Synchronic Variation in The Old English Perfect

Abstract

In Old English, the present/past dichotomy of the Germanic verbal system was supplemented by the development of periphrastic forms such as the perfect and pluperfect. However, the inflected past tense continued to be used beside these newer forms to express similar temporal content. The research presented here aims to provide accurate quantitative data on the distribution within Old English texts both of the periphrastic forms and of semantically comparable preterites. Upon analysis, these data reveal a substantial degree of synchronic variation among Old English texts in their use of these grammatical categories, with no observable diachronic trends. The evidence does not suggest that this variation is grammatically motivated; it is hypothesised that the preterite and the periphrastic forms differed in their perceived stylistic value, although the exact details of such a difference may no longer be recoverable.

The Status of Passive Constructions in Old English

“…An additional way in which translation can influence the form of texts was suggested by Macleod (: 333–6), which found that more literal translations can sometimes display a different general pattern from free translations. In the present paper a distinction has been drawn between passive constructions that are ‘strict’ translations, in which either the Old English and the Latin correspond in every respect or else only minor changes such as a change of tense or mood have taken place, and those which are ‘free’ translations, in which the Old English construction translates an active Latin verb or a different syntactic category such as a noun, or does not correspond directly to any Latin form.…”

“…Owing to the amount of manual analysis required, only a subset of the Corpus was analysed; it will be seen that this was still sufficient to provide significant results. A starting point for the sampling methods was the corpus used in Macleod (), a methodologically similar study; however, alterations have been made to this schema where appropriate, as we explain below. Texts were chosen to represent a mix of different time periods and stylistic diversity.…”

“…Sweet ). For this text the same sample as in Macleod () was used, comprising the preface and Chapters 1–5, 21, 32–6, and 50–4. The Latin text used for comparison was taken from the edition of Judic and Rommel ().…”

“…A text that presented additional complications in terms of sampling was Bede’s History ( Bede ), which also dates from the late 9th century (see Whitelock : 57–9). The constructions with weorðan are unusually infrequent in this text, a phenomenon that will be examined below, and as a result the sample from Macleod () was extended to include the full text of all sections containing passives with weorðan ; this comprises the preface, Chapter 7 of Book 1, Chapters 3–10 and 16 of Book 2, Chapter 20 of Book 3, Chapters 1–3, 17, 23, and 32 of Book 4, and Chapters 12–13 of Book 5. For this text, the Latin version was taken from the edition of Plummer ().…”

“…The Latin text used for comparison was that of the Vulgate; although modern editions of the Vulgate may not correspond exactly to the texts in use in Anglo‐Saxon England, none of the known textual differences would affect the passages at issue here (see Marsden : 395–419). Another text from the late 10th century, which was not included in the study by Macleod (), is Æthelwold’s translation of the Benedictine Rule (see Gretsch ). Of this work the first 20 chapters were analysed; due to the structurally repetitive nature of the text this was found sufficient to provide a representative sample.…”