The demise of the Old English impersonal construction

Abstract

Jespersen (1894) was the first to attempt to provide an account of the changes that the Old English (OE) impersonal construction was subject to over a period of time, finally ending in its disappearance from the language. The analysis that he proposed, and that he worked out in greater detail in Jespersen (1927), has essentially been taken over by other linguists writing on the subject since then, the only difference lying in the type of explanation they had to offer for the loss of the construction. It seems to have been generally taken for granted that Jespersen's choice of data on which to base the explanation for the disappearance of the construction is correct. As Tripp (1978: 177) puts it, ‘The discussion of the loss of impersonal constructions has reached a point where additional data seem unlikely to alter competing explanations of their disappearance.’ We have a radically different view of the matter in that we claim that all previous explanations of the loss of the impersonal construction (that we know of) are based on the same incorrect starting-point, i.e. a data base that is unduly limited and consequently an incorrect view of the changes involved in the loss of the construction, therefore inevitably leading to the wrong explanation. Rather than assuming, with Jespersen and others, that ‘impersonal’ verbs had one meaning in OE and another, the converse, meaning in New English (NE), we uphold that in OE both meanings existed side by side, systematically associable with different syntactic constructions.

On analogy as the motivation for grammaticalization

“…Fischer and van der Leek 1983). 26 When the modal verb is used impersonally, without a nominative, that is without an agentive-like NP, the semantic meaning of the verb becomes more general.…”

A ‘case’ for the Old English impersonal

“…2) Plural examples of both construction (2) and (3) exist in OE (see Fischer & van der Leek 1983. These show even more clearly, by verb agreement, the subject status of the nominative NP.…”

Taking Stock to Look Ahead: Celebrating Forty Years of English Studies in Spain

“…Very influential accounts such as Jespersen ([1927] 1961), Fischer and van der Leek (1983) or Allen (1995), among others, generally link the demise of the impersonal construction to the deep morphosyntactic transformations the English language underwent during the OE (449-1066) and ME (1066-1500) periods. More recently, authors like Möhlig-Falke (2012) point out that the interpretation of the historical development of impersonal constructions in these terms is not viable if we take into account that a great many ME verbs developed new impersonal uses between 1200 and 1450, a period of time when such morphosyntactic changes were either in the course of development or had already taken place.…”