Middle English , Old French , argument structure , Psych verbs , Reflexives
Abstract:
This article discusses the relation between impersonal constructions and the reflexive use of psychverbs of theadmire-type (Levin 1993) copied from Old French to Middle English. The outset of the study is anobservation made by van der Gaaf (1904) which was commented on by Fischer (1992) concerning the reflexiveuse of verbs likeremembren(Old Frenchremembrer) in the course of the development of impersonal construc-tions to personal constructions. My aim is to answer the following questions: First, was the reflexive use ofverbs copied from Old French new to the Middle English system? Second, what is the syntactic and semanticrelation between ME impersonal and OF reflexive constructions? I will first examine the reflexive construc-tion in Old English and Old French to answer the first question. I will then deal with the second questiontaking a closer look at both constructions in Middle English. Supported by lexicon-based and corpus-basedsmall-scale studies of the psych verbremembrenI will provide an analysis of the syntactic and semantic properties of the verb in both constructions and show that what they have in common is an intransitive structurewhere the subject is anexperiencer, and middle semantics. I will finally address possible effects of languagecontact through translations, before I conclude.
Zusätzliche Informationen:
Online-Ressource
Dieser Eintrag ist Teil der Universitätsbibliographie.
Das Dokument wird vom Publikationsserver der Universitätsbibliothek Mannheim bereitgestellt.
![[img]](https://madoc.bib.uni-mannheim.de/style/images/fileicons/application_pdf.png)
Suche Autoren in