Project 12

Semantically related argument structures in the history of English

This project aims to investigate constructional relations diachronically. More specifically, the history of the so-called “Object Attribute Construction Attr:NP”, “Attribute Construction Attr:AdjP”, “Attribute Construction Attr: to-INF” constructions or, respectively, the “AGENT – ÆFFECTED – JUDGEMENT” construction will be the focus of the study (www.constructicon.de, Herbst, Uhrig 2009). Possible constructs of this construction are “the man regarded her as wise,” or “I consider you a good friend.”

In detail, the study focuses on the following internal variations: First, the different verbs including their valency properties and semantic fields are analyzed. Second, the so-called “Attributee” or “Æffected” will be under scrutiny concerning, for instance, potential case marking in older stages of English. Special attention will be paid to the “Attribute”- or “Judgement”-slot which can take a range of different forms like noun phrases, adjective phrases, to-infinitive patterns, or more complex clauses. Also, the active-passive alternation of the construction will be taken into account.

In order to find patterns in the development of the distribution of the possible realizations of the construction in question, corpus studies are conducted using the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry and Prose (YCOE), Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, and the ARCHER Corpus. To compare them to the distribution of this construction in Modern English, the BNC will be used.

In a last step, those constructions will be compared to related German constructions with, for example, the verb halten fürand finden (e.g. “ich halte dich für einen Freund.” “Er findet dich interessant”). That way, conclusions can be drawn on the cross-linguistic relations of the constructions in question and the impact factors that lead to the different developments in English and German, respectively. In order to carry out this comparative part of the project, the Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch (ReA), the Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch (ReM) and, the Referenzkorpus Frühneuhochdeutsch (ReF) will be used to track the history of the constructions in German. To compare those to nowadays usage of the construction the DWDS corpora will be used.

The bigger objective of this project is to trace back the development of related argument-structure construction, their interdependence as well as mutual impact on one another and determine influential factor across time and languages. In particular, the aim of the study is to come up with a reasonable way to determine what is part of the same construction as opposed to what is only part of related constructions (and in what way they are related). On top of that, a useful way to represent the construction and its constructional relations should be found. Ideally, this representation will not only be applicable to this one but also other argument structures.

References:

ARCHER Corpus. https://www.projects.alc.manchester.ac.uk/archer/. Last accessed: 21

January 2023.

DWDS – Digitales Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. Das Wortauskunftssystem zur deutschen Sprache in Geschichte und Gegenwart, hrsg. v. d. Berlin-Brandenburgischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, <https://www.dwds.de/>, abgerufen am 23.10.2023.

Herbst, Thomas & Peter Uhrig. 2009. Introduction. In Erlangen Valency

Patternbank. Available via: https://www.patternbank.uni-erlangen.de/cgibin/

patternbank.cgi?do=introtxt (last accessed: 19 September 2023). abgerufen am 23.10.2023.

Klein, Thomas; Wegera, Klaus-Peter; Dipper, Stefanie; Wich-Reif, Claudia (2016). Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch (1050–1350), Version 1.0, https://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/rem/. ISLRN 332-536-136-099-5. abgerufen am 23.10.2023.

Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edition.

https://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-4/index.html. Last accessed: 21

January 2023.

The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition). 2007. Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. URL: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/

The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). Https://wwwusers.

york.ac.uk/~lang22/YcoeHome1.htm. Last accessed: 21 January 2023.

The York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry. https://wwwusers.

york.ac.uk/~lang18/pcorpus.html. Last accessed: 21 January 2023.

Wegera, Klaus-Peter; Solms, Hans-Joachim; Demske, Ulrike; Dipper, Stefanie (2021). Referenzkorpus Frühneuhochdeutsch (1350–1650), Version 1.0, https://www.linguistics.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/ref/. ISLRN 918-968-828-554-7. abgerufen am 23.10.2023.

www.constructicon.de: The CASA-ConstruCtiCon of the English Language.

Zeige, Lars E., Gohar Schnelle, Martin Klotz, Karin Donhauser, Jost Gippert & Rosemarie Lühr. 2022. Deutsch Diachron Digital – Referenzkorpus Altdeutsch. Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Homepage: http://www.deutschdiachrondigital.de/rea/

This project is done by Veronika Stampfer and is supervised by Prof. Dr. Mechthild Habermann and Prof. Dr. Thomas Herbst.