Demonstratives and possessives: From Old English to present-day English

Abstract

Three different nominal word orders in Old English through present-day English are investigated, in order to determine whether English has an ‘adjectival’ possessive similar to Modern Italian. It is argued that the orders a) demonstrative, possessive, noun and b) possessive, demonstrative, noun represent different syntactic constructions, with different paths of development. It is concluded that the a) order represents three different constructions: i) apposition, ii) a possible ‘adjectival’ possessive, no longer found in Middle English, iii) an Early Modern English focus construction using the proximal. The b) order represents a demonstrative in form, functioning only as a definiteness marker.

The Definiteness Cycle in Germanic

“…More evidence for the changing structural status of the demonstrative can be found in data provided by Traugott (1992), Wood (2007), and others, namely that the possessive often precedes the demonstrative, as in 34a and 35a, even if there is no demonstrative in the original Latin. Wood argues that this shows that the demonstrative is in the head position by late Old English.…”

“…The tree for 21 might be as in 22, with the article hitt moving to a position higher in the DP, but this structure is revised below where the article is concerned (a word marked by strikethrough is a copy that is not to be spelled out). Wood 2007). Sentences 20a-c have the same structure, with the demonstratives at and au in the specifier and the it and in in the D head moving there from the n head where it originates.…”

The Loss of Grammatical Gender and Case Features Between Old and Early Middle English: Its Impact on Simple Demonstratives and Topic Shift

“…Some noteworthy examples of the former include Allen (1995Allen ( , 2006Allen ( , 2012 and Wood (2007), who examine the properties of the OE demonstratives in co-occurrence with adjectives or quantifiers in the DP. Examples of the latter include Osawa (2007), Watanabe (2009), van Gelderen (2011avan Gelderen ( , 2011b, Crisma (2011), Los (2012), and Breban (2012).…”

“…In the nominative own extended projection, i.e., DP with the demonstrative in D 0 . Allen (2006) and Wood (2007) conflate this discrepancy with the fact that this sequence represents the grammaticalisation of the demonstrative which is here the pure definiteness marker (Wood 2007: 357).…”