Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-01T05:02:58.071Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A usage-based analysis of phrasal verbs in Early and Late Modern English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2012

YASUAKI ISHIZAKI
YASUAKI ISHIZAKI*
Affiliation:
Department of English, Nanzan Junior College, 18 Yamazato-cho Showa, Japan, #466–[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article presents a historical cognitive analysis of the development of phrasal verbs (PVs) with out and away in Early and Late Modern English. Semantically, PVs in Present-Day English can be classified as being (a) fully compositional (e.g. go out), (b) partially idiomatic, with the particle having an aspectual (i.e. grammatical) function (e.g. work away) and (c) (fully or highly) idiomatic (e.g. make out ‘understand’; see Quirk et al. 1985, Jackendoff 2010). As is clear from this classification, the development of PVs has, at least, involved grammaticalization and idiomatization. However, there is no consensus in recent grammaticalization research on how these two kinds of changes are related.

The literature suggests that the particles used in the partially idiomatic PVs were undergoing grammaticalization in the Old and Middle English periods. Therefore, to understand the semantic and conceptual relationships between partially idiomatic and idiomatic PVs, a closer investigation of the uses of PVs after Early Modern English is in order. In this article, focusing on the distributions of away and out taken from colloquial corpora of Early and Late Modern English, namely, the Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS) and the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE), it is shown through descriptive characterizations that the partially idiomatic and idiomatic PVs are instances of idiomatization caused by grammaticalization and by lexicalization, respectively. Based on these observations, the developments of these two types of PVs can be explained by a Usage-Based Model put forth mainly by Langacker (2000) and Bybee (2006, 2010). Specifically, the idiomatization of partially idiomatic PVs involves repeated schema extractions leading to productivity, whereas the idiomatization of fully or highly idiomatic PVs involves the ‘conserving effect’, whereby a highly entrenched linguistic expression with high frequency resists further language change.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 16 , Issue 2: Selected papers from the Fourth International Conference on Late Modern English , July 2012 , pp. 241 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Akimoto, Minoji. 1995 Grammaticalization and idiomatization. In Powell, Mava Jo (ed.), The LACUS Forum 1994, 583–90. Chapel Hill: LACUS.Google Scholar
Akimoto, Minoji. 1999. Collocations and idioms in Late Modern English. In Brinton, & Akimoto, (eds.), 207–38.Google Scholar
Akimoto, Minoji. 2006. On the decline of after and forth in verb phrases. In Dalton-Puffer, , Kastovsky, , Ritt, & Schendl, (eds.), 11–31.Google Scholar
Anderwald, Lieselotte. 2011. Norm vs variation in British English irregular verbs: The case of past tense sang vs sung. English Language and Linguistics 15 (1), 85–112.Google Scholar
Barlow, Michael, & Kemmer, Suzanne (eds.). 2000. Usage-based models of language. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1971. The phrasal verb in English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. 1988. The development of English aspectual systems. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. & Akimoto, Minoji (eds.). 1999. Collocational and idiomatic aspects of composite predicates in the history of English. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Brinton, Laurel J. & Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2005. Lexicalization and language change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 1985. Morphology: A study of the relation between meaning and form. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2006. Frequency of use and the organization of language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bybee, Joan. 2010. Language, usage, and cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Claridge, Claudia. 2000. Multi-word verbs in Early Modern English: Corpus-based approach (Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics 32). Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Dalton-Puffer, Christiane, Kastovsky, Dieter, Ritt, Nikolaus & Schendl, Herbert (eds.). 2006. Syntax, style, and grammatical norms: English from 1500–2000. Bern and Berlin: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Denison, David. 1985. The origins of completive up in English. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 86, 37–61.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2010. Subject-marker for and the phrasal verb particles out and forth. In Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Trousdale, Graeme (eds.), Gradience, gradualness and grammaticalization (Typological Studies in Language 90), 75–104. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hiltunen, Risto. 1983. The decline of the prefixes and the beginnings of the English phrasal verbs: Evidence from some Old and Early Middle English Texts. Turku: Turun Yliopisto.Google Scholar
Hiltunen, Risto. 1994. On phrasal verbs in Early Modern English: Notes on lexis and style. In Kastovsky, Dieter (ed.), Studies in Early Modern English, 129–40. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ishizaki, Yasuaki. 2009. A usage-based analysis of the distribution of forth in the history of English. Kindai Eigo Kenkyu (Studies in Modern English) 25, 41–61.Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 2010. Meaning and the lexicon: The parallel architecture, 1975–2010. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kemmer, Suzanne & Barlow, Michael (eds.). 2000. Introduction: A usage-based conception of language. In Barlow & Kemmer (eds.), vii–xvii.Google Scholar
LangackerRonald, W. Ronald, W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar, vol.1. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 2000. A dynamic usage-based model. In Barlow, & Kemmer, (eds.), 1–65.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou, 2004. From resultative predicate to event-modifier: The case of forth and on. In Kay, Christian, Horobin, Simon & Smith, Jeremy (eds.), New perspectives on English historical linguistics, 83–100. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Oxford English Dictionary (OED), 2nd edn. 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sydney, Leech, Geoffrey & Stratvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor. 1975. Cognitive representations of semantic categories. Journal of Experimental Psychology 7, 573–605.Google Scholar
Tanabe, Harumi. 1999. Composite predicates and phrasal verbs in the Paston Letters. In Brinton, & Akimoto, (eds.), 97–132.Google Scholar
Thim, Stefan. 2006. Phrasal verbs in Late Middle and Early Modern English: Combinations with back, down, forth, out, and up. In Dalton-Puffer, et al. . (eds.), 213–28.Google Scholar
Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Trousdale, Graeme. 2009. Degrammaticalization and construction grammar. Presented at Current Trends in Grammaticalization Research held at the University of Groningen.Google Scholar
Tyler, Andrea & Evans, Vyvyan. 2003. The semantics of English prepositions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Weman, B. [1933] 1967. Old English semantic analysis and theory with special reference to verbs denoting locomotion. Lund: Gleerup.Google Scholar

Corpora

Nurmi, Arija (ed.). The Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (CEECS) in ICAME.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice & Diertani, Ariel. 2010. Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE).Google Scholar