Predications in competition and the rise of serial verb constructions in English

1.1. Relevance

This book deals with the syntax and semantics of Old English. To be more precise, its aim is to explain the competition on the complementation of Old English aspectual and manipulative verbs that arises between finite and non-finite clauses, on the one hand, and between clauses and noun phrases, on the other hand. This explanation should include the typological perspectives offered by the concept of serial verb construction as applied to Old English.

This study intends to contribute to the research project in the linguistic analysis of Old English with corpus-based lexical databases carried out, among others, by García Fernández (2020), García García (2012, 2013, 2016, 2019), García García and Ruiz Narbona (2021), González Torres (2010a, 2010b, 2011), Martín Arista (2012a, 2012b, 2012c, 2013, 2014, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022), Martín Arista and Cortés Rodríguez (2014), Martín Arista and Ojanguren López (2018a, 2018b), Martín Arista and Vea Escarza (2016), Mateo Mendaza (2013, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2016), Metola Rodríguez (2015, 2017a, 2017b, 2018), Novo Urraca (2015, 2016a, 2016b), Ojanguren López (2020, 2021), Tío Sáenz (2015), Torre Alonso (2011a, 2011b), and Vea Escarza (2012, 2013, 2014, 2016a, 2016b, 2021).

This book focuses on Old English, the diachronic stage of English lasting approximately from 650 to 1150 (Christian Era). Old English is a West Germanic language, along with Old Frisian, Old High German and Old Saxon. From the typological point of view, Old English is an SVO language with some elements of SOV syntax (Ringe and Taylor 2014) that is characterised by a consistently Germanic lexicon (Kastovsky 1992). The written records of Old English comprise around three million words and three thousand texts, according to the count of The Dictionary of Old English Corpus, which was compiled for The Dictionary of Old English. The Dictionary of Old English Corpus and The Dictionary of Old English constitute, together with The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English, the most updated lexicographical and textual sources, respectively, in the field of Old English studies.

The area of complementation has been chosen because, in spite of the long tradition of studies in Old English grammar and syntax (Visser 1963–1973; Wright 1984; Mitchell 1985; Campbell 1987; Denison 1993; Hogg and Fulk 2011; Ringe and Taylor 2014, among others), little attention has been paid to the semantic aspects that motivate morpho-syntactic structure, and to the relation between the components of meaning and the grammatical behaviour of categories. Studies like the ones conducted by Martín Arista (2000a, 2000b) or within the Lexematic Functional framework (González Orta 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006; Cortés Rodríguez and Torres Medina 2003; Cortés Rodríguez and Martín Díaz 2003; Cortés Rodríguez and González Orta 2006; C. García Pacheco 2013; L. García Pacheco 2013) are exceptional in looking to the semantics of verbs and the association of semantics and syntax. This book can be considered a contribution to this avenue of research.

Of the various lexical categories that may be examined in a structural-functional theoretical framework and with a method grounded in linguistic analysis with corpus-based lexical databases, this work concentrates on the verb and its complementation patterns because this lexical category organises the semantics and the syntax of the simplex clause and the complex sentence. Within the verbal category, this research analyses two sets of verbal classes that can be expected to require clausal and nominal complementation. The concepts of verbal class and set of verbal classes are based on Levin (1993), for whom verbs that share meaning components and grammatical behaviour must belong together in the paradigmatic description of the lexicon. With these premises, this book deals with aspectual and manipulative verbs roughly corresponding to Present-Day English aspectual end, try and fail; and manipulative forbid, hinder and refrain.

Previous works more or less directly related to Old English aspectual and manipulative verbs include Callaway (1913), Visser (1963–1973), Mitchell (1985), Molencki (1991), Denison (1993), Los (2005) and Ringe and Taylor (2014). From the specific angle of the development of the gerund, relevant contributions have been made by Rohdenburg (1995, 2006), Fanego (1996) and Iyeiri (2010). The existing literature considers the inflection of the infinitive and the complementation by means of non-finite (infinitival) clauses and finite clauses (with verb mostly in the subjunctive), as well as the partial replacement of the infinitive with the gerund throughout diachronic evolution. These works, however, do not have much to say about the semantics of the verbs that select these complementation patterns, neither do they address the question of the competition of noun phrases and clauses as complements of aspectual and manipulative verbs. Previous work has not raised the question of the rise of serial verb constructions in English, either. A serial verb construction (Haspelmath 2016: 292) is a monoclausal construction consisting of multiple independent verbs with no element linking them and with no predicate-argument between the verbs. Roberts (2010: 7) adds further properties of serial verb constructions, including the single intonation contour of the construction, the reference of the construction to a single event, the existence of at least one shared semantic argument (with the corresponding presence of only one grammatical subject), the obligation of non-coreference (in such a way that two overt NPs cannot refer to the same argument) and the single specification of operators of tense, aspect, modality, negation, etc. Roberts (2010: 26) remarks that a prototypical SVC [serial verb construction-AEOL] contains two or more verbs that are fully lexical verbs. That is to say, for Roberts (2010: 33) English constructions containing aspectual verbs like ‘to stop’ with the same participant in the matrix predication as in the linked predication, such as John stopped reading, can be considered serial verb constructions.

1.2. Overview

In order to answer the research questions posed by the competition on the complementation of Old English aspectual and manipulative verbs as well as by the application of the concept of serial verb construction to Old English, it is necessary to identify the levels of structure and the semantic relations found in the simplex and complex clauses with the verbs under analysis and to relate clausal configurations to nominal configurations through nominalisations that can be described by means of well-attested derivational processes of deverbal noun formation. With this aim, it is expected that the synchronic analysis of semantics and syntax sheds light on the organisation of the lexicon of Old English and its points of contact with syntax, on the range of syntactic constructions found in the complementation of aspectual and manipulative verbs and on the diachronic development of the clausal complements of English. Conclusions may be drawn in two areas. Firstly, the relevance of nominalisations for the loss of clausal linked predications may be assessed, so that it can be proposed as one of the factors contributing to the development of the gerund. Secondly, the Old English origin of the serial verb construction may be established.

The research undertaken in this book requires a theoretical framework that is both interlinguistically valid and comprised of modules that account for the lexical representation of verbs, on the one hand, and for the semantic motivation of syntax, on the other hand. The structural-functional linguistic theory called Role and Reference Grammar (Foley and Van Valin 1984; Van Valin and LaPolla 1997; Van Valin 2005, 2007, 2014, 2021) has been chosen for these reasons. It can provide a descriptive framework that associates semantics to syntax (the linking semantics-syntax) and an explanatory set based on functions and hierarchies that relates the semantics of the complex predication to its syntactic construction (the Interclausal Relation Hierarchy) and, moreover, predicts structural changes on the diachronic axis. In general, the position is held that an analysis of syntax which is consistently anchored in semantics should consist not only of semantic roles and semantic domains but also of a flexible concept of predication that comprises both verbal and nominal predications.

To reach the aim described above, three stages of research have been devised. The first is source selection and data collection. Once the relevant verbs, meanings and forms have been selected, the second research stage consists of the analysis of the simplex and complex linking found with aspectual and manipulative verbs, including juncture-nexus types and alternations in the realisation of arguments. The third stage comprises the description of the patterns of complementation and the explanation of the types of competition to which these patterns give rise.

On the side of data collection, the combination of sources is a fundamental aspect of this study. It carries out a semantic and syntactic analysis of Old English aspectual and manipulative verbs with textual sources (The Dictionary of Old English Corpus and The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English), lexicographical sources (the Clark Hall and Bosworth-Toller dictionaries, as well as The Dictionary of Old English), and some of the databases filed in the knowledge base of Old English of the Nerthus Project, including Nerthus (canonical spellings, meaning definitions), Sif (lexical domain classification), Freya (inflectional forms), Norna (lemmatisation), and Idunn (text translations). The data are gathered from the lexicographical and textual sources of Old English just mentioned and checked against the syntactic parsing provided by The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English.

1.3. Book structure

This book can be broken down into three main parts. Chapters 2–5 lay the foundations of the research. Chapters 6 and 7 represent the bulk of the work and present the descriptive analysis and results of the study in aspectual and manipulative verbs. Chapters 8 and 9 provide the explanation for the complementation of the Old English verbs under scrutiny. Chapter 8, which deals with competition, is more relevant for manipulative verbs, whereas Chapter 9, which raises the question of serialisation, is more focused on aspectual verbs.

The book structure, in more detail, is as follows. Chapter 2 presents the rationale of the work, whose contribution can be described from four perspectives. Methodologically, the undertaking combines the textual and lexicographical sources of Old English in an extensive and explicit way. Synchronically, it identifies two levels of structural complexity (the nominal and the verbal predication) that are relevant for the complementation of aspectual and manipulative verbs. From the diachronic point of view, it is based on the theoretical tenet that strictly synchronic analysis can shed light on other historical stages of the language and relate the configurations under analysis to cross-linguistic phenomena. From the angle of typology, this book considers the question of serial verb constructions with a view to deciding whether or not the concept is explanatory for Old English.

Chapter 3 reviews the parts of the theory of Role and Reference Grammar on which the study of verbal complementation in Old English is based, including lexical representation and macroroles, grammatical relations, the structure of the clause, nominalisations and complex sentences.

Chapter 4 explores some aspects of the semantics-syntax interface in Old English, such as grammatical, prepositional government, the marking of first arguments, second and third arguments, the passive and complex sentences, including tree diagram representation.

Chapter 5 presents the method, sources and data of the study. In general, the method is based on the combination of textual and lexicographical sources as well as on the design, implementation and exploitation of lexical databases. This chapter defines the scope and the steps of analysis. Special emphasis is made on the compilation of the corpus as well as on the main issues raised by the selection of data, including the exclusion of irrelevant meanings and the identification of inflectional forms.

Chapter 6 delves into the syntactic constructions with aspectual verbs, both in simplex and complex configurations. Three types of linked predication are considered, namely, a clause with a non-finite form of the verb, a clause with a finite form of the verb and a referential phrase (called noun phrase in standard terminology) headed by a nominalisation based on a verb. The description of the various juncture-nexus types includes logical structures and the linking semantics-syntax.

Chapter 7 carries out an analysis of the syntactic constructions with manipulative verbs that is parallel to the one of aspectual verbs rendered in Chapter 6.

Chapter 8 classifies the phenomenon of competition by distinguishing two basic types, namely, structural competition and functional competition. Structural competition involves competing structural units such as the verbal predication (both finite and non-finite) and the referential phrase. Functional competition arises when two units from different structural levels compete for the status of semantic macrorole. This chapter also inquires into the morpho-syntactic consequences of competition and the reflexes in the lexicon.

Chapter 9 addresses the question of the existence of serial verb constructions in Old English. It reviews the typological concept of serial verb construction and describes the semantic-syntactic configurations that comply with the requirements of serial verb constructions. A serialisation cline is defined in terms of which complex configurations with aspectual and manipulative verbs, as well as other related constructions, can be classified.

Chapter 10 draws the main conclusions from the synchronic, diachronic and typological points of view. To finish up this study, three appendices are given. Appendix 1 lists the textual sources of the study. Appendix 2 provides all the textual fragments in the corpus with their translation into Present-Day English. Appendix 3 organises the textual material by text number, lemma, inflectional form and morphological tag.