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The role of the accessibility of the subject in the development of adjectival complementation from Old English to Present-day Eng
Van linden, An; Davidse, Kristin
2012In López-Couso, María José; Los, Bettelou; Meurman-Solin, Anneli (Eds.) Information Structure and Syntactic Change
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Abstract :
[en] This article investigates the role of the accessibility of subjects in the development of extraposed complements depending on deontic adjectives, such as it is important to honour those who have done honour to us (CB). Throughout history, these mandative constructions have patterned with both that- and to-complements, whose distribution changed over time. It is shown that, from the rise of the to-clauses at the expense of the that-clauses in Middle English onwards, these two types of complement start to differ in terms of accessibility of the subject, with to-clauses attracting subjects with more accessible reference. Accessibility of subjects therefore appears to have been a factor in the rise of the to-infinitive in mandative extraposition constructions. Interestingly, this general trend was temporarily reversed in the Early and Late Modern English data due to a combination of constructional, informational and stylistic factors.
Disciplines :
Languages & linguistics
Author, co-author :
Van linden, An  ;  Katholieke Universiteit Leuven - KUL
Davidse, Kristin
Language :
English
Title :
The role of the accessibility of the subject in the development of adjectival complementation from Old English to Present-day Eng
Publication date :
2012
Main work title :
Information Structure and Syntactic Change
Editor :
López-Couso, María José
Los, Bettelou
Meurman-Solin, Anneli
Publisher :
Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom
Collection name :
Oxford Studies in the History of English 1
Pages :
199–227
Peer reviewed :
Peer reviewed
Available on ORBi :
since 29 May 2017

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