Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:43:01.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Like a rolling stone: the changing use of English premodifying present participles1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2014

HENDRIK DE SMET  and
EVELYN VANCAYZEELE
HENDRIK DE SMET
Affiliation:
Department of Linguistics, University of Leuven, Blijde Inkomststraat 21, box 3308, 3000 Leuven, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article develops a functional classification of the different uses of English premodifying present participles and applies it to historical corpus data to show that premodifying present participles have undergone functional change. It is argued that three core functions can be distinguished: identifying uses (e.g. the following evening); type-oriented uses (e.g. a talking dog) and situation-oriented uses (e.g. a passing car). Historically, the use of premodifying present participles has shifted from predominantly identifying and type-oriented uses, to predominantly situation-oriented uses, particularly in narrative discourse. This means that premodifying present participles have come to fulfil a function that is less typical of noun-phrase-internal modification, instead being increasingly used to denote backgrounded situations that are temporally aligned to the situation evoked by their main clause. The shift can be interpreted as an instance of functional clausalization.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 2015 , pp. 131 - 156
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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.)

Footnotes

1

We would like to thank Kristin Davidse, Bettelou Los, Peter Petré, three anonymous referees and the editors of English Language and Linguistics for their helpful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. The first author also gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Research Foundation Flanders and the University of Leuven.

References

Arnaud, René. 1983. On the progress of the progressive in the private correspondence of famous British people (1800–1880). In Jacobson, Sven (ed.), Papers from the second symposium on syntactic variation. Stockholm, May 15–16, 1982, 83–94. Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas & Gray, Bethany. 2011. Grammar emerging in the noun phrase: The influence of written language use. English Language and Linguistics 15, 223–50.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Adjectives in English: Attribution and predication. Lingua 18, 1–34.Google Scholar
Carlson, Greg N. 1977. A unified analysis of the English bare plural. Linguistics and Philosophy 1, 413–57.Google Scholar
Carroll, Mary & von Stutterheim, Christiane. 2003. Typology and information organisation: Perspective taking and language-specific effects in the construal of events. In Ramat, Anna (ed.), Typology and second language acquisition, 365–402. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Davidse, Kristin, Breban, Tine & Van linden, An. 2008. Deictification: The development of secondary deictic meanings by adjectives in the English NP. English Language and Linguistics 12, 475–503.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Declerck, Renaat. 1991. A comprehensive descriptive grammar of English. Tokyo: Kaitakusha.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2008. Nominal gerunds in 16th-century English. The function of the definite article. Folia Linguistica Historica 28, 77–113.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik. 2009. Functional motivations in the development of nominal and verbal gerunds in Middle and Early Modern English. English Language and Linguistics 12, 55–102.Google Scholar
De Smet, Hendrik & Heyvaert, Liesbet. 2011. The meaning of the English present participle. English Language and Linguistics 15, 473–98.Google Scholar
Disterheft, Dorothy. 1981. Remarks on the history of the Indo-European infinitive. Folia Linguistica Historica 2, 3–34.Google Scholar
Fanego, Teresa. 1998. Developments in argument linking in early Modern English gerund phrases. English Language and Linguistics 2, 87–119.Google Scholar
Fauconnier, Gilles & Turner, Mark. 2002. The way we think: Conceptual blending and the mind's hidden complexities. New York: Basic Books.
Fonteyn, Lauren, De Smet, Hendrik & Heyvaert, Liesbet. Forthcoming. What it means to verbalize: The changing discourse functions of the English gerund. Journal of English Linguistics.Google Scholar
Ghesquière, Lobke & Van de Velde, Freek. 2011. A corpus-based account of the development of English such and Dutch zulk: Identification, intensification and (inter)subjectification. Cognitive Linguistics 22, 765–97.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. 1994. An introduction to Functional Grammar, 2nd edition. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Hay, Jennifer B. & Baayen, R. Harald. 2005. Shifting paradigms: Gradient structure in morphology. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 9, 342–48.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey K.et al. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1940. A Modern English grammar on historical principles, vol. 5: Syntax. London: George Allan & Unwin.Google Scholar
König, Ekkehard. 1971. Adjectival constructions in English and German: A contrastive analysis. Heidelberg: Groos.Google Scholar
Kranich, Svenja. 2010. The progressive in Modern English: A corpus-based study of grammaticalization and related changes. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1995. Stage-level and individual-level predicates. In Carlson, Gregory N. & Pelletier, Francis J. (eds.), The generic book, 125–75. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Labov, William. 2013. The language of life and death: The transformation of experience in oral narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W. 1991. Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, vol. 2: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2009. The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: Information structure and syntax in interaction. English Language and Linguistics 13, 97–125.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou. 2012. The loss of verb-second and the switch from bounded to unbounded systems. In Meurman-Solin, Anneli, López-Couso, María José & Los, Bettelou (eds.), Information structure and syntactic change in the history of English, 21–46. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mair, Christian, Hundt, Mariane, Leech, Geoffrey & Smith, Nicholas. 2002. Short-term diachronic shifts in part-of-speech frequencies: A comparison of the tagged LOB and F-LOB Corpora. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 7, 245–64.Google Scholar
Markus, Manfred. 1997. ‘The men present’ vs ‘the present case’: Word order rules concerning the position of the English adjective. Anglia 115, 487–506.Google Scholar
Petré, Peter. 2014. Constructions and environments: Copular, passive, and related constructions in Old and Middle English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul M. 1970. On coreferential complement subject deletion. Linguistic Inquiry 1, 439–500.Google Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Smitterberg, Erik. 2005. The progressive in 19th-century English: A process of integration. Amsterdam: Rodopi.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strang, Barbara M. H. 1982. Some aspects of the history of the BE +ING construction. In Anderson, John (ed.), Language form and linguistic variation: Papers dedicated to Angus McIntosh, 427–74. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Talmy, Leonard. 2000. Toward a cognitive semantics, vol. 1: Concept structuring systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Vancayzeele, Evelyn. 2011. Like a rolling stone: The development of prenominal present participles in Middle and Modern English. MA thesis, University of Leuven, Department of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Van de Velde, Freek. 2011. Left-peripheral expansion of the English NP. English Language and Linguistics 15, 387–415.Google Scholar
Vartiainen, Turo. 2012. Telicity and the premodifying ing-participle in English. In Rayson, Paul, Hoffmann, Sebastian & Leech, Geoffrey (eds.), English corpus linguistics: Looking back moving forward, 217–34. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Vartiainen, Turo & Lijffijt, Jefrey. 2012. Premodifying -ing participles in the parsed BNC. In Mukherjee, Joybrato & Huber, Magnus (eds.), Corpus linguistics and variation in English: Theory and description, 247–58. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna. 1988. The semantics of grammar. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar