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

Old English weorðan and its replacement in Middle English 45
By contrast, the verb becuman, if used as a copula, does not have such a
restricted collocational profile and could also be found with more time-stable
adjectives, such as those denoting age or colour in (40) and (4 ) respectively:
(40) Ich was ʓonge, and by-come olde. (c 350. Earliest Prose Psalter:44)
“I was young, and became old.”
(4 ) þe yefþe of pite. þet is a grace þet bedeaweþ þe herte and makeþ his zuete […],
and makeþ his al become grene. (c 340. Ayenbite of Inwit: 6)
“the gift of pity, which is a grace that bedews the heart and makes it sweet […],
and makes it all become green.”
Recall from Section 3 that becuman has a preference for the Copula + NP construction
not found with weorðan. This preference can now be explained in terms
of time-stability as well: NPs prototypically denote entities or classes, which are
‘self-contained units’, and therefore inherently time-stable. In sum, unlike weorðan,
becuman has no preference for time-unstable subject complements.
The predication of time-stable concepts in combination with a copula of
change, however, is peculiar. This holds in particular for a subject entity linked by
such a copula to an NP subject complement referring to a class of entities: it is not
to be expected that this entity changes class membership spontaneously or instantaneously;
that is, a certain degree of effort will be required. For instance, in order
for John to change class-membership from the class of non-teachers to the class of
teachers (as in the proposition John became a teacher), John will first have to study
for a degree enabling him to teach. Moreover, in this particular instance this effort
is volitional. Such cases of volitional change of class membership can also be found
in ME uses of becuman, as example (23) illustrates. The difference in collocational
profile between weorðan and becuman, then, mirrors a difference in semantics:
sudden change beyond the control of the subject (weorðan) and gradual change,
possibly controlled by the subject (becuman). The influx of new types of predicates
involving gradual change or volition accounts for the quick success of becuman
(and probably also weaxan). Once again, the strong association of weorðan with
time-unstable collocates prevented this verb from extending to these new predicate
types. As a consequence, weorðan was felt to be archaic, and copulas such as
becuman or weaxan were preferred instead.
The final question that remains is the following: where do these new predicate
types come from? As a first tentative explanation, we would like to suggest that
this increase indicates a kind of typological shift. The increase in Copula + NP
constructions could be attributed to a takeover by intransitive predication constructions
of some of the functions previously expressed by transitive constructions.
An illustration is the development of the well-known OE idiom he feng to rice
‘he came into power [lit. he took to the kingdom]’ into the PDE intransitive