Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-l7hp2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-02T21:35:12.762Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

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

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.