Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
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172 Bettelou Los<br />
mainly with ‘light’ verbs (<strong>the</strong> OE counterparts of PDE come, get, go, keep, let, make,<br />
place, put, set – see Section 3.1 above). 9 In (30) we have <strong>the</strong> light verb gedon ‘do’:<br />
(30) þu ne miht ænne locc gedon hwitne oððe blacne (Mt (WSCp) 5: 36)<br />
Lat. non potes unum capillum album facere aut nigrum<br />
‘you cannot turn one hair white or black’<br />
A search of typical unergatives (<strong>the</strong> OE counterparts of verbs like dream, laugh,<br />
sing and work) did not bring up any combinations with predicates. Nei<strong>the</strong>r predicates<br />
nor particles, <strong>the</strong>n, are used as creatively as <strong>the</strong>y are in PDE.<br />
Nor does ME yield much evidence of unergative verbs with ei<strong>the</strong>r a complex<br />
predicate or a particle; nei<strong>the</strong>r <strong>the</strong> Middle English part of <strong>the</strong> Helsinki Corpus, <strong>the</strong><br />
Middle English Dictionary or <strong>the</strong> OED offer any examples under unergatives like<br />
dream, laugh, sing and work, apart <strong>from</strong> variations on <strong>the</strong> idiom laugh NP to scorn<br />
(to hokere, to bismare, til/at/into hething), and <strong>the</strong> instance in (31) <strong>from</strong> <strong>the</strong> OED<br />
and <strong>the</strong> MED: 10<br />
(31) þey haue an herbe … þat makeþ men laughe hem selue to deþ<br />
(Trevisa Higden (Rolls) I. 305)<br />
We do get instances like (32), but <strong>the</strong>y are probably postpositional ra<strong>the</strong>r than true<br />
particle-verbs:<br />
(32) ofte he hire loh to (a1225 (?a1200) Lay. Brut 18542)<br />
often he her laughed to<br />
‘he often laughed at her’ 11<br />
9. Non-light verbs are rarer, but <strong>the</strong>y do exist; e.g., (i), with formian ‘scour’:<br />
(i) formige man þone pytt clæne (Conf 3.1.1, 4.56)<br />
scour one <strong>the</strong> well cleane<br />
‘scour <strong>the</strong> well clean, scour out <strong>the</strong> well’<br />
10. Verbs like sing and work have of course not been dealt with yet in <strong>the</strong> MED.<br />
11. Example (32) is probably <strong>the</strong> same construction as <strong>the</strong> OE example of (i):<br />
(i) þa englas cwædon him to (Gen 19.17)<br />
<strong>the</strong> angels spoke him to<br />
‘The angels spoke to him’<br />
Structures like (32) and (i) are very reminiscent of complex verbs in Modern Dutch and German<br />
that appear to be postpositions ra<strong>the</strong>r than <strong>the</strong> result of grammaticalized complex predicates.<br />
German examples that ultimately derive <strong>from</strong> <strong>the</strong> same pattern are what Blom (2005) has<br />
termed “postpositional particle verbs” like anstarren ‘stare at’, and zulachen ‘smile at’. As German<br />
has preserved its case endings, we can tell <strong>from</strong> <strong>the</strong> dative case of <strong>the</strong> objects of <strong>the</strong>se verbs<br />
that <strong>the</strong>y are <strong>the</strong> complement of <strong>the</strong> postposition ra<strong>the</strong>r than <strong>the</strong> object of <strong>the</strong> particle-verb<br />
combination.