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

46 Peter Petré & Hubert Cuyckens
predicate construction He became king. This might not be the only example of such
a change of idiom, but more research is necessary to establish the general character
of this kind of shift. As regards the increase in Copula + AP constructions,
becuman + AP can be seen as the successor of the second class of weak verbs,
which disappeared in early ME. Many verbs from this class expressed properties
of all degrees of time-stability, as for instance ealdian ‘grow old’, hwitian ‘whiten’,
ascortian ‘shorten’, etc. It would indeed be highly unlikely that the co-occurrence
of the disappearance of this class and the emergence of phrases such as become old
or become green are a coincidence. In sum, these changes point towards a sweeping
change in the constructional idioms available in English, a change which, however,
will have to be examined in more detail in future research.
5. Conclusion
In this paper, we have established the existence of a constructional network of
copula-constructions in OE and ME. We have focussed on two verbs used in this
constructional network, namely weorðan, which disappeared in early ME, and
becuman, which appeared as an alternative. The appearance of becuman has been
shown to be an instance of analogical extension, made possible through the initial
distributional similarity between this verb and the copula weorðan. Moreover, the
replacement of weorðan by becuman (and other copulas such as weaxan) has been
explained in terms of a change of the constructional network of copulas. More
specifically, (i) the emancipation of a passive construction seems to have contributed
to the archaisization of weorðan and prevented the spread of becuman to this
new passive construction; and (ii) becuman also apparently filled a need for a new
copula of change, allowing volitional and gradual kinds of change, which emerged
as a consequence of the influx of time-stable predicates (both aps and nps) during
the late OE and early ME periods. The causes for this influx, finally, are still in need
of a more thorough investigation.
References
Biese, Yrjö M. 932. Die neuenglischen Ausdrücke des Werdens in sprach geschichtlicher
Beleuchtung. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 33: 2 4–224.
Biese, Yrjö M. 952. Notes on the Use of Ingressive Auxiliaries in the Works of William Shakespeare.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 53: 9– 8.
Bybee, Joan. 2003. Cognitive Processes in Grammaticalization. The New Psychology of Language
ed. by Michael Tomasello, vol. 2, 45– 67. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.