1887
image of Tracing the development of the perfect alternation in Early Modern English

Abstract

Abstract

On the basis of just under 5,050 examples of perfect constructions, this paper traces the development of the perfect alternation in English between the 1620s and 1750s. For a core group of 18 verbs, the study investigates the role that language-internal and language-external predictor variables played in the choice of auxiliary. Multifactorial modelling reveals that language-internal factors such as modality, negation, clause-type and tense are among the most important predictors favouring the choice of as auxiliary; there is also some indication of diachronic, lexical and idiosyncratic variation within Early Modern English. A close investigation of perfects that combine both auxiliaries strengthens the view that ambiguity-avoidance did not play a major role in the loss of the -perfect. The results of the multifactorial model suggest greater independence of negation and counterfactuality as factors than previously claimed. The study thus contributes a novel perspective on the demise of the -perfect, with paradigmatic variability taking centre stage.

Available under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/dia.23040.hun
2025-01-30
2025-02-15
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/10.1075/dia.23040.hun/dia.23040.hun.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1075/dia.23040.hun&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

References

  1. Anderwald, Lieselotte
    2014 The decline of the be-perfect, linguistic relativity, and grammar writing in the nineteenth century. InMarianne Hundt (ed.) Late modern English syntax, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139507226.004
    https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139507226.004 [Google Scholar]
  2. 2016Language between description and prescription. Verbs and verb categories in nineteenth-century grammars of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190270674.001.0001
    https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190270674.001.0001 [Google Scholar]
  3. Anthony, Laurence
    2021AntConc 4.0 [Computer Software]. Tokyo, Japan: Waseda University.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Brinton, Laurel J.
    1994 The differentiation of statives and perfects in Early Modern English: The development of the conclusive perfect. InDieter Stein & Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (eds.). Towards a standard English, 1600–1800, –. Berlin: de Gruyter.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Denison, David
    1993English historical syntax. London: Longman.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Elsness, Johan
    1997The perfect and the preterite in comtemporary and earlier English. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110810264
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110810264 [Google Scholar]
  7. Fokkema, Marjorie & Achim Zeileis
    2019 Package “glmertree”. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/glmertree/glmertree.pdf (accessed8 December 2022).
  8. Fokkema, Marjolein, Julian Edbrooke-Childs & Miranda Wolpert
    2020 Generalized linear mixedmodel (GLMM) trees: A !exible decision-tree method for multilevel and longitudinal data. Psychotherapy Research. –.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Fokkema, Marjolein, Niels Smits, Achim Zeileis, Torsten Hothorn & Henk Kelderman
    2018 Detecting treatment-subgroup interactions in clustered data with generalized linear mixed effects model trees. Behavior Research Methods. –. 10.3758/s13428‑017‑0971‑x
    https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-017-0971-x [Google Scholar]
  10. Hilpert, Martin
    2017 Frequencies in diachronic corpora and knowledge of language. InMarianne Hundt, Sandra Mollin & Simone Pfenninger (eds.). The changing English language: Psycholinguistic perspectives, –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/9781316091746.003
    https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316091746.003 [Google Scholar]
  11. Hosaka, Michio, Shimpei Okuda & Kazutoshi Sasahara
    2020 Evolutionary forces in the development of the English perfect construction. InAndrea Ravignani (ed.), Chiara Barbieri, Molly Flaherty, Yannick Jadoul, Ella Lattenkamp, Hannah Little, Mauricio Martins, Katie Mudd & Tessa Verhoef (eds.). The evolution of language. Proceedings of the 13th International Conference, –. Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Hristov, Bozhil
    2020Grammaticalising the perfect and explanations of language change. Have- and be-perfects in the history and structure of English and Bulgarian. Leiden: Brill. 10.1163/9789004414051
    https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004414051 [Google Scholar]
  13. Hundt, Marianne
    2014 The demise of the being to V construction. Transactions of the Philological Society(). –. 10.1111/1467‑968X.12035
    https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-968X.12035 [Google Scholar]
  14. 2021 “The next Morning I got a Warrant for the Man and his Wife, but he was fled”: Did sociolinguistic factors play a role in the loss of the be-perfect?InTine Breban & Svenja Kranich (eds.). Lost in change: Causes and processes in the loss of grammatical elements and constructions, –. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 10.1075/slcs.218.07hun
    https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.218.07hun [Google Scholar]
  15. Hundt, Marianne & Geoffrey Leech
    2012 Small is beautiful: On the value of standard reference corpora for observing recent grammatical change. InTerttu Nevalainen & Elizabeth Closs Traugott (eds.). The Oxford handbook of the history of English, –. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199922765.013.0017
    https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199922765.013.0017 [Google Scholar]
  16. Jespersen, Otto
    1931A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part IV, Syntax, vol. 3, time and tense. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Kranich, Svenja & Tine Breban
    (eds.) 2021Lost in change: Causes and processes in the loss of grammatical elements and constructions. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 10.1075/slcs.218
    https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.218 [Google Scholar]
  18. Kytö, Merja
    1997Be/have + past participle: The choice of the auxiliary with intransitives from late middle to modern English. InMatti Rissanen, Merja Kytö & Kirsi Heikkonen (eds.). English in transition: Corpus-based studies in linguistic variation and genre styles, –. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110811148.17
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110811148.17 [Google Scholar]
  19. Lieberman, Erez, Jean-Baptiste Michel, Joe Jackson, Tina Tang & Martin A. Nowak
    2007 Quantifying the evolutionary dynamics of language. Nature. –. 10.1038/nature06137
    https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06137 [Google Scholar]
  20. McFadden, Thomas & Artemis Alexiadou
    2006 Auxiliary selection and counterfactuality in the history of English and Germanic. InJutta M. Hartmann & László Molnárfi (eds.), Comparative studies in Germanic syntax: From Afrikaans to Zurich German, –. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 10.1075/la.97.12mcf
    https://doi.org/10.1075/la.97.12mcf [Google Scholar]
  21. 2010 Perfects, resultatives, and auxiliaries in Earlier English. Linguistic Inquiry(). –. 10.1162/LING_a_00002
    https://doi.org/10.1162/LING_a_00002 [Google Scholar]
  22. McWhorter, John
    2002 What happened to English?Diachronica(). –. 10.1075/dia.19.2.02wha
    https://doi.org/10.1075/dia.19.2.02wha [Google Scholar]
  23. Petré, Peter & Lynn Anthonissen
    2020 Individuality in complex systems: A constructionist approach. Cognitive Linguistics(). –. 10.1515/cog‑2019‑0033
    https://doi.org/10.1515/cog-2019-0033 [Google Scholar]
  24. Petré, Peter, Lynn Anthonissen, Sara Budts, Enrique Manjavacas, Emma-Louise Silva, William Standing & Odile A. O. Strik
    2019 Early Modern Multiloquent Authors (EMMA): Designing a large-scale corpus of individuals’ languages. ICAME Journal. –. 10.2478/icame‑2019‑0004
    https://doi.org/10.2478/icame-2019-0004 [Google Scholar]
  25. Rissanen, Matti
    1999 Syntax. InRoger Lass (ed.). The Cambridge History of the English Language, vol., –. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Rydén, Mats
    1991 The be/have variation in its crucial phases. InDieter Kastovsky, (ed.). Historical English syntax, –. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110863314.343
    https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110863314.343 [Google Scholar]
  27. Rydén, Mats & Sverker Brorström
    1987The be/have variation with intransitives in English. With special reference to the late modern period. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Smith, K. Aaron
    2007 Language use and auxiliary selection in the perfect. InRaúl Aranovich (ed.). Split auxiliary systems: A cross-linguistic perspective, –. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 10.1075/tsl.69.12smi
    https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.69.12smi [Google Scholar]
  29. Sorace, Antonella
    2000 Gradients in auxiliary selection with intransitive verbs. Language(). –. 10.2307/417202
    https://doi.org/10.2307/417202 [Google Scholar]
  30. Tagliamonte, Sali & Harald Baayen
    2012 Models, forests, and trees of York English: Was/were variation as a case study for statistical practice. Language Variation and Change(). –. 10.1017/S0954394512000129
    https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954394512000129 [Google Scholar]
  31. Tuggy, David
    1993 Ambiguity, polysemy, and vagueness. Cognitive Linguistics. –. 10.1515/cogl.1993.4.3.273
    https://doi.org/10.1515/cogl.1993.4.3.273 [Google Scholar]
  32. Visser, Fredericus Th.
    1973An historical syntax of the English language, Part 3, second half: Syntactical units with two or more verbs. Leiden: Brill.
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Zehentner, Eva
    2022 Revisiting gradience in diachronic construction grammar: PPs and the complement-adjunct distinction in the history of English. Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik(). –. 10.1515/zaa‑2022‑2066
    https://doi.org/10.1515/zaa-2022-2066 [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1075/dia.23040.hun
Loading
/content/journals/10.1075/dia.23040.hun
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error