Old and Middle English adverbs of degree in their wider West Germanic context

Abstract

Research on adverbs of degree in Old and Middle English has been largely self-contained and has paid little attention to developments that were happening in the neighbouring West Germanic languages. While research on these other languages is less extensive, “Middle” Germanic has been identified as a period of convergence for the usage of adverbs of degree (Visser 2023). The present study analyses the usage patterns of seven adverbs in both Old and Middle English using data from different corpora: swīðe/swīthe, ful, miċle/muchel, sāre/sǭre, ġearwe/yāre, fela/fę̄le, and hearde/harde. It is found that their development differs strikingly from their Continental West Germanic counterparts, and they appear to preserve more primary usage patterns.