Chapter 1. “Permissive” subjects and the decline of adverbial linking in the history of English

Los, Bettelou

doi:10.1075/slcs.198.02los

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…As claimed in Los (2018) and Dreschler (2019), the only unmarked theme in English is the subject which hence performs the discourselinking function too. Jahić et al (2000) assert that even though in Bosnian, the subject is typically the theme of the sentence, other elements can also be themes depending on their informational value.…”

Section: Permissive Subjects In Bosnianmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…2 The only way to package this temporal information as an unmarked theme is to make it the subject of the sentence as in (12). Los (2018) and Dreschler (2019) propose that it is this limitation on the theme -the subject being the only unmarked theme in English and the subject now performing the discourse-linking function-that inspired the promotion of a variety of arguments to the subject position including those arguments expressing temporal, spatial or instrumental meaning that normally do not occur in the subject position. This, hence, increased the functional load of the subject encouraging the rise of permissive subjects but also of other superficially similar constructions such as middles and alternating unaccusative constructions.…”

Section: Permissive Subjects In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Nevertheless, cross-linguistic variation is present in language. Los (2018), for example, compared German, Dutch and English and he argues that compared to other two languages, English subjects are much more permissive of thematic roles other than the agent. More specifically, the information conveyed by permissive subjects in English would be more likely to be expressed by adverbials in German and Dutch (however, see a study on English -Dutch translation: Doms, 2015).…”

Section: Permissive Subjects In Bosnianmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bosnian Translation Equivalents of English Constructions with Permissive Subjects / Bosanski prijevodni ekvivalenti engleskih konstrukcija s permisivnim subjektima

Osmankadić

Čordalija

Butigan

2022

Journal

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Even though a verb can assign a variety of thematic roles to the subject, the most typical role for a subject is that of an agent or that of an experiencer for verbs of perception and mental inference. In this paper, we describe constructions where verbs that typically select agent or experiencer subjects occur with subjects expressing thematic roles typical of adverbials: instrument, time or place. We refer to those subjects as permissive subjects. On the other hand, it is argued that in South Slavic languages, non-agents (and non-experiencers) do not show such a strong tendency to occur in the subject position. We performed a translation task to answer the following research question: What range of structures occur in Bosnian translation equivalents of the following English constructions with permissive subjects: Period sees, Money buys, Object seats number, Object sleeps number, Book/ Album/Record sells copies? The quantitative analysis showed that some of the most frequent translation strategies include the following: middle constructions, passive constructions and constructions where the English permissive subject becomes an adverbial in the Bosnian translation equivalent. Moreover, translation equivalents where the English permissive subject is translated as a Bosnian non-agentive/ permissive subject are rather frequent too. Nevertheless, our qualitative analysis shows that the choice of a translation equivalent for the target construction depends on the English target construction itself. For example, in the case of some combinations, we show a correlation between the thematic meaning of a particular permissive subject in English and the choice of a translation equivalent.

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Section: Permissive Subjects In Bosnianmentioning

confidence: 85%

Section: Permissive Subjects In Englishmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Permissive Subjects In Bosnianmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Bosnian Translation Equivalents of English Constructions with Permissive Subjects / Bosanski prijevodni ekvivalenti engleskih konstrukcija s permisivnim subjektima

Osmankadić

Čordalija

Butigan

2022

Journal

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“…Similar observations can be found in comparative studies of PDE and German, another V2 language (Rohdenburg 1974: 11;Hawkins 1986: 58-61). Komen et al (2014) provide quantitative evidence for this change in function of the subject in the history of English, whereas other studies connect the increased functional load of the subject to an increased and/or extended use of passives, middles and so-called permissive subjects (Los 2009(Los , 2018van Gelderen 2011;Los & Dreschler 2012;Dreschler 2015Dreschler , 2020. An example of an extended use of the passive is the exceptional case-marking (ECM) construction with verbs of thinking and declaring like report in (3):…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The decline of local anchors is a combination of two factors: the decline of main-clause-initial adjuncts as a means of creating links to the previous discourse, a function that has been taken over by the subject (Los 2018), and a change in the referential functionality of standalone demonstratives (see next section). Standalone demonstratives were ultimately not replaced by an alternative system, although there were contenders (the same, there+preposition, and personal pronouns, particularly the innovative use of (h)it); we will discuss these in section 5.3.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The decline of local anchoring: a quantitative investigation

Los¹,

Dreschler²,

Kemenade³

et al. 2023

English Language and Linguistics

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This article presents a quantitative study of the referential status of PPs in clause-initial position in the history of English. Earlier work (Los 2009; Dreschler 2015) proposed that main-clause-initial PPs in Old English primarily function as ‘local anchors’, linking a new clause to the immediately preceding discourse. As this function was an integral part of the verb-second (V2) constraint, the decline of local anchors was attributed to the loss of V2 in the fifteenth century, so that only the contrasting and frame-setting functions of these PPs remain in PDE. This article tests these hypotheses in the syntactically parsed corpora of OE, ME, EModE and LModE texts, using the Pentaset-categories (New, Inert, Assumed, Inferred or Identity; Komen 2011), based on Prince's categories (Prince 1981). The finding is that Identity clause-initial PPs decline steeply from early ME onwards, which means the decline pre-dates the loss of V2. A likely trigger is the loss of the OE paradigm of demonstrative, which functioned as standalone demonstrative pronouns as well as demonstrative determiners, and the loss of gender marking more generally. From EModE onwards, main-clause-initial PPs that still link to the preceding discourse do so much more indirectly, by an Inferred link.

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‘Fifty pounds will buy me a pair of horses for my carriage’: the history of permissive subjects in English

Dreschler

2019

English Language and Linguistics

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This article investigates the history of so-called permissive subjects in English, for example The tent sleeps four: inanimate, non-agentive subjects used with verbs that normally take animate, agentive subjects. Although permissive subjects are assumed in the literature to be innovations, there is little information available on their use and frequency. Using historical corpora, I provide an account of the history of permissive subjects with five verbs – see, buy, seat, sleep and sell. The results show that permissive subjects with see and buy are already found in the sixteenth century, while those with seat and sell occur from the nineteenth century onwards, and those with sleep first occur in the twentieth century. The five types also differ in other respects, with genre and functional motivations playing an important role. Crucially, there is an increase in the overall use of these permissive subjects, which follows the increase in subject-initial clauses and a more marked use of the presubject position as described by Los & Dreschler (2012), supporting their proposal that several subject-creating strategies – passives, middles and permissive subjects – became more frequent in English due to changes in the pragmatic character of the clause-initial position, in turn caused by the loss of verb second.

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Chapter 1. “Permissive” subjects and the decline of adverbial linking in the history of English

Cited by 4 publications

References 38 publications

Bosnian Translation Equivalents of English Constructions with Permissive Subjects / Bosanski prijevodni ekvivalenti engleskih konstrukcija s permisivnim subjektima

Bosnian Translation Equivalents of English Constructions with Permissive Subjects / Bosanski prijevodni ekvivalenti engleskih konstrukcija s permisivnim subjektima

The decline of local anchoring: a quantitative investigation

‘Fifty pounds will buy me a pair of horses for my carriage’: the history of permissive subjects in English

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