Studies in the History of the English Language VI

Evidence and Method in Histories of English

Michael Adams, Laurel J. Brinton, R.D. Fulk, Michael Adams, Laurel J. Brinton, R.D. Fulk, Michael Adams, Laurel J. Brinton, R. D. Fulk

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9783110345919
• eBook ISBN: 9783110395020
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The relationships among data, evidence, and methodology in English historical linguistics are perennially vexed. This volume – which ranges chronologically from Old to Present-Day English and from manuscripts to corpora – challenges a wide variety of assumptions and practices and illustrates how diverse methods and approaches construct evidence for historical linguistic arguments from an increasingly large and diverse body of linguistic data.

Part I Corpora, Evidence, Method

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Lauren Fonteyn and Hubert Cuyckens

The development of free adjuncts in English and Dutch

1 Introduction

This paper will study the diachronic development of (a particular type of) present-participial clauses in English and Dutch, viz. the present-participial free adjunct:

• (1)
  1. Having made these necessary provisions, you are to keep in your storehouse every little thing the poor fishermen have occasion for. (1718, PPCMBE³)
  2. (…) sometimes it acts upon the kidneys, at others on the bowels, producing griping and diarrhoea. (1807, PPCMBE)
• (2)
  1. Vatbaar van aard zijnde leerde hij de kunst van het lezen en schrijven, en de gronden der rekenkunst met ongemeene snelheid. (1823, CCHD⁴) ‘Being of impressionable nature (i.e., being receptive to learning), he learned to read and write and the basics of arithmetic in no time.’
  2. . [Hij] sloot (…) zyn kaamerdeur, zeggende tegen den Goudmaaker dat hy dadelyk zoude weederkoomen. (1756, CCHD) ‘He closed (…) his door, saying to the goldsmith that he would return immediately.’

Present-participial free adjuncts, as in (1) and (2) (from now on simply “free adjuncts”),⁵ are non-finite subordinate clauses (or converb clauses) with a present participle as head. They are “detached” or separated from the main clause by means of a pause, and they have a separate intonational contour (Thompson 1983: 43; Kortmann 1991: 1, 6). Further, they lack an explicit subject: their subject is understood and equals that of the matrix clause, i.e., it is controlled by the subject of the matrix clause. In this respect, free adjuncts differ from absolute constructions (as in (3)), which contain an explicitly expressed subject within the subordinate clause.

• (3) The coach being crowded, Fred had to stand. (Kortmann 1991: 5)

Free adjuncts typically express adverbial meanings, such as time (1a), condition, concession, contrast, instrument, manner, purpose, result, or cause (2a), or adverbial-like meanings such as addition/accompanying circumstance to the event in the matrix clause (add/acc), as in (2b), and exemplification/specification of the event in the matrix clause (ex/spec), as in (1b) (Kortmann 1991; Declerck 1991: 457; Killie and Swan 2009).⁶

The free adjunct discussed in the present paper is believed to have developed from an adverbial-like present participial use in earlier Germanic. This Germanic participle showed hardly any clausal features and only rarely occurred with an object; it was mostly derived from an intransitive verb and expressed an accompanying circumstance or state of mind (Callaway 1901; Killie 2006), as illustrated in (4). Here, al liueand expresses the circumstance accompanying the subject’s descent into hell:

• (4) Cum þe deþe vp þe yuel, and descenden hij into helle al liueand. (c1350, PPCME2)
  ‘Should death come upon the evil, and they descend into hell living.’

Presumably due to Latin influence (Callaway 1901; Sørensen 1957; Killie and Swan 2009), this original Germanic form then gradually acquired more clausal features, resulting in the adverbial present participle clause or free adjunct.⁷ Interestingly, despite their common Germanic origin, the frequency of the free adjunct in Present-Day Dutch is far lower than in English, where it is used quite extensively. Present-Day Dutch instances such as (2) moreover sound stilted, and the translation of an example such as that in (1) would be problematic. This, in fact, holds true for all other Germanic languages, and English free adjuncts often have to be translated by means of other constructions, such as finite clauses (König and van der Auwera 1990; Killie 2006, 2007).

While free adjuncts in Present-Day English have been examined in considerable detail (for instance, in Kortmann’s 1991 seminal monograph), less attention has been paid to their diachronic development. Only a few studies have focused on the history of the free adjunct and have studied the question of why the construction still exists in Present-Day English but was lost in all other Germanic languages. Focusing on Danish and Norwegian, Killie (2006, 2007) proposes several linguistic and sociolinguistic factors that might either have influenced the success of the present participial free adjunct in Present-Day English or stimulated its loss in other Germanic languages. Killie and Swan (2009) point out that free adjuncts in English, which, they assume, “were originally modelled on Latin participial clauses” (2009: 360), saw a dramatic rise from Late Middle English onwards. They argue that the success of these free adjuncts can be traced back to a set of semantic and syntactic changes that occurred exclusively in English: (i) their semantic diversification and (ii) their reanalysis from present-participial clauses with semi-coordinated status to more integrated adverbial clauses, comprising both a positional shift and the acquisition of a higher degree of syntactic integration into the main clause.⁸ Killie and Swan argue that these changes were triggered and then sustained by a number of related constructions which were unique to English, such as the progressive and the verbal gerund.

The existing literature on Dutch present-participial clauses and their diachronic development challenges the idea that the construction expanded exclusively in English (den Hertog 1909; Rinkel 1989; van der Horst 2008; van der Wal and van Bree 2008). Data from comparable corpora in English and Dutch likewise suggest that the Dutch free adjunct underwent a development similar to that of the English free adjunct. The purpose of this paper, then, is to re-examine the development of present-participial free adjuncts in English and Dutch. In doing so, we want to obtain a better insight into the reasons and conditions that led to the success of the free adjunct in English and consider more closely the specific position of Dutch among the Germanic languages.

By comparing the development of free adjuncts in these two languages, it will be shown that their semantic diversification and reanalysis to a fully subordinate clause might have been the initial step towards establishing free adjuncts as a frequent means of clause combining, but these factors do not provide a conclusive answer to the question why the construction has been retained in English but not in another Germanic language such as Dutch. The answer to this question needs to be sought in the increasing discourse-functional and the increasing formal overlap between the English verbal gerund and present participle. Importantly, these insights can only be gained from a thorough comparison of the evidence in both languages, and not from examining each of the languages individually.

More generally, this paper makes clear that language change may be the result of the interaction of language-internal and languag...

Table of contents

• Topics in English Linguistics
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: Evidence and method in the historical study of English
• Part I Corpora, Evidence, Method
• Part II Reconfiguring History: Overlooked Evidence of English
• Part III Emerging Paradigms: New Methods, New Evidence
• Name index