passage from Vita S. Etheldredae

Eliensis (early fifteenth century), where town and city are both used with

reference to Granchester:

For þer is a litulle toun in þis contrey ney‰e here byside,/ þe whichesomme-tyme a fulle fayre cite hit was,/ Of þe whiche þe walles ben broke,

þe ‰atys ben wyde,/ Bot þe compas of þat toune is full gret space;

‘‘For there is a little town in this country near here,/ which once was a

very fair city,/ the walls of which are broken, the gates are wide/ but thecompass of that town is very spacious.’’

(Vita S. Etheldredae Eliensis 642–45)

The two words are contrasted here, and city is used to describe the formergreatness of Grantchester, the litulle toun. In Ipomadon, another fifteenth-

century text, town and village are used as synonyms. Village is not a fre-

quent word in Middle English texts (Svensson 1997: 149) but is used hereto emphasize the small size or insignificance of the place:

They saw a towne at the laste/ Stondyng on the syde of a broke./ Hit

was but a meane velage/ So littill was the harburage,/ That both one

inne they toke.

‘‘They saw a town at last/ standing on the side of a brook./ It was only

a mean village,/ so small was the dwelling/ that they both took one

inn.’’ (Ipomadon 7056–61)

Chaucer, in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, uses town in his portrait

of the poor country parson, and town refers to the parson’s parish. The

Figure 2. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century town as hypernym / hyponym


word parisshe is later used, and the phrase houses fer asunder shows that a

small, rural community is meant:

A good man was ther of religioun,/ And was a povre persoun of a toun,

‘‘There was a good man of religion,/ and he was a poor parson of

a town’’

Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer asonder,

‘‘His parish was extensive and the houses far apart’’ (Prologue to the

Canterbury Tales 477–78, 491)

On the other hand, Chaucer also uses town as the hypernym of the seman-

tic field, which is seen in the following passage from The Miller’s Tale,

where town is ‘‘distinct from or contrasted with the country’’ (OED, svtown 4c), an indication of the urban connotations attached to the word.

He sente hire pyment, meeth, and spiced ale,/ And wafres, pipyng hoot

out of the gleede;/ And, for she was of town, he profred meede./ For som

folk wol ben wonnen for richesse,/ And somme for strokes, and somme for

gentillesse.

‘‘He sent her sweetened wine, mead, and spiced ale,/ and wa¿es,whistling hot out of the iron;/ and, as she was from town, he o¤ered

money,/ as some people will be won by riches,/ and some by force and

some by gentleness.’’ (Chaucer: The Miller’s Tale 3378–82)

Middle English Town in Phrases

The previous discussion has shown instances of Middle English town

occurring with reference to inhabited places, but it also occurs in phrases,

often as generalizing expressions, as the following examples demonstrate.

Lenten ys come wiþ loue to toune,/ wiþ blosmen ant wiþ briddes roune./

þat al þis blisse bryngeþ.

‘‘Spring has come with love to town/ with flowers and with bird song/

that bring all this joy.’’ (Harley Lyrics 11: 1–3)

As spring does not come only to urban settlements, to toune here should

probably be interpreted as ‘to the world.’ Town in generalizing expressions

often occurs in coordinated phrases, a stylistic device used by MiddleEnglish writers to ‘‘create verbosity or various rhythmical e¤ects’’ (Blake

1979: 97–99). One of these coordinated phrases where antonyms are

linked is town and field. The earliest examples of this phrase in the exam-ined texts are found in Havelok (c. 1300):


Haue nu for-þi of Cornwayle/ þe erldom ilk del, with-uten fayle,/ And al

þe lond þat Godrich held,/ Boþe in towne and ek in feld;

‘‘Have now therefore every part/ of the earldom of Cornwall, without

fail,/ and all the land that Godrich held/ both in town and also in field’’

(Havelok 2908–11)

The OED points out that field can be ‘the country’ as opposed to ‘a town’

(OED, sv field 2). The Old English synonyms tu #n and feld had thusbecome antonyms that could be contrasted in Middle English so that the

phrase boþe in towne and ek in feld here is used in the meaning ‘every-

where.’An early example of a similar phrase, on wudan 7 on / tunan, is found in

The Peterborough Chronicle:

þises geares wæron swiðe mycele windas on Octobris monðe, ac he wæs

ormæte mycel on þa niht Octabe Sancti Martini, 7 þet gehwær on wudan7 on / tunan gecydde.

‘‘In the course of this year there were many strong winds in the month

of October, but it was extremely strong on the night which was theOctave St. Martin, and it was evident everywhere in woods and

villages’’

(Peterborough Chronicle 1114: 12–13; translation by Whitelock (1961))

The OED gives the original Old English sense of ‘enclosure’ or ‘field’ as

the meaning of town here, but the MED (Middle English Dictionary) givesthe phrase on wudan 7 on / tunan as ‘everywhere’; Whitelock 1961 uses

‘villages’ for tunan in her translation of the text. It appears that wudan

and tunan are contrasted here; the strong winds were evident in thewoods and also in the inhabited places. ‘Everywhere’ would be a likely

interpretation.

Another fairly frequently used phrase in Middle English is tower and

town. The MED gives the phrase as a generalizing expression denotingfortified places, and the OED gives the following definition: ‘‘an allitera-

tive phrase for the inhabited places of a country or region generally’’

(OED, sv tower 9). The earliest instance of tower and town in the examinedtexts dates from the fourteenth century, and þe cites alle in Spain are

referred to.

Charls dede þat ymage falle,/ & wan in spaine þe cites alle,/

Boþe tour & toun;

‘‘Charles overthrew the statue/ and won all the cities in Spain/both tower and town’’ (Roland and Vernagu 347–9)


The phrase tower and town can also be applied to specific places as in the

reference to Tyre in The Wars of Alexander from the fifteenth century:

The toure of tyre & þe towne. titely he levys,

‘‘He quickly leaves the tower of Tyre and the town’’

(Wars of Alexander (MS. Dublin) 1283)

It appears that the phrase here refers to the fortified town of Tyre.

Final Remarks

A close examination of early texts shows that it was the period around the

turn of the fourteenth century that saw the transformation of Old Englishtu #n ‘enclosure’ or ‘rural community’ to Modern English town ‘inhabited

place larger and more regularly built than a village’ (OED). But why did

the semantic change take place at that particular time?

As a language is integrated with the society ‘‘in which it operates’’(Lyons 1977: 248), changes in vocabulary are likely to reflect changes in

society, and the thirteenth century was a period of social, economic and

political change that created a new category of urban settlements:

– Trade was increasing and market places were needed.– Small places called town grew and set up markets.

– Borough, the word for ‘urban settlement,’ became restricted as

borough representatives were summoned to Parliament.

The growth of urban settlements and the restricted use of borough created

a need for a convenient word for the new concept of ‘urban settlement ingeneral.’ The French loanword city had been introduced into English in

the thirteenth century, but the loan was initially applied to foreign or

important British places and was mainly used in translations from theFrench. City did not fill the lexical gap in the English vocabulary created

by the changes in society, but the already existing word town did. In the

thirteenth century, the small rural communities that had been called town

and often had town, in the form -ton, as part of their names had grown

and often become market places so that they were clearly separated from

the surrounding country. Even if town could still be applied to small settle-ments, it had acquired urban connotations and was no longer used in the

Old English senses of ‘enclosure’ and ‘house(s) on the enclosed land.’ It

was thus the lexical need created by the thirteenth-century changes in


society that triggered the transformation of town from the original sense of

‘enclosure’ or ‘house(s) on the enclosed land’ to its modern sense of ‘urban

settlement.’

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An Old English Miscellany. EETS 49 (1872).The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154. MS. Bodley Laud Misc. 636. Edited by

Cecily Clark. Oxford 1958.The Poems of John Audelay. MS. Douce 302, Bodleian Library 21876. Edited by

E.K. Whiting. EETS 184 (1931).The Proverbs of Alfred. MS. Jesus College Oxford 29. Edited by R. Morris. In An

Old English Miscellany. EETS 49 (1872).The Wars of Alexander. MS. Trinity College Dublin D.4.12. Edited by W.W.

Skeat. EETS ES 47 (1886).Twelfth-Century Homilies in MS. Bodley 343. Edited by A.O. Balfour. EETS 137

(1909).Vices and Virtues. MS. Stowe 240. Edited by F Holthausen. EETS 89, 159 (1888,

1921).Vita S. Etheldredae Eliensis. MS. Cotton Faustina B. III. Edited by C. Horst-

mann. In Altenglische Legenden, neue Folge. Heilbronn 1881.


Commentary on Svensson and Hering, FromGermanic ‘fence’ to ‘urban settlement’:On the Semantic Development of English town

Don Chapman

Who would have suspected that town would be such an interesting word?We know about nice and silly as great words for teaching about semantic

change. But town is such a mundane, homey word. That it has such

an interesting history confirms Crystal’s words: ‘‘Being an etymologist isthe most fascinating of professions – though without a day-job, as Eric

Partridge used to say, it won’t pay the mortgage’’ (Crystal 2006: 151).

As Svensson and Hering have shown, town started out as ‘fence.’ Some-how we have to get from ‘fence’ to . . . to . . . to what? Just what has town

come to mean? Town is such an every-day word, how could anyone not

know what it means? But as Svensson and Hering’s paper brings out, theword has taken on a wide range of meanings centering on the core mean-

ing of ‘a settlement.’ Again, town would be a good word to illustrate the

notion that words accrue meanings and that older words have more senses(Nevalainen 1992: 434).

This article is also useful for showing the importance of context for

deciphering meaning in older stages of a language. The examples in thispaper excellently illustrate the senses that we can detect in Middle English,

as when Svensson and Hering point to Cana as the only Biblical place

called a town in the twelfth-century texts from their corpus, and even

then it seems to need an additional explanation: ‘‘Ure Hælend com hwilon

to Chanan, þam tune on Galileiscre scire.’’ Of course the historical diction-

aries (OED and MED) aim to do much the same thing, but this article has

the advantage of using more narrative and argument to show the changesthat occurred to the word. I can see using this article in connection with

the entries from the OED and MED to show students how to unpack the

story captured in dictionary entries.These examples remind us, too, that context is not only important for

us in retrieving the meanings from earlier stages, but it must have been

important for contemporary speakers in forming the meanings. Afterlexicographers, historical linguists and philologists might well be the most

aware of the importance of context for establishing a meaning; all our

experience tells us that a word means as it is used. But for a public who

can consult a dictionary for a word’s meaning the same way they cancheck a metric system conversion chart, the meanings of words probably

seem more like independent facts. A History of the English Language

course should help students become more comfortable seeing meaning as

historical linguists do: as the residue of all the occurrences of a word bymany di¤erent speakers in many di¤erent contexts.

The importance of context in forming meanings suggests a core mecha-

nism of semantic change: not only do words mean as they are used,they change meaning as they are used in di¤erent contexts. Svensson and

Hering’s paper implicitly recognizes this as their citations of town through-

out the centuries reflect speakers using town in new situations and thusgradually attaching new senses to the word. Nevertheless, I would have

appreciated a more explicit formulation of this mechanism for change.

When Svensson and Hering discuss mechanisms, they argue that semanticchanges came from changes in society and a lexical gap that developed as

society became more urbanized. As reasonable as their arguments are, I

believe that they could have highlighted more how the speakers’ use oflanguage propagated those changes. For example, I am not so sure a

lexical gap is the best way to describe the di¤erentiation between city and

town. It is not as if speakers newly encountered large settlements and soneeded a word for them. I imagine that it is more likely that speakers

would have been using both town and city to refer to the same kinds of

settlements, and then found themselves gradually preferring city for thelarger settlements. As the word is used in that context, the notion of large

size becomes a salient feature of city.

In general, I wish more discussions of semantic change would examinemechanisms; the glib repetition in our textbooks of taxonomies (general-

ization/specialization, amelioration/pejoration, strengthening/weakening,

etc.) do not explain enough. More interesting are the ways that wordscome to generalize, specialize, ameliorate, pejorate, etc. In the case of

town, the largest change in sense was from ‘fence’ to ‘a settlement enclosed

by a fence.’ This happened before any usages were recorded, but theguessing for how this happened is not too hard. It is a classic case of

metonymy – one of the principal paths for meaning shift (Traugott and

Dasher 2002: 27–34; Nevalainen 1992: 442). As speakers referred to afence that enclosed a settlement, somehow the area that was enclosed

would have become regarded as part of the meaning. As the whole enclo-

sure was more important than just the fence that enclosed it, the principal

Commentary on Svensson and Hering 203

sense would have shifted from the fence to the enclosure. And since it

was really the settlement that was the most important, not just that the

settlement was enclosed, it is easy to see how speakers would have inferredsettlement as the main sense of town. The initial change from fence to

settlement, then would have come from invited or contextual infer-

ences, that is from speakers inferring new senses as the term was used in

a variety of contexts (see Nevalainen 1992: 439–41; Traugott and Dasher2002: 34–40).

Once town had acquired the sense of settlement, continued use of the

term would account for its change in sense as the referent of town wouldhave shifted underneath the label. As settlements changed, becoming

larger and more urban, the label that speakers continued to use (town)

would have acquired new senses. This is a classic example of social changeleading to semantic change, cited as such by Traugott and Dasher (2002:

61) and emphasized by Svensson and Hering. The part to keep in mind

throughout this process is that speakers would have continued using thesame label as the referent changed. Speakers and listeners must have

recognized enough of a core sense of town to continue using it and thus

to extend its sense.The use of town in contrast to other words, like burgh and country, as

well as the use of town in collocations like at town and to town are likewise

interesting parts of its history, as Svensson and Hering point out. Howthese contrasts and collocations came about could probably also be ex-

plained in finer detail with an appeal to their actual use. Di¤erentiation

similar to that between town and city would account for the contrastswith burgh and country, and the widening reference of town would have

led it to its use as a hypernym, as Svensson and Hering describe, and

thus its availability in collocations that depend on its hypernym status.But explaining semantic change is not easy. Attempts, including my

preliminary sketch here, run the risk of becoming merely post hoc descrip-

tions. Still I hope that our understanding of the mechanisms of semanticchange improves, and as we have seen with Svensson and Hering’s paper,

even a little word like town has a fascinating history and provokes us to

think how that history came about.

References

Crystal, David2006 Words, Words, Words. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

204 Don Chapman

Nevalainen, Tertu1999 ‘‘Early Modern English Lexis and Semantics.’’ In The Cam-

bridge History of the English Language: 1476–1776. Vol. 3. Ed.Roger Lass. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Traugott, Elizabeth Closs and Richard B. Dasher2002 Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press.

Commentary on Svensson and Hering 205

Response to Commentary by Chapman

Ann-Marie Svensson

Semantic change is one of the factors that can make the understanding ofan old text di‰cult for a modern reader, and town is one of the many

words that have been subject to semantic change over the centuries. The

journey from Germanic ‘fence’ first to Old English ‘enclosure’ and even-tually to Modern English ‘inhabited place larger and more regularly built

than a village, and having more complete and independent local govern-

ment’ (OED) was a long one.As pointed out in the commentary, the context is important for the

understanding of the meaning of a word in earlier periods. Town often

refers to a definite, generally identifiable place, at least as an important orunimportant British or non-British place, and this context gives the reader

guidance as regards the meaning of the word.

Semantic changes are often triggered by changes in society, and theMiddle English period, especially the thirteenth century, was definitely a

period of social, economic and political change: increased trade created a

need for marketplaces, which led to the growth of the small places thathad been called town. As pointed out in the commentary, ‘‘speakers would

have continued using the same label as the referent changed.’’ Perhaps

even more important for the development of the word town to ‘urbansettlement in general,’ however, was a political change that led to the

restriction of the use of the word borough, previously favored in the

context of ‘urban settlement in general’: borough came to refer only toprivileged places that sent representatives to Parliament. Consequently,

borough was no longer used to mean ‘urban settlement in general,’ a

fact that is clearly reflected in texts of a general nature written in thefourteenth century and that led to a gap in the lexicon eventually filled

by town.

Celtic Influence on English: A Re-Evaluation1


1. Introduction

The question of Celtic influences in English grammar has preoccupied the

minds of historical linguists for well over a century now, but no consensushas yet been reached about the matter. The prevailing view on the extent

of this influence holds that apart from place- and river-names, Celtic ele-

ments in English are limited to about a dozen loanwords, with hardly anytrace in phonology or syntax. This despite the fact that English and Celtic

have coexisted in the British Isles for at least one and a half millennia; in

such circumstances lack of phonological and syntactic contacts can beregarded as highly unusual. The oddity of the situation is acknowledged

by such eminent scholars as Barbara Strang, who notes that ‘‘the poverty

of the Celtic contribution to English vocabulary even in this area [of

place-names], and at a time when Celtic cultural influence was enormous,is very remarkable’’ (Strang 1970: 374). Yet she is content to endorse the

traditional view which can be traced back to the early statement by Otto

Jespersen, who explained the paucity of Celtic influence in Englishthrough the social, political, and cultural supremacy of the Anglo-Saxons

over the conquered Britons; this meant that the ruling classes had no need

to learn Celtic, whereas the Celts had to learn English – and accordingto him, very well – in order to serve their Anglo-Saxon masters (see

Jespersen 1905: 39).

Not all scholars have been willing to accept Jespersen’s account. Keller(1925) was one of the first to raise serious objections to it and to propose

Celtic origin for some central features of English grammar, including the

so-called progressive form. His work has since inspired many others toexplore the possibility of Celtic contact e¤ects in various domains of

1. The research for this article was partly supported by the Academy of Finlandfunding for Markku Filppula (grant no. 119396) and Juhani Klemola (grantno. 119271), which we gratefully acknowledge. We would also like to thankthe two anonymous referees for their useful comments.

English grammar. These ‘dissident’ voices include Dal (1952), G. J. Visser

(1955), Preusler (1956), Tolkien (1963), and Braaten (1967). After a rela-

tively quiet period on the ‘Celtic front’ in the 1970s and 1980s, there hasclearly been a new rise of interest in what could be called the ‘Celtic

Hypothesis’ (CH) from the 1990s onwards. It started with a paper by

Patricia Poussa (see Poussa 1990) on the possible contact origin of so-

called ‘periphrastic do,’ and was followed by a host of articles on thisand several other phonological or syntactic features by a steadily increas-

ing number of scholars. Let it su‰ce to mention Hickey (1995 on possible

Celtic ‘low-level’ phonological and syntactic contact influences; Tristram(1999) on general typological influence of Celtic on English syntax and

morphophonology (esp. loss of inflections), Mittendorf and Poppe (2000)

and Poppe (2003) on possible Brythonic influence on the English progres-sive; Vennemann (2001) on, e.g. the so-called internal possessor construc-

tion; van der Auwera and Genee (2002) on periphrastic do; McWhorter

(2006) on the same feature, and Lutz (2006) on Celtic influence on theOE ‘be’ paradigm and the English progressive. In addition to these, an

edited collection of articles (Filppula, Klemola and Pitkanen 2002) seeks

to address the issue of Celtic influences from various linguistic and his-torical perspectives.

The aims of the present paper are, first, to adduce both linguistic and

‘extra-linguistic’ evidence to show that early Celtic influence on Englishwas not only possible but most likely under the sociohistorical circum-

stances in the first few centuries following the adventus Saxonum. Particu-

larly relevant are, in our view, four types of evidence: archaeological,demographic and historical, contact-linguistic, and areal-typological. Our

second aim is to illustrate and also demonstrate the power of this kind

of argumentation through a case-study, which concerns one of the mostoften mentioned putative Celtic-derived feature of English syntax, viz.

periphrastic do.

2. Archaeological, demographic and historical evidence

Needless to say, linguistic contact e¤ects presuppose (more or less) active

interaction between speakers of two or more languages, and this is exactly

what is denied in the most extreme traditional accounts of the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Some eminent nineteenth-century historians like Free-

man (1870) and Stubbs (1870) held that the Anglo-Saxon newcomers

drove out or exterminated virtually all of the native British and Romano-


British population and usurped their lands and property. The same

‘Anglo-Saxonist’ view entails the idea that the English people are of pure

Germanic extraction, with virtually no admixture of native British ele-ments. This ‘replacement’ or ‘ethnic cleansing’ theory still has its suppor-

ters, although the most recent archaeological, historical, and population

genetic evidence does not support it. The extent of survival of the indige-

nous Romano-British population must have varied from one place toanother, but there is no firm evidence of widespread massacre of the in-

digenous population in either towns or rural areas. This is the conclusion

of, e.g., Laing and Laing (1990 on the basis of their discussion of variouskinds of early medieval archaeological finds. Instead of sharp polarization

between the two populations, they consider widespread intermingling

of the two cultures to have been a much more likely scenario in the Bri-tain of that period. In a similar vein, Oppenheimer (2006) cites the view

of British archaeologist Helena Hamerow, who also concludes that the

archaeological evidence does not lend support to the replacement theorybut rather suggests ‘‘a substantial degree of continuity’’ (Hamerow 1997:

40, cited from Oppenheimer 2006: 347).

The replacement theory is not supported by the estimated populationstatistics either. The Germanic immigrants formed only a small propor-

tion of the population of the country. The size of the (Romano-)British

population c. 450 AD has been estimated to have been about one million,but there are wide di¤erences in estimates of the immigrant: native ratio.

The most ‘minimalist’ stand is represented by the historian Nick Higham,

who puts the figure at 1:100 (Higham 1992). At the other extreme is thearchaeologist Heinrich Harke, who places the ratio at 1:5 (Harke 2003),

while the archaeologists Laing and Laing adopt a medium position, pro-

posing 1:20 or 1:50 (Laing and Laing 1990). What is significant, however,is that even Harke agrees that instead of a wholesale extermination of the

Britons, what happened in most places (excepting some areas in eastern

and central England) was a process of acculturation over the couple ofcenturies following the arrival of the Germanic tribes.

Support for the ‘‘acculturation theory’’ can be obtained from recent

population genetic studies. Particularly well-known among these is theCapelli et al. (2003) analysis of Y chromosome variation based on a sam-

ple of 1772 males from 25 small urban locations in the British Isles and

Ireland, involving also comparative sample sets from Norway, Denmark,and North Germany. Capelli et al.’s quantitative analysis of the results

shows that ‘‘there has not been complete population replacement any-

where in the British Isles’’ (Capelli et al. 2003: 981–982). It is another

Celtic Influence on English 209

matter, then, to what extent the present-day population of the British Isles

retains gene flows dating back to the pre-historical period preceding the

arrival of the Celts in Britain. In the light of the most recent research,this seems to have been much greater than was previously assumed (for

discussion, see Oppenheimer 2006). Another study similar to that of

Capelli et al. (2003) was conducted under the auspices of the Oxford

Genetic Atlas Project (Sykes et al. 2006). Their analysis of both matri-lineal mitochondrial DNA and patrilineal Y-chromosome samples of

over 10,000 subjects from all over Britain and Ireland also supports signi-

ficant continuity of the indigenous Celtic-speaking population in Britainand Ireland. In the words of the authors, ‘‘Celtic’’ must in this context be

understood as referring to ‘‘descent from people who were here before the

Romans and who spoke a Celtic language’’ (Sykes 2006: 287).Despite some continuing controversies in these areas of study, there is

enough evidence to conclude that the demographic and sociohistorical cir-

cumstances surrounding the adventus Saxonum were such that linguisticcontact influences were not just possible but most likely. Arguably, there

was a period of extensive bilingualism for a considerable length of time

after the adventus. During this period, the Britons shifted to English andwere gradually assimilated to the Anglo-Saxon population both culturally

and linguistically.

3. Evidence from language-contact theory

The most relevant question to ask here is: what happens in language shift

situations like the one in early medieval Britain? Evidence from similar

contact settings in other parts of the world tells us that speakers shiftingto another language typically bring along considerable influences from

the substrate language to the target language (cf. Thomason and Kaufman

1988). It has likewise been shown that linguistic contact e¤ects in onedomain or subsystem of a language are usually accompanied by the same

type of e¤ects in some other subsystem (ibid). Living testimony to these

kinds of e¤ects are the outcomes of the modern-age language shift in theformerly Celtic-speaking areas in Wales, Ireland, Isle of Man and in

the western parts of Scotland, which have given rise to so-called ‘‘Celtic

Englishes.’’ What we also know from general contact-linguistic theory isthat, in conditions of language shift where speakers have only limited

access to the target language, phonology and syntax are a¤ected most,

whereas there is much less lexical transfer (cf. Thomason and Kaufman


1988). This is particularly significant from the point of view of the English-

Celtic contacts, because the paucity of Celtic loanwords in English is in

fact something to be expected in this type of a language shift situation,not a factor speaking against Celtic influence on English ( pace Jespersen

1905).

What have sometimes been called ‘‘delayed contact e¤ects’’ are also

likely in certain types of conditions. As examples, McWhorter (2006) men-tions loss of inflections in Middle Persian, not visible until after a three-

century documentational gap; Standard Finnish which is very much

lagging behind ‘‘Universal Colloquial Finnish’’; Ecuadoran Spanish; andMoroccan Arabic. In all these cases, a significant time gap exists between

colloquial and spoken varieties and the respective standard languages. In

the discussion below, it will be argued that the same phenomenon mostprobably accounts for the relatively late attestation in English of, e.g.,

periphrastic do.Finally under this heading, the sources cited in the Introduction pro-

vide ample evidence to show that contact influences from Celtic have not

been confined to just one or two isolated features, but appear to have

a¤ected several ‘‘core’’ areas of English grammar and morphophonology.

4. Areal and typological evidence

Extrapolation from typological and areal distributions of linguistic fea-

tures has long been a commonly used method for obtaining additional evi-dence when there are few or no written records of a language or variety.

For example, Haspelmath (1998) uses it in his attempt to trace the origins

of Standard Average European features. Writing much earlier, SlavicistValentin Kiparsky applied the same methodology to the question of pos-

sible Finno-Ugrian substrate influence on Russian (1969); he used areal-

typological evidence to ascertain that the non-use of the verb have inRussian possessive constructions is most likely due to an early Finno-

Ugrian substratum.2 In the latter part of this article, this same method

will be applied to shed light on the origins of English periphrastic do.On a more general level, the explanandum from an areal-typological

perspective is: Why does English have so many syntactic and other fea-

2. Russian, unlike other Slavic languages, uses a possessive construction whichclosely corresponds to the construction found in Uralic languages, c.f. Kiparsky(1969: 15–16) and Thomason and Kaufmann (1991: 246).


tures that it shares with the Celtic languages but which are not found, or

have been lost, especially in German and, in many cases, in most other

Germanic languages or dialects? Are the parallels merely coincidental (i.e.,endogenous developments) or results of contacts with Celtic languages?

Recent research on possible areal-typological connections between English

and the Celtic languages has brought to light several syntactic features

that are shared by English and Celtic languages but not by German. Theseinclude:

– the Old English functional distinction between the *es- and *bheu

-forms of the ‘‘substantive’’ verb ‘‘be’’ (Tolkien (1963); Lutz (2006))

– periphrastic do (van der Auwera and Genee (2002))

– the prevalence of the so-called internal possessor construction in whichthe possessor assumes the form of a possessive pronoun rather than

the definite article, as in He broke his wrist (Konig and Haspelmath

(1997); Vennemann (2001))– the progressive (Dal (1952); Filppula (2003); Poppe (2003); Lutz

(2006); Filppula, Klemola, and Paulasto (2008))3

– the it-cleft construction (German 2003; Filppula, Klemola, and Paulasto(2008))

– relative clauses with preposition stranding (Tristram (1999))

– identical forms for intensifiers and reflexives (Vezzosi (2005))

Phonological features are clearly fewer, but there are a couple of obvious

ones:

– preservation of /þ/ and /w/ in English; no other Germanic dialect pre-

serves them both; /þ/ is only preserved in Icelandic (Tolkien (1963))

– preservation of the interdental fricatives in English and Welsh, which is

remarkable from a typological point of view because of the marked-ness of interdental fricatives from a cross-linguistic perspective (Tolkien

(1963), Tristram (2002))

To sum up the areal and typological evidence, English has a striking

number of ‘un-Germanic’ features which are hard to explain as coinciden-

3. It is true, as one of our referees points out, that various other Germanic dia-lects have, or have had at some stage of their history, at least partial parallelsto the English progressive. However, English is the only Germanic languagein which the progressive is based on the use of a verbal noun type structure(similar to that found in Celtic languages) and not on that of a nominalisedinfinitive (as in other Germanic dialects).


tal given the Celtic parallels and the socio-historical contact evidence. The

existence of similar parallels in the modern-era ‘‘Celtic Englishes’’ in

Ireland, Wales, Man, and (West of ) Scotland also reduces the likelihoodof independent developments or ‘‘drift’’ at least as the sole explanatory

factors. The case-study to be discussed in the next sections provides a con-

crete illustration of how the various strands of evidence mentioned so far

can be used to show that attempts to explain the origins of English peri-phrastic do fail to be convincing without assuming at least some degree

of contact influence from Celtic.

5. A case study: the rise of periphrastic do

In present-day English, periphrastic auxiliary do is used as an operator

characterized by the so-called NICE properties (Negation, Inversion,

Code, Emphasis, cf. Huddleston (1976: 333)). As Denison remarks, thisfeature sets English apart not only from the other Germanic languages,

but also from Standard Average European (1993: 255). Although there is

some evidence for the use of periphrastic and causative ‘‘do’’ in colloquial,spoken registers in German and Dutch (van der Auwera & Genee (2002)),

grammaticalized do-support constructions are indeed typologically rare,

to the extent that McWhorter (2006) has characterized the use of do inEnglish as ‘‘starkly peculiar . . . alien to its entire Indo-European family

and also bizarre in the cross-linguistic sense.’’

What is the origin of this ‘‘starkly peculiar’’ use of do in English?Denison notes that the Old English don verb does not have auxiliary-like

properties, and it is only during the Middle English period that do devel-

oped into an auxiliary, at least in some of its uses (1993: 255). There is awidespread consensus that periphrastic do developed from an earlier,

causative use of do. This causative hypothesis is mainly associated with

Alvar Ellegard (1953), and was developed further by Denison (1985). Ina nutshell, Ellegard’s argument runs as follows: in late Old English/early

Middle English, a construction consisting of causative do þ NP þ infini-

tive came to be widely used in the east and south-east of England. Thisconstruction is exemplified by (1) (from Denison (1993: 257)):

(1) c1155 Peterb. Chron. 1140.22Þe biscop of Wincestre . . . dide heom cumen þider.

the bishop of Winchester . . . caused them come (INF) thither

‘The bishop of Winchester . . . had them come there.’


The ‘doþNPþ infinitive’ construction had a variant, where the subject

of the infinitive was not expressed (‘do þ infinitive’), as in example (2),

from Denison (1993: 257):

(2) a1225 (c1200) Vices and V.(1) 25.10

Ðis hali mihte ðe dieð ilieuen ðat . . .this holy virtue that causes believe that . . .

‘This holy virtue which causes one to believe that . . .’

According to Ellegard (1953: 28–33; 118–19), the periphrastic do con-struction then arose as a result of a ‘‘permutation of meaning’’ of such

equivocal ‘doþ infinitive’ constructions that could be interpreted either

as causative or as purely periphrastic constructions where do was inter-preted as a semantically empty auxiliary. The equivocal construction is

exemplified in (3) (from Denison 1993: 278).

(3) ?a1400 (a1338) Mannyng, Chron. Pt. 2 97.22

Henry . . . | þe walles did doun felle, þe tours bette he doun.

Henry . . . | the walls ‘did’ down fell the towers beat he down

‘Henry . . . felled the walls, he beat down the towers.’

As Denison states, ‘‘Did felle [. . .] could be interpreted either as did

‘caused’þ felle ‘to fell/be felled’ or as did ‘past tense’þ felle ‘cause tofell/be felled’ ’’ (1993: 278). The interpretation of do as a purely periphras-

tic auxiliary in these equivocal contexts then led to the rise of periphrastic

do in general.Although the causative hypothesis is elegant and attractive, there are

some problems with it. Perhaps the most serious one, already pointed out

by Ellegard (1953: 118–119), has to do with the dialectal distribution ofperiphrastic uses of do in Middle English. In the thirteenth century, when

periphrastic uses of do first appear in English, causative uses of do are

found mainly in south-eastern texts, while the early attestations of peri-phrastic uses are found in the south-west only. Periphrastic uses of doonly appear in the south-east of England about a century later, during

the fourteenth century. The problem is thus the following: How couldcausative do be the source of the periphrastic uses, if causative uses are

not attested in the area where periphrastic uses of do originate, that is, in

the south-west of England?This problem with the geographical distribution of di¤erent uses of do

in Middle English is an important motivation for the hypothesis that the

Celtic languages played an important role in the rise of periphrastic do in


English. The use of constructions where a verb with the sense ‘‘do’’ is com-

bined with a verbal noun is a prominent feature of all Celtic languages,

and especially the Brythonic languages, Welsh, Breton and Cornish, whereperiphrastic uses of ‘‘do’’ are attested already in the earliest surviving

documents.4 Thus, periphrastic uses of gweneuthur ‘do’ are attested in

Middle Welsh, as in example (4) from the eleventh century:

(4) ath gyrchu a wna

and.your attack PT will.do

‘and he will attack you’

(11th c.; Lewis and Pedersen 1961: 316)

Similar uses of the ‘‘do’’ verb are also common in Middle Cornish and

Middle Breton:

(5) ny wreugh why tryge

not do you (pl.) remain

‘you will not remain’

(Middle Cornish, 16th c.; Lewis and Pedersen 1961: 316)

(6) hoz trugaregat a raf

you (pl.) thank PT do (1. sg.)

‘I thank you’

(Middle Breton, 16th c.; Lewis and Pedersen 1961: 316)

Walther Preusler (1938, 1956) was one of the earliest scholars to make

explicit the claim that the rise of periphrastic do in English is due to Celtic

influence. Preusler argues that since in Welsh a construction with a verbcorresponding to periphrastic do is attested before the late thirteenth cen-

tury, which is the period when Preusler considers periphrastic do to have

appeared in English, it is reasonable to assume that it was the Welshlanguage that influenced English (1938: 182; 1956: 334–5). Furthermore,

4. An anonymous referee suggests that our argument here would be more per-suasive ‘‘if do could be shown to occur with verbal nouns.’’ However,although the verbal noun in the Celtic languages is found in a range of con-structions, its primary use is in a construction that is functionally equivalentto the infinitive in English (Lewis and Pedersen 1961: 312). Thus it is notunexpected that DO should occur with the infinitive rather than the verbalnoun or the gerund in English. Furthermore, it is not at all uncommon in lan-guage contact situations that syntactic parallelism between a donor languageand a borrowing language is only partial.


Preusler points out the fact that unstressed periphrastic do has survivedin the south-western dialects of English as an archaism and that it is

significant that this archaic feature has survived just in the area where

Welsh and Cornish influence must have been strongest (1938: 182).In an attempt to document the use of unstressed periphrastic do in

English dialects, Klemola (1996) presents a detailed survey of the geo-

graphical distribution of unstressed periphrastic do in these dialects. Map1, based on both the published Survey of English Dialects materials and

the unpublished SED fieldworker notebooks, shows the geographical dis-

tribution of unstressed periphrastic do in a‰rmative statements in the tra-ditional dialects of England towards the middle of the twentieth century.

The round shape of the isogloss on Map 1 would seem to indicate that,

historically, periphrastic do was an innovation that took place somewherein the focal area of West Wiltshire and East Somerset and spread from

Map 1. The geographical distribution of unstressed periphrastic do in a‰rmativestatements in the traditional dialects of England and Wales in the mid-twentieth century (from Klemola 1996: 64).


there. Indeed, in the light of historical documents this seems to be the

case, as Ellegard confirms: ‘‘Our findings also make it probable that

periphrastic do really originated in the West (or rather, South West)’’(1953: 47).

But what about the geographical distribution of periphrastic do before

the mid-twentieth century and the SED evidence? Although the use of

unstressed periphrastic do in a‰rmative declarative sentences is men-tioned as a characteristic feature of south-western dialects already in

many nineteenth-century dialect descriptions, these early dialect studies,

as a rule, are not very helpful when one tries to determine the geographicaldistribution of do-periphrasis in any detail. There is, however, one nine-

teenth-century dialect survey which o¤ers us a very detailed picture of

the geographical distribution of the use of periphrastic do in mid- tolate nineteenth-century England. This is Alexander Ellis’s monumental

study, On Early English Pronunciation. Part V: The Existing Phonology

of English Dialects Compared with that of West Saxon Speech (Ellis1889). Map 2, drawn on the basis of the remarks found in Ellis (1889),

represents as accurate a picture of the geographical distribution of peri-

phrastic do in the mid- to late nineteenth century as we can ever hopeto obtain.

Comparing Maps 1 and 2, it is clear that there is a remarkably good fit

between the nineteenth-century geographical distribution of periphrasticdo, as described by Ellis (Map 2), and the distribution that can be inferred

from the SED data collected in the 1950s, about a hundred years after

Ellis (Map 1). One of the assumptions behind the apparent-time methodin the sociolinguistic study of linguistic change is that ‘‘each generation

acquires its basic motor-controlled vernacular and its evaluative norms

between the ages four and seventeen’’ (Downes 1984: 198). Applying theprinciples of the apparent-time method to Ellis’s survey (and assuming

that Ellis’s dialect informants were 60þ years old on average), we can

infer that Ellis (1889) reflects the situation during the first quarter of thenineteenth century. The SED data displayed on Map 1, on the other

hand, also based on data collected from NORM informants, were col-

lected during the 1950s, and can thus be taken to reflect the situationduring the last decades of the nineteenth century. In other words, the close

match between Map 2, based on Ellis (1889), and Map 1, based on the

SED, together with the backwards projection principle of the apparent-time method, warrants the conclusion that the SED data probably reflect

fairly accurately the dialectal distribution of periphrastic do as far back in

time as the first decades of the nineteenth century.


There are no reliable, systematic descriptions of English folk-speech

that could take us further back in time than the first decades of the

nineteenth century. However, as Ihalainen (1994) has argued, English(traditional) dialect areas and characteristics on the whole have been

remarkably stable and in many cases well-established for centuries. This

prompts the question whether it is possible that the SED distribution ofperiphrastic do, as shown on Map 1, could indeed provide us with a fairly

good indication of the dialectal distribution of unstressed periphrastic

do even before the early nineteenth century. Some evidence pointing inthis direction can be found in the surviving written documents from the

Middle English and early modern English periods. Ellegard arrives at the

following conclusion about the geographical distribution of periphrasticdo in ME and EModE:

Map 2. The geographical distribution of unstressed periphrastic do in a‰rmativestatements in the rural dialects of England in the mid-nineteenth centuryon the basis of Ellis 1889 (from Klemola 1996: 26).


The origin of the do-construction, according to my argument in Part I, hasto be sought in the Central and Western parts of the South, from where itspread eastwards and northwards. All through the 15th century it is absentin prose works from the North, and is rare in the East. In the 16th and 17thcenturies the do-form continues to be used much less often in the Norththan elsewhere. (Ellegard 1953: 164)

A similar conclusion on the dialectal distribution of periphrastic do is

found in Mustanoja’s Middle English Syntax:

The earliest prose instances of periphrastic do date from c 1400, but the con-struction remains uncommon down to the end of the 15th century, beingrarer in the East than in the West. The Paston Letters contain few instancesof periphrastic do. In Caxton’s early works it is much less frequent than inhis later products. It is not found in the prose written in the North duringthe 15th century, and it remains comparatively rare in the northern proseworks of the 16th and 17th centuries. (Mustanoja 1960: 603–604)

There is also strong evidence to indicate that periphrastic do was not used

in Middle Scots during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In her studybased on the extensive Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (1450–1700),

Meurman-Solin found that periphrastic do is introduced into Scots prose

as late as the latter half of the sixteenth century (1993: 248). She furtherargues that the form shows signs of having been introduced into Scots

through the influence of southern English (presumably the London stan-

dard). As early Scots was very heavily influenced by the northern varieties

of English, the fact that periphrastic do seems not to have been an in-digenous feature of early varieties of Scots lends further support to the

claim that the construction is a southern borrowing rather than an original

feature of the northern vernacular varieties of Middle English and earlymodern English. In other words, it appears that periphrastic do is a

south-western innovation, and that the later introduction of do to the

northern vernacular varieties (in questions, negatives, etc.) took placethrough the influence of the evolving standard variety of English as a

change from above, to use the terminology introduced by Labov (see, e.g.,

Labov 1994: 78).To sum up the discussion on the geographical distribution of periphras-

tic do: the dialectal evidence discussed in Klemola 1996 supports the argu-

ment that periphrastic do was originally a feature of the south-westerndialects of Middle English, and only later di¤used to other vernacular dia-

lects as a consequence of the growing influence of the southern standard


from the seventeenth century onwards. In other words, the dialectal evi-

dence supports Preusler’s (1938) Celtic hypothesis for the origin of do.Ellegard was aware of Preusler’s Celtic hypothesis and the fact that it

would seem to supply an answer to the problem of the dialectal distribu-

tion of early attestations of periphrastic do:

In spite of the fact that my investigation tends to show that English peri-phrastic do originated in the South West, which would seem to lend somesupport to Preusler’s thesis, I do not think that it is acceptable. To establisha genetic relation between parallel expressions in two languages it is notenough to show that the expression exists in both languages, and is foundearlier in one than in the other. We need more circumstantial evidenceas well.In this case it is relevant to ask the following questions. First: is there any

evidence that Welsh influence was especially strong in the 13th century, thetime when the periphrasis is first found in English? Celtic influence isgenerally believed to have been fairly insignificant in English, and I donot see any reason why it should have been stronger in the 13th centurythan during all the previous centuries that the races had been in contact.(Ellegard 1953: 119)

For Ellegard, the timing of the possible Celtic influence was the major

problem with Preusler’s Celtic hypothesis, as shown by the quotationabove. However, contra Ellegard, it may be argued that the fact that peri-

phrastic do is only attested in written documents from the thirteenth

century onwards should not be considered a problem for the Celtichypothesis. A number of studies of language contacts have shown that

delayed contact e¤ects are frequent in language contact situations (cf.

Dal 1(952), McWhorter (2006)). McWhorter even argues that delayedappearance of contact e¤ects in written texts is the norm:5

Dal was correct that if Celts contributed periphrastic do, then its delayedappearance in texts is nothing short of ordinary. For it to have occurred inOld English texts would have been a stark contradiction of sociolinguisticrealities typical of written languages worldwide since time immemorial.(McWhorter 2006)

5. On the other hand, some of the Celtic-derived features already show up in OldEnglish texts (e.g. the internal possessor construction and the it-cleft construc-tion). The reasons for this kind of selective contact influence are so far poorlyunderstood and need further study.


Since Preusler (1938), a number of scholars including Wagner (1959),

Poussa (1990) Tristram (1997), Klemola (2002), van der Auwera and

Genee (2002), and most recently McWhorter (2006), have argued thatCeltic influence must have played a significant role in the rise of periphras-

tic do in English (for a survey, see van der Auwera and Genee 2002). It is

unlikely that su‰cient evidence can ever be amassed to prove conclusively

any one theory on the origins of do but we would argue that there is su‰-cient evidence to conclude that the Brythonic ‘‘do’’ construction must have

been a significant contributory factor in the rise of do in English.

6. Conclusion

We have endeavored to show in this paper that the question of Celtic in-

fluences in English continues to intrigue the minds of language historiansand that important new light can be shed on it by combining di¤erent

kinds of linguistic and extra-linguistic evidence. Among these, archaeolo-

gical, demographic and historical, as well as contact-linguistic and areal-typological evidence seem to us to provide the most reliable basis for

ascertaining contact influences. Periphrastic do was chosen here as a

good example of a syntactic feature which has long defied attempts toexplain its origins by recourse to language-internal factors only. As men-

tioned above, several other morphosyntactic features of English can like-

wise be shown to have a Celtic connection in some way or another, whichadds significantly to the overall plausibility of the Celtic hypothesis.

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Commentary on Filppula and Klemola,Celtic Influence on English: A Re-Evaluation

Elisabeth Tacho

Markku Filppula and Juhani Klemola’s paper takes up the long-running

debate over the extent of Celtic impact on English grammar and cre-

ditably shows how a thorough discussion of recent research findings andthe combination of various kinds of linguistic as well as extra-linguistic

evidence may contribute to deepen our understanding of the development

of Celtic features in the English language.The authors introduce their paper with a critical discussion of Otto

Jespersen’s (1905) explanation for the scarcity of Celtic elements in

English. Jespersen’s account stands in marked contrast to the view thatnumerous central grammatical elements of the English language, like the

progressive, the it-cleft construction or periphrastic DO, may be of Celtic

origin, as advocated by Keller (1925), Preusler (1956) and, more recently,of proponents of the ‘‘Celtic Hypothesis’’ such as Poussa (1990), Hickey

(1995), and McWhorter (2006). In highlighting the discrepancy between

the paucity of Celtic elements in the English language, as the traditionalview holds, and the assumption that the socio-historical situation after

the adventus Saxonum must have fostered cultural and linguistic inter-

action between English and Celtic to at least some extent, Filppula andKlemola make a powerful argument for the need to debate and reassess

previous studies in the light of recent linguistic and historical evidence.

Filppula and Klemola presuppose a period of prolonged bilingualismafter the Anglo-Saxon invasion with recognizable linguistic e¤ects on the

English language. They put forward conclusive archaeological evidence

drawn from Oppenheimer (2006) and Laing and Laing (1990) in orderto substantiate their claim that ‘‘instead of a wholesale extermination of

Britons, what happened in most places . . . was a process of acculturation.’’

Furthermore, Harke (2003) and Higham’s (1992) population statistics andthe genetic studies of Capelli (2003) and Sykes (2006) do not support the

Freeman (1870) and Stubbs (1870) ‘‘ethnic cleansing’’ theory either. And

although Filppula and Klemola are aware of and acknowledge the con-tinuing controversy over recent genetic testing procedures, the fact that

all the di¤erent studies reveal a ‘‘significant continuity of the indigenous

Celtic speaking population’’ is telling and lends further support to the

here advocated acculturation theory.In the second part of the paper, Filppula and Klemola maintain their

focus on geographical and historical evidence and show how a meticu-

lously researched case study on the origin of ‘‘periphrastic do’’ can be

placed within the larger framework of the Celtic Hypothesis. Periphrasticdo represents a grammatical feature that distinguishes English from

most other European languages as Denison (1993) indicates. The origin

of auxiliary do, however, is not entirely clear. While Denison and Ellegardargue that ambiguous ‘doþ infinitive’ constructions may have led to a

twofold interpretation of the phrase as either a causative and a periphras-

tic construction, thus contributing to the rise of periphrastic do, Filppulaand Klemola cast serious doubt on this causative hypothesis and challenge

the approach of Ellegard (1953) and Denison (1985), revealing flaws in the

scholars’ interpretations. The key argument put forward against Ellegardand Denison’s interpretation of periphrastic do is based on Filppula and

Klemola’s finding concerning the geographical and typological distribu-

tion of the relevant structure. Filppula and Klemola discern that whileperiphrastic uses of do initially appear in south-western areas first, causa-

tive do is mainly found in the south-east of England, which therefore

does not necessarily qualify as the source of periphrastic do. In combiningKlemola’s (1996) thoroughly conducted survey of the geographical distri-

bution of twentieth-century unstressed periphrastic do with Ellis’s 1889

study on early English pronunciation and the distribution of nineteenth-century periphrastic do, the authors apply the principles of apparent-time

method and represent their results on two maps that show an accurate pic-

ture of the linguistic situation of that period.The patterns they observe in the geographical and areal-typological dis-

tribution of periphrastic do are borne out by the findings of historical lin-

guists, as Filppula and Klemola indicate by their inclusion of viewpointsexpressed by scholars like Ellegard and Preusler (1938, 1956), who both

indicate a south-western origin of periphrastic do constructions. It is note-

worthy that this account can be further corroborated by evidence drawnfrom the analysis of the dialectal distribution of periphrastic do in various

text types and genres. The authors adopt Mustanoja’s (1960) conclusions

to good purpose and thereby substantiate their initial results that northernsources of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries hardly show any instances

of periphrastic do, which in turn gives good evidence that periphrastic docan indeed be regarded a southern borrowing.

Commentary on Filppula and Klemola 227

One more detail that has intrigued a number of linguists, among them

Ellegard (1953), is the relatively late attestation of Celtic features, such as

periphrastic do, in English written sources. Here, Filppula and Klemolacommendably draw on McWhorter’s (2006) research results to explain

the observed time gap between the contact situation and the actual imple-

mentation of grammatical borrowings as ‘‘delayed contact e¤ects,’’ which

may be interpreted as a rather common phenomenon whenever colloquialoral features gradually shift towards the written standard. However, while

Filppula and Klemola’s findings give ample and strong evidence for the

mechanisms behind the uses of auxiliary do, a small element of doubtconcerning the motivation behind the rise of periphrastic do still remains.

It would be useful to know whether the authors think it plausible that

the great number of Anglo Norman and French loanwords may have con-tributed to the increase of periphrastic do constructions in Middle English

as Fischer and Van der Wur¤ argue (2006: 155):

Such new verbs can be di‰cult to fit into the native inflectional system, anda way of avoiding a hybrid form (a French word with an English past tensein -ed or a present in -est or -es/-eth) would be to use a form of the all-purpose verb do plus an infinitive (a strategy for incorporating loan verbsthat is in fact found in several other languages). Once do has become morecommon, it may also begin to be used more frequently with other infinitives,possibly for phonotactic reasons. . . .

In drawing all strands of their argument together, Filppula and Klemola’s

seminal paper is a comprehensive and thoroughly researched account of

Celtic influence on the English language. Discussions like these not onlysuccessfully model convincing evidence based on contact-linguistic princi-

ples, as well as historical and geographical findings, but also shed new

light on the possible origin of a single syntactic feature like periphrasticdo, and provide fascinating information on and compelling arguments for

the plausibility of the Celtic Hypothesis, for which Filppula and Klemola

present appealing linguistic and extra-linguistic accounts.

References

Fischer, Olga, and Wim van der Wur¤2006 Syntax. In A History of the English Language, edited by Richard

Hogg and David Denison, 109–198. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

228 Elisabeth Tacho

Response to Commentary by Tacho


In her commentary to our paper, Elisabeth Tacho raises the questionof other possible explanations for the rise of periphrastic do in Middle

English. She refers to Fischer and van der Wur¤ (2006: 155), who suggest

that the initial spread of do in Middle English could have been aided by‘‘the large influx of French loanwords,’’ which may have been di‰cult to

incorporate in the native inflectional system. As Fischer and van der Wur¤

point out, this type of strategy of avoiding verb inflections is not uncom-mon crosslinguistically (for a survey of the use of ‘‘do’’ periphrasis as a

strategy of avoiding verb inflections, see Jager 2006: 260–64).

If we understand Fischer and van der Wur¤ correctly, they o¤er theavoidance of inflections as a contributory factor in the early stages of

the rise of periphrastic do, cf. their following remark: ‘‘[o]nce do has

become more common, it may also begin to be used more frequentlywith other infinitives’’ (2006: 155). However, the earliest attested exam-

ples of periphrastic do found in thirteenth century south-western verse

show periphrastic do used with native verbs rather than French loans, asin the following examples from Denison (1993: 264): His schlaun he dude

dun legge (c1300 Horn 1057), toward þe stude þat þe sonne: In winter does

a-rise (c1300 SLeg. Patr. Purg 205.191). Thus, at least on the basis of theearliest attested evidence, Fischer and van der Wur¤’s explanation does

not seem to work. In principle, it should be relatively simple to further

corroborate Fischer and van der Wur¤’s hypothesis of avoidance of inflec-tions with French loanwords as a contributory factor in the rise of do in

English. This could be done, for example, by using Ellegard’s (1953) data

on the early instances of periphrastic do, and calculating the percentage ofFrench loans among the verbs that the early occurrences of periphrastic do

collocate with.

References

Denison, David1993 English Historical Syntax. London: Longman.

Ellegard, Alvar1953 The Auxiliary Do. The Establishment and Regulation of its Use

in English. (Gothenburg Studies in English II.) Stockholm:Almqvist & Wiksell.

Fischer, Olga, and Wim van der Wur¤2006 Syntax. In A History of the English Language, edited by Richard

Hogg and David Denison, 109–198. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Jager, Andreas2006 Typology of Periphrastic ‘Do’-constructions. (Diversitas Lingua-

rum, Vol. 12.) Bochum: Universitatsverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer.


When arı #ven Came to England:Tracing Lexical Re-Structuring by Borrowing inMiddle and Early Modern English. A Case Study

Elisabeth Tacho

1. Introduction

While jetting all around the globe, we often forget about the risks anddangers of traveling. Nowadays, most tourists and travelers just have to

deal with lost luggage or flight delays, and although traveling can involve

more serious risks, we do not even come close to what traveling meant topeople more than seven hundred years ago. Hunger and thirst, heat and

cold, exhaustion, illnesses and death – those were the dangers medieval

and Renaissance travelers had to face. Kings and knights, monks andpilgrims, merchants and traders, apprentices and refugees, people from

all walks of life – all of them needed stamina and good luck to survive

their journeys. Traveling was not at all safe and the English seafaringmerchant Henry Timberlake reported about his pilgrimage to Jerusalem,

‘‘[. . .] my life was the thing I most of all feared’’ (1974 [1603]: 25). Simi-

larly, Katherine Paston writes in a letter to her son ‘‘I was very glad toheer by your first letter that you wer so sa¿y arriued at your wished

port.’’ We must not think of these quotations as hollow phrases but read

these lines as mirroring the ever-presence of danger on the roads as wellas the concerns of the travelers and their beloved, waiting for them to

return back home. Building on sociolinguistic evidence (cf. Labov 1972

and 1994; Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003; Romaine 1982) thatlanguages are socially embedded and therefore do not evolve in a social

vacuum, it may be claimed that the high rate of mobility during the middle

ages and the Renaissance (cf. MacDonald 2006; Ohler 1989; Verdon2003), as well as the significance of moments such as the arrival from a

journey, must have had some impact on the English language. The focus

of the present study is, therefore, on a very small segment of the English

lexicon, i.e., the verb arrive, in order to examine how the verb entered theEnglish lexicon and to investigate whether and how the word developed in

meaning and frequency from the Middle English to the Early Modern

English period. Furthermore, the present article reports some of the find-

ings concerning the distribution and frequency of ME arı #ven in written

and speech-based text types between 1100 and 1500. Since both quanti-tative and qualitative research are necessary to gain a full picture of the

situation in Middle English, I will further provide contextualized examples

to show how arı #ven is used in various di¤erent text types compared to its

native competitor le #nden.

2. Theoretical framework

As far as the theoretical framework is concerned, I will give a brief outline

of the theories on which my paper is based. Word field theory has provedto be very useful for the present study as it provides the theoretical back-

ground for the analysis of a lexical field. According to Coseriu and

Geckeler (1981), a lexical field can be defined ‘‘as a lexical paradigm,which results from the division of a lexical content continuum into di¤er-

ent lexemes’’ (Tacho 2007: 66). The individual lexemes are connected with

each other in various di¤erent ways, regarded as lexical relations suchas antonymy, polysemy, or hyponomy (cf. Coseriu and Geckeler (1981),

Geckeler (1971), Kastovsky (2006)). These concepts of lexical fields and

relations help to determine the notion of the lexical field investigated, i.e.,‘to come ashore,’ and to study the relationship between the lexemes incor-

porated in the field.

Language change, such as the borrowing of a foreign lexical item,always involves at least some kind of social interaction between di¤erent

cultures and groups of speakers. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg

(2003) examine the mechanisms of language change in the tradition ofLabov’s variationist approach, thereby including socio-linguistic and social

criteria, such as social status, regional and gender variation. Social status

or prestige may also be regarded as one of the driving forces behind someof the observed changes in the lexical field of ‘to come ashore’ and may in

particular account for the borrowing of arı #ven from Anglo-Norman, as I

will discuss later on.Historical linguists largely rely on the study of manuscripts and texts of

a certain period in order to gain an impression of how language changed

over time. Literary scholars as well as linguists have developed numeroustheories and approaches to classify and categorize these preserved texts.

As regards genre theory, the distinction between genre and text type is

not always clear. While Biber (1988: 206) distinguishes between genre and

232 Elisabeth Tacho

text type on the basis of external and internal features, the compilers of

the Helsinki Corpus use both terms as rough synonyms and provide what

Oesterreicher (1997: 193) calls a medium-distinction, labeling texts ac-cording to their main characteristics and purpose as travelogues, letters

or biographies, etc. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003: 28) point

out that ‘‘genres di¤er in many ways, for instance in their conventions,

level of formality and type of setting.’’ The level of formality serves as themajor criterion to establish the degree of orality in written texts in many

linguistic studies (cf. Biber 1988, Kohnen 1997, and Taavitsainen 1997).

The Helsinki Corpus’ categories ‘‘written,’’ ‘‘speech-based,’’ and ‘‘script,’’i.e., written to be spoken, represent a rough guideline towards a more con-

ceptual profile of these texts. Koch and Oesterreicher (1996: 64–96) have

developed a very useful framework to determine the orality of writtentexts. They di¤erentiate between the language of immediacy, i.e., the in-

formal or oral type of linguistic conception, and the elaborate and formal

type of language of distance as the two poles of a conceptual continuum.On this scale Koch and Oesterreicher provide further levels of orality

which are characterized by varying degrees of spontaneity or planning,

sentence complexity and elaboration. Oesterreicher (1997: 193) also high-lights the importance of treating the aspects of medium and conception

separately. In the present study I will use the Helsinki Corpus classification

of text types and I will apply Koch and Oesterreicher’s conceptual ap-proach in order to find out more about the level of orality of individual

texts.1 The varying levels of orality in written texts have turned out to

shed more light on the mechanisms of the lexical changes examined. Ac-cording to Labov (1972) and Romaine (1982) language innovations may

occur in spoken language long before they show up in written sources.

Both scholars focus their attention on language internal changes and pre-suppose that linguistic novelties primarily find their way into a language

through regular and prolonged face-to-face interaction taking place within

a close-knit social network.However, recent studies on socially embedded changes (Eckert 2003,

Milroy 2007) have proven Labov’s and Romaine’s assumptions to be

only partly relevant for linguistic innovations involving contact situationsand have further developed di¤erent ways to identify and explain two

major types of language variation. Based on the observation that some lin-

guistic innovations in language are more readily available to its speakers

1. For a discussion of the text type classification used in the present study seeSection 5.

When arı #ven Came to England 233

than others, Lesley Milroy adapts Eckert’s (2003) definition of ‘‘o¤ the

shelf ’’ changes and adds to it her own category of ‘‘under the counter’’

changes. Milroy points out that these labels roughly correspond to thedistinction between ‘‘supralocal’’ and ‘‘local’’ changes. Furthermore, both

terms refer to the extent to which language variation is accessible to

speakers. Whereas under the counter changes are restricted to smaller

local speech communities and need regular and repeated social interactionamong their members in order to be implemented, o¤ the shelf changes

can be seen as more freely accessible to a greater number of speakers

regardless of their social a‰liation and geographical location. Althoughthese studies primarily focus on sound changes, Eckert (2000: 16) and

Milroy (2006: 165) argue that lexical borrowings are very likely candidates

for o¤ the shelf changes, too, since many loan words enter a language notonly through face-to-face interaction but through written sources and

distant contact between two di¤erent cultures. In the present paper I will

aim to find out whether Eckert and Milroy’s categorization of sociallymotivated sound change can also be applied to the case of the borrowing

of arı #ven.Lexical and semantic changes have always been a fascinating field of

research for many historical linguists of di¤erent schools. Schendl (1985

[1987]: 357–399) for example applies Fillmore’s model of valency and

case grammar theory (1968) to the study of semantic change. He illus-trates his study with diachronic accounts of individual verbs of motion,

among them arı #ven and le #nden. His discussion of the phenomenon of

meaning variation in arı #ven and le #nden is closely connected with the re-sults of my quantitative approach to investigate the implementation of

the AN loan word in the English language.

3. The dictionaries and corpora used

The present paper is based on the entries in the standard dictionaries anddata retrieved from two diachronic corpora. For the semasiological part

of this study, I collected my data from the online versions of both the

Oxford English Dictionary (henceforth OED) and the Middle English Dic-

tionary (MED). Additionally, I backed up the data with information

drawn from the Anglo Norman Dictionary (AND), the Dictionnaire du

Moyen Francais (DMF ), and Hindley’s Old French-English Dictionary.The aim of the first part of this paper is to trace arı #ven’s way into the

English lexicon and its subsequent variation in meaning as well as its rela-

tion to native lexemes.

234 Elisabeth Tacho

The frequency data presented in this study are based on the Helsinki

Corpus of English Texts (henceforth HC ) for Middle English (ME) and

Early Modern English (EModE). The ME part of the HC is further sub-divided into four periods, ranging from M1 (1150–1250), M2 (1250–1350)

and M3 (1350–1420) to M4 (1420–1500), and consists of 608,570 words in

total. The EModE part (551,000 words) is divided in three sub-periods

from E1 (1500–1570) to E2 (1570–1640) and E3 (1640–1700). In addition,I also consulted the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse (CME ) in

order to expand the rather limited data set on ME sources provided by the

HC. While the HC consists of extracts of continuous texts the CME hasbeen compiled by the Humanities Text Initiative at the University of

Michigan, using reliable collections of full ME electronic texts. At present,

the corpus consists of 146 titles, comprising a total of 18,402,897 words,and provides the user with di¤erent search types. For the present fre-

quency study I searched the corpora for all tokens of arı #ven carrying

the meaning of ‘to come ashore’ and all possible spelling variations2 wereconsidered. Moreover, the material was organized according to the sub-

periods given in the HC. Since the HC and the CME di¤er considerably

in size it is not possible to directly compare their results. I will, therefore,use the data retrieved from the HC and aim to provide the reader with a

quick overview of the implementation of arı #ven in the English language,

and will focus on the early development of the verb in the second partof my quantitative study, using data drawn from the full texts included in

the CME.

4. How arı #ven came to England

In this chapter I turn to the origin and the early development of arı #ven.The way the new word found its way into the English language as well as

the question of its origin have been debated by various scholars and is stillcontroversial.

First, there is a remarkable di¤erence in the way the dictionaries treat

the relevant verbal form of arı #ven and its etymological background. It isnoteworthy to state that for the OED and the MED the verb arı #ven is bor-

2. Tokens showing the following spelling variations arrive, arriue, arive, ariue,arryve, arryue, aryve, aryue, a-ryve, a-ryue including common su‰xes, suchas -n, -de, -th, are included in the study.


rowed from OF arriver in the sense of ‘to land, to come ashore or to reach

shore.’ The form and meaning of the verb is derived from Late Latin

adripare, a combination of the preposition ad, meaning ‘to’ and the nounripa for ‘shore.’ In his article ‘‘Arrivals and Departures,’’ Rothwell (1998),

however, expresses serious doubts about the dictionaries’ accuracy on the

Old French origin of loan words, such as arrival or departure, and Schendl

(1985 [1987]: 379) sharply criticizes the OED’s etymology of the verbarı #ven. Both claim that arrival and arı #ven are to be considered Anglo Nor-

man rather than Old French loan words and both corroborate their claims

with evidence taken from the Anglo Norman Dictionary and a selection ofother dictionaries as well as from ME texts3. According to the entries

taken from the AND and those found in the MED arı #ven is only attested

in its narrow meaning of ‘to come ashore’ for the early ME period whilethe DMF includes entries with both the verb’s extended and narrow mean-

ing as being attested in Old French texts. From an etymological perspec-

tive, therefore, it is possible to view arı #ven as being borrowed from AngloNorman.

Second, the borrowing of arı #ven involves both linguistic and socio-

historical aspects, which are closely interrelated. Since the speakers ofEnglish in medieval England were not short of native words expressing the

idea of ‘traveling and coming ashore,’ the prestige of the Anglo-Norman

language as well as some language internal shift within the English lexiconmay be considered to be responsible for the borrowing of arı #ven.

The evidence taken from various di¤erent ME texts4 shows that the

Anglo Saxons used three di¤erent lexemes in order to express the samemeaning as the AN verb arı #ven, ‘to come to land.’ One of these equiva-

lents in Old English is le #ndan, a denominal formation of the noun land

plus the su‰x -jan, which develops into le #nden due to the Old English pro-cess of i-mutation. The OED mentions that ME le #nden slowly loses its

specific concept of ‘to come ashore’ and broadens its meaning towards

the more general notion of ‘to come to a place.’ The two main meaningsof le #nden roughly co-existed for more than a century before the verb

ceases to be used around 1540.

3. For a detailed reference list of dictionaries, reference books and MiddleEnglish text sources see Rothwell (1998) and Schendl (1985 [1987]).

4. A contrastive analysis of the distribution of arı #ven, le #nden and comen to inselected Middle English texts is conducted in Tacho (2007).

236 Elisabeth Tacho

Moreover, we can observe the use of the verb in various di¤erent mean-

ings in ME texts from the early thirteenth century onwards, as illustrated

in the semasiological diagram6 above.According to the OED, supported by the MED, the first use of the ex-

tended meaning of le #nden in ME texts coincides with the first attestation

of the AN loan word arı #ven ‘to come ashore.’ Roughly at the same timeas the native lexeme broadens its meaning, the new and foreign word

arı #ven appears in the English language and gradually takes over the posi-

tion and function of le#nden, which it maintains for more than one hundredyears. It seems plausible to assume that the widening of meaning of le #ndenfacilitated the later spread of arı #ven. However, as the MED further states,

the loan word does not remain stable in its meaning for long but ratherextends its meaning, gradually adopting the broader notion of ‘to come

to a place,’ just as its predecessor le #nden once did.

Figure 1. Semasiological diagram of le #nden5

5. The data used in Figure 1&2 above is taken from the OED and the MED.The following conventions are used in Figure 1&2:– words are listed from top to bottom in the order of their first attestation.– broken lines indicate that the words in question are already found in Old

English.– solid lines indicate the length of usage of words with their first and last

attestation in written sources given, according to the OED.6. For a more detailed discussion of Figure 1 & 2 see Tacho (2007).


The semasiological diagram of arı #ven below shows how the process of

meaning extension has developed from the originally restricted meaning to

rather abstract concepts in Early Modern and Modern English.As soon as both le #nden and arı #ven had completed their widening of

meaning, the English language was devoid of a specific term denoting the

concept of ‘to come ashore.’ According to Schendl’s hypothesis of a ‘‘func-tional pull,’’ i.e., the closing of a real or just felt gap by a new word for-

mation, the new verb landen, denoting the concept ‘to come ashore,’ is

coined and has remained in its narrow meaning until the beginning of the

twentieth century. The above described development may also be sum-marized as a circular movement with repeating processes of meaning

extension and partial replacements of lexemes, as indicated in Diagram 1.

The variety of meaning can be illustrated by the examples below.Example (1) is taken from King Horn and shows arı #ven in its earliest and

narrowest meaning ‘to come ashore.’

(1) He fond bi þe stronde, ariued on his londe, Schipenes fifteen, Wiþsarazins kene.

(HC, M2, King Horn, 35–38)

The following three examples show the word’s usage in both its narrow

and its wide meaning ‘to come to a place’ during the fourteenth andfifteenth centuries, whereas example (5) shows arı #ven in its current meaning.

Figure 2. Semasiological diagram of arı #ven7

7. For detailed explanation of the graph see footnote 5.

238 Elisabeth Tacho

(2) Eneas . . . With gret navie aryveth at Cartage.

(MED, 1393, GOWER, Confessio Amantis III, 4.8)

(3) all that contre on the left hond unto Egypt & arryuen at the cyteeof Damyete.

(HC, M3, Mandeville’s Travels, 36)

(4) I was very glad to heer by your first letter that you wer so sa¿yarriued at your wished port.

(HC, M4, Katherine Paston, KPASTON 65)

(5) He shall in good time arriue to his designed journey’s end.

(OED, 1661, BARROW, Sermon, i. I. 2)

5. Frequency studies

5.1. The Helsinki Corpus

Semasiological accounts of the development of a verb’s meaning in time

are one task of a linguist in order to establish a detailed picture of a loanword’s variation in form and meaning, thereby contributing to the better

Diagram 1. Illustration of meaning variation of ME le #nden and arı #ven


understanding of language change. However, the quantitative study of a

verb’s distribution in di¤erent genres may turn out to be a crucial aspectin research in order to shed some light on the nature of its implementation

in and the e¤ect on the recipient language. The first part of my quantita-

tive study of arı #ven was carried out with regard to the following con-straints. First, I focused only on those tokens of the loan word which com-

prise the meaning of ‘to come ashore’ in ME. For the EModE period I

included both the verb’s broad and narrow meaning. Second, I includedall known spelling variants of the verb in question. However, the fre-

quencies of arı #ven based on the data of the HC are rather low and can

only be regarded as a rough guideline. Table 1 lists absolute numbers;normalized numbers will be considered later on.

In a total of twenty-six relevant uses from 1250 to 1700, the HC renders

only eleven uncontroversial occurrences with arı #ven expressing ‘to comeashore,’ all in thirteenth century manuscripts. However, one will look in

vain for a single instance in the first sub-period M1 (1150–1250) of the

Middle English part of the HC, although the dictionary evidence (OED

and MED) shows Layamon’s Brut as the first Middle English text in

which the loan word is attested. Figure 1 below seems to represent a per-

fect S-shaped curve, which may be typical of many cases of lexical di¤u-sion8. However, caution must be exercised. The sudden drop around

1400 is rather puzzling, since the period between 1350 and 1450 is re-

garded as a very productive era of translations from Latinate or Frenchsources (cf. Drinka 2006, Sørensen 1957). Furthermore, the very low fre-

quencies in the EModE period seem to be very unreliable, since the inven-

tion of printing may have had a positive influence on the production and

spread of written texts.

Table 1. Absolute frequencies of arı #ven in HCE database

1150–1250

1250–1350

1350–1420

1420–1500

1500–1570

1570–1640

1640–1700

11 3 1 3 3 5

8. According to Wang and Chen (1972), any kind of change may start slowlyand then ‘speed up,’ spreading rapidly, just to slow down and come to anend finally.

240 Elisabeth Tacho

As it turns out, a valid generalization on the basis of the data drawn

from the HC does not seem possible because the total number of occur-

rences in the text samples provided in this corpus is too small. A morecomprehensive study of full texts, as included in the CME for the ME

period, is therefore highly desirable and will be conducted below.

5.2. The Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse

The second part of my frequency study focuses on the ME period only,because the period of direct rivalry between the loan word arı #ven and its

native competitor le #nden deserves particular attention. I am further inter-

ested in the question whether a detailed analysis of full texts can provide amore comprehensive picture of the verb’s development in order to support

the above discussed semasiological account of the borrowing process. In

Table 2 below, I have listed the absolute frequencies of arı #ven ‘to comeashore’ and categorized them according to text type distinctions and the

sub-periods of the HC. The HC gives a list of text types, which are clas-

sified according to language external parameters, such as text origin,purpose, and audience (cf. Taavitsainen 1997). Although Middle English

written sources often show di¤erent internal features and vary in style

and format so that they are not homogeneous enough to be clearly as-

signed to a specific text type I have decided to use the HC classificationin order to provide my study and the reader with a clear overall structure.

Figure 3. Frequency study of arı #ven in HCE database (absolute numbers)


Furthermore, I have modified the Helsinki Corpus’ distinction between

speech-based and written text types and followed the model provided by

Koch and Oesterreicher (1996), who provide a list of idealized communi-cative events ranging from immediacy types, i.e., intimate conversation or

private letters, to distance types such as scientific articles or legal texts.

Oesterreicher (1997: 206) also stresses the fact that features of orality inliterary texts ‘‘must be examined with caution because they normally do

not reflect spontaneous or natural language [. . .].’’ This argument par-

ticularly holds true for ME romances, like Malory’s Morte D’Arthur orCaxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine, because they chiefly represent trans-

lations from French or Latinate sources and therefore include linguistic

features which are less spontaneous but more carefully planned and out-lined than for example a private letter. The same goes for fiction of this

period. Although early fiction includes many oral features, such as dia-

logues, spontaneous interactions, and ‘‘emotionally loaded language’’ (cf.Taavitsainen 2005: 197), the examples of fictitious texts included in this

study, like Gower’s Confessio Amantis or Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales,

do not qualify as speech-based texts because the authors may have func-tionalized oral features in order to add more immediacy to their stories. I

therefore count romances, travelogues, chronicles, biographies and reli-

gious treatises as well as documents and fiction as written text types, since

they resort to literate strategies, such as elaborate style and complex struc-

Table 2. Absolute frequencies of arı #ven in ME genres (data based on CME)

1150–1250 1250–1350 1350–1420 1420–1500

History 1 53 147 20

Romance 33 6 116

Biography 15

Religious treatises 6 5

Travelogue 14

Documents 3

Fiction 34

Letters 5

Handbooks 5

Total 1 106 210 146

242 Elisabeth Tacho

tures. The only text type which can be regarded as more oral, spontaneous

and speech-like is the private correspondence from the members of thePaston and Stonor families.

As it turns out, the period between 1350 and 1420 clearly shows the

highest rate of occurrences of arı #ven in nearly all text types and is closelyfollowed by the period until 1500. This development partly coincides with

the increase of text production in general and can also be explained by the

introduction of new text types as well as the variation of subject matter inthe Late Middle English period. Moreover, a large number of those texts

showing the highest number of incidents of the loan word may be classi-

fied as translations from mainly French originals, which supports Drinka’s(2006) hypothesis that word constructions or lexemes of French or Anglo-

Norman origin may occur more frequently in translations and in written

text types. The normalized frequencies in Figure 4 below illustrate theimplementation of the loan word arı #ven with its ‘‘high tide’’ (Sørensen:

1957) around 1400 and the use of its native competitor le #nden in the

same period. From the graph we can see that the lines run parallel to one

another, le #nden always on a lower level than its foreign rival, and that theamounts received for both lexemes reach a peak by around 1400.

The pie chart in Diagram 2 additionally illustrates arı #ven’s distributionwithin the di¤erent text types. And here the results of my study point toan interesting trend: chronicles and romances have the largest share and

Figure 4. Normalized frequencies (10.000) of arı #ven and le #nden / londen (to comeashore) in ME texts


number of instances of the loan word. Both text types are aimed at an

educated clerical and courtly readership. A closer look at these chroniclesand romances reveals that nearly all of them represent translations from

Latin, French or Anglo-Norman original sources. Moreover, literary

scholars (Cooper 1999, Field 1999, and Galloway 1999, etc.) have found

out that chronicles and romances often show similar stylistic features andField (1999: 154) emphasizes the fact that many romances are influenced

in style and structure by vernacular chronicles and chansons de geste. The

results of my frequency study in Table 2, showing a gradual shift of theuse of arı #ven from chronicles, with 147 tokens in the period between 1350

and 1420, to romances, with 116 tokens from 1420 to 1500, can be inter-

preted in a similar way and may highlight the parallels between chroniclesand romances from a linguistic point of view. Additionally, romances are

gradually shifting from the relatively narrow courtly context to a much

wider audience of gentry and merchants during the thirteenth and four-teenth centuries. Thus, the close connection between romances and chroni-

cles or historical writing as well as the translation of and the expanding

Diagram 2. Percentage of arı #ven in di¤erent Middle English text types based onCME data

244 Elisabeth Tacho

audience for romances (Bennett 1986, Field 1999: 168–169) are further

factors that may have contributed to the increasing number of occurrences

of arı #ven. Furthermore, the lower number of instances of le #nden may bedue to the fact that translations from Latin or French sources have the

tendency to use more words of Latinate and Romance origin because of

word by word translation and other translation methods or the higher

prestige of these languages at a certain period in time.The results of the frequency study above seem to draw a very clear

picture and indicate that the loan word arı #ven is predominantly used in

chronicles and romances translated from or influenced by Latinate orFrench and Anglo-Norman original sources whereas the percentage of

le #nden in the same texts remains on a rather low level.

However, a closer analysis of contextualized examples taken fromchronicles and romances has revealed some astonishing results. For the

study of textual examples I decided to use chronicles and romances of

those periods in which the loan word occurs most often, i.e., the periodfrom 1350 to 1420 for chronicles and the period between 1420 and 1500

for romances, in order to get the most extensive amount of data possible.

I then counted the occurrences of arı #ven ‘to come ashore’ and comparedthem with the number of tokens of le #nden in these texts. Although the

overall tendency and relation between loan word and native lexeme in

chronicles and romances is similar to the results of the study of all textsincluded in the CME a more detailed analysis shows remarkable excep-

tions. The chronicles which can be dated to the period between 1350 and

1420 present the following distribution of arı #ven and le #nden, as in Table 3below:

Table 3. Absolute frequencies of arı #ven and le #nden / londen in ME chronicles

M3 (1350–1420) The Brut Langtoft’sChronicle

Trevisa’sPolychronicon

arı #ven 50 49 3

le #nden / londen 24 5 38

While The Brut and Langtoft’s Chronicle show a considerably higher rateof arı #ven than of le #nden, Trevisa’s translation of the Polychronicon Ranul-

phi Higden displays a di¤erent distribution of both verbs. Interestingly,

Trevisa’s version of the Polychronicon includes far more instances of thenative verb le #nden than of the synonymous loan word. Galloway (1999:


270; 277–278) argues that that Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle can be regarded

as ‘‘a courtly history for a landowning and French-speaking class’’

whereas Trevisa provided a history in colloquial English which was aimedat a lay vernacular readership and therefore did not include too many loan

words but rather used a variety of native equivalent terms. According to

accommodation theory and audience design (cf. Bell: 2001), ‘‘it is the . . .

sociolect of the audiences that will define the language of the text typeused by the given author’’ (Eitler 2004: 225). Based on this assumption,

the reason for the low frequencies of arı #ven may be seen in the broader

readership and audience of travelogues compared to other written texttypes. Furthermore, by the time Trevisa’s translation of the Polychronicon

was produced, English slowly began to regain a position in formal writing

formerly occupied by Latin and French. Thus, the emergence of Englishas the standard language in formal writing may be foreshadowed by

Trevisa’s work.

The outcome of the close analysis of romances in the period from 1420to 1500 presents another puzzling detail, as illustrated in Table 4 below.

The romances Merlin and Caxton’s translation of Blanchardyn and Eglan-

tine show rather high numbers of arı #ven compared to le#nden. Here onlyMalory’s Arthurian romance Morte D’Arthur deviates from the expected

norm and we can see a roughly even distribution of both verbs arı #ven and

le #nden throughout the text.The variation in the usage of arı #ven compared to le #nden can be ob-

served in selected text examples and gives the reader some insight into the

style and writing patterns of individual authors. One feature the readercan notice in all the examined texts is that both the loan word arı #ven as

well as its native equivalent le #nden are embedded in a very specific context

in order to distinguish the di¤erent meanings of the verbs and to get themeaning across to one’s audience. Therefore, the two verbs in question

mostly occur with explicit reference to journeys overseas, to ships and the

Table 4. Absolute frequencies of arı #ven and le #nden / londen in ME romances

M4 (1420–1500) Wheatley’sMerlin

Malory’sMorte D’Arthur

Caxton’sBlanch. & Egl.

arı #ven 12 20 42

le #nden / londen 3 15 2

246 Elisabeth Tacho

navy as well as to names of ports and rivers, as in the examples (6–9)

taken from Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle and John Trevisa’s translation of

Higden’s Polychronicon. In addition to the verbs arı #ven and le#nden de-noting the concept of ‘to come ashore’ a third verb is used to refer to the

process of ‘to come to a place in general,’ i.e., come.

(6) Oseth, þe Danes kyng, com Inglond to a¤ray. He aryued at Berwik,

in þe water of Tuede. (CME, 1350?, Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle)

(7) Philip & late þe folk ouer wend / & passage haf in schip, to londes

forto lend.(CME, 1350?, Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle)

(8) Anone he made hym redy and cam over see into Englond with alle

his hooste, and arrived in Mylford haven;

(CME, 1387, John Trevisa’s translation of Polychronicon Ranulphi

Higden)

(9) . . . cam over soe to Dover with moche peple, and there landed, to

whome al the countray drewe, and cam to London armed.

(CME, 1387, John Trevisa’s translation of Polychronicon Ranulphi

Higden)

Sometimes the author also includes allusions to rough waters, bad weather

and good fortune, as in (10):

(10) . . . daryus the sone of Alimodes, by fortune of the see, arryued inthe lande of ¤ryse.

(CME, 1489, Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine)

Thomas Malory pursues a similar writing and translation technique as

chroniclers did in earlier periods. In his Morte D’Arthur he uses the wordsarı #ven and le #nden along with other verbs connected with seafaring, such as

‘to ship,’ ‘to sail’ or the verb phrase ‘to pass the sea’ but also comes up

with arı #ven’s wider meaning ‘to come to a place on land,’ as in (13).

(11) [. . .] they had syghte of londe and saylled tyl they arryued atte

Barflete in Flaundres.

(CME, 1470, Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur)

(12) [. . .] and so shypped and passed the see in to Englond / and

londed at Douer(CME, 1470, Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur)


(13) [. . .] Soo after on a mondaye hit befelle that they aryued in the

edge of a foreste [. . .](CME, 1470, Thomas Malory’s Morte D’Arthur)

By the end of the fifteenth century, when arı #ven had already widened its

meaning, the loan word slowly made its way from written to morespeech-based text types and can be found with five instances in the mean-

ing of ‘to come ashore’ and further four tokens of ‘to come to a place or a

result’ together with four instances of le #nden ‘to come ashore’ in privateletters of the Paston and Stonor families. However, le #nden is predomi-

nantly used thirteen times in its meaning ‘to lend money’ in commercial

contexts, as in (15).

(14) Syr John Trobylvyll, and Johon Motton, sariant porter, be a-ryvyd

a-geyn vp-on þe cost of Yngland, save all – only Syr Richard

Egecum wech londyd in Breten and [. . .](Margery Paston, 1477)

(15) Neuerthelesse, i¤ ye and all my frendys and yowrys in Nor¤olkmyght haue lende me so moche money, [. . .]

(John Paston, 1478)

As the contextualized examples above illustrate, the emergence of arı #venand le #nden in a wider range of meanings adds to a certain stylistic variety

in the examined texts in Late Middle English. The loan word’s variation in

meaning described in the semasiological account above is clearly mirroredby the findings in the examined texts.

In addition the extension and variation of meaning seems to correlate

with the more widespread usage of both lexemes throughout various dif-ferent text types in Middle English. The loan word spread from chronicles

and romances and made its way to more oral types of texts like hand-

books and letters. Since chivalric literature was extremely popular amongcourtiers of the fourteenth and fifteenth century romances quickly adopted

an important social function among the upper ranks of society. It was

considered a sign of high prestige to own a copy of Malory’s Morte

D’Arthur or Caxton’s prints and Cherewatuk (2000: 46–47) puts forward

good evidence that books circulated among members of the royal court

of the fifteenth century. Since these romances were basically written forand by the educated and lay nobility the possession and circulation of

selected prints of romances might have influenced the language of the

courtly audience, among them members of the gentry like John Pastonwho worked his way up at Edward IV’s court. Paston evidently was a

248 Elisabeth Tacho

reader of chivalric literature9, which was regarded as a means of self-

improvement among social aspirers, and he might have been more than

willing to adopt some popular phrases from the books he consumedat court.

6. Concluding remarks

One can conclude that the borrowing of arı #ven involved meaning varia-

tion of both the Anglo-Norman loan word and the native lexeme le#nden.According to sociolinguistic principles one can assume that the process

of lexical intake was partly conditioned by semantic as well as extra-

linguistic criteria. Firstly, the growing ambiguity of le #nden and its meaningextension facilitated the borrowing and further implementation of arı #ven.Secondly, the AN loan word might have been borrowed because many

speakers of Middle English wanted to have a precise term in order todenote the concept of ‘to come ashore.’ Great Britain’s island position

and the fact that the cheapest and fastest way to travel or to transport

goods in medieval times was to travel by ship are two factors that mayhave contributed to the felt need for a specific expression for ‘to land.’

Furthermore, the high prestige of the donor language Anglo Norman

may have favored and supported the borrowing process, thereby, con-sciously initiating a change from ‘above’ as Labov (1994: 78) sees it.

As far as the distribution of arı #ven in various Middle English text types

is concerned, it turned out that the highest number of instances can befound in written text types, such as chronicles and romances of Latinate

and French or Anglo-Norman origin. These translations account for the

vast majority of instances of the loan word in contemporary texts and aremainly responsible for the educated and formal writing in the Middle

English period. Linguistic change, thus, seemed to have taken place in

written text types first. Judging from the popularity of these translations,members of the gentry, representatives of the higher London merchant

class and social aspirers must have been fascinated by the attitude,

ideology and language displayed in those learned books. These people

9. Cherewatuk (2000: 42–67) gives a detailed and in-depth account of JohnPaston’s connections to Edward IV’s court and describes the way Arthurianromances and chivalric literature, especially Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, werecirculated and spread among members of the court.


might have adopted particular linguistic features they considered presti-

gious in order to establish social a‰liation to the upper ranks of society.

According to Eckert (2003) as well as Milroy (2007: 163) speakers onthe periphery of a particular speech community behave linguistically dif-

ferently from those fully integrated in a social network. Speakers on the

edge of the network take up prestigious linguistic forms by making ‘‘exten-

sive use of older variants which are publicly accessible,’’ for example inbooks. Following Milroy’s definition of o¤ the shelf changes we may

assume that social up-movers like John Paston were not necessarily depen-

dent on face-to-face interaction and unrestricted access to the local speechcommunity. In fact, the prestigious linguistic structures they were looking

for were easily available in traditional romances and chronicles, printed

and circulated at court. In the case of arı #ven, thus, the book may haveserved as the medium for transmitting lexical change o¤ the shelf, or

rather o¤ the bookshelf, to be precise.

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256 Elisabeth Tacho

Commentary on Tacho, When arı #ven Came to England:Tracing Lexical Re-Structuring by Borrowing inMiddle and Early Modern English. A Case Study

Emily Runde

Elisabeth Tacho’s paper commendably models how a meticulous semasio-logical study of a single word may be placed in the context of, and con-

tribute to, our knowledge of the culture in which it was used. Her opening

sets the tone for the rest of her paper with a discussion of the seriousnessof journeys and their perils in medieval and early modern England. This

preface also makes a compelling argument for the social impact of voyag-

ing on the development of the verb arı #ven, whose meaning ties it to theidea of travel. Tacho sustains this focus on historical context to good pur-

pose in her account of the origins of the verb arı #ven, which, she argues wasprobably an Anglo-Norman loan word rather than an Old French one, asthe OED claims. Here, she draws on the arguments of Rothwell (1998)

and Schendl (1985 [1987]) in support of her etymology and points out

that the prestige of Anglo-Norman in England after the Norman Con-quest could well have motivated the borrowing of the word in English.

The sociohistorical situation Tacho describes lends accessibility to her

data and analysis thereof. Tacho analyzes the shifting meanings and fre-quencies of usage of arı #ven as well as an Old English equivalent, le #nden.In tracing their staggered semantic widenings and shifts, she discerns a

possible relationship between the uses of the two words, observing, ‘‘it

seems plausible to assume that the widening of meaning of le #nden facili-tated the later spread of arı #ven.’’ This assumption is at odds with the fre-

quently observed pattern of di¤erentiation in which an Old English word

undergoes semantic narrowing and its former sense is expressed with aborrowed word as in the word pairs fiend vs. enemy or heaven vs. sky

(Burnley 1992 [2001]). Further explanation would therefore be useful

here. Tacho also applies Schendl’s hypothesis of ‘‘functional pull,’’ whichshe describes as ‘‘the closing of a real or just felt gap by a new word for-

mation,’’ to account for the adoption of landen with the specific meaning

‘‘to come ashore’’ once both le #nden and arı #ven widened in sense. Tacho’scircular diagram provides a good visual summation of her findings, and it

could make for an interesting study to explore whether this circular model

can be applied to other instances of borrowing and lexical restructuring

during the Middle English period.Tacho dedicates the second half of her paper to a closer analysis of

arı #ven’s adoption and di¤usion in Middle English, using a modifica-

tion of the Helsinki Corpus’ text types as her database. Recognizing that

medieval ‘‘authors may have functionalized oral features in order to addmore immediacy to their stories’’ and that writers of translations might

often have manifested the lexical influence of their French and Latin

originals, she adapts the Helsinki Corpus’ distinctions to reflect the rangeof communicative events advanced by Koch and Oesterreicher (1996). In

principle, this is a well-reasoned approach; her focus on gradations of

orality in written texts still allows her to debate the possibility that ob-served changes originated in spoken language. One can wonder, neverthe-

less, whether her observation that arı #ven appears earlier in more literary

texts like chronicles and romances and only later in more speech-basedtexts like letters might depend as much on the relative paucity of surviving

speech-based texts during the period as on the degree of orality attribut-

able to the texts. The Paston and Stonor letters may yield good dataregarding more speech-based usages in the fifteenth century, but it would

be useful for Tacho to indicate whether she had consulted earlier texts

under the category of private correspondence that simply made no use ofarı #ven.

This second portion of Tacho’s study has the advantage of demonstrat-

ing the relevance of her findings to cultural, and specifically literary,studies of medieval England. The patterns she observes in the diachronic

distribution of arı #ven and le #nden among di¤erent genres provide informa-

tion that corroborates the findings of literary scholar, as Tacho makesclear by her inclusion of viewpoints expressed by scholars like Cooper

(1999) and Galloway (1999), among others. Her comparison of the fre-

quency with which arı #ven and le #nden appear in the prose Brut, RobertMannyng’s translation of Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle, and John Trevisa’s

translation of Ranulf Higden’s Polychronicon demonstrates the usefulness

of her findings to literary as well as linguistic study. Trevisa’s marked pre-ference for the Anglo-Saxon le#nden, Tacho demonstrates, stands in marked

contrast to the preference for arı #ven evident in the Brut and Mannyng’s

Chronicle, but, as she remarks, Trevisa was writing for a primarilyEnglish-speaking audience and had good reason to prefer a native word

over a borrowed one. Indeed, Trevisa is frequenty cited for his observation

258 Emily Runde

that French had become uncommon as a first language or even a taught

language in fourteenth century England:

‘‘now, þe fiere of oure Lorde a þowsand þre hundred and foure score andfyue, and of þe secounde kyng Richard after þe conquest nyne, in alle þegramere scoles of Engelond, children leueþ Frensche and construeþ andlerneþ an Englische, and . . . now children of gramere scole conneþ na moreFrensche þan can hir lift heele . . . Also gentil men haueþ now moche i-leftfor to teche here children Frensche.’’ (Trevisa 161).

While Tacho’s findings from Trevisa line up neatly with his own assess-

ment of his contemporaries’ linguistic practices, her findings from Mannyngstand in contrast to the writer’s own assessment of his language. Mannyng

claims in the preface to his Chronicle that he has written in English ‘‘not

for þe lerid but for þe lewed,/ ¤or þo þat in þis land won/ þat þe Latyn

no Frankys con’’ (lines 6–8). Moreover, he claims, ‘‘haf I alle in myn In-glis layd,/ in symple speche as I couth/. . . for þe luf of symple men/ þat

strange Inglis can not ken’’ (lines 72–3, 77–8). Mannyng’s claim that he

writes in simple English, though perhaps a modesty trope, would seem tosupport the idea that he, like Trevisa, would prefer familiar native words

over borrowed words of similar meaning. This may be another exception

to the rule whose inevitability Tacho recognizes, but her data does suggestthat further exploration of this particular finding by literary scholars or

linguists could yield fruitful results.

I also have a factual correction whose amendment might well have abearing on Tacho’s findings regarding Robert Mannyng. Tacho consis-

tently attributes her data from Mannyng’s Chronicle to one of Mannyng’s

main Anglo-Norman sources, Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle. Her source,Michigan’s Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, likewise attributes

authorship of the English translation to the original Anglo-Norman

writer, though this is not standard practice. Mannyng’s Chronicle is recog-nized as a distinct text and, as Mannyng’s own words suggest, the transla-

tion of Anglo-Norman chronicle materials into English implies a changed

text and a new audience.Tacho analyzes several fifteenth century romances and personal letters

with comparable specificity, but by providing a complete list of texts she

consulted in conjunction with each of her genre designations, she couldrender her data even more accessible and useful to scholars. It would, for

example, be informative to know how many of the texts to which she

referred were, like Mannyng’s Chronicle and Trevisa’s Polychronicon,

Commentary on Tacho 259

translations of earlier French or Latin works. It would be similarly useful

to know how many of the texts consulted were works of poetry or prose.

Indeed, constraints of meter and rhyme probably played a significant rolein the adoption or rejection of the Anglo-Norman arı #ven in individual

poems. Tacho’s seventh citation, for example, could not conveniently

have used the verb arı #ven for reasons of both meter and rhyme:

‘‘. . . Philip & late þe folk ouer wend/ & passage haf in schip, to londes

forto lend.’’

(CME, Robert Mannyng’s Chronicle)

Metrically the position occupied by ‘‘lend’’ demands a stress-bearing

syllable, but the first syllable of arı #ven may not bear primary stress. In

this case the vowel final ending of the previous word could allow the drop-ping of the initial unstressed vowel of arı #ven, but these lines still demon-

strate the sorts of metrical constraint that could force a poet’s hand in

choosing one word over the other. Moreover, the verb is prevented frombeing a viable alternative to le #nden here by the demands of the line-final

rhyme. A systematic analysis of instances in which meter compels the use

or rejection of arı #ven or le #nden could add complexity and accuracy to thepatterns in usage she has already observed. As it stands, however, Tacho’s

paper presents a very useful contribution to what is known about the

word arı #ven’s development during the Middle and Early Modern Englishperiods and presents the data in such a way as to demonstrate its relevance

to linguists and literary scholars alike.

References

Mannyng, Robert1996 The Chronicle, edited by Idelle Sullens. Binghamton: Bingham-

ton University.Trevisa, John (trans.)1869 Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensi: Together

with the English Translation of John Trevisa and of an UnknownWriter of the Fifteenth Century, edited by Churchill Babington,vol. 2. London: Longmans, Green and Co.

260 Emily Runde

Response to Commentary by Runde

Elisabeth Tacho

Runde has provided a thorough and insightful commentary to my article.Nevertheless, I would like to respond to four points that Runde has

brought up. The first two points are clarifications about the CME data

used in the frequency study and my recent research findings about arı #ven’simplementation in speech-based as well as literary text types in Middle

English. The last two points respond to Runde’s discussion of examples

drawn from individual texts.First, a clarification concerning the choice of texts investigated in the

frequency study seems appropriate. For the quantitative study all 146 texts

included in the Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse were searchedfor tokens of the AN loan word arı #ven. 47 manuscripts10 finally rendered

su‰cient material suitable for closer investigation. The highest frequencies

of arı #ven appeared in chronicles such as Robert Gloucester’s Metrical

Chronicle, The Brut, as well as Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle and Robert

Mannyng’s Story of England. Among the romances showing the most

instances of the loan word are the manuscripts of King Horn, Melusine,

Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine as well as his translation of The right

plesaunt and goodly historie of the foure sonnes of Aymon and Thomas

Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur.Second, it is true, as Runde points out, that the scarcity of surviving

speech-based texts in Middle English might influence the results of my fre-

quency study to a certain extent. The decline or rise of arı #ven in MiddleEnglish texts and manuscripts may well depend on the development of

individual text types throughout time. As biographies and depictions of

saints’ lives became less popular during the first part of the fourteenth cen-tury, the share of instances of arı #ven within this particular text type was in

decline, too (cf. Tacho 2007: 80). Similarly, we can observe a rise of tokens

in private correspondence as soon as letter writing as such becomes morefrequent. Runde suggests that my argument here would be more per-

10. A list of the texts relevant for the quantitative study is provided below and theindividual texts can be accessed online at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme.

suasive if earlier private correspondence could be examined to find out

whether arı #ven occurred in those texts or not. However, the fact that

speech-based manuscripts from the early Middle English period haveonly randomly been preserved confronts historical linguists with what

Labov (1994) and Nevalainen (1999: 503) describe as the ‘‘bad data prob-

lem.’’ Bo¤ey (1999: 612) once more pinpoints the problem when she states

that ‘‘the significant collections of letters [. . .] date in the main from the fif-teenth century and later.’’ The Stonor letters are among the earliest letter

collections in English that are publicly accessible for research purposes,

and it is indeed interesting to note that the early Stonor letters of the latethirteenth century hardly show any instances of arı #ven whereas the corre-

spondence of later years indicate a growing tendency to use the loan word

in certain contexts. Apart from the linguistic evidence, thus, arı #ven’s devel-opment may coincide with the extra-linguistic fact that new text types,

such as private letters, became more and more frequent during the four-

teenth century. Furthermore, the rise of the loan word may also reflectthe readers’ preference of a certain subject matter, such as travelogues or

private letters reporting about one’s travel arrangements or business trips.

Third, Runde’s observation concerning Mannyng’s source of Chroniclerepresents a very useful contribution, stating that Mannyng’s work ‘‘is

recognized as a distinct text.’’ Interestingly, a comparison of both Robert

Mannyng and Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle has not yielded any significantdi¤erence in the number of instances of arı #ven, with Mannyng’s text show-

ing 45 tokens as compared to 49 instances in Langtoft’s source. Here fur-

ther close examination of contextualized examples will be needed in orderto shed some more light on the relation of these two texts.

Finally, I agree with Runde that there is still work to be done in re-

searching meter and rhyme as additional constraints for arı #ven’s ‘‘adop-tion or rejection’’ in poetry. One of the main goals of this paper was to

examine the implementation and development of the AN loan word arı #venand a short glimpse on the metrical and rhythmical distribution of arı #venrenders interesting results. The two examples below beautifully illustrate

how rhyme patterns may have influenced the author’s choice of words in

his work:

(1) ‘‘. . . Atte laste he gan aryue / In Ytalye, a lond plentyue.’’

(CME, Robert Mannyng’s Chronicle)

(2) ‘‘. . . þar þe dragoun gan ariue / At coloyne vnder a cliue.’’

(CME, The romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun)

262 Elisabeth Tacho

The suggestions and arguments put forward here show how the combina-

tion of various di¤erent linguistic and extra-linguistic approaches may

lead to a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms of changeand variation in language, illustrated by the case study of le #nden and its

foreign competitor arı #ven.

Notes

Text type CME texts included in frequency study

Chronicles Layamon’s Brut; The metrical chronicle of Robert ofGloucester; Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle; Robert Mannyng’sStory of England ; The Brut or The Chronicles of England ; AnEnglish chronicle of the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, HenryV and Henry VI ; Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden (togetherwith the translation of John Trevisa and unknown writer);English Conquest of Ireland.

Romances King Horn; The romance of Guy of Warwick; The romanceof Sir Beues of Hamtoun; Le morte Arthur (a romance instanzas of 8 lines); The Gest hystoriale of the destruction ofTroy; The alliterative Morte Arthure; Melusine; The LaudTroy Book; The Prose Life of Alexander; Merlin: or the earlyhistory of King Arthur: a prose romance; Thomas Malory’sLe Morte D’Arthur; Caxton’s Blanchardyn and Eglantine;The right plesaunt and goodly historie of the foure sonnes ofAymon (translated by Caxton); The Three Kings’ Sons.

Documents An anthology of Chancery English, English gilds: the origi-nal ordinances of more than one hundred early English gilds:from 14–15th century ms.; The English register of Godstownunnery; A common-place book of the fifteenth century,religious play & poetry, legal forms.

Religious treatises The vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman; SelectedEnglish works of John Wyclif; The English works of Wyclif;The minor poems of the Vernon ms.; Lydgate’s Reson andsensuallyte; The pilgrimage of the life of man by Lydgate.

Biographies Þe liflade of St. Juliana: from the OE ms of 1230.; The earlySouth-English legendary: or Lives of saints.

Response to Commentary by Runde 263

Travelogues Mandeville’s Travels (the Cotton version); Mandeville’sTravels (the Egerton version).

Fiction John Gower’s Confessio Amantis; Geo¤rey Chaucer’sCanterbury Tales (Cambridge, Landsdowne, Petworth,Corpus, Ellesmere, Harleian and Hengwrt ms); Geo¤reyChaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde.

Handbooks Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry: a compiled instructionfor his daughter (translated from French).

Private letters Stonor letters and papers: 1290–1483.; Paston Letters of theFifteenth Century. 1429–1489.

References

Bo¤ey, Julia1999 ‘‘Middle English lives’’. In Wallace, David (ed.). The Cambridge

History of Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 610–634.

Nevalainen, Terttu1999 ‘‘Making the best use of ‘bad’ data. Evidence for sociolinguistic

variation in Early Modern English’’. In Valikangas, Olli; Rissa-nen, Matti; Koivulehto, Jorma (eds.). Neuphilologische Mittei-lungen. Helsinki: Neuphilologischer Verein, 499–533.

264 Elisabeth Tacho

Reexamining Orthographic Practice in theAuchinleck Manuscript Through Study ofComplete Scribal Corpora

Emily Runde

1. Reasons for Revisiting the Auchinleck Manuscript

The Auchinleck Manuscript (NLS Adv MS 19.2.1) is a very familiarmanuscript to medievalists of a number of disciplines. It is, as Hanna

(2000: 92) has observed, a ‘‘big and messy’’ object, provoking many ques-

tions and interpretations but allowing for relatively limited consensus. Themanuscript itself was produced by six scribes who copied a total of at least

forty-four texts, and the evidence of surviving fragments and missing

bifolia suggests that it may have contained many more texts originally.The Auchinleck provides, in the words of Pearsall, ‘‘our principal witness

for the existence of a vigorous and prolific London literary culture before

Chaucer’’ (2006: 31). It remains an enduring focus for scholars concernedwith the light it may shed in studies of growing literacy in the vernacular

and the consequent appetite for secular vernacular reading material,

modes of book production during the fourteenth century, and the emer-gence of a London literary standard. Unlike other miscellanies of the

time, the Auchinleck focuses on one primary genre, the romance. More-

over, the romances it contains are all written in English. For that reason,this manuscript remains both an important literary artifact in its own right

and a compelling source of linguistic data.

I have chosen to work with the Auchinleck Manuscript in part becauseit looms large in the history of English’s rise to literary preeminence, but

also in order to show that this familiar and well-studied manuscript can

yield additional insights into the linguistic history of its contents andcreators. The paper focuses on the complete bodies of work of the two

most prolific Auchinleck scribes, commonly known as Scribes 1 and 3,

and herein I will begin to assemble a record of these scribes’ orthographic

practices across all of the texts they copied. I will further demonstrate thatthe study of these scribes’ complete corpora of copied texts can be used to

further our knowledge regarding the scribes’ orthographic consistency,

their contributions to fourteenth-century standardizing tendencies in writ-

ten Middle English, and the extent to which their copying practices may

preserve valuable dialectal information in their exemplars. More gener-ally, I wish to establish the usefulness of studying complete scribal corpora

in instances in which it is possible to do so.

2. The Scope and Subject of this Study

Most studies of scribal intervention in other manuscripts have focused onmultiple scribes’ copies of a single text.1 Significant linguistic variation

from one scribe’s copy to the next, particularly variation suggestive of dis-

parate dialects, may provide evidence regarding how faithfully scribescopied their exemplars, what they added, and what their exemplars would

have looked like. It is thereby possible to determine the dialects, and per-

haps then the geographical origins, of both scribe and exemplar. Thecircumstances of the Auchinleck’s production a¤ord the opportunity to

determine scribal intervention from another vantage point. Rather than

focusing on individual texts, many of which exist in unique copies in theAuchinleck, I am looking at each scribe’s complete body of work within

the manuscript. Because Scribes 1 and 3 both copied a number of texts, it

is possible to examine their linguistic consistency across all the texts theycopied in the Auchinleck.2

1. Notable exceptions are Wiggins’ comparative study of the scribal practices ofAuchinleck Scribes 1 and 6 (2004) and her study of Guy of Warwick (2003),which focuses on Auchinleck Scribe 1’s general linguistic tendencies as wellas the various scribal tendencies in di¤erent copies of the given text. Herwork exemplifies the benefits of considering more generally the practices ofthe Auchinleck scribes and the scribes of other anthologies.

2. According to the most recent scholarly consensus, as provided by the Auchin-leck Manuscript website’s editors (Burnley and Wiggins 2003), paleographicalevidence reveals that Scribe 1 copied The Legend of Pope Gregory (pg), TheKing of Tars (kt), The Life of Adam and Eve (lae), Seynt Mergrete (stm),Seynt Katerine (stk), St Patrick’s Purgatory (stpp), Þe Desputisoun Bitven þeBodi and þe Soule (dbs), The Harrowing of Hell (hh), The Clerk who wouldsee the Virgin (cv), Amis and Amiloun (aa), The Life of St Mary Magdalene(stmm), The Nativity and Early Life of Mary (nlm), Guy of Warwick (cou-plets) (gwc), Guy of Warwick (stanzas) (gws), Of Arthour & of Merlin (am),A Peniworþ of Witt (pw), How Our Lady’s Sauter was First Found (lsff), Layle Freine (lf), Roland and Vernagu (rv), Kyng Alisaunder (ka), The Thrush

266 Emily Runde

This work has already been begun by the Linguistic Atlas of Late

Mediaeval English (LALME ), which has examined certain orthographic

and lexical practices of both scribes and provided both with localizablelinguistic profiles based on these practices and their consistency.3 These

profiles, however, are limited by the scope of the questionnaire used in

constructing LALME as well as the number of texts consulted to construct

these profiles. Of the six texts copied by Scribe 3, LALME has consultedone, and of the thirty texts copied by Scribe 1, LALME has consulted five.

While it provides a generally dependable survey of what the scribes do

fairly consistently from text to text, this survey is incomplete and thepossibility exists that scribal inconsistencies may have slipped through the

cracks. Furthermore, the scope of LALME’s project renders it incapable

of providing completely comprehensive or contextualized data.4

Individual texts contained within the Auchinleck have also been subject

to scrutiny focused on linguistic practices within one copy of one text.

Because such studies are relatively narrow in scope, they benefit from agreater thoroughness than a study of an Auchinleck scribe’s entire output

will allow. At the same time, however, a scribe’s linguistic practice cannot

be distinguished so easily from that of the exemplar with which he workedwhen linguistic analysis is confined to a single text he copied. The linguis-

tic profiles provided by LALME may be of use in determining a scribe’s

and the Nightingale (tn), The Sayings of St Bernard (sstb), David þe King(dk), Sir Tristrem (st), Sir Orfeo (so), The Four Foes of Mankind (ffm), TheAnonymous Short English Metrical Chronicle (semc), Horn Childe & MaidenRimnild (hc), Alphabetical Praise of Women (apw), and King Richard (kr).According to Cunningham’s calculations in the introduction to the Auchin-leck facsimile (Pearsall and Cunningham 1977), Scribe 1 copied approxi-mately 72% of what survives in the Auchinleck, roughly 253 leaves.Scribe 3 copied On the Seven Deadly Sins (sds), The Paternoster (pn),

Assumption of the Blessed Virgin (abv ), Sir Degare (sd), The Seven Sages ofRome (ssr), and Floris and Blancheflour (fb). According to Cunningham,Scribe 3 copied approximately 11% of what survives in the Auchinleck,roughly 37 leaves.

3. LALME assigns the work of Scribe 1 to LP 6510 and finds his practices mostconsistent with those of other scribes localizable to Middlesex. It assigns thework of Scribe 3 to LP 6500 and finds his practices most consistent with thoseof other scribes localizable to London.

4. See Putter and Stokes (2007: 470) who critique LALME ’s linguistic profilingof the Pearl poet and find its profile, LP 26, susceptible to ‘‘many errors andomissions’’; they also point out the lack of discrimination between normal andmetrically constrained usages.

Reexamining Orthographic Practice in the Auchinleck Manuscript 267

basic practice and thus provide a useful supplement to single-text studies,

but greater focus on scribal practice specifically within the Auchinleck,

enabled as it is by access to an electronic edition of the manuscript,5

provides an even firmer basis to support specific studies of particular texts

in the manuscript. My study begins an exploration of a middle ground

between the wide-ranging observations of LALME and the tightly focused

linguistic analyses of individual texts within the Auchinleck Manuscript.I have chosen to focus on the orthographic and lexical practices of

Scribes 1 and 3 because their contributions to the manuscript are the

most significant. Together they were responsible for producing overthree-quarters of the surviving contents of the Auchinleck and, in Hanna’s

words (2000: 95), Scribe 3 is ‘‘the closest thing Auchinleck scribe 1 has to a

legitimate collaborator.’’ Additionally, Scribe 3’s possible association withthe chancery, based on Parkes’ analysis of his script (1969: xvii), also

merits attention. Scribe 1, a probable supervisor of the Auchinleck’s pro-

duction as well as the greatest scribal contributor,6 is the most likely of thesix scribes to have had an agenda; based on other signs of imposed orga-

nization and consistent layout, the supervisor of this manuscript might

well have valued regularity of linguistic as well as visual presentation.Moreover, Scribes 1 and 3 have already received a great deal of lin-

guistic attention because their dialects, localizable to the region around

London, have been identified by Samuels (1989: 66) as belonging to akind of language that is ‘‘less obviously dialectal, and can thus cast light

on the probable sources of the written standard English that appears in

the fifteenth century.’’ Specifically, Samuels assigns these languages toType II, which he identifies as a type of written English prevalent in the

regions surrounding London during the fourteenth century. He claims that

it was supplanted by Type III, the language of Chaucer and Hoccleve,towards the end of that century. Table 1 shows some of the key di¤erences

Samuels observes between Type II and Type III English.

5. The Auchinleck has been converted into an electronic text under the auspicesof the National Library of Scotland and thanks to the work of Burnley andWiggins (2003). An electronic edition enables thorough searches of the vastquantity of text contained within the Auchinleck so that even rare aberra-tions in scribal behavior can be observed and a greater range of data can beexamined.

6. Shonk (1985: 73) advances the hypothesis that Scribe 1 took charge of organ-izing and compiling the various sections of the manuscript whose copying hedelegated to the other scribes.

268 Emily Runde

With su‰cient circulation these London ‘‘incipient standards’’ could

have been adopted outside of London for emulation as a kind of literary

language. Sandved (1981: 39) has set two main criteria for such an adop-tion: in a socio-linguistic sense, the ‘‘incipient standard’’ must be recognized

‘‘as a model language worthy of imitation’’ and in a primarily linguistic

sense, the language must have enough internal consistency to be iden-tifiable as such a model. If the texts copied by Scribes 1 and 3 provide evi-

dence of an identifiable and consistent written language, then their writing

arguably meets Sandved’s second criterion.

3. Research Methodology

Using the scribes’ linguistic profiles as a starting point, I have selected

words from these profiles and monitored their orthography throughouteach scribe’s complete body of work. Many of these words are subject to

varied spellings depending on authors’ and scribes’ dialects, so I look first

for consistency, and when I find inconsistent spellings I take note of all of

them and how often they occur. As patterns of orthographic variation orinconsistency begin to emerge, I monitor new lexical items that may test

these patterns and expand the pool of data regarding orthographic prac-

tice. In order to establish whether scribal orthography varies in di¤erenttexts copied by the same scribe, I keep track of what orthographies are

produced by which scribes and in what contexts. When apparent incon-

sistencies do emerge, I take note of the environments in which variousspellings appear in the text.

The verse nature of these texts is another complicating factor. Ortho-

graphy becomes a thornier issue when the word in question occurs in

Table 1. Some Di¤erences Between Types II and III (Samuels 1989: 70)

Type II Type III Type II Type III

þat ilch(e), ich(e) thilke, that ilk(e) þerwhile(s) (þat) whil

noufit, no nat -ande, -ende, -inde -yng

eld(e) old(e) noiþer, noþer neither

werld, warld world schuld sholde

þai, hij they ofiain(s), afien ageyns, ayeyns

þei(fi) though wil wol(e), wil(le)


rhyming position. Scribes who otherwise tend to translate a text into their

own dialect as they copy it may leave exemplar forms intact in rhyming

positions in order to preserve valid rhymes. Rather than exclude theorthographic data culled from rhymes, I record it separately so that it

can be consulted for the insights it may yield into scribal behavior.

Worthy of note as well is the placement of metrical stress in relation to

the words I have monitored, either because the constraints of meter mayforce the scribe’s hand or because the scribe may make changes in spite

of the metrical disruption they cause.

In regards to orthographical and lexical choices, the data collected:

(a) remained completely consistent in the work of both Scribes 1 and 3,

(b) remained completely consistent within the work of each scribe even ifthe choices of the two scribes conflicted,

(c) remained completely consistent within given texts copied by a scribe

but vary from text to text, or(d) varied within a text.

Benskin and Laing’s theory of constrained selection (1981: Section 5) pro-

vides a useful means of interpreting this distribution of forms. The theoryof constrained selection works on the assumption that for any given word,

a scribe is familiar with one or more variants that may be in his spelling

repertoire due to their familiarity. There may be several spellings for oneword among these familiar forms and they may not all belong to the

scribe’s own dialectal group, but the scribe will in most cases prefer his

own dialectal form to the other forms of which he is aware. When copyinga text, he will copy any form within his repertoire as is, even if it is not the

preferred form. On the other hand, he will not copy any unfamiliar form

or spelling outside of his repertoire. Instead he will translate it into hisown preferred form. I have considered the implications of this theory

where it has been applicable.

4. Results: Intentionality of Orthographic Consistency

The question may arise as to whether we can attribute a scribe’s ortho-

graphic practices to any conscious choices, or even consistent inclinations,

on his part. In order to determine if there is any underlying logic govern-ing the spellings used by Scribes 1 and 3, I have looked at retention of

initial <h> in their corpora of copied texts. Presence or absence of initial

<h>, and particularly the regularity of scribal practice in regards to this

270 Emily Runde

orthographic trait, may not necessarily correspond to the absence or

presence of initial <h> in the spoken language. Indeed, the initial <h>

would often have gone unpronounced at this time in words that containedan etymological initial <h>. In such words, and particularly in those that

were recent additions to the Middle English lexicon, preservation of the

initial <h> was a purely orthographic choice. The scribes’ orthographic

practices regarding retention or dropping of the initial <h> may demon-strate the degree of their sensitivity to their own orthographic consistency.

Both scribes’ work exhibits consistent retention of the etymological ini-

tial <h> in words of Anglo-Saxon derivation. A survey of the words hard,hell, help, heart, holy, horse, and hundred, some of the Anglo-Saxon <h>

initial words employed most commonly in the Auchinleck, reveals that

both scribes always avoided dropping the initial <h>. This consistency isto be expected, given the familiarity and frequency of these words.

The initial <h> becomes more unstable in both scribes’ spellings of

<h> initial words of Anglo-Norman or French origin. Whether the <h>is dropped or preserved varies from word to word and sometimes also

between the two scribes, but, even so, each scribe’s practice with a given

word tends to be consistent. Table 2 demonstrates these patterns in twoof the Auchinleck’s most commonly occurring words of French origin.

honor tends to retain its initial <h> in the spelling of both scribes.

Scribe 1 drops the <h> on rare occasions, which often coincide with rarelyused verb forms like the past participle <onourd> and the plural present

form <we . . . onoury>. Scribe 3, on the other hand, drops <h> more sys-

tematically. Whenever the prefix <des-> is appended to the beginning ofthe word, the <h> is dropped. Scribe 3 probably made this drop to avoid

using an <sh> cluster, a cluster he demonstrably avoided. In all of Scribe

3’s texts he only ever uses one <sh> cluster, which occurs in a word whosecompounding made it unavoidable.7

The word host, and other words expanding on that word stem, likewise

exhibit a divide between the two scribes’ orthographic practices. In all ofthe texts copied by Scribe 1 this word nearly always occurs without an

<h>. Scribe 3, on the other hand, appears to favor the <host> spelling.

Given the infrequency with which this word occurs in his texts, it is hardto say with any great certainty how deliberately the <h> was preserved; he

uses the <host> spelling three times and the <ost> spelling once. This is

7. That word is <falshede>. Since Scribe 3 was not dropping initial <h> for thesu‰x -hood, which has its roots in Old English, the <sh> cluster in <falshede>could not be avoided.


Table 2. Patterns of h-Retention in Words of French Origin

Scribe 1:

PDE Item MiddleEnglish

PG KT LAE StM StK StPP

HONOR (des)honour- – – – 1 2r 1 1r

(des)onour- – – – – – –

HOST host- – – – – – –

ost- 8 2 3r – – – –

DBS HH CV AA StMM NLM

HONOR (des)honour- – – 1r 1 9r 2 1r 3

(des)onour- – – – – – –

HOST host- – – – – – –

ost- – – – – – –

GWC GWS AM PW LSFF LF

HONOR (des)honour- 6 6r 5 9r 1 34r – – 1r

(des)onour- 2r – 1 1r – – –

HOST host- – – 1r – – –

ost- 28 2r 6 1r 9 8r – – –

KA RV TN SStB DK ST

HONOR (des)honour- 5r 3r – – 1 1 2r

(des)onour- – 1 – – – –

HOST host- – 1r – – – –

ost- 4 1 3r – – – –

SO FFM SEMC HC APW KR

HONOR (des)honour- – – 5 4r – 4 2r 1 8r

(des)onour- – – – – – –

HOST host- – – – – – –

ost- 1 – 6 4 1r 4 3r

Note: the italicized numbers followed by ‘‘r’’ designate the count of a givenspelling in rhyming position.

272 Emily Runde

a recurring problem; unfortunately, Scribes 1 and 3 do not use any <h>initial words of French origin with enough frequency to determine with

certainty whether the patterns above are deliberate.

The <h> initial words that Scribes 1 and 3 use most frequently tend tobe prosodically weak function words. Words like IT or the auxiliary have

are also liable to undergo loss of initial <h> due to their metrical posi-

tions, but Table 3 demonstrates that each scribe retains or drops initial<h> consistently for each lexical item, regardless of metrical constraints.

For both scribes, have begins with <h> in all environments, even those

in which the word is unstressed or in which the <h> would have been

dropped in pronunciation. Scribe 3 never once drops the initial <h> andScribe 1, who copied the word 1,065 times, only drops the <h> once in

the form <astow>, which is a compound of the elements <hast> and

<þou>, the second person singular pronoun in its nominative form. Thiswould have been a very familiar form, however, since <astow> occurred

regularly in the texts he copied as a form compounding <as> and

<þou>, and it seems likely that Scribe 1 copied it without registeringwhich form it was.

Scribes 1 and 3 prefer di¤erent forms of it. Mosse (1968: 56) traces the

appearance of this h-less spelling back as far as the twelfth century andnotes it began to supplant <hit> over the next two centuries. With some

rare exceptions, Scribe 3 overwhelmingly favors the spelling <hit>, which

retains the initial <h> used in the older spelling of the word, while Scribe1 uses the spelling <it>. According to LALME, both of these forms were

still in widespread use during the fourteenth century, so it is not surprising

Scribe 3:

PDE Item Middle English SDS PN ABV SD SSR FB

HONOR (des)honour- – – 2 2r – 6r

(des)onour- – – – – – –

(des)honur- – – 1 1r – 2 8r 1

(des)onur- – – 1r – 2r –

HOST host- – – – – – 3 1r

ost- – – – – – 1



Table 3. Patterns of h-Retention in IT and HAVE aux

Scribe 1:

PDE Item Middle English PG KT LAE StM StK StPP

IT hit – – – – – –

it 47 62 40 31 18 52

HAVE aux haue-/hab-/had- 33 27 44 8 23 44

aue-/ab-/ad-/a- – – – – – –


IT hit – – – – – 1

it 29 9 3 96 40 41


aue-/ab-/ad-/a- – – – – – –


IT hit – – – – – –

it 339 163 366 22 11 37


aue-/ab-/ad-/a- 1 – – – – –

KA RV TN SStB DK ST

IT hit – – – – – –

it 27 32 3 3 3 160

HAVE aux haue-/hab-/had- 13 15 1 – 6 72

aue-/ab-/ad-/a- – – – – – –


IT hit – – 1 – – –

it 25 3 99 51 12 23


aue-/ab-/ad-/a- – – – – – –

274 Emily Runde

that both forms would be familiar to the scribes.8 For that same reason,

however, even if these exemplars were internally consistent in their reten-tion or dropping of initial <h> in these words, it is improbable that every

exemplar copied by each of these scribes adhered to one form or the other

so consistently depending on the scribe. It is far more likely that eachscribe used one preferred form whenever he encountered a form of the

word it in his exemplars. Patterns like this substantiate the supposition

that scribes tended to work with some kind of spelling repertoire. Indeed,Scribes 1 and 3 adhere to a number of consistent spellings in their copying,

as can be seen above in Table 4.

5. Results: Samuels’ Types II and III

Data of the type (a) mentioned above in Section 3, namely data that re-

veals consistency in orthographical practice in the work of both scribes,

8. According to LALME, vol. 1, dot maps 24 and 25, <hit> has more attesta-tions to the west of England and <it> more to the east, but are both fre-quently attested and overlap throughout southern England the area aroundLondon.

Scribe 3:

PDE Item Middle English SDS PN ABV SD SSR FB

IT hit 15 9 33 47 162 60

it – – – 1 2 1


aue-/ab-/ad-/a- – – – – – –

Table 4. Type (a) Data*

PDE Item Middle English Scribe 1 Scribe 3

DO pt-sg. dede 434 44

LITTLE litel 145 25

MAN man 807 147

MANY mani(e) 574 60

SUCH swich(e) 262 62

* See the Appendix for a text-by-text breakdown of the data in Table 2.


provides some grounds for grouping the language of the two scribes

together in one linguistic type, as Samuels has done. Generally speaking,

near perfect consistency of orthography occurs more frequently here inshort, common, or function words. Table 4 shows a sampling of five

words set down with one consistent orthography in the work of both

Scribes 1 and 3.

According to their distribution in LALME, most of these spellings wereused very heavily throughout the surveyed area. The <man> spelling for

man, for instance, is one of three orthographic variants attested in

LALME, but of the other two, one has only been used rarely and theother, <mon>, is frequently used in the west Midlands, but hardly ever

elsewhere. Scribes 1 and 3 also share some less universal orthographies,

like their spellings for such and many. The initial <sw-> of the consistentlyused <swich(e)> has been localized by LALME primarily to the north

and east Midlands as well as the area surrounding London and Glou-

cestershire, but it is almost completely absent in the central Midlands andthe south of England. Likewise, the <i> final spelling of many is fairly

unusual. What attestations do occur are again clustered in the vicinities

of London and Gloucestershire.While there is a fair amount of type (a) data to be found in the work of

the Auchinleck scribes, many of the orthographic patterns that Samuels

associates with Type II language do not actually belong to this set.Samuels’ types can often contain more than one spelling for a given

word, so the presence of orthographic variety in the work of these Type

II scribes is not entirely surprising. At the same time, however, ortho-graphic features that he identifies with types other than Type II do appear

in the work of the two scribes, as can be seen in Table 5.

In the case of the word old, Samuels (1989: 70) identifies <eld(e)> as aType II spelling and <old(e)> as a Type III spelling. A thorough examina-

tion of the work of Scribes 1 and 3 reveals, however, that this data tends

to fall into either the (c) or (d) types identified above in Section 3. In otherwords, the word is not spelled consistently from text to text or even some-

times within a text, and the spelling identified as characteristic of Type III,

though less common than the Type II spelling, is fairly widespread.Indeed, outside of rhyming position, <old(e)> is the more common spell-

ing in twelve out of twenty-four texts. According to LALME, the <o>

spelling is more commonly attested throughout England while the <e>spelling is a form more common to the south and east.9 Since LALME

primarily covers a period post-dating the production of the Auchinleck, it

9. See dot maps 851, 852, and 1141 in LALME, vol. 1.

276 Emily Runde

Table 5. Type II and III Blends

Scribe 1:



OLD eld(e) 1r 3 – 1 1r – –

old(e) 1r 1r – – 1r 1

WORLD warld- 1 2 9 1 2 3

world- 4 2 – 2 – 5


OLD eld(e) – – – 1 1 6

old(e) 1 1r – – 3 7r 1 10 1r

WORLD warld- 5 – 3 9 – 1

world- 2 2 – 18 – 1


OLD eld(e) 6 5r 1r 15 5r 4 – 1r

old(e) – 2 3r 4 5 – 2

WORLD warld- 6 19 11 4 – –

world- 9 6 7 – – –

werld- 1 – – – – –

KA RV TN SStB DK ST

OLD eld(e) 1 – – – – 1

old(e) – 1 – – – 3 3r

WORLD warld- 8 2 1 – – 2

world- 1 1 2 – – 2


OLD eld(e) – – – 1 1 –

old(e) 1 – – – 2r 1

WORLD warld- 1 2 3 – – 2

world- – 2 1 – 3 1



may be that the distribution of the <e> spelling could have been greater at

the time the Auchinleck was produced, but, regardless, the fairly even dis-tribution of the two forms in Scribe 1 and 3’s texts suggests that both

scribes were comfortable copying both forms.

In his division of Type II and III forms of the word world, Samuelsascribes the spellings <werld> and <warld> to the former and the spelling

<world> to the latter. Just as in the case of old, however, Scribes 1 and 3

complicate this division. According to LALME, the Type II variants arevery commonly attested in the Northeast Midlands, but very rarely found

elsewhere.10 The <world> spelling is very commonly attested throughout

most of England, particularly in areas outside of the Northeast Midlands.Throughout the entire body of texts he copied, Scribe 1 uses all three spell-

ings of the word, but he only uses the <werld> spelling once, and so it

seems very likely that <werld> was a relict form from the scribe’s exem-

plar for the couplet Sir Guy. Throughout most of his texts, he uses both<warld> (96 times) and <world> (71 times). Fifteen of the twenty-four

texts copied by Scribe 1 that contain the word world contain both of these

spellings and the relative frequency with which each is employed variesfrom text to text, as Table 5 shows.

This diversity of orthography complicates the idea that Scribes 1 and 3

were Type II scribes, but it does not undermine the association so much asit calls for a rethinking, or rewording, of the scribes’ position vis-a-vis

Samuels’ types. This is in line with Benskin’s useful way of thinking about

these types: ‘‘as defining characteristics of the type, [the forms associatedwith a given type] are necessary but not su‰cient’’ (2004: 2). In other

words, the mere fact that Scribes 1 and 3 employ a set of forms associated

with Type II supports an association of their work with this type. At the

10. See dot maps 291 and 296 in LALME, vol. 1.

Scribe 3:


SDS PN ABV SD SSR FB

OLD eld(e) 1 – – 2 1r 3 1r –

old(e) 1r – – 2r 17 1r –

WORLD werld- 4 – 2 – 6 1

world- – – 3 – 1 –


278 Emily Runde

same time, I would argue, since they employ some Type III spellings with

the same regularity, they provide written evidence for a transition

between, or at least a permeability of, the two types. Though they mayhave imposed Type II spellings more actively on exemplars, they both

clearly recognized the Type III spellings and were willing to preserve

them. The Type III spellings <old(e)> and <world> are the most fre-

quently and broadly attested spellings for each word in LALME, and theirpresence in the writings of Scribes 1 and 3 alongside the Type II spellings

suggests that the scribes may have been embracing orthographic practices

that were becoming less localizable and more widespread alongside theorthographic practices that characterized the familiar London standard

of their own time.

6. Results: Dialectal Origins

In addition to complicating Samuels’ breakdown of types, my examina-

tion of the texts identifies evidence regarding the authorship and origins

of various texts. The data in Table 6 provides a basis for revisiting claimsthat Sir Tristrem and Horn Childe & Maiden Rimnild may have originated

somewhere in the north of England.

Table 6 presents the full set of attestations of Scribes 1 and 3’s ortho-graphical treatment of the words hand and land. Their preference for the

<o> spelling in Table 6 stands in apparent contrast to their preference

for the <a> spelling of man as shown above in Table 4. The <o> spellingof man was a carry-over from Old English, in which Anglian favored use

of the letter <o> to convey the sound that a took before a nasal. It per-

sisted in Middle English almost entirely in the West Midlands, but the<a> spelling was far more common. Late Old English vowels preceding

consonant groups like <mb> and <nd>, however, had tended to lengthen,

and, with the exception of Northern English a#, which was fronted andraised, Middle English a# rounded into o. Though spellings preserving the

<a> before <nd> were thus common in the North and Northeast Mid-

lands, the <o> spelling permeated most of England until the <a> spellingbegan to regain ground in the East Midlands during the fourteenth cen-

tury and eventually became common in London in the fifteenth century.11

11. This entire account follows that of Mosse (1968: 16, 19–20) and Richard Jor-dan (1974: 43–44, 50), who both provide a discussion of the linguistic factorsbehind these phonological and orthographical shifts.


Table 6. <-and> vs. <-ond>

Scribe 1:



LAND land- – – – – – 1

lond- 13 8r 7 1r 1r 3r 2 7r 7 10r

HAND hand- – – – – – –

hond- 4 6r 7 1r 3r 5 2r 1 2r 3 5r


LAND land- – – – – – –

lond- 1 1 1r – 32 13r 7 2

HAND hand- – – – – – –

hond- 3 1 1 6 12r 1 1r 1 3r


LAND land- – – 2r – – –

lond- 55 22r 71 40r 73 74r 5 2r – 4

HAND hand- 2 – 1 6r – – –

hond- 30 16r 10 42r 40 54r 1r – 1r

KA RV TN SStB DK ST

LAND land- – 1r – – – 4 18r

lond- 13 5r 8 4r 3r – – 47 4r

HAND hand- – 1r – – – 1 20r

hond- 4 2r 3r – – – 4 3r


LAND land- – – – 5 5r 1 –

lond- 6 2r – 95 62r 28 8r 6 2r 7 17r

HAND hand- – – – 6r – –

hond- 3 2r – 3 23r 2 5r – 2 8r


280 Emily Runde

For the most part Scribes 1 and 3 overwhelmingly prefer the <o> spell-ing, but inconsistencies appear in Scribe 1’s copying, as can be seen in

the entries in Table 6 for Sir Tristrem, Horn Childe, and Of Arthour &

of Merlin. Generally, these inconsistencies in these texts and others canbe justified by their environment. For example, in a text like Arthour &

Merlin, <o> spellings appear over ninety percent of the time and the

exceptional <a> spellings tend to occur in rhyming position with propernames or in similarly constraining environments. In most texts that Scribe

1 copied, it would seem that he only permitted the <a> spelling when it

was unavoidable. Sir Tristrem and Horn Childe, however, defy Scribe 1’stendency to use <o> spellings when environment does not necessitate

otherwise. Though both texts are substantially shorter than Of Arthour &

of Merlin, both contain more frequent instances of the <a> spelling in thewords hand and land, suggesting an influence at work other than those

behind the occasional <a> spellings in Arthour & Merlin.

Scribe 1’s oscillation between the two spellings for hand and land does

not appear to be the result of environment in these two texts, though, inboth, <a> spellings are more likely to occur in rhyming positions than in

line-internal ones. Typical rhyme words for the <a> spellings – which

include <fand> past tense of find, <band> past tense of bind, <stand>,and <brand> – also occur in these texts as rhyme words for the <o> spell-

ings of hand and land with <o> spellings of their own. These patterns

provide no justification for the scribe’s choice of <a> spellings over <o>spellings in rhyming position. Furthermore, there are instances in both

texts in which <o> spellings and <a> spellings are placed in rhyming

positions with each other. Many of these <a> spellings, in other words,could readily have been converted to the <o> spellings without disrupting

the rhyme.

Scribe 3:



LAND land- – – – – – –

lond- 1 1r 1r 5 16r 6 14r 2 5r

HAND hand- – – – – 2 2

hond- 3 2r – 5 2r 7 13r 15 14r 3 7r



The unusual profusion of the <a> spellings in these two texts, particu-

larly in rhyming position, suggests that Scribe 1 found these orthographic

variants in his exemplars, but, if he translated any instances of <a> spell-ings into <o> spellings, he certainly did not trouble to translate those he

found in rhyming position. Based on his observation of the multitude of

<a> spellings in Tristrem, McNeill (1966: xxxiii) claims, ‘‘the language of

the poem is such as was written towards the close of the thirteenth centuryin the north of England and the south of Scotland.’’ The theory of north-

ern authorship has been contested by Vogel (1941: 543–44), who argues,

‘‘it may well be that, after all, the author of Tristrem was, in reality, acosmopolitan Londoner who perhaps spent part of his youth in the North,

but who, at any rate, was familiar not only with the Northern dialect, but

also with Northern literary tradition.’’ Vogel bases his claim on the factthat many southern forms abound alongside a rather limited number of

northern forms. One set of the northern forms he does acknowledge is

the <a> spelling of words like land and hand, but he only identifies oneother in Tristrem, the <ta> spelling for the infinitive form of take and the

<tan> spelling for the past participial form of that verb.

Vogel is correct that the text contains many southern forms, and theseare consistent with forms that Scribe 1 uses more generally in all of the

texts he copies. There are also, however, a number of unusual spellings

that appear in fairly high concentration in Tristrem and Horn Childe, butare almost completely absent from all other texts copied by Scribe 1, and

these spellings tend to be northern. They also appear primarily in rhyming

position, where Scribe 1 would have been more likely to preserve spellingsfrom his exemplars. Some of these northern forms are listed in Table 7

below.

Table 7. Northern Forms Persisting in Sir Tristrem and Horn Childe &Maiden Rimnild

PDE Item Middle English ST HC

TAKE inf. ta 2r 2r

TAKE ppl. tan 5r 7r

MIGHT vb. moufit 5r 4r

-ONE -an(e) 10r 11r

-ORE -are 38r 14r

-ODE -ade 23r 8r

282 Emily Runde

The prevalence of these forms in Tristrem and the similarity of forms

that survive in both Tristrem and Horn Childe, lend no support to Vogel’s

hypothesis. Indeed, since many of the southern forms Vogel identifiescould well have come directly from Scribe 1, the preponderance of north-

ern forms in rhyming positions supports an association of Tristrem with

the north, whether it was written there or copied at some point by a

northern scribe.

7. Conclusions

My examination of the orthographic practice of Scribes 1 and 3 is still a

work in progress, but the findings above attest, I believe, to the impor-tance of studying the work of these scribes in its entirety as well as in the

particular texts they copied. Such study enables valuable connections to be

made between the large and sometimes unwieldy data sets of LALME andthe more narrowly focused studies of the Auchinleck’s individual texts.

Until quite recently, the complete corpora of Scribes 1 and 3 have gone

without close linguistic scrutiny, but I hope my work here has revealedsome valuable applications to which these corpora may be put.

As my analysis demonstrates, scribal consistencies and inconsistencies,

made more apparent by a complete survey of each scribe’s linguistic out-put, can provide new insights into scribal practice and textual history. In

the regularity with which they drop or retain initial <h> from word to

word, both scribes demonstrate a greater propensity for orthographic con-sistency than has traditionally been attributed to scribes by scholars of

Middle English. The scribes’ corpus-wide oscillation between Samuels’

Type II and Type III forms complicates his classification of both as TypeII scribes. Their linguistic practice points to a transition between forms

belonging to a familiar London dialect and less localizable, more wide-

spread forms. Linguistic inconsistencies between individual texts copiedby a single scribe shed light on these texts’ histories and origins. The

unusual prevalence of northern forms in Sir Tristrem and Horn Childe &

Maiden Rimnild, both copied by a scribe who almost never employs theseforms in the many other texts he copied, gestures toward an earlier stage

in both texts’ transmission. Given the unlikelihood that Scribe 1 imposed

northern forms on two out of the thirty texts he copied, the abnormal pro-fusion of northern forms in these two texts indicates that they were either

copied at some earlier stage by a northern scribe or originally written with

northern dialectal forms. The work of these two scribes certainly needs


more study, but I hope that the analysis of their work also serves to indi-

cate some possible benefits of studying the complete corpora of other

scribes and how such study may shed new light on scribal practices moregenerally.

References

Benskin, Michael2004 Chancery Standard. In New Perspectives on English Historical

Linguistics: Selected Papers From ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August2002, edited by Christian Kay, Carole Hough and Irene Wother-spoon, 1–40. Vol. 2: Lexis and Transmission. Amsterdam andPhiladelphia: John Benjamins.

Benskin, Michael and Margaret Laing1981 Translations and Mischsprachen in Middle English Manuscripts.

In So Meny People Longages and Tonges: Philological Essaysin Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh,edited by Michael Benskin and M.L. Samuels, 55–106.

Burnley, David and Alison Wiggins, eds2003 The Auchinleck Manuscript. An On-Line Facsimile. Version 1.1.

National Library of Scotland. http://www.nls.uk/auchinleck.Hanna, Ralph2000 Reconsidering the Auchinleck Manuscript. In New Directions

in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998Harvard Conference, edited by Derek Pearsall, 91–102. York:York Medieval Press.

Jordan, Richard1974 Handbook of Middle English Grammar: Phonology. Translated

and revised by Eugene Joseph Crook. The Hague: Mouton.A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English1986 Edited by Angus McIntosh, M.L. Samuels, Michael Benskin,

et al. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.McNeill, George P.1966 [1886] Sir Tristrem. New York, London: Johnson [first publ.: 1886].

Mosse, Fernand1968 A Handbook of Middle English. Translated by James A. Walker.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press.Parkes, M.B.1969 English Cursive Book Hands: 1250–1500. Oxford: Clarendon.

Pearsall, Derek2006 Before-Chaucer Evidences of an English Literary Vernacular

with a Standardizing Tendency. In The Beginnings of Standard-ization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England

284 Emily Runde

(Studies in English Medieval Language and Literature 15), editedby Ursula Schaefer, 27–41. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Pearsall, Derek and I.C. Cunningham (eds.)1977 The Auchinleck Manuscript. A Facsimile. London: Scolar.

Putter, Ad and Myra Stokes2007 The Linguistic Atlas and the Dialect of the Gawain Poems. The

Journal of English and Germanic Philology 106: 468–491.Samuels, M.L.1989 [1963] Some Applications of Middle English Dialectology. In Middle

English Dialectology: Essays on Some Principles and Problems,edited by Margaret Laing, 64–81. Aberdeen: Aberdeen Univer-sity Press [first publ.: 1963].

Sandved, Arthur O.1981 Prolegomena to a Renewed Study of the Rise of Standard

English. In So Meny People Longages and Tonges: PhilologicalEssays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to AngusMcIntosh, edited by Michael Benskin and M.L. Samuels, 31–42.

Shonk, Timothy1985 A Study of the Auchinleck Manuscript: Bookmen and Book-

making in the Early Fourteenth Century. Speculum 60: 71–91.Vogel, Bertram1941 The Dialect of Sir Tristrem. The Journal of English and Ger-

manic Philology 40: 538–544.Wiggins, Alison2003 Guy of Warwick in Warwick? Reconsidering the Dialect Evi-

dence. English Studies 84: 219–230.Wiggins, Alison2004 Are Auchinleck Manuscript Scribes 1 and 6 the Same Scribe?

The Advantages of Whole-Data Analysis and Electronic Texts.Medium Aevum 73: 10–26.


9. Appendix: Type (a) Data

Scribe 1:



DO pt-sg. dede 3 9 11 3 6 4

LITTLE litel 6 2 1 4 4 –

MAN man 13 20 11 5 9 23

MANY mani(e) 6 29 2 1 5 13

SUCH swich(e) 8 3 4 1 4 15


DO pt-sg. dede 5 1 – 8 6 4

LITTLE litel 9 – – 5 4 2

MAN man 7 12 1 44 15 22

MANY mani(e) 4 2 – 20 4 –

SUCH swich(e) 3 – 1 7 2 5


DO pt-sg. dede 86 42 122 7 2 2

LITTLE litel 14 12 56 1 – 3

MAN man 99 90 210 13 6 5

MANY mani(e) 93 45 229 1 1 2

SUCH swich(e) 43 19 66 4 – 2

KA RV TN SStB DK ST

DO pt-sg. dede 4 7 – – – 24

LITTLE litel 2 – 1 2 – 2

MAN man 5 11 1 1 1 66

MANY mani(e) 19 8 1 1 – 19

SUCH swich(e) 4 4 – – – 29


DO pt-sg. dede 5 – 46 7 – 20

LITTLE litel – – 9 4 – 2

MAN man 17 3 59 18 11 9

MANY mani(e) 4 5 24 13 3 20

SUCH swich(e) 5 – 13 5 3 12

286 Emily Runde

Scribe 3:



DO pt-sg. dede – – 4 6 33 1

LITTLE litel 2 – 3 8 5 7

MAN man 4 4 11 52 60 16

MANY mani(e) 1 – 4 22 29 4

SUCH swich(e) – – 6 11 36 9


Commentary on Runde, Reexamining OrthographicPractice in the Auchinleck Manuscript ThroughStudy of Complete Scribal Corpora

Sherrylyn Branchaw

Runde innovates in the way she investigates scribal practices. The tradi-

tional method has been to look at all the copies of a single text to seehow di¤erent scribes transcribe the same word. One of the strengths of

this method is that it allows scholars to approach a reconstruction of the

exemplar. They can compare the di¤erent spellings that a word exhibits asit appears in di¤erent copies of a manuscript, and they consider which

spelling – not necessarily identical to any of the attested spellings – would

have been able to have given rise to each of the attested spellings. Thespelling that is most probable or is the only possibility is then attributed

to the manuscript the scribes were copying from. This is much the

same as the comparative method used by historical linguists in recon-structing a protolanguage, and indeed it is where the linguistic compara-

tive method originated. By paying attention to forms that are associated

with particular dialects, the traditional method also allows scholars todraw conclusions about the dialects of the scribes and about the dialect

of the exemplar.

What Runde does is to look at all the copies written by a single scribe.In particular, she looks at all the texts in the Auchinleck manuscript

copied by Scribes 1 and 3. Thirty texts were copied by Scribe 1 and six

by Scribe 3, and the scope of her study allows her to investigate each one.

In contrast, although the editors of LALME did examine more than onecopy by the same scribe, because they were investigating many texts

throughout the entire Late Middle English period, they could not hone in

on one particular manuscript. Due to the scope of their study, they usedonly five of the Scribe 1’s thirty copies in the Auchinleck. Furthermore,

Runde notes that the editors of LALME were limited to using only the

items included in their questionnaire whereas she was able to examine theentire texts closely for any and all forms that might be of interest. This

larger set of possible forms seems like a real advantage, but listing in

section 2 some specific forms that she examines and that are absent from

LALME would have made this strength of her study more obvious to the

reader.

A major theoretical advantage of her study is that she is able to deter-mine the overall consistency of a single scribe’s habits, independent of the

manuscripts he is copying. A priori, he could be in the habit of copying

every form faithfully, or he could be in the habit of rendering a given

word in a single spelling, regardless of how his exemplar reads. In practice,he lies somewhere between these two extremes, and Runde’s study allows

her to locate individual scribes on this continuum of consistency. Being

able to identify the consistencies and inconsistencies of scribes providesevidence for the dialects of the scribes as well as indicating to what extent

a given scribe can be trusted to provide a faithful copy. The latter in turn

will aid in the reconstruction of the exemplar. In her paper, Runde pointsout some of the implications of her findings.

Runde starts by listing the four possibilities with respect to the ortho-

graphic consistency of forms:In regards to orthographical and lexical choices, the data collected:

(a) remained completely consistent in the work of both Scribes 1 and 3,(b) remained completely consistent within the work of each scribe even if

the choices of the two scribes conflicted,

(c) remained completely consistent within given texts copied by a scribebut vary from text to text, or

(d) varied within a text.’’

To interpret the consistency of forms with respect to the above four possi-bilities, Runde works within the theory of constrained selection as devel-

oped by Benskin and Laing (1981). Their theory says that a scribe has a

set of familiar forms of a word, and within that set, a preferred form thatbelongs to his own dialect. He will copy any form contained in his set of

familiar forms, but any form not in his familiar set will be rendered with

his own preferred form.She uses this theory of constrained selection to handle findings that

challenge the conclusions of earlier scholars about the dialects of Scribes

1 and 3. Samuels (1963) assigns Scribes 1 and 3 to a dialect that he callsType II. Runde, however, finds that they comfortably copy forms belong-

ing to Samuels’ Type III dialect. She points out that some of the Type III

forms Scribes 1 and 3 copy were the most generally used in LALME, interms of both frequency and geographical spread, ‘‘and their presence in

the writings of Scribes 1 and 3 alongside the Type II spellings suggests

that the scribes may have been embracing orthographic practices that

Commentary on Runde 289

were becoming less localizable and more widespread alongside the ortho-

graphic practices that characterized the familiar London standard of their

own time.’’ This willingness to deal with a more complex state of a¤airsthan the simple impression given by merely assigning one scribe to one

dialect is one of the strengths of her study.

As indicated above, the study of scribal corpora can also contribute to

the study of individual texts, and Runde’s study sheds light on two texts inparticular: Sir Tristrem and Horn Childe & Maiden Rimnild. Previous

scholars, such as Vogel (1941), have concluded, because most of the forms

in these two texts are southern, that the northern forms found there wereintroduced by Scribe 1. Without the rest of Scribe 1’s corpus, it would not

be possible to tell rigorously whether the northern forms originated with

him or in the manuscript he was copying. Looking at the other texts hecopies, though, Runde sees that elsewhere he renders northern forms only

when metrically unavoidable, and that in Sir Tristrem and Horn Childe

northern forms appear in relatively high concentration. As it is highlyunlikely that Scribe 1 introduced many northern forms here, but nowhere

else in twenty-eight texts, the northern forms probably originated not with

him but in the manuscript he was copying. This is an important finding inthat it tells us something about the history of the text that could not have

been found without the methodology used by Runde. It is to be hoped

that other scholars will recognize its value and extend the study of com-plete scribal corpora.


Response to Commentary by Branchaw

Emily Runde

I greatly appreciate Branchaw’s clear commentary on both my work and

the wider range of approaches that have been used to study and localize

dialectal layerings in Middle English texts. She rightly notes that I havenot included a list of forms examined beyond those found in LALME, an

omission I will address formally in further work as I expand the scope of

my study. When I began my work with Scribes 1 and 3 of the Auchinleck,I made it my first priority to examine their use of forms listed in their

LALME profiles throughout their entire corpora. Much of the data I

have collected falls into this category. All of the items in Tables 4 and 9(in the appendix) have been adopted from the scribes’ LALME profiles,

and the words hundred (see Section 4), it (Table 3), have (Table 3), land

(Table 6), and might as a verb (Table 7) are also present in one or bothof the scribes’ linguistic profiles. The great majority of the forms I have

considered in my paper are not included in the scribes’ profiles, however,

though in some cases they are forms considered elsewhere in LALME.As Branchaw has highlighted, a major advantage of the corpora ap-

proach I have adopted is that it supports study of a scribe’s prac-

tices in addition to the study of individual texts he has copied. This newmethodology is promising. The study of complete scribal corpora could

be extended profitably to other Auchinleck scribes and to scribes involved

in copying other fourteenth-century manuscript miscellanies of com-parable length. As paleographers identify prolific scribes whose hands are

evident in multiple manuscripts, scribes like Adam Pinkhurst (Mooney

2006) and M. B. Parkes and A. I. Doyle’s ‘‘Delta Scribe’’ (1991), the cor-

pora approach could also be used to study these scribes’ copying practicesacross the various manuscripts they helped produce.

As I continue my work with Scribes 1 and 3 of the Auchinleck, I will

extend my study of their orthographic and lexical practices, and I alsohope to expand the scope of my study to include a broader analysis of

the linguistic consistencies and inconsistencies throughout the texts they

copied. The sociohistorical circumstances in which the Auchinleck wasproduced suggest that at least some of the scribes’ roles may have been

quite complex. In spite of the fact that it contains dozens of texts and has

been produced through the combined e¤orts of six scribes, the Auchinleck

is remarkably coherent and elegant in its mise-en-page and program of

textual arrangement and illuminations, most of which unfortunately havebeen excised. Textual scholars have also remarked upon the occurrence of

similar passages in multiple Auchinleck texts and postulated that these

repetitions could be the result of scribal intervention. Given the probable

complexity of Scribe 1’s involvement in the Auchinleck’s production, andto some extent of Scribe 3’s as well, I hope that continued study of their

complete corpora may add to what is known about their practices.

References

Mooney, Linne R.2006 Chaucer’s Scribe. Speculum 81: 97–138.

Parkes, M.B. and A.I. Doyle1991 [1978] The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Con-

fessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century. In Scribes, Scripts,and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation, andDissemination of Medieval Texts, by M.B. Parkes, 201–48. Lon-don: Hambledon Press [first publ.: 1978].

292 Emily Runde

How Medium Shapes Language Development:The Emergence of Quotative Re Online

Stefanie Kuzmack

1. Introduction

Due to the influence of the Internet, written language has become increas-

ingly a part of everyday communication. It should not be surprising,therefore, that the Internet has become a potential environment for lan-

guage change – not merely for the coining of new nouns and verbs, but

for grammaticalization as well.1 Recently, the Internet has been the settingfor the emergence of a new quotative complementizer, re, which reflects

the impact of the medium in which it evolved in several ways. In particu-

lar, the online medium led it to acquire a unique use: bringing quotations(often taken from earlier in the same conversation) back into the discourse

in order to set up responses to those statements. This usage stems from the

nature of threaded discussions, where the long turns make it useful toquote previous statements in order to clarify the object of the response.

Quotative re stems from the English preposition2 re ‘about, regarding,’

often seen in the subject lines of memoranda and electronic messages.3

(1) Re: Definitive Proxy Statement

(2) Re: Using Microsoft Outlook

(3) I would suggest that you again read what I initially wrote re:that topic.

Quotative re di¤ers from the preposition re syntactically, in that itscomplements are clauses rather than noun phrases, and pragmatically, in

1. I refer to re’s shift from preposition to quotative complementizer as gramma-ticalization following Romaine and Lange’s (1991) analysis of the prepositionlike making the same transition (although with di¤erent intermediate steps).

2. See the first paragraph of Section 2 for why re should be considered anEnglish preposition, rather than a Latin noun borrowed into English.

3. The data for this paper were collected primarily using Google’s Usenet ar-chives; neither the orthography nor punctuation has been altered. See Appen-dix for the data collection method.

that it has a new quotative function. Semantically, quotative re and pre-

position re are much the same. Quotative re’s function entails that it is

accompanied by a matrix clause that addresses – that is ‘about’ – the quo-tation that re introduces, and that preserves the connection between quo-

tative re’s function and preposition re’s meaning.

(4) [Re: Who wants a fantasy land that’s just like the real world] –I think that would be more intriguing in some ways.

There are some instances, however, where quotative re’s meaning is not

very salient; in (5–6), the meaning of the sentence is relatively unchangedif re is replaced with that. Semantic bleaching has begun, even though it

can only be seen in certain cases.

(5) My post was in response to your statement re: you don’t know if

eyesight would come into play during a dogfight.

(6) My post was in response to your statement that you don’t know ifeyesight would come into play during a dogfight.

Re has unusual characteristics for a quotative complementizer, reflect-ing the influence of the online medium on its development. This paper will

discuss each of the following traits in turn, showing how the online

medium promoted each one of those traits in re.For example, quotative re is used in two structures, neither of which are

used with any other English quotative. The first is adjoint complementa-

tion, as seen in (4), where re and its complement are attached to one endof a matrix clause. The second is noun phrase complementation, seen in

(5), where re is the object of a noun phrase (‘‘your statement’’). Interest-

ingly, re is not used in verb complementation, the structure in which quo-

tative verbs and the quotative complementizers like and all are used.4

(7) She said, ‘‘I was late.’’ / She said (that) she was late.

(8) He was like/all, ‘‘What should I do?’’

Re is also relatively unusual in that the quotations that it takes as com-

plements can be either direct (9) or indirect (10) speech. That ability iscommon with quotative verbs, as (7) illustrates, but the quotative comple-

mentizers like and all are limited to introducing direct quotations.

(9) Youi made a statement above re: ’I’mi frequently criticized . . .’.

(10) Hence, hisj argument re: Ik don’t talk football is kinda shot down.

4. See Bresnan (1970) for a discussion of the di¤erent types of complementation.

294 Stefanie Kuzmack

Re is for the most part limited to quoting actual statements, but rare

instances do exist where it is used to quote thoughts:

(11) Also his arrogance re: ‘‘I can be opener, wicketkeeper and captain

at the same time, I’m wonderful aren’t I?’’ drives me mad.

(12) Your attitude re: ‘‘if you are not for us, then you must be against

us’’ is too simplistic a formulation.

Thus, re does not fit the same mold as either English’s quotative verbs

or its quotative complementizers; this paper will examine how the online

medium caused this to come about. The case of re demonstrates thatlanguage can evolve within the written medium, and that the nature of

written language can play an important role in language change.

2. The emergence of quotative re

The preposition re came from the ablative form of the Latin noun res

‘thing, object, matter’ (Marchant and Charles 1952: 483). According to

the OED, the ablative re meant ‘in the matter of ’ and was borrowed intoEnglish in the 1700s, but in the process its nominal meaning, already

abstract, was lost, replaced by the case meaning. Examples (13–14) dem-

onstrate this loss; the speakers who produced them did not consider thephrase the matter of to be conveyed by re, even though ‘matter’ is the

original meaning of res.

(13) The superintendent spoke re the matter of inadequate resources.

(14) Re: the matter of production by freely associated laborers,I disagree.

Thus, re has developed a use in English markedly di¤erent from the origi-

nal Latin. While some instances of re in English, produced by knowledge-

able speakers, may be considered the insertion of Latin into an otherwise

English sentence, for many people re is simply an English preposition withLatin origins.5

5. In fact, there is quite a bit of folk etymology concerning the preposition re, inlarge part due to the disconnect between its older use in memoranda and itsnew use in electronic messages. Although in memoranda re marks the subjectof the message, on the Internet it occurs solely in the subject lines of reply

How Medium Shapes Language Development 295

Online, the use of re was encouraged by its presence in the headers of

electronic messages (e.g., ‘‘Re: Tech support question’’). In fact, the use

of the word re has been so strongly influenced by its use in the subjectline that the colon which always follows that use of re has become part of

the way re is spelled for many people. Most of the examples of quotative

re presented in this paper are followed by a colon, and those colons are

more likely intended to be part of the word than they are to be intendedas punctuation. Re’s use in subject lines has made it omnipresent online,

constantly reminding Internet users of its existence. Internet users began

to use the preposition re in front of block quotes, then came to use it as aquotative complementizer, first in adjoint complementation, then noun

phrase complementation.

Unfortunately, this path of development cannot be corroborated bymeans of the dates of the messages in which re occurs, due to the role

that false positives play in collecting data on re (see Appendix). Since

<re> is a very common string on Usenet, there is a vast number of falsepositives that must be filtered out. Too many examples of quotative re

are unavoidably eliminated, along with the false positives, to use the dates

of the known occurrences to shed light on the chronology.The earliest two known uses of quotative re that do not involve block

quotes, seen in (15–16), illustrate the problem. They were both produced

in November of 1990, on the 11th and 13th, respectively, by di¤erentspeakers in di¤erent newsgroups (sci.skeptic and rec.music.beatles). In the

former, re is used in noun phrase complementation, and in the latter, in

adjoint complementation. With only two days separating the two exam-ples, the dates provide no support for either structure having preceded

the other. Earlier uses of quotative re in one of the structures must exist,

but it has not been possible to locate them.

messages, and subject marks the subject line. The redundancy of markingthe subject twice, coupled with re appearing only in the subject lines of replymessages, has led many speakers to reanalyze re as an abbreviation of reply orresponse. Even apart from that motivation, some speakers have concludedthat re is an abbreviation of regarding. In short, re’s origin is a point ofconsiderable confusion, having been discussed in newsgroups as diverseas alt.folklore.urban, alt.games.elder-scrolls, alt.music.s-mclachlan, alt.tv.er,comp.mail.misc, comp.mail.pine, microsoft.public.outlook.general, rec.audio.opinion, rec.arts.mystery, rec.games.roguelike.adom, rec.photo.digital, andalt.usage.english. However, since the re in memoranda is from Latin (certainlynot from reply or response), and since that use parallels the use of re in subjectlines, the Latin source remains the most likely one for both.


(15) Your implication re ‘‘you can do absolutely *anything* if you

only try often enough’’ appears to me to be completely without

foundation.

(16) I doubt if there was a lot of questioning among the Beatles re:

‘‘you can’t put that on a Beatles album’’.

The most probable first step on re’s path to becoming a quotative com-

plementizer was a use in which it introduced block quotes. At this point,

the prepositional meaning was still essential to how re was used, but thecomplements that re took were quotations, and had more in common

with clauses than with noun phrases.

Block quotes from previous messages are common online, since manye-mail programs generate them automatically. It is not unusual for Inter-

net users to intersperse their own words between block quotes, as in (17),

in order to remind readers of what was said in previous messages, and toset up their own replies. This use of block quotes serves a useful function;

due to the delays between messages, it is often di‰cult to remember what

a previous message said. As we will see, the existence of this problem wascrucial to re’s grammaticalization into a quotative, because re evolved in

response to it.

(17) > Dusty da baker wrote:>> It’s probably just me . . . but the SD [sourdough] critters don’t

> eat sugar. . .

> Where do you get this from?

Probably a couple of decades of feeding ’em. Why? Do you know

something else. . .?

> Maybe it is ‘‘just you’’?Or, maybe not. . .

In the new use of re, re was added before these block quotes, to make

explicit the connection between the quotation and the new material writ-ten below. Examples (18–20) provide some typical examples of this usage.

(18) re:

<< Looks like someone broke into the Team Saturn van’s and tookabout $60K of bikes and equipment. Lots of it was Mt. bikes from

the Volvo team. It was all high end stu¤, and lots of it.

Don’t buy the hot stu¤. Contact Team Saturn and bust these

guys. >>

Hey that’s major bummer to anyone, and if I found the thiefsI’d turn them in.


(19) Re:-

> I enjoyed the sci-fi excerpt on dolphins, but did not recognize the> source. Where is it from?

Its not surprising you dont recognise it Erich, its from a totally

unknow and obscure source, namely me.

(20) RE: ‘‘But please respect that I DO belive WT to be the best system

FOR ME (to fit my needs). I’m not going to appologize for that.’’.

I, for one, certainly do respect that and you will not be asked to

apologize for it.

However, not all uses of re before block quotes are as simple as those

above, with re followed by a single quotation. The use of re that led into‘‘block quote re’’ was one where it could precede any kind of text, as in

(21–22). In (21), re is used to quote the entire previous message, including

the signature, and in (22), it introduces multiple quotations by di¤erent

speakers.

(21) Yes I’ve had that same problem. Removing the dust from around

the speaker contacts will help.

[. . .]

RE:

> I’ve got a Mac IIsi running system 7.5 (with update 7.5.2).

> Sometimes

> the sound shuts o¤ for no apparent reason. I can usually get

> the sound

> to switch back on by cranking the sound level up to 5 or 6.

> Anyone had this problem or know how to fix it?

– Brian

————————————————

[name and address of sender] (quoted portion in italics)


(22) re:

>>> Are they up to their ‘‘usual tricks’’. . .

>> You say you aren’t trolling?

> Correct.

> Tell me, why can’t MSFT answer a single one of my valid

> questions?

Are they ‘‘valid’’ questions?

The fact that re introduces the entire message or exchange in these exam-ples is not characteristic of a quotative, and illustrates the intermediacy of

‘‘block quote re’’ as a stage in re’s development. Uses like (21–22) are the

exception rather than the rule, but they show how speakers interpreted re

at the beginning of the block quote stage, not as a quotative complemen-

tizer but rather as a preposition that could precede anything.

In the more typical examples, like (18–20), ‘‘block quote re’’ functionsstructurally like a complementizer in that it introduces full clauses, but it

is somewhat unusual because non-quotative complementizers introduce

either a single clause or conjoined clauses. However, introducing multi-sentence quotations is not unusual for an established quotative comple-

mentizer, as (23–25) illustrate. This ability is not unique to re, nor to writ-

ten language. The di¤erence with ‘‘block quote re’’ is primarily one of

degree; it introduces longer quotations than in spoken language, and itintroduces multi-sentence quotations most of the time. Example (23)

shows that ‘‘block quote re’’ is also not unique in its ability to introduce a

quotation in isolation, without occurring in a full matrix clause.

(23) Like, ‘‘Oh my god! You cut your bangs! They look great, Jane!

Great, Jane, great!’’ (Singler 2001: 261)

(24) And she’s like, she’s like, ‘‘Now I’m not even sure if I like him. Now

when I look at him his face is kind of deformed and everything.

Like you start seeing little flaws.’’(Romaine and Lange 1991: 250)

(25) He’s like, ‘‘Why, what’s wrong? Why you still sitting up?’’ [. . .] Andhe was like, ‘‘Well, I just got stuck with the guys. They wouldn’t let

me, take me to my car or anything.’’ (Ferrara and Bell 1995: 266)

There is no break in the transition from ‘‘block quote re’’ to adjointcomplementation; the two are points on a continuum. In some uses of

‘‘block quote re,’’ the quotation is only a single sentence, albeit formatted


as a block quote. These cases are essentially no di¤erent from quotative re

in adjoint complementation. Only the punctuation and the presence of

line breaks show that the writer thought of the quotation as a blockquote rather than part of the following sentence. (Examples (26–27)

contain ‘‘block quote re’’; (28–29) contain quotative re in adjoint comple-

mentation.)

(26) RE: ‘‘You will not be able to download the same message to more

than one of your clients.’’

When I switched over to an Exchange Server, that was one of the

issues I was having.

(27) re: I stopped by an appliance store

What is your definition of an appliance store?

(28) Re, ‘‘Don’t take it out of my pocket,’’ please consider the following:

[. . .]

(29) However, RE: ‘‘Then again I realize that’s asking way too much ofanyone today.’’, asking that is irrelevant if that is not the given

martial artist’s objective.

In e¤ect, ‘‘block quote re’’ and quotative re overlap; re’s use in adjointcomplementation is a straightforward development, emerging from the

simplification of ‘‘block quote re.’’

3. Noun phrase complementation vs. verb complementation

The use of quotative re in noun phrase complementation is a separate

development, prompted by the existence of quotative re in adjoint comple-

mentation,6 but not stemming directly from it. This use of re is most likelybased on a parallel structure with the preposition re, seen in (30–31). In

these examples, the preposition re is distinguished from quotative re in

noun complementation (32–33) only by the fact that re’s complementshere are noun phrases, not clauses.

6. Even the existence of ‘‘block quote re’’ alone may have been su‰cient toprompt speakers to use re in noun phrase complementation. This is a finedistinction, however, since ‘‘block quote re’’ is not truly distinct from re inadjoint complementation.


(30) His answer re: color support was of course to mention the Pixar

board.

(31) I would like to give a special thanks to Bridger at RAND-UNIXfor his comments re the bugs in the previous release.

(32) Your comments re: ‘‘we dont know how to fight in one of these

wars’’ is also true.

(33) Can you supply the facts to back up your comment Re:

‘‘We wouldn’t even have got this far without him’’

Quotative re’s use in this structure would have been aided by the fact

that many of the noun phrases that take the preposition re as a comple-

ment are equally capable of taking prepositions and complementizers ascomplements.

(34) His answer that the manual should have the instructions wasn’t veryhelpful.

(35) I would like to thank Bridger for his comments that the bugs can be

found by. . .

However, this source for the structure raises a question: why is quota-

tive re not used in verb complementation? After all, the other English quo-tative complementizers, like and all, occur in that structure – in their

cases, always as complements of the verb be (see 24–25). Moreover, the

preposition re does occur in verb complementation (36–37), as well as innoun phrase complementation (30–31).

(36) [. . .] recently one of the MDs and I spoke re: butter and margarine.

(37) None of them have so far commented re that book.

If speakers could use preposition re as a template7 for noun phrase com-

plementation, then they would be expected to do so for verb complemen-tation as well.

Part of the reason that they did not do so is that cases like (36–37) do

not function quite as well as (30–31) as templates. The noun phrases thatthe preposition re occurs with can uniformly take either a preposition or a

7. It should be pointed out that using as templates the structures that the pre-position re occurs in is entirely di¤erent from reanalyzing those structures.The preposition’s complements in these cases were always noun phrases, andnot simultaneously interpretable as clauses.


clause, so that speakers can easily imagine using re as a quotative comple-

mentizer where it had previously only been used as a preposition. The

verbs that the preposition re occurs with, however, are less flexible in theircomplements. Some verbs related to speech, such as speak and talk, can

take prepositions as complements, but not clauses. As a result, these verbs

cannot be used with quotative re, and cannot contribute to the use of quo-

tative re in verb complementation.

(38) We spoke/talked about/re butter and margarine.

*(39) We spoke/talked that/re margarine isn’t as healthy as people think.

Say, the most generic quotative verb in English, also fails to provide a

suitable template, although for a di¤erent reason: it cannot have a pre-positional phrase as its only complement. As (40–42) demonstrate, it can

take a clausal complement, and it can take both a clause and a preposi-

tional phrase as complements simultaneously, but it cannot have a pre-positional phrase as its only complement.

*(40) You said re Arnold.

(41) You said that we couldn’t trust the records.

(42) You said re: Arnold that we couldn’t trust the records.

Thus, say could theoretically take quotative re as a complement, unlike

speak and talk. However, say provides only a flawed template for verbcomplementation, because it only occurs with the preposition re when

there is already a clausal constituent present, highlighting the fact that re

is a preposition, not a complementizer. Since say is the most genericquotative verb, and accordingly a commonly used one, it would have had

considerable power to promote quotative re in verb complementation.

That it does not promote that usage reduces the likelihood that speakerswill use it as a complementizer with other verbs.

Nevertheless, there are some quotative verbs that can take both clauses

and prepositional phrases as complements, individually, and thereforecould provide good templates:

(43) He wrote/commented that he agreed with the first message inthe thread.

(44) He wrote/commented on the subject.

Although write and comment are less generic than say, their meanings are

not so specific as to be a barrier to using them with re. Write is applicableto nearly all online communication, and the noun comment is the most


frequent noun to take quotative re as its complement. These verbs could

provide the template for using re in verb complementation, and once

speakers became accustomed to seeing quotative re being used with theseverbs, extending quotative re’s use to say would be easier.

Even with these verbs, however, re is not used as a quotative comple-

mentizer. Therefore, while the structures that quotative re is used in are

probably influenced by the types of complements that these noun phrasesand verbs can take, these syntactic factors do not entirely explain why re is

not used in verb complementation.

The key factor is the use to which re is put. Both ‘‘block quote re’’ andquotative re are used to bring quotations from earlier in a discussion back

into the current discourse in order to set up responding to them, to alle-

viate the potential confusion caused by the delays between messages thatare inherent to the medium. Noun phrase complementation allows the

quotation to be embedded within a noun phrase, saving the sentence’s

matrix clause for responding to the quote.

(45) I disagree with your statement re ‘‘We should start a new,

moderated newsgroup.’’

Using verb complementation for this task would require two sentences,

one to report what was said and one to include the response.

(46) You said/were like, ‘‘We should start a new, moderated

newsgroup.’’ I disagree.

This is because when speech is reported using verb complementation,the matrix clause is used to indicate what was said, and by whom. That

property makes verb complementation appropriate for situations where

the primary purpose of a sentence is to report who said what, as in anarrative. Since quotative like is used in telling narratives, verb comple-

mentation is a suitable structure for it. In the contexts where re is used,

on the other hand, responding to what was said is more important thanwho said it, and so speakers chose noun phrase complementation over

verb complementation because it was better suited to their purpose and

to the medium.

4. Direct speech and indirect speech

The nature of the online medium also influenced re’s ability to introduce

direct and indirect quotations. Re is unusual in that it can introduceboth, with no visible di¤erences in sentence structure. In (47), the prono-


minal deixis doesn’t change; in (48), the quotation is indirect, and we is

changed to you. The deixis is the only clue; without context, it would be

impossible to tell whether these quotations were direct or indirect.

(47) > YOUi ARE TOO YOUNG TO REMEMBER ANY REAL

> CARS ANYWAY

[. . .]

Now as for yourj comment re: youi are too young . . . yada yadayada. . .

(48) Message A: I think you will find wek don’t advise to use the feedand kill insects type of systemic that is put on the ground. [. . .]

Message B: And yourk comment re: ‘‘youk don’t use the groundkind’’ only serves further to point out the general and widespread

ignorance over their use. . .

Direct and indirect quotation in identical constructions creates ambiguity,

but re’s function and the medium in which it is used reduce the poten-

tial for confusion. Because re is generally used to quote statements fromearlier in the same discussion, the addressees were also present for the

original utterance. Moreover, there are records online which allow the

addressees to confirm the intended reading, if necessary.In spoken language this kind of flexibility could produce confusion,

since quoted speech is often entirely new to the addressee, and there are

no records to consult. Quotative like, all, and go are all limited to intro-ducing direct quotations. Schourup (1982: 148–9) suggested that quotative

go is restricted in this way in order to avoid ambiguity. Most quotative

verbs can introduce both direct and indirect quotations, but there the

ambiguity can be reduced by adding the complementizer that if the quota-tion is indirect.

(49) Johnj said, ‘‘Ij was responsible for Lauren’s failure.’’(Schourup 1982: 148)

(50) Johnj said Ik was responsible for Lauren’s failure.

(Schourup 1982: 148)

*(51) Johnj said that ‘‘Ij was responsible for Lauren’s failure.’’

(52) Johnj said that Ik was responsible for Lauren’s failure.

Re’s ability to take both direct and indirect speech complements is

clearly not due solely to the online environment, since quotative verbs


used in spoken language do have the potential to be similarly ambiguous.

At the same time, the nature of the Internet and newsgroups undoubtedly

makes it easier for sentences with re to be understood, despite the absenceof any signs8 that direct or indirect quotation is intended.

5. Speech and thought

Re’s sharply limited ability to quote thoughts is a result both of the struc-

tures in which it occurs, and of its function. My sample contains only twoinstances where re quotes thoughts, as opposed to statements:

(53) Also his arrogance re: ‘‘I can be opener, wicketkeeper and captainat the same time, I’m wonderful aren’t I?’’ drives me mad.

(54) Your attitude re: ‘‘if you are not for us, then you must be against

us’’ is too simplistic a formulation.

In the first case, an author describes the general attitude of a cricket player

(who is not a participant in the newsgroup). The exaggeration and overalltone of the quotation make it fairly clear that the speaker in (53) is attri-

buting unvoiced thoughts to the cricket player, and a portion of a reply

message confirms that reading:

(55) I don’t think he has made any great claims to being able to captain,

keep, and open all at once. [. . .] I’ll give you that he hasn’t made a

lot of public noise saying ‘‘I can’t do all three’’

In the latter example, the speaker in (54) quoted another participant in the

discussion, whose actual words are presented in (56).

(56) You have been arguing in the past that Maoist METHODS are

WRONG. Now you have come to express pretty explicitly your

mind saying that the Maoist reasons are WRONG! This clearlyleaves us to believe that Government’s REASONS and METHODS

of killing innocent civilians in the name of containing Maoist

‘‘terror’’ is right!

8. Although quotation marks could potentially be used for this purpose, Internetusers do not use them consistently according to the standard rules of punctua-tion. Not only may a direct quotation have no quotation marks, as in (47), butan indirect quotation may be contained within quotation marks, as in (48).The use of quotation marks in (48) is not necessarily random or a simple


In this case, the quotation conveys the other speaker’s essential idea accu-

rately, but the words are too di¤erent to consider this even an extremely

flexible paraphrase (particularly given that the author of (54) had asmuch access to the exact words as we do), and the fact that the author

chose the noun attitude shows that he saw this quotation as representing

a mental state, not words.9

However, re’s ability to quote thoughts is restricted by the structures inwhich it is used. In adjoint complementation, the identity of the person

being quoted cannot be specified explicitly. The contexts in which re is

used make this construction work when actual statements are quoted,since speakers can either remember or look up the quotations, but it

would be challenging at best with quoted thoughts. Noun phrase com-

plementation is more open to quoting thoughts, but the structure is stilla complicating factor. When re introduces the complement of a noun

phrase, the noun of the noun phrase always characterizes the quotation

in some way. The most common noun is comment, seen in (32), (33),(47), and (48), but other nouns are also used, such as statement (5), argu-

ment (10), implication (15), etc.10 Choosing a noun to characterize quoted

speech is simple, because there are nouns that do no more than charac-terize the quotation as an utterance (or as a kind of utterance), and

calling the quotation an utterance is not controversial. In order to quote

thoughts, di¤erent nouns must be chosen, like arrogance and attitude in(53) and (54). Choosing a suitable noun to characterize thought requires

error; it may have been motivated by the fact that the quotation is approxi-mate rather than exact. Nevertheless, examples like these show that neitherthe presence nor the absence of quotation marks can be used to reliably pre-dict whether a quotation is direct or indirect.

9. The choice of noun, as it quite explicitly categorizes the quotation as ‘‘anattitude or a general feeling,’’ indicates that this example meets one ofTagliamonte & Hudson’s (1999: 156) criterions for quoted thought. Theirother test for distinguishing between quoted speech and quoted thought isinapplicable to re, since it states that a quotation should be taken to havequoted speech if it ‘‘advanced the story-line, or was part of an utterance towhich the protagonists responded’’ (1999: 156), and re is not used in tellingnarratives.

10. The relative frequency of comment and the other nouns is not the result of thesearch strings used. In these cases, a noun phrase before re was stipulated inthe search with a specific determiner (your, his, her) followed by a wildcard,allowing any noun to head the phrase. Accordingly, the range of nouns foundto be used with quotative re should be representative of the actual patternsof use.


more e¤ort, because the nouns to choose from have more specific mean-

ings than comment or statement, which are neutral in tone and can char-

acterize most quoted speech (unlike arrogance and attitude). Even thegeneric thought could well be problematic, since it would make explicit

the fact that the author is claiming to know another person’s thoughts.

The lack of a generic noun to serve as a default in quoting thoughts

reduces the likelihood that speakers will quote thoughts using re.Furthermore, quoting thoughts is extraneous to re’s usual function.11

In telling a narrative, including people’s internal reactions and thoughts

is valuable, and presenting those thoughts as dialogue is more vivid thandescribing them, or presenting them as indirect speech. In that context,

reporting thoughts and reporting speech are both ways of achieving the

goal: telling a story. But when the goal is to bring statements back intothe discourse in order to make clear that they are the object of the

response, it is necessary to keep the quotation similar enough to the origi-

nal that it is recognized as a previously made statement. Insofar as quotedthoughts di¤er from what another person actually said, they stand to con-

fuse the issue of what one is responding to, rather than clarifying it.

Thus, re is rarely used to quote thoughts, as a direct result of its func-tion and the structures in which it occurs. However, those structures are

themselves a result of re’s function, and its function is a result of the online

environment. Even though that environment has no direct impact on re’sability to quote thoughts, it indirectly caused that ability to be limited in

two separate ways.

6. Conclusion

Every aspect of quotative re has been shaped, either directly or indirectly,

by the medium in which it evolved. The driving force behind quotative re’s

development has been the need to remind the addressees of previous state-ments, before responding to those statements. Meeting that need became

re’s primary function, and re’s function in turn shaped its other charac-

teristics. Crucially, the need to bring statements back into the current

11. Note that in (53) and (54), the authors did not use re for its usual purpose. In(53), the author was quoting someone outside the discussion entirely. Re’s usein (54) is similar to its usual function, but the author of (54) had alreadyreproduced the previous message in a block quote, making it clear what hewas responding to. Re was not needed to do the same.


discourse is a direct result of the nature of e-mail and newsgroups. Con-

versations in e-mail and newsgroups do not occur in real-time, and the

delays between messages make it helpful to quote the previous message.Also as an e¤ect of the delays, messages are often much longer than turns

in a real-time conversation are. As a result, it is also useful to point out

exactly to which part of the previous message a sentence or paragraph is

responding. The fact that this is a written medium is also essential, sinceotherwise the delays between messages would not exist.

Of course, correspondence has always involved delays, and the delays

were significantly longer, before the Internet. However, there are two fac-tors that favor online correspondence giving rise to a quotative like re,

rather than o¿ine correspondence. First, the fact that online messages

are electronic makes extensive quoting of previous messages both practicaland easy, which encourages people to quote them more often. Second,

correspondence on newsgroups involves far more people per message

than o¿ine correspondence, allowing linguistic innovations to spreadmuch faster. These factors made it much easier for a quotative like re to

develop.

Thus, the nature of the medium shaped the uses of the emerging quota-tive re, which in turn influenced the structures it occurs in. Those struc-

tures in their own turn, combined with re’s typical function, form the basis

for re’s limited use for quoting thoughts. The written medium also enabledre to take both direct and indirect quotations as complements, with com-

paratively little confusion. The case of re demonstrates the importance of

the role that context of use plays in shaping change: due to the nature ofthe online environment, the preposition re grammaticalized into a quota-

tive complementizer that di¤ers from all other English quotatives in both

structure and function, and rather than competing with them, comple-ments them.

Appendix: Data collection

All of the data presented here was collected from Google’s Usenetarchives, which date back to 1981. Instances of quotative re can be di‰-

cult to locate, since a specialized use of re is present in the subject line of

every reply message (e.g., ‘‘Re: Tech support question’’), and since thepreposition re is used outside of the subject line, as well. Google unfortu-

nately does not provide a way to automatically limit a search to the bodies

of messages, but an adequate solution is to use searches that specify at


least one word before re. This technique screens out occurrences of re in

subject lines, since re occurs at the beginning of the subject line. Words

and phrases such as however, above, and your/his/her (noun) occur beforere with some frequency, and can be used in the search string to eliminate

instances of subject-line re.

Similarly, a higher proportion of hits with quotative re can be obtained

when the environment following re is specified. For instance, if the searchstring specifies a nominative pronoun after re (e.g., <re I>), the con-

stituent following re will be a clause, making that instance of re a comple-

mentizer. If the search string specified an accusative or genitive pronounafter re (<re me>, <re my>), on the other hand, the constituent following

re would be a noun phrase, and that instance of re would be a preposition.

(a) [. . .] Mary’s comment re: ‘‘I can’t do this anymore’’ brings back some

memories.

(b) Ok, so here is Michael Greenberg’s latest post re me, which trulyshows his colors [. . .]

(c) But the comment re my way of listening to Schoenberg implies I still

haven’t made myself clear.

The consequence of having to specify portions of re’s environment in this

way is that the more that is specified in the search, the less of the full range

of re’s uses will appear in the search results. Inevitably, some instances ofquotative re are filtered out along with the false positives. Fortunately,

though, it is still possible to obtain a wide variety of uses.

References

Bresnan, Joan W.1970 On Complementizers: Toward a Syntactic Theory of Comple-

ment Types. Foundations of Language 6: 297–321.Ferrara, Kathleen and Barbara Bell1995 Sociolinguistic Variation and Discourse Function of Constructed

Dialogue Introducers: The Case of beþ like. American Speech70(3): 265–290.

Marchant, J. R. V., and Joseph F. Charles, eds[1952] Cassell’s Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary. New York:

Funk & Wagnalls Company.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed1989 Prepared by J. A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner.

http://www.oed.com (accessed August, 2006).


Romaine, Suzanne, and Deborah Lange1991 The Use of Like as a Marker of Reported Speech and Thought:

A Case of Grammaticalization in Progress. American Speech66(3): 227–79.

Schourup, Lawrence1982 Quoting with Go ‘Say.’ American Speech 57(2): 148–149.

Singler, John Victor2001 Why You Can’t Do a VARBRUL Study of Quotatives and

What Such a Study Can Show Us. U. Penn Working Papers inLinguistics 7(3): 257–278.

Tagliamonte, Sali and Rachel Hudson1999 Be like et al. beyond America: The Quotative System in British

and Canadian youth. Journal of Sociolinguistics 3(2): 147–172.


Commentary on Kuzmack, How MediumShapes Language Development:The Emergence of Quotative Re Online

Anatoly Liberman

Stefanie Kuzmack’s paper is devoted to a small event in the developmentof English. Yet its material poses several general questions. I would like to

dwell on three of them.

Terms like Old English and Middle English come naturally to languagehistorians. Both periods lasted several centuries and ended long before we

were born. Even late, to say nothing of early, Modern English did not

begin yesterday. We accept the fact that numerous cataclysms happenedbetween the settlement of Britain and the days of King Alfred, between

the Norman Conquest and Chaucer’s epoch, and so on. We express little

surprise even at the relatively recent Great Vowel Shift, which gave thevocalic system of English its unique appearance. But how often do we

witness the birth of a new construction or a new phoneme? Kuzmack’s

case is rare: the object of her investigation is an event that occurred beforeour eyes, and we know both its environment and its causes. Yet there is a

good deal to be said about the phenomenon that attracted her attention.

Moreover, we realize that the history of English need not be about thepast. Synchrony, as Roman Jakobson never tired of repeating, is dynamic.

The distinction between oral and written language is so familiar as to

be trivial, and we forget that, although oral language is primary, writing

must not be identified with its well-edited transcript. No one has donemore for investigating the relations between oral speech and writing than

Josef Vachek (see his main works collected in two books: Vachek 1973

and Vachek 1989; both include exhaustive bibliography). In conversation,we lose no time reacting to what is said. The reward for the immediacy of

speech is its naturalness; the punishment is its evanescence. Written texts

allow people to preserve information ‘‘forever’’ and recall it at any timein the future. Therefore, in literate societies oral speech and writing are

equally important. The Internet and the chatroom have partly wiped out

the di¤erence between the two media. Emails fly back and forth with thespeed of remarks in a telephone exchange. When we speak, we may a¤ord

the luxury of using an imprecise word and shaky syntax (our inaccuracies

and incoherence will probably not be noticed). By contrast, good writing

is an art, but nowadays most people do not reread their emails and donot mind looking ‘‘spontaneous’’ in them. This type of writing is indeed

a transcript of oral speech – a situation unthinkable thirty years ago.

Kuzmack has found herself on a linguistic planet whose existence would

have surprised Vachek and his contemporaries.The main material of language historians has always been manuscripts

and books. Those are sources of the same order, for manuscripts were pro-

duced with care, could be very expensive, and, like books, were expectedto have a long lifespan. At one time, researchers examined private letters

(among other things) for the sake of spelling mistakes and the degree of

variation among the literate and semiliterate writers. They knew that theywere reading documents meant for one recipient. Today, as this article

shows, the contours of privacy have become blurred, and any number of

outsiders may claim our innermost thoughts: once the Internet gets hold ofour words, they end up in public domain. Anyone may put them to use,

and linguists who analyze the written data at their disposal are once

again invited to draw conclusions from the chaos that was typical of theprivate documents of the remote past. Phoneticians have been studying

the patterns of individual speech ever since phonetics emerged as a branch

of scholarship. Likewise, our knowledge of modern usage depends to aconsiderable extent on the study of recorded and overheard conversations.

Now written samples are being studied by comparable methods.

The paper opens with an introduction and an overview, looks at theemergence of quotative re, and goes on to examine the use of re in noun

phrase complementation (as opposed to verb complementation) and in

direct speech (as opposed to indirect speech). Then Kuzmack concentrateson the ability of re to introduce actual statements, as opposed to thoughts.

The paper ends with a conclusion, a note on data collection, a predictably

small bibliography, and notes. The most amazing note deals with the folketymology of re. It would seem that the origin of re is the least controver-

sial question one can imagine. Yet some people believe that re goes back

to the first syllable of reply, response, or regarding. This says somethingabout the level of our education.

Like every other language phenomenon of this type, quotative re has its

syntax and distribution; both have been described in the paper. Above,I have referred to a predictably small bibliography. The phenomenon in

question has not existed long enough to become a popular subject of

research, but Kuzmack had a few predecessors. The time-honored quota-


tive verb has been say (–he says . . . –I says, etc.). Then go appeared

(–he goes, –she goes) and like (She like: ‘‘No, that’s not true’’). Neither go

nor like will win our admiration, but they bloom on the rich garbage oflanguage creativity indi¤erent to our praise and disdainful of our dis-

approval. Four articles in Kuzmack’s bibliography are devoted to them;

one of them deals with re, the Internet counterpart of like and go. The

computer changed our life in many unpredictable ways. It is no wonderthat language, which reflects everything in human experience, has reacted

to this momentous change. We now have an addition to the house of gen-

eral and, as it turns out, historical linguistics, namely, ‘‘Language and theInternet.’’ Welcome to the housewarming party.

References

Vachek, Josef1973 Written Language: General Problems and Problems of English.

Janua Linguarum. Series critica 14. The Hague [and] Paris:Mouton.

Vachek, Josef1989 Written Language Revisited. Selected, edited and introduced

by Philip A. Luelsdor¤. Amsterdam [and] Philadelphia: JohnBenjamins.

Commentary on Kuzmack 313

Response to Commentary by Liberman

Stefanie Kuzmack

As Liberman says, the Internet has brought written language closer tospoken language. In chatrooms and in text messaging, writing has even

become a practical means of real-time communication. And yet, as the

case of re shows, the fact that this is written language still has an impacton the utterances that are produced. Much of online communication is

still asynchronous, and that fact was crucial to re’s development. If

threaded discussions were not asynchronous, and did not involve lengthy

delays, re would never have been needed to refresh participants’ memoriesof what had been said in the last turn.

Still, these discussions do also possess some characteristics of oral com-

munication. Participants in these conversations could briefly cite previousmessages instead of quoting from them as they do (often extensively), and

could force each other to check previous messages for context. This is

particularly noticeable since the previous messages are easily accessed; itis easier to locate an earlier message in a thread than it is to follow up on

a citation in an academic work. However, since following up on citations

is not a normal part of conversation, participants provide the context thatthe addressees need. Thus, the oral qualities of Internet language are

worth taking note of, as Liberman does, although it is still a written

register.The fact that many people believe that re has its origins in the first

syllable of reply, response, or regarding may in part reflect changes in edu-

cation, particularly with respect to the role of Latin. However, it may alsobe due to trends in the use of Latin words in English, and in the use of

abbreviation. Latin words and phrases in general are less commonly used

than they once were (although that in itself may also be a result of changesin education). Re is still used to mark the subject in memoranda, but the

parallel online use of re is distinctly di¤erent, and people who are not

familiar with re could overlook the connection. At the same time, newabbreviations are extremely common, especially online. Even speakers

who know the Latin might conclude that re is a new abbreviation, given

that its use in subject lines is so di¤erent from previous uses.

This paper was devoted specifically to re, but as Liberman noted, the

development of new quotatives is ongoing. Re may be the only currently

used quotative that developed in a written context, but it is not thefirst quotative to do so. Moore (2006) discusses a quotative use of Latin

videlicet (abbreviated viz.) that developed in legal documents in Early

Modern English. The quotative uses of re and videlicet have somewhat

similar origins: they both developed in the written medium and in specificgenres, and more superficially, both came from Latin. However, the quo-

tative videlicet was essentially restricted to the legal register, and that use

has disappeared (2006: 257). Re may share the same fate, since it tooappears to be confined to a single genre, but the number of participants

in the online register provides hope that even if it does not expand to other

contexts, re’s quotative use may stabilize.

Reference

Moore, Colette2006 The Use of Videlicet in Early Modern Slander Depositions: A

Case of Genre-specific Grammaticalization. Journal of HistoricalPragmatics 7: 245–263.

Response to Commentary by Liberman 315

Author Index

Listings do not include authors cited for their linguistic usage or brief exemplarycitations of language.

Adams, Valerie 111–112, 138Aitchison, Jean 187Albright, Adam 101–102, 106, 108Allen, Cynthia 43, 85Arnon, Inbal 53Arono¤, Mark 117Ayres, Alfred 143–145, 147–148, 150,152

Baker, Peter 67Baker, Robert 143–145, 149Bakhtin, Mikhail 15Ball, Catherine 17Barlow, Michael 82Barnhart, Robert 171Bassett, Molly 111Bauer, Laurie 28, 113, 115Beecher, Henry 65Bell, Allan 246Bennett, J. A. W. 245Benskin, Michael 270, 278, 289Benveniste, Emile 34Berg, Thomas 12Bernstein, Theodore 143–144, 149,159

Biber, Douglas 21, 61, 63, 232–233Biese, Y. M. 28Blake, Norman 196Bloomfield, Leonard 111Bo¤ey, Julia 262Bopp, Franz 170Borer, Hagit 119Bosworth, Joseph 166Braaten, B. 208Bradley, Henry 167, 169, 171Branchaw, Sherrylyn 3, 4, 8, 87–109,288–292

Bresnan, Joan 294

Brians, Paul 143–144Brinton, Laurel 16Buchstaller, Isabelle 60Burchfield, Robert 143–144, 169, 173Burnley, David 257, 266–268Burzio, Luigi 124Butler, Christopher 13Buyssens, Eric 174Bybee, Joan 66, 82, 91–92, 101, 106,

108

Campbell, Lyle 53Capelli, C. 209–210, 226Carlson, Lauri 17, 21Casaubon, Meric 162Chambers, J. K. 61Chapman, Don 5, 7, 141–159, 202–

206Charles, Joseph 295Cherewatuk, Karen 248–249Chomsky, Noam 12, 137Chung, Sandra 40Cienki, Alan 68Clark, Herbert 12Coleridge, Samuel 164Collins, Peter 17Cooper, Helen 244, 258Copperud, Roy 143–144Coseriu, Eugenio 232Couper-Kuhlen, Elizabeth 16Coventry, Kenny 68Craigie, William 169Croft, William 13, 82Crystal, David 202Culicover, Peter 37, 40–41, 51Culpeper, Jonathan 61–62Cunningham, I. C. 267Cuyckens, Hubert 12, 68, 83

Dal, Ingrid 208, 212, 220Dalton-Pu¤er, Christiane 125, 127–128

Dasher, Richard 13, 204Delin, Judy 17den Diken, Marcel 17Denison, David 213–214, 227, 229De Smet, Hendrik 82Detges, Ulrich 11, 13–14, 16Diefenbach, Lorenz 166Dirven, Rene 12Dolezal, Frederic 164, 171Downes, William 217Downing, Pamela 138Doyle, A. I. 291Drinka, Bridget 240, 243Du Bois, John 12–13Ducrot, Oswald 14, 34

Eckert, Penelope 233–234, 250Eitler, Tamas 246Ekwall, Eilert 188Ellegard, Alvar 213–214, 217–220,227–229

Ellis, Alexander 217, 227Elman, J. L. 108Ettmuller, Ludovicus 166Evans, Vivian 67–68

Feist, Sigmund 168, 171Fennell, Barbara 188Field, Frederic 244–245Fiengo, Robert 40Fillmore, Charles 71, 234Filppula, Markku 4, 7, 17, 105–109,207–230

Finnegan, Edward 62Fischer, Olga 11, 228–229Fitzmaurice, Susan 61Flemming, Edward 102Ford, Cecilia 16Fowler, H. W. 143–144, 152, 159Freeman, Edward 208, 226

Galloway, Andrew 244–246, 258

Garner, Bryan 145–152, 158Geckeler, Horst 232Genee, Inge 208, 212–213, 221Gergel, Remus 49German, Gary 212Gerritsen, Marinel 12Geurts, Bart 15Ginzburg, Jonathan 37, 40–41, 51Givon, Talmy 15, 62Goldberg, Adele 82Grice, H. Paul 12Grimm, Jacob 166, 170, 184Grimshaw, Jane 117–118, 122, 137

Haiman, John 12Hamerow, Helena 209Hankamer, Jorge 37, 40, 48Hanna, Ralph 265, 268Hardt, Daniel 37Hare, M. 108Harke, Heinrich 209, 226Harma, Juhani 15Harris, Alice 52Haspelmath, Martin 13, 211–212Hayes, Bruce 101–102, 106, 108Helquist, Elof 187Helvigius, Andrae 165–166Hering, Jurgen 6, 187–206Hickey, Raymond 208, 226Higgins, Francis 16–17Higham, Nick 209, 226Hoad, T. F. 171Hodgson, William 143Hofmeister, Philip 53Holquist, Michael 15Holthausen, Ferdinand 71, 75Hopper, Paul 13, 16, 31, 66Horn, Laurence 34Huddleston, Rodney 29–31, 213Hudson, Rachel 306

Ihalainen, Ossi 218Ihre, Johan 166

Jackendo¤, Ray 37, 40–41, 51–52

318 Author Index

Jackson, H. J. 164Jager, Andreas 229Jamobson, Roman 311Jesperson, Otto 28–29, 207, 211,226

Johnson, Edward 164Jordan, Richard 279Joseph, Brian 13Junius, Franciscus 161, 163, 165, 167,171

Kageyama, Taro 116Kaltschmidt, Jakob 167Kastovsky, Dieter 116–117, 119, 121,127–128, 136, 232

Kaufman, Terrence 210–211Kehler, Andrew 37, 40, 51Keller, Rudi 12Keller, W. 207, 226Kemmer, Suzanne 82Kemmerer, David 68Kempson, Ruth 11Kennedy, Arthur 163Kiliaen, Cornelius 161, 166Kilpio, Matti 39Kim, Kyu-Hyun 17Kiparsky, Paul 12Kiparsky, Valentin 211Kitigawa, Yoshihisha 40Klein, Ernst 170–171Klemola, Juhani 4, 7, 105–109, 207–230

Kluge, Friedrich 167–168, 170, 174Knobloch, Johan 174Koch, Peter 233, 242, 258Kohnen, Thomas 233Koma, Osamu 119Konig, Ekkehard 13, 15, 31, 212Korhonen, Jarmo 15Kortmann, Bernd 16Krygier, Marcin 81, 87–88, 92–94, 98,100, 106

Kuzmack, Stephanie 1, 5, 8, 156–159,293–315

Kyto, Merja 61–62

Labov, William 61, 219, 231–233,249, 262

Laftman, Emil 173–174, 184Laing, Jennifer 209, 226Laing, Lloyd 209, 226Laing, Margaret 270, 289Lambrecht, Knud 17Langacker, Ronald 12, 38, 61, 82Lange, Deborah 293Lasnik, Howard 39Lass, Roger 91, 94Leech, Geo¤rey 15Lehmann, Christian 13, 18Leibnitz, Gottfried 163, 165Leith, Dick 93–94Lemon, G. W. 166Levinson, Stephen 68Lewis, Henry 215Liberman, Anatoly 1, 6, 9, 161–186,

311–315Lieber, Rochelle 111, 113Lightfoot, David 12, 38Locke, John 163Luraghi, Silvia 67–69Lutz, Angelika 208, 212Lynch, Jack 143–144Lyons, John 15, 187, 194, 198

MacDonald, Fiona 231Mair, Christian 62Mann, William 16Marchand, Hans 28, 111, 115–116,

136Marchant, J. R. V. 295Matzner, Eduard 166May, Robert 40McMahon, April 13McNeill, George 282McWhorter, John 208, 211, 213, 220–

221, 226, 228Merchant, Jason 39–41, 51–53, 55Messing, Gordon 174Meurman-Solin, Anneli 219Milroy, James 13, 61Milroy, Lesley 233–234, 250

Author Index 319

Minkova, Donka 93, 103Minsheu, John 6, 161–163, 165, 167Mittendorf, Ingo 208Moder, Carol 101Mooney, Linne 291Moore, Colette 315Mosse, Fernand 273, 279Muller, Eduard 167Murray, James 169, 171Mustanoja, Tauno 129, 136, 219, 227

Nagano, Akiko 2, 4–5, 28–35, 111–139

Nagle, Stephen 52Nakau, Minoru 31Nevalainen, Terttu 16, 187, 202, 204,231–233, 262

Nunberg, Geo¤rey 142Nølke, Henning 15Nykiel, Joanna 2–3, 37–66, 81–86

Oberlander, Jon 17Oesterreicher, Wulf 233, 242, 258Ohler, Norbert 231Onions, Charles 169Oppenheimer, Stephen 209–210, 226Oshita, Hiroyuki 122

Panther, Klaus-Uwe 11–12Parkes, Malcolm 268, 291Partridge, Eric 170–171Patten, Amanda 17Paulasto, Heli 212Pearsall, Derek 265, 267Pedersen, Holger 215Pennanen, Esko 28Perlmutter, David 124Pesetsky, David 53Peters, Pam 142, 158Pitkanen, Heli 208Pfei¤er, Wolfgang 187Plag, Ingo 28Plato 161Poppe, Erich 208, 212Poussa, Patricia 208, 221, 226

Poutsma, Henry 16Preusler, Walther 208, 215–216, 220–

221, 226–227Prince, Ellen 17Pullum, Geo¤rey 29–31, 48, 53Putter, Ad 267

Quirk, Randolph 30, 87, 108

Radden, Gunter 11–12Rask, Rasmus 170, 184Raumolin-Brunberg, Helena 61, 231–

233Renouf, Antoinette 113Reynolds, Susan 191Richardson, Charles 165Rissanen, Matti 62Roeper, Thomas 112, 137Romaine, Suzanne 61, 231, 233, 293Room, Adrian 188, 192Ross, John 37–38, 51, 55Rothwell, William 236, 257Roulet, Eddy 14Rudanko, Juhani 68Runde, Emily 8, 257–292Rutherford, William 29, 31Ryder, Mary Ellen 138

Sag, Ivan 37, 40–41, 51, 53Sakahara, Shigeru 31Sandved, Arthur 269Samuels, M. L. 8, 268, 276, 289Schendl, Herbert 234, 236, 238, 257Schourup, Lawrence 304Schwenck, Konrad 167Schwenter, Scott 11, 13–16, 21Segen, Bazyl 67Seibicke, Wilfried 174Selkirk, Elizabeth 112Shimada, Masaharu 28Shizawa, Takashi 31Shonk, Timothy 268Short, Michael 15Siegel, Mu¤y 112Sievers, Eduard 166

320 Author Index

Sihler, A. L. 134, 136Skeat, Walter 161, 167–171,183

Skinner, Stephen 163, 165, 167Slack, Jon 68Slobin, Dan 12Smith, A. H. 187–188Snyder, William 137Sommer, Wililam 166Sørensen, Knud 240, 243Spurlock, Kurt 111Stainton, Robert 37, 40–41, 48, 51–53Stein, Dieter 12Stenton, Doris 193Stokes, Myra 267Strang, Barbara 207Stratmann, Francis 166–167Stubbs, Michael 35Stubbs, William 208, 226Svensson, Ann Marie 6–7, 183–206Sweetser, Eve 29, 31Sykes, Bryan 210, 226Szemerenyi, Oswald 134

Taavitsainen, Irma 15, 61, 233, 241–242

Tacho, Elizabeth 7–8, 226–264Tagliamonte, Sali 306Tajima, Matsuji 116Taylor, John 12Taylor, Joseph 175Thomason, Olga 3–5, 69–86, 132–139Thomason, Sarah 210–211Thompson, Sandra 15–16Timberlake, Alan 38, 61Timberlake, Henry 231Tolkien, J. R. R. 208, 212

Tooke, Horne 163–164, 167Tottie, Gunnel 15Traugott, Elizabeth 2–3, 11–36, 60–

66, 83, 111, 204Tristram, Hildegard 208, 212, 221Trousdale, Graeme 83Tyler, Andrea 67–68

Vachek, Josef 311van der Auwera, Johan 208, 212–213,

221van der Wur¤, Wim 228–229Van der Zee, Emile 68Vennemann, Theo 208, 212Verdon, Jean 231Vezzosi, Letizia 212Vidrine, Rachel 143–144Visser, Gerald 208Vogel, Bertram 282, 290

Wagner, Heinrich 221Waksler, Rachelle 60Waltereit, Richard 11, 13–14, 16Ward, Gregory 51Webber, Bonnie 37Webster, Noah 165, 167Wedgwood, Hensleigh 167–169, 171Weekley, Ernest 169–171, 175Whitelock, Dorothy 190–191, 197Wiggins, Alison 266–268Williams, Edwin 40Wilson, Kenneth 143–144

Yonekura, Hiroshi 121Young, Wendy 142

Zwicky, Arnold 60

Author Index 321

Subject Index

ablative 295ablaut 3–4, 87, 89, 91–92, 96, 98, 100,102, 105, 108, 174

accommodation 246acculturation 7, 209, 226–227accusative 3, 69–71, 73, 76, 81–83, 85,309

ad ‘to’ 236adjoint complementation 9, 294, 296,299–300, 306

adripare 236adventus Saxonum 208, 210, 226adverbial clauses 30–31adversatives 15agentive noun su‰xes 127ALL-cleft 2, 17, 19American English 107, 109analogy 93, 101–102, 106–108, 147anaphor(a) 3, 37–38, 40, 52, 65Anglo Norman Dictionary (AND)234, 236

Anglo-Norman 7, 232, 236, 243–245,249, 257, 259–260, 271

Anglo-Saxons 7, 100, 166, 207–210,226, 236, 258, 271

antecedent structure 37, 47, 51–52antonymy 232arbitrary justification 5, 146–148, 154,157

archaeological evidence 7, 208–209,221, 226

areal-typological evidence 7, 208,211–213, 221, 227

argument structure 4, 39, 41, 51, 117–119, 122–124, 134, 136

ariven/arrive 231arrival 236arriver 234asynchronous correspondence 9, 314Auchinleck Manuscript 8, 265, 266–268, 271, 276, 278, 283, 288, 291–292

audience design 246authorship 259, 279, 282Avestan 75

bad data problem 8, 262Bare Argument Ellipsis 53–54bigot 168bilingualism 7, 210, 226biography 233, 242, 261Blanchardyn and Eglantine 242, 246,261

block quote (re) 296–300, 303blow 107borough/burh 6, 188, 190–194, 198,206

borrowing 7, 174, 187, 194, 215, 219,227–228, 232, 234, 236, 241, 249,257–258

bow 94, 96Breton 215British English 107Britons 7, 207, 209–210, 226Brythonic languages 208, 215, 221

Canon/canonical 141–143, 149, 153–154, 156, 158

Canterbury Tales 195, 242case-assigner 137causative do 213–214, 227ceaster 188Celtic 7, 166, 187, 207–215, 220–221,226–228

change from above 219, 249change, diachronic 2–5, 12, 16, 28, 31,42, 67, 86, 105, 129, 158, 164, 234,258

chanson de geste 244chide 167chilvaric literature 248–249chronicle 188, 192, 242–245, 247–250,258–259, 261

city 190, 194–195, 198, 203–204

clause 19, 30–31, 62–63, 76, 150, 294,299, 302–303, 309

cockney 162cocktail 172–175collocation 71, 78, 204comment 301–302, 304, 306–307,309

complex event nominals 117compounding 4–5, 111–116, 122–125,128, 132–134, 136–138, 271, 273

concessives 2, 15Confessio Amantis 242conservatism 157constituent transparency 83contact 7, 208, 210–211, 220–221, 228containment 69, 70, 82context 2, 7, 14–21, 28–31, 34–35, 37,41, 202–204, 206, 246, 304, 308,314–315

conversation 16–17, 242, 293, 308,311, 314

conversion nominals 118–119, 121,125, 133, 137

conversion 2, 28–29, 34–35, 113, 115–116, 118–119, 121–122, 124–125,132–133, 137

copying practice(s) 266, 291Cornish 215corpora 8, 265, 283–284, 290Corpus of Middle English Prose andVerse (CME) 235, 241, 259, 261

Corpus of Older Scots 219correspondence 43, 46, 49, 243, 258,261–262, 308

Cratyllus 161

dative case 69–71, 73–75, 81–83, 85daughter 176Delta Scribe 291demographic evidence 7, 208–210,221

Denmark 209denominal 91, 236dental 91, 100, 109departure 234

derivational a‰x 1, 4–5, 111–112,115–117, 119, 121–122, 125–129,135–137

deverbal compound nouns 113, 124,132

dialect 106, 214, 217–220, 227, 291dialogicity 2, 11, 14–21, 28–31, 34–35dialogue 17, 29, 45–46, 61, 307Dictionary of Old English Corpus 88,

105Dictionnaire du Moyen Francais

(DMF) 234dig 91, 102direct speech 303–304, 312direction(al(ity)) 3, 67, 69–78, 81–83,

85–86discourse 1, 9, 13–15, 17, 21, 37, 41,

45, 48, 52–55, 62, 66, 149, 293, 303,307–308

dive 87, 94, 96document 8, 211, 215, 217–218, 220,

242, 312, 315donor language 249drag 92, 107draw 95, 107Dutch 163, 165, 176, 178, 187, 213

Early Middle English 4, 91–92, 100,188, 190, 213, 262

Early Modern English 7, 37, 62, 102,218–219, 235, 260, 315

Early Old English 187East Midland 276, 279economic change 6, 187–188, 198, 206Edward I 193Edward IV 248electronic edition 268electronic messages 9, 293, 295–296ellipsis 37, 39, 41, 44, 65e-mail 9, 297, 308-ende 136, 269Epea pteroenta 164epistemic modality 13, 15, 30–31etan/aet 86, 98ethnic cleansing 209, 226

Subject Index 323

etiquette rules 5, 142, 156etymological dictionary 6, 163–178,183–186

etymology 1, 6, 9, 146, 150, 154, 157,159, 161–179, 183–186, 235–236,257, 295, 312

event nominals 4, 117–118, 121–122,124, 133–134, 137

exemplar 82, 266–267, 270, 275, 278–280, 282, 288–289

extra-linguistic evidence 208–221,226–228

face-to-face interaction 233–234,250

false positives 296, 309fare 94–95fiction 46–50, 61–62, 242field/ feld 196, 197final velar 91, 108Finnish 166–167, 178, 211First Projection Principle 112–113First Sister Principle 112–113flow 96, 97focus particle 15, 30folk etymology 9, 295, 312four principal parts 2, 88, 89free variation 73, 75, 78French 7, 13–14, 19, 34, 100, 168–169, 172–174, 178, 184, 194, 198,228–229, 236, 240, 242–246, 249,258–260, 271–273

frequency study 235, 241, 244–245,261

functional pull 238, 257

galoot 176gender variation 232genitive case 73, 133, 309genre 21, 45–46, 50, 61–63, 65, 175,227, 232–233, 240, 258–259, 265,315

gentry 244, 248–249geographical distribution 214, 216–219, 227

German 38–39, 161–162, 164–167,176, 178, 187, 212–213

Germanic 6–7, 70, 125, 127, 165–166,169, 175–176, 178, 184, 186–188,206–207, 212–213

gerundive su‰x 128–129, 137Gloucestershire 276god 165, 170Gothic 161, 166, 169, 171, 175, 178Gothic 161, 166, 169, 171, 175grammar 1, 100, 207–208, 211, 226grammaticalization 13–14, 16, 18, 30–

31, 293, 297Great Britain 249Greek 161–163, 166, 172, 178Grice’s Maxims 12grow 96–97

hand 166, 171, 279–282have 211, 273–275, 291Hebrew 161–162, 166Helsinki Corpus of English Texts

(HC) 60, 233, 235, 239–242, 258Hittite 172, 178honor 35, 271–273Horn Childe & Maiden Rimnild 8, 279,

281–283, 290host 271–273hostility 74–78how-mismatch 41, 43–44, 47–49, 62h-retention 270–272, 274–275hyponomy 232

Icelandic 161, 166, 178, 212iconicity 11–12i-mutation 236indirect speech 15, 303–304, 307, 312Indo-European 6, 70–71, 85, 134–136,

162, 166, 169, 174, 176–178, 184,186, 213

informative wh-phrases 53-ing 4–5, 111–116, 118–129, 132–138initial <h> 8, 270–271, 273, 275, 283interaction 12–16, 21, 28, 32, 208,

232–234, 250

324 Subject Index

internal possessor construction 208,212, 220

Internet 293, 295–297, 305, 308, 311–314

Ireland 209–210, 213, 263Isle of Man 210it 273–275Italian 13, 176, 178IT-cleft 17–18, 212, 220, 226

King Horn 238, 261

lad 162land 8, 236, 249, 279–282, 291landen 238, 257Langtoft’s Chronicle 245, 246–247,258–259, 261–262

language acquisition 12language change 2, 8, 12–13, 232, 240,293, 295

language development 67, 73language internal shift 233, 236Late Latin 236Late Middle English 43, 44, 47, 62,194–196, 243, 248, 288

Late Modern English 37Late Old English vowels 279Late Old English 52, 213Latin 9, 19, 34, 47, 76, 161–163, 165,169, 172, 178, 188, 236, 240, 242,244–246, 249, 258, 260, 293, 295–296, 314–315

Layamon’s Brut 188, 240, 245, 258, 261lenden 8, 232, 234, 236–238, 241, 243,245–249, 257–258, 260, 263

let 99, 100letters 219, 233, 242, 248, 258–259,261–262, 264, 312

lexeme 187, 194, 232, 234, 236–238,243, 245, 248–249

lexical borrowing 234lexical change 7, 233–234, 250lexical gap 198, 203lexical practice(s) 267–268, 291lexical restructuring 258

lexicography 142, 161–162, 164–165,168, 171

lexicon 1, 5–9, 101, 194, 206, 231,234, 236, 271

licensing context 37, 41linguistic aspect 236Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaevel

English (LALME) 8, 267–268, 273,276, 278–279, 283, 288–289, 291

linguistic profile(s) 8, 267, 269, 291liquid-consonant cluster 98Lithuanian 178loanword 7, 169, 188, 194, 198, 207,

211, 228, 229, 234, 236, 237, 239,240, 241, 243–246, 248, 249, 257,261, 262

location 6, 53–54, 69, 71–78, 81–83,85–86

location-to-direction semantic devel-opment 71, 75

Logic 146, 148–149, 154, 156–157London 192, 194, 219, 265, 268, 269,

276, 279, 283, 290

man 163, 165, 170, 175Mannyng’s Chronicle 258–259, 262manuscript miscellanies 291matrix clause 294, 299, 303meaning mappings 125, 127meaning variation 234, 247medieval England 236, 258medium-distinction 233memoranda 9, 293, 295–296, 314merchant 231, 244, 249merger 40–44, 46–48, 50, 60–62, 65Merlin 246metalinguistic negation 34meter 260, 262, 270, 273Middle Breton 215Middle Cornish 215Middle English Dictionary (MED)

197, 234Middle English 4, 6–8, 37, 61–62, 65,

67, 87, 91–92, 94–95, 100, 102–103,107, 111, 164, 166, 177, 184, 187–188,

Subject Index 325

190, 195–197, 202, 206, 213–214,218–219, 228–229, 231–232, 235,240–241, 243, 248–249, 258, 261–262, 266, 271, 279, 283, 288, 291, 311

Middle English 43, 45, 61–62, 65, 67,87, 91–92, 95, 100, 102–103, 107,111, 115–116, 119–128, 136, 166,184, 188, 190, 194, 196–197, 202,206, 213–214, 219, 228–229, 231–232, 240–241, 243, 248–249, 258,261–262, 266, 271–275, 277–283,286–287, 289, 291

Middle High German 176Middle Persian 211Middle Scots 219Middle Welsh 215Midlands 276, 278–279mobility 231Modern English 3, 4, 7, 37, 62, 87, 89,92, 95, 102, 105, 108, 163, 169, 183,188, 190, 198, 206, 218–219, 235,238, 260, 311, 315

Moderna sprak 173monologicity 2, 15Moroccan Arabic 211morphological restriction 115Morte d’Arthur 242, 246–248, 261motivation 11–14, 16, 38, 228multiple analogy 101, 106–108

naming su‰x 117, 119, 127–129, 134,136

naming 4, 116–117, 119, 121–122,125, 127–129, 134, 136–138

narrative 45, 202, 303, 307negation 15, 20, 34, 213Neogrammarians 166-ness 117, 127newfangled words 146–147, 157, 159N-N compounding 123–125, 137–138nominal gerund 129nominalization 4, 112–113, 117–119,122, 124–128, 133, 136–137

non-linguistic antecedent 48non-productive a‰xes 115

non-standard dialect 4, 105Norman French speakers 100Norse 91, 169North Germany 209Northern dialect 8, 219, 279, 282–283,

290Norway 209noun phrase 9, 294, 296, 300–301,

303, 306, 309, 312Null Complement Anaphora

(NCA) 40

object compounding 113Of Arthour & of Merlin 281Old English 3–5, 17, 28, 37, 38, 60,

62, 65, 67–71, 73, 75–76, 79, 81, 83,85–89, 91–92, 94–95, 101–102, 105,107, 111, 133, 166, 187–188, 190–191, 197–198, 206, 210, 213, 236,257, 279, 311

Old English 3–5, 17, 28, 38, 42, 60,62, 65, 67–71, 73, 75–76, 79, 83, 85–86, 87–89, 91–92, 94–96, 98, 101–102, 107, 111, 115–116, 119–125,127–128, 133, 136–137, 166, 187–188, 190–191, 197–198, 206, 212–213, 236–237, 257, 271, 279

Old French 236, 257Old French-English Dictionary 234Old Icelandic 166, 178Old Irish 178Old Norse 98, 169old 276–279ongean 3, 67, 70, 75, 77–78, 81online medium 9, 293–295, 303oral, orality 228, 233, 242, 258orthographic practice(s) 265, 267–271,

275–276, 279, 282–283, 289–291Oxford Dictionary of English

Etymology 171Oxford English Dictionary (OED)

5–6, 34, 47, 94, 107, 162, 167, 169,172–175, 178, 187, 190–191, 197,202, 234–237, 257, 295

Oxford Genetic Atlas Project 210

326 Subject Index

participles 89, 92, 95, 100, 105–106,134, 136, 164, 271

Paston family 231, 243, 248–250perceptual distinctness 100periphrastic do 7, 208, 211–221,226–229

phonology 102, 151, 207–208, 210–211, 217

Phrygian 161placename 194Polish 178political change 6, 188, 198, 206Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden 245–247, 258, 259

polysemy 187, 232pre-deletion structure 38, 40, 47, 51,55

preposition stranding 39, 55, 212preposition 2–3, 9, 39, 42, 50–52, 55,67–68, 70–71, 73–79, 81–83, 85, 88,148, 156, 212, 236, 293–296, 299–302, 308–309

prepositional phrase 2, 67–73, 75–79,83, 86, 302

prescription 5, 141–154, 156–159Present-Day English 18, 28, 37, 47–48, 67, 81, 105, 111–116, 118–119,121–125, 127, 133–134, 136–138,213, 272–275, 277–278, 280–282,286–287

preterite 4, 87, 89, 91–92, 94–96, 98–102, 105–107, 109

private correspondance 242–243, 246,258, 261–262, 312

productivity 28, 54, 76, 101, 113, 116,127–128, 132

progressive 207–208, 212, 226pronominal deixis 304proximity 69, 72–76, 79, 86pseudo-cleft 18, 20, 28

qualitative research 2, 158–159, 232quantitative research 1, 2, 7, 9, 158,232, 235, 238, 240, 261

quotative all 304

quotative complementizer 9, 293–297,299, 301–303, 308

quotative go 304quotative like 303–304quotative re 9, 293–309, 311–312quotative verb 302

re 1, 9, 293–311, 313–315read 99, 100, 102recategorization 4, 115–117, 119, 122,

127–129, 137Recency Illusion 2, 60Redundancy 149–150, 157, 296regarding 9, 293, 296, 312, 314Renaissance 231reply 295–296, 305, 308, 312, 314res 9, 295response 296, 312, 314result nominals 4–5, 117–119, 121–

122, 124–125, 133–134, 136–137retort 2, 29, 34rhyme 108, 260, 262, 270, 276, 281–

283ripa ‘shore’ 236Romance su‰xes 125, 127–128romance 189, 242–246, 248–250, 258–

259, 261, 265root 3, 87, 90–93, 96, 98, 100, 101,

105–106Russian 178, 211

Sanskrit 177, 178say 302–303Scandinavian 162, 175Scotland 210–211, 268, 282scribal practice(s) 8, 266–268, 270–

271, 283, 291–292semantic bleaching 9, 294semantic change 7, 13, 82, 125, 127,

187–188, 198, 202–204, 206, 234,257

semantic field 7, 194, 196semantic structure 68semantically empty auxiliary 214semantics of case 69

Subject Index 327

semasiological account 237–239, 241,248

Semitic 162shit 90, 94, 101, 106Sir Tristrem 8situational antecedent 37situational context 41, 53sluicing 2, 37–48, 50–55, 60–63, 65sneak 92, 107social change 6, 188, 198, 204, 206,233

social network 233, 250sociolinguistic variation 61, 93sociolinguistics 1, 9Socrates 161Somerset 216southern forms 219, 282–283, 290Spanish 14–15, 178, 211spatial meaning 68, 73speak 34, 93–94, 302, 311speech act 2, 30–31, 34speech community/-ies 234, 250spelling repertoire 270, 275spit 101, 106, 108spoken language 9, 41, 61, 232, 258,271, 299, 304–305, 314

sprouting 41–52, 60–62, 65S-shaped curve 240stable variation 3, 61–62stance 11standard English 228, 268step 98, 99, 132stick 91Stonor family 243, 248, 258, 262strike 90–91, 102–103stripping 53strong verb inflection 4, 87–103, 105–109

strumpet 162stubborn 161–162subject compounding 4–5, 111–116,122–125, 128, 133, 136–138

subject line 296, 308–309substrate 211superlative 2, 29–30, 34

supralocal change 234surface anaphor 2, 3, 37, 38, 40, 48,

52, 65Survey of English Dialects 216Swedish 166, 187syntax 1–3, 11, 40–42, 47, 62, 115–

117, 132, 207–208, 210, 219, 312synthetic compounds 4, 111

talk 302text type 7–8, 41, 45, 46, 48–50, 60,

227, 232, 233, 241–244, 246, 248,249, 256, 258, 261–262

that-deletion 62The American Heritage Dictionary of

the English Language 143–144, 174The Century 162The New Oxford American Dictionary

175theory of constrained selection 270,

289threaded discussions 9, 293, 314throw 96, 97to# 3, 67, 69–75, 78–79, 81–82, 85togean 3, 67, 70, 77–79, 81token frequency 3, 4, 87–89, 91, 94,

96, 98, 99–102, 105, 165, 235, 240,244, 245, 248, 261, 262

town/tun 6, 7, 187–199Transactions of the Philological

Society 167translation 76, 190–191, 194, 197–

198, 240, 242–247, 249, 258–261transposition 117travelogue 233, 242, 246, 262, 264turn-taking 11, 13, 15–16, 34type frequency 3, 4, 87, 89, 90–92,

94–96, 98–102, 105, 106Type II (LALME) 8, 268, 269, 275–

279, 283, 289Type III (LALME) 8, 268, 269, 275–

279, 283, 289

unaccusative verbs 124under the counter change 234

328 Subject Index

usage dictionaries 145usage rules 5, 142, 156usage-based theory 29, 82Usenet 293, 296, 308utterance 2, 15, 28–30, 34, 304, 306,314,

variation in form 105, 239variation in meaning 234, 239, 248verb complementation 302–303, 312verb forms 19, 28–29, 129Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) 48videlicet 315village 190–191, 195vowel alternation 113vowel distinctness 92, 98–100

wake 93–95Wales 210, 213, 216

wear 93weave 93, 98Welsh 212, 215–216, 220West Germanic 175WH-cleft 2, 17wh-movement 39wife 170, 175Wiltshire 216wiþ 3, 67, 70, 73–79, 81, 85word formation 28–29, 111, 113, 238,

257world 269, 277–279wreak 92–94write 302

Year’s Work 163yeoman 176

zero forms 28, 62, 119

Subject Index 329

Variation and Change in English Grammar and Lexicon - Contemporary Approaches (Eds. R.a.cloutier&a M...

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