Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

Old English weorðan and its replacement in Middle English 4
of intransitive predication. This new semantics of the subject enabled using
the passive construction as a way to topicalize the patient of a transitive event.
While topic function of a transitive patient could still be signalled by OSV word
order in OE, this order was no longer available in ME, during which period the
SVO order typical of PDE was established. The new SVO order, then, required
a new topicalizing strategy, and using the passive (or formerly, Copula + pple)
construction for this purpose was the easiest way out. As such, the new function
of the passive implied a definite split-off from construction (D), which, being a
one-participant construction without any (implicit) agent, had never been used
in this way.
While it is generally assumed that this new function only developed in late
ME, there is evidence that it already came into being in early ME, precisely the
period in which weorðan started to disappear. Restricting ourselves to a single
piece of evidence for this earlier date (for a more detailed account, see Petré 2006),
let us consider the emergence of prepositional passives. Contrary to what is often
assumed, the first attestation of this passive type, given in (37) already dates from
the thirteenth century.
(37) Þer wes sorhe te seon hire leoflich lich faren so reowliche wið.
(c 225. St.Juliana (Roy):22. 95)
“It was painful to see her lovely body dealt so cruelly with.”
(Taken from Denison 985: 9 )
The emergence of this remarkable construction can be seen as constituting a
clear actualization of the new function of the passive. First, it differs in its syntax
from construction (D) (Copula + ap), and, second, it also illustrates how the new
topicalizing strategy was implemented. Compare in this respect (37) to (38) and
(39) respectively:
(38) *he is afraid of (meaning: someone was afraid of him)
(39) ?With her body they dealt cruelly (infelicitous construction from ME onwards)
While weorðan is found with past participles during its entire period of use, it is
not found with prepositional passives, nor is there any indication that it participated
in the new topicalizing function of the passive construction. We would like to
argue that this lack of participation can be accounted for by means of the close association
between participle and adjectival constructions with weorðan, described
in Section . This association prevented the spread of weorðan to non-adjectival
passives. As a consequence, weorðan started to sound archaic and eventually was
lost. The split of the passive from the rest of the copula network can also explain
that becuman was not used in combination with participles at all. The spread of