On privative verbs and the double object construction in Middle English

Eva Zehentner

ICEHL 18, Leuven 2014

“Ditransitive complementation in its basic form involves two object noun phrases” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1208)

“a construction consisting of a (ditransitive) verb, an agent argument (A), a recipient-like argument (R), and a theme argument (T)” (Malchukov, Haspelmath & Comrie 2007: 2)

Ditransitive Construction

DO, ‘theme’

IO, ‘recipient’

2

Introduction (I)

• John gave Mary an apple

• John baked Mary a cake

• John wrote Mary a letter

• John sent Mary a gift

• John gave Mary a book

• John gave a book to Mary

Dative alternation IO-DO, ‘synthetic’

DO-IO, ‘analytic’

3

• They gaff the godis [...] to theire knyghtes

‘They gave the goods to their knights’ (a1470 Malory)

late Old English/ early Middle English

• and þær geoffrode Gode menigfealde lac

‘and offered God manifold gifts there’(Ælfric, AS Hom. 578; De Cuypere 2010: 340)

• Đu cyðest micelle mildheortnysse ðinum ðeowan

‘you show great mercy your servant’(Ælfric, AS Hom. 146; De Cuypere 2010: 340)

Old English

Introduction (II)

o central/basic sense: ‘X successfully causes Y to receive Z’

o sub-senses:- ‘X intends to cause Y to receive Z’- ‘Conditions of Satisfaction imply that X causes Y to receive Z’- ‘X causes Y not to receive Z’- ‘X acts to cause Y to receive Z at some future point in time’- ‘X enables Y to receive Z’

ex. Bill promised his son a car.His mother denied Billy a birthday cake.

(Goldberg 1995: 32ff.; cf. also Pinker 1989; Rappaport Hovav & Levin 2008; Croft 2003)

4

“The most typical ditransitive constructions contain a verb of physical transfer such as 'give', 'lend', 'hand', 'sell', 'return', describing a scene in which an agent participant causes an object to pass into the possession of an animate receiver (= recipient)”

(Malchukov, Haspelmath & Comrie 2007: 2; cf. also Kittilä 2005)

‘Semantics’ of the ditransitive CxG in PDE

“the inventory of verbs instantiating the Ditransitive Construction is semantically much richer in Icelandic than in Standard English, including not only verbs of actual, intended, retained and metaphorical transfer, but also verbs of transfer along a path, verbs of possession, utilizing, enabling, hindrance, constraining and verbs denoting mental activities. In other words, the Ditransitive Construction is far from being confined to the concept of transfer”

(Barðdal, Kristoffersen & Sveen 2011: 93; cf. also Barðdal 2007)

• reduction in verb classes associated with cxg, loss of (peripheral) sub-senses

• “presents a case of [constructional semantic] specialization, in whichthe construction has come to be associated with a significantlynarrower range of meanings”

(Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 183)

• specialisation to basic ‘give’-situations

cf. also Rohdenburg (1995: 108-113); Geeraerts (1997)

5

Diachronic development (I)

PGmc. WGmc. OE ME eModE lModE PDE

narrowing/ reduction in range

verbs of privation/ banishment

• For dronkenesse bireveth hym the discrecioun of his wit

‘for drunkenness takes away from him the discretion of his wit’(CMCTPARS,316.C2.1212)

• þe ȝonger schuld be banchid þe rewme

‘the youngers should be banished (from) the realm’ (CMCAPCHR,146.3399)

• ibroken ham þe schuldren

‘and broken them the shoulder’ (CMJULIA,114.303)

• and him scorteð his daȝes

‘shortened him his days’(CMLAMBX1,25.295)

‘malefactive’ verbs

6

Diachronic development (II)

7

indirect affectedness

“an individual affected by a process or state which obtains in some part of his personal sphere”

(Dąbrowska 1997: 68; cf. also Newman 1996: 82-88; Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 201-202; Lambert 2010)

transfer, basic ‘giving’

IO: recipient, benefactive, addressee(highly salient)

triggers for specialisation

• deflection, loss of case marking

• rise of prepositional constructions

(Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 201-202; cf. also Colleman 2010; Barðdal 2007; Barðdal, Kristoffersen & Sveen 2011)

?

Diachronic development (III)

closely connected to more general processes occurring at transition OE > ME

o erosion of case marking system

o convergence of different case frames available for ditransitive verbs in OE(apart from most common [DATRec ACCTheme] )

Cf. Allen (1995: 28-29); Visser (1984: 606-635)

Development of DOC:

• þa het he hineACC wædumDAT bereafian

then ordered he him clothes bereave

‘then he ordered him to be stripped’(COE) ÆCHom I, 29 426.4; taken from Allen 1995: 29)

[ACCDeprivee DATTheme]

8

Diachronic development (IV)

9

• ‘Re-narrowing’

• specialisation to ‘giving’ situations

• uses at periphery of core meaning: lost

(cf. Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 204; Rohdenburg 1995)

OE

ME

• different case frames expressing different sub-senses

• erosion of morphological case marking

→ convergence of different case frames;

distinctions blurred

• DOC can encode wide range of meaning relations

Diachronic development (V)

narrowing: increasingly close (reinforced) association of datives with semantic relations expressed by to/ with basic ‘give’-situations

Re-narrowing:promoted by rise of dative alternation/ to-paraphrase?

rise of alternation:change in syntactic options (word order PLUS presence/ absence of relational marker)

10

Causes of narrowing? (I)

narrowing: increasingly close (reinforced) association of datives with semantic relations expressed by to/ with basic ‘give’-situations

Re-narrowing:promoted by rise of dative alternation/ to-paraphrase?

rise of alternation:change in syntactic options (word order PLUS presence/ absence of relational marker)

correlation/causation ?

11

Causes of narrowing? (II)

12

Causes of narrowing? (III)

[GEN-DAT] [GEN-ACC] [DAT-DAT]

Ditransitivity/ ‘Indirect affectedness’

[DAT-ACC][ACC-ACC]

OE: • different case frames associated with different (overlapping)

semantic relations

• most common frame: [DAT-ACC]; prototypically expressing transfer situations (instantiated by ‘giving’ verbs)

13

on

for

[Subj [V Obj1 Obj2]]

from

toof

Ditransitivity/ ‘Indirect affectedness’

Causes of narrowing? (IV)

[GEN-DAT] [GEN-ACC] [DAT-DAT][ACC-ACC][DAT-ACC]

14

onfor

[Subj [V Obj1 Obj2]]

from

[GEN-DAT] [DAT-DAT]

to

[DAT-ACC]

of

late OE/ early ME:

• different case frames merge into one ‘super-construction’ due to loss of case distinctions

• at the same time, the more explicit prepositional competitors increase

• most prominent/frequent: to (corresponds best to ‘transfer’-semantics of verbs most frequently used in the DOC)

Causes of narrowing? (V)

[GEN-ACC] [ACC-ACC]

15

to

on

from

for

[Subj [V Obj1 Obj2]]of

ME:

• link between to-pattern and DOC becomes increasingly stronger (due to the former’s prevalence and frequency)

• closer and closer association of the two patterns, until to is perceived as analytic alternative to DOC (DOC and to-pattern express ‘same’ meaning in different way)

• preferential association → (near-) categorical association

Causes of narrowing? (VI)

16

for

of [Subj [V Obj1 Obj2]]

onfrom

to

ME (and beyond):

• ‘rich get richer, poor get poorer’

• verbs with corresponding patterns including prepositions other than to (e.g. from/of/..), i.e. verbs/ verb classes that do not fit the semantic relations

expressed by to→marginalised from DOC and eventually ousted; restricted to prepositional pattern

Causes of narrowing? (VII)

Methodology/ data

• quantitative corpus study

• Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edition (PPCME2)

1150-1500; 4 (+5) sub-periodsca. 1 mill. words; 56 texts; 5 dialect areas; 15 genres

• 6,856 instances of DOC & to-periphrasis (+ subset of other paraphrases)

17

Test case: privative verbs/ verbs of dispossessione.g. binimen, birēven, rēven, stēlen, robben, nimen, depriuen

Methodology

Figure 1. Frequency distribution of privative verbs in DOC

18

05

10

15

20

25

30

Sub-periods

No

rma

lise

d fre

qu

en

cie

s o

f p

riva

tive

vb

s in

th

e d

itra

nsitiv

e C

xG

M1 M2 M3 M4

Figure 2. Proportional distribution of privative verbs in DOC

χ2 (goodness of fit):M1-M4: p < 0.001; large effect size (Cramer‘s V > 0.8)

0.0

00

.05

0.1

00

.15

0.2

0

Sub-periods

Fra

ctio

n o

f p

riva

tive

ve

rbs in

th

e D

OC

(9

5%

co

nfid

en

ce

in

terv

als

)

M1 M2 M3 M4

Results (I)

19

Results (II)

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

Sub-periodsFra

ctio

n o

f p

riva

tive

ve

rbs in

pre

po

sitio

na

l cxg(9

5%

co

nfid

en

ce

in

terv

als

)

M1 M2 M3 M4

χ2 (goodness of fit):M1-M4: p < 0.001; large effect size (Cramer‘s V > 0.7)

Figure 3. Proportional distribution of privative verbs in the prepositional cxg

20

Figure 4. Frequency distribution of different ditransitive patterns (DOC, to-periphrasis, total)

(Cf. McFadden 2002; Polo 2002)

02

00

40

06

00

80

0

Sub-periods

No

rma

lise

d fr

eq

ue

nci

es

(pe

r 1

00

,00

0)

of t

ype

s o

f ditr

an

sitiv

e C

xGs

total (DOC+to)

DOC

to-periphrasis

M1 M2 M3 M4

χ2 (goodness of fit):M1-M4: p < 0.001 for all distributions; to: large effect size (Cramer‘s V > 0.7); DOC: medium effect size (Cramer‘s V ≈ 0.3)

Results (III)

Figures 5/6. Proportional distribution of DOC in contrast to to-periphrasis

21

χ2 (goodness of fit):M1-M4: p < 0.001; medium-large effect size (Cramer‘s V > 0.4)

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

Sub-periods

Fra

ctio

n o

f D

OC

s o

f a

ll d

itra

nsitiv

e c

on

str

uctio

ns(9

5%

co

nfid

en

ce

in

terv

als

)

M1 M2 M3 M4

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

Sub-periods

Fra

ctio

n o

f to

-pa

rap

hra

se

s o

f a

ll d

itra

nsitiv

e c

on

str

uctio

ns(9

5%

co

nfid

en

ce

in

terv

als

)M1 M2 M3 M4

Results (IV)

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i. ACTUAL TRANSFER: giving/delivering, lending, paying, sending, bringing, obtainingii. INTENTION: verbs of future transfer (offering, promising, guaranteeing)iii. CREATION: creating, modifyingiv. MODE OF COMMUNICATION: verbs of communicated messagev. ENABLING/ ‘pure benefaction’: enabling, utilizing (?)vi. RETAINING/ ‘malefaction’: hindrance, constrainingvii. MENTAL PROCESSES/ EMOTION: mental activity, constrainingviii. POSSESSION: (prolonged) possession/ owning (?)

Evidence supporting move towards more basic ‘give’-semantics?

(Barðdal, Kristoffersen & Sveen 2011: 65; Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 191-197)

Results (V)

23

i. ACTUAL TRANSFER: giving, lending, paying, sending, bringing, obtainingii. INTENTION: verbs of future transfer (offering, promising, guaranteeing)iii. CREATION: creating, modifyingiv. MODE OF COMMUNICATION: verbs of communicated messagev. ENABLING/ ‘pure benefaction’: enabling, utilizing (?)vi. RETAINING/ ‘malefaction’: hindrance, constrainingvii. MENTAL PROCESSES/ EMOTION: mental activity, constrainingviii. POSSESSION: (prolonged) possession/ owning (?)

Evidence supporting move towards more basic ‘give’-semantics?

(Barðdal, Kristoffersen & Sveen 2011: 65; Colleman & De Clerck 2011: 191-197)

Results (VI)

24

Figure 6. Verbal classes associated with the DOC (taken from Barðdal, Kristoffersen & Sveen2011: 65)

Results (VII)

25

Figure 7. Proportional distribution of ‘giving’ verbs in the DOC

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

Sub-periods

Fra

ctio

n o

f 'g

ivin

g'-ve

rbs in

th

e D

OC

(95

% c

on

fid

en

ce

in

terv

als

)

M1 M2 M3 M4

Results (VIII)

• increase of ‘giving’-verbs in the DOC

(suggestive of later development)

• clear increase of the to-pattern at the expense of the DOC

• clear decrease of privative verbs in the DOC

• clear increase of prepositional counterparts

(suggestive of the development of other ‘malefactive’ verbs/ verbs of hindrance, as well as other non-core verb classes)

χ2 (goodness of fit):M1-M4: p < 0.001; small-medium effect size (Cramer‘s V ≈ 0.2)

closer and closer association of the semantics of the DOC with ‘give’-situations (involving successful transfer of patient to recipient) due to

its association with the to-pattern

increasingly close association of the DOC with the to-pattern (higher salience/ frequency)

26

Summary/ Conclusion (I)

loss of case marking, merging of different case frames and rise of prepositional alternatives (general trend of more synthetic →

more analytic)

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• whan a womman steleth hir body from hir housbonde and yeveth it to the devel

‘when a woman steals her body away from her husband and gives it to the devil’ (CMCTPARS,319.C1.1317)

• ðe reaueð godes luue of mannes hierte

‘that steals god’s love from man’s heart’(CMVICES1,11.103)

Summary/ Conclusion (II)

marginalisation and eventual ousting of uses at the periphery of core meaning (not compatible with to) from the DOC; increasing use of alternative prepositional patterns

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Conclusion/Outlook

i am puting videos on her[e] as soon as i get my cell fix[ed] my boyfriendsbrother broke it on me lol

(http://www.youtube.com/user/suggababe12; taken from Lambert 2010: 76)

o semantic potential of to (and other prepositions) ?

o other prepositional competitors (from/ of/ for/ ..)

o development of other (non-core) verb classes

“We therefore view the prepositional dative and double object constructionsas having overlapping meanings which permit them to be used as alternative expressions or paraphrases“ (Bresnan 2007: 76)

Thank you for your attention

29

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