Предыдущая страница реферата | 13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23 | Следующая страница реферата

2. Diachrony as an explanation of these features.

Although the above description has not been purely synchronic, since it cites differences in usage between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it is actually only by looking back at even earlier stages of the language that we can gain any clear insights into why the dialects have developed in this way.

Both Widen and Wakelin remind us that the originally strictly morphological -y ending has since developed into a syntactic feature. It is a survival of the Middle English infinitive ending -ie(n), traceable to the
-ian suffix of the second class of Old English weak verbs (OE milcian > ME milkie(n) > south-west dial. milky). Subsequently, -y has been analogically extended to other types of verbs in south-west dialects under certain syntactic conditions: in the absence of any DO, through sheer impossibility
(intransitive verb) or due to the speaker’s choice (ODV or ergative). The only survival of medieval usage is the impossibility of a verb form like milky being anything other than an infinitive. Note that this cannot be labelled an archaism, since the standard language has never demonstrated this particular syntactic specialization.

So far no explanation seems to have been advanced for the origin of
‘otiose of’, and yet it is fairly easy to resort to diachrony in order to explain this syntactic feature. Let us start, however, with contemporary
Standard English:

[3] They sat, singing a shanty. (present participle on its own)

[4] They are singing a shanty. (progressive aspect)

[5] I like them/their singing a shanty. (gerund)

[6] I like their singing of a shanty. (verbal noun)
Here [5] and [6] are considered nominalizations from a synchronic point of view. As far as [4] is concerned, Barnes reminds his readers that the OE nominalization ic waes on hunlunge (‘I was in the process of hunting’, cf
Aelfric’s Colloquim: fui in. venatione) is the source of modern / was hunting, via an older structure I was (a-) hunting which is preserved in many dialects, the optional verbal prefix a- being what remains of the preposition on.

The nominal nature of V-ing is still well established in the verbal noun (with the use of of in particular), and it is here that the starting- point of a chain reaction lies. Hybrid structures (verbal nouns/gerunds) appeared as early as Middle English, as in bi puttyng forth of whom so it were (1386 Petition of Mercers) and similar gerunds followed by of were still a possibility in Elizabethan
English:

Rend not my heart for naming of my Christ (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus) together with verbal nouns not followed by any of:

... as the putting him clean out of his humour (B. Jonson, Every Man out of his Humour).

Having been extended from the verbal noun to the gerund, of also eventually spread to the progressive aspect in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at a time when the V-ing + of sequence became very widespread in Standard English:

Are you crossing of yourself? (Marlowe, Doctor Faustus).

He is hearing of a cause (Shakespeare, Measure for Measure).

She is taking of her last farewell (Bunyan, The Pilgim’s Progress).

However, what is definitely an archaism in Standard English has been preserved in south-western dialects, which have gone even further and also added an optional o’ to the present participle used on its own (ie other than in the progressive aspect). Moreover, there is even a tendency, as we have seen, to use o’ after a transitive verb without the -en (= -ing) ending. This tendency, which remains slight, represents the ultimate point of a chain reaction that can be portrayed as follows:

Use of o’ in the environment following:

(A) (B) (C)

(D) verbal noun > gerund > be + V-ing > pres. part. > V

V-ing

(A) evolution from Middle English to the Renaissance;

(B) evolution typical of English in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries;

(C) evolution typical of south-western dialects;

(D) marginal tendency in south-western dialects.

The dialect usage is more than a mere syntactic archaism: not only have the south-western dialects preserved stages (A) and (B); they are also highly innovative in stages (C) and (D).” (№18, p.218)

Рекомендуем скачать другие рефераты по теме: реферат по праву, курсовые работы бесплатно, решебник по геометрии класс атанасян.



Предыдущая страница реферата | 13  14  15  16  17  18  19  20  21  22  23 | Следующая страница реферата

Поделитесь этой записью или добавьте в закладки