Lilo Moessner Diachronic English Linguistics An Introduction Gunter Narr Verlag Tubingen
Table of contents Table of contents Preface: About this book Abbreviations Abbreviations of sources Transcription symbols V IX XI XIII XIV 1 Introduction: Historical periods 1 1.1 Pre-Old English 1 1.2 Old English 4 1.3 Middle English 6 1.4 Early Modern English 9 1.5 Modern English 11 2 Methods used in diachronic linguistics 15 2.1 Internal reconstruction 15 2.1.1 The present participle 15 2.1.2 The past 17 2.1.3 The plural of substantives 19 2.2 Comparative reconstruction 20 2.2.1 The vowel of PDE words like stone, bone, etc 26 2.2.2 The initial phonemes of PDE words like ten, tooth, etc 27 2.3 Typological classification 29 3 Evidence of linguistic change 35 3.1 Loanwords 35 3.1.1 PDE words with initial M 39 3.1.2 The morphology of English substantives 41 3.1.3 The expression of reflexivity 41 32 Contemporary metalinguistic statements 42 3.2.1 Metalinguistic statements of the 20th century 43 3.2.2 Metalinguistic statements of the 19th century 44 3.2.3 Metalinguistic statements of the 18th century 45 3.2.4 Metalinguistic statements of the 17th century 46 3.3 Irregular paradigms 48 3.3.1 Plural formation of English substantives 48 33.2 Stem-vowel alternation in OE verbs 50 3.3.3 Stem-vowel alternation in adjectives 50 3-3.4 Stem-vowel alternation in word-formation paradigms 51
3.4 Gaps in patterns 52 3.4.1 The development of the PDE consonantal system 53 3.4.2 The structure of the verbal syntagm 55 4 Motivations for linguistic change 61 4.1 Language contact 61 4.2 Unbalanced systems 62 4.2.1 The system of ME stressed vowels 62 4.2.2 The system of English vowels at the beginning of the 17th century 62 4.2.3 The system of stressed English vowels at the end of the EModE period 63 4.2.4 The system of PDE stressed vowels 64 4.2.5 Summary 65 4.3 Free variants 66 4.3.1 The development of the progressive aspect 67 4.3.2 The development of the Jo-periphrasis 70 5 Phonological changes 75 5.1 Combinatory sound-changes 75 5.1.1 OE long V > ME short V 75 5.1.2 ME/u/>PDE/A/ 76 5.1.3 ME /i, e, u/ > EModE IQI 76 5.1.4 EModE /ae/ > EModE /ae:/ (> PDE /a.7) 77 5.1.5 EModE/e:,u:/> PDE/e,u/ 77 5.1.6 OE /e, a, o/ > ME It:, a:, 0:1 78 5.1.7 OE/9/>ME/a/ 78 5.2 Spontaneous sound-changes 78 5.2.1 OE Ae, ie/ > OE /i, i/ 79 5.2.2 OE /eo, eo/ > ME /e:, e/ 79 5.2.3 OE /ea/ > OE /ae/ 79 5.2.4 OE /ae/ > ME /a/ 79 5.2.5 OE/a/>ME/o:/ 80 5.2.6 ME/ai/>PDE/ei/ 80 5.3 Changes of distinctive features 81 5.3.1 Change of the distinctive feature 'frontness' 81 5.3.2 Change of the degree of openness 81 5.3.3 Substitution of the degree of vocalicness 82 5.4 Phoneme merger 83 5.5 Phoneme split 87 5.6 Loss of phonemes 89 5.7 Redistribution of phonemes 90 5.8 Rise of phonemes 92 VI
6 Grammatical changes 97 6.1 Restructuring of inflectional paradigms 97 6.1.1 Substantive inflection 97 6.1.2 Adjective inflection 99 6.1.3 Verb inflection 101 6.2 Restructuring of pronominal patterns 103 6.2.1 Personal pronouns 103 6.2.2 Possessive pronouns 105 6.2.3 Deictic pronouns 105 6.2.4 Interrogative pronouns 106 6.3 Analogical levelling 106 6.3.1 Substantives 107 6.3.2 Adjectives 108 6.3.3 Verbs 110 6.4 Loss of constructions/rise of constructions 112 6.4.1 Loss of multiple negation 112 6.4.2 Rise of the indirect passive 113 6.4.3 Loss of the split genitive and rise of the group genitive 113 6.5 Change of syntactic functions 114 6.5.1 Functional change of personal pronouns 115 6.5.2 Functional change of modals 115 6.5.3 Functional change of relative markers 115 6.6 Change of syntactic relations 117 6.6.1 Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations 117 6.6.2 The relation between demonstrative and possessive pronouns in substantival syntagms 118 6.6.3 The relation between the subject and the predicate in clauses 119 7 Diachronic word-formation 125 7.1 Compounds 126 7.1.1 Compound substantives 126 7.1.2 Compound adjectives 127 7.1.3 Compound verbs 127 7.2 Prefixations 128 7.3 Suffixations 129 7.4 Zero-derivatives 130 8 Diachronic semantics 133 8.1 The description of meaning 136 8.2 Situations favouring semantic change 137 8.3 Paths of semantic change 138 8.3.1 Sub-class to class 139 VII
8.3.2 Class to sub-class 139 8.3.3 Similarity 140 8.3.4 Contiguity 141 8.3.5 Ellipsis 141 8.3.6 Euphemism 141 8.4 Results of semantic change 142 8.4.1 Semantic extension 142 8.4.2 Semantic specialization 144 8.4.3 Semantic shift 146 8.4.4 Pejoration 149 8.4.5 Amelioration 150 9 Answers to questions 153 9.1 Questions relating to chapter 1 153 9.2 Questions relating to chapter 2 154 9.3 Questions relating to chapter 3 156 9.4 Questions relating to chapter 4 158 9.5 Questions relating to chapter 5 159 9.6 Questions relating to chapter 6 161 9.7 Questions relating to chapter 7 163 9.8 Questions relating to chapter 8 164 Bibliography 165 General index 179 Index of personal names 183 Index of languages other than English 185 VIII