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I: On the Study of Old English Syntax

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George William Small
George William Small*
Affiliation:
University of Maine
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Extract

There has recently been a pronounced turning toward the study of English syntax as a separate department of linguistics with its own technique. If, however, the study of English syntax is an attractive and fruitful field, it is too often a most bewildering and deceptive one. Aside from the external dangers of slipping off into irrelevant semantics or into morphology, there is an ever-present danger in the analysis and exposition of the strangely illogical fabric that holds our language together.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 1936 , pp. 1 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1936

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References

1 I say “Latin influence (if any)” with feeling because after seeing many of the older opinions about Latin influence discredited with reference to one construction after another, I am inclined to take the position that there is no clearly demonstrated taking over of a construction into the living language that had no previous existence in English. The creation of a vogue for certain native constructions has often been taken for a borrowing.

2 Frank R. Blake, A Semantic Analysis of Case, Curme Volume, Language Mono. vii, 35.