32.1798, Diss: Danish; Dutch; English, Middle; English, Old; Historical Linguistics: Sune Gregersen: '' Early English modals: Form, function, and analogy''

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-1798. Mon May 24 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.1798, Diss: Danish; Dutch; English, Middle; English, Old; Historical Linguistics: Sune Gregersen: '' Early English modals: Form, function, and analogy''

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Date: Mon, 24 May 2021 13:25:26
From: Sune Gregersen [s.gregersen at hum.ku.dk]
Subject: Early English modals: Form, function, and analogy

 
Institution: University of Amsterdam 
Program: Amsterdam Center for Language and Communication 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2020 

Author: Sune Gregersen

Dissertation Title: Early English modals: Form, function, and analogy 

Dissertation URL:  https://hdl.handle.net/11245.1/0a5dbde6-7a43-4201-8037-eff81274178e

Linguistic Field(s): Historical Linguistics

Subject Language(s): Danish (dan)
                     Dutch (nld)
                     English, Middle (enm)
                     English, Old (ang)


Dissertation Director(s):
Olga Fischer
Jan Nuyts

Dissertation Abstract:

This book concerns the early history of the English modals, in particular
their morphosyntactic and semantic development in the Old English (c. AD
800–1100) and Middle English (c. AD 1100–1500) periods. The English modals
have played an important role in both synchronic and diachronic linguistic
work in the last decades, but a number of contested issues concerning their
development remain unresolved. This dissertation attempts to answer some of
the open questions through careful analysis of the extant Old and Middle
English sources and comparison with other Germanic languages, such as Old
Norse, Middle Danish, and Middle Dutch.

The first part of the book provides a theoretical and methodological
introduction to the study of the early English modals, the semantics of
modality, and the historical corpora and other textual sources used for the
investigation. The second part presents the investigation itself, which
consists of four interconnected studies on the development of the modals,
focussing on various morphological and syntactic developments in Middle
English, the numerous changes to the ‘marginal’ modal dare, and the semantic
development of the ‘core’ modals can, may, and must. I pay particular
attention to a number of changes which do not follow the predictions made in
the grammaticalization literature, but which can be readily explained with
reference to analogy.




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