The functions ofweorðanand its loss in the past tense in Old and Middle English

Abstract

In this article, I relate the loss of weorðan in the past tense to the loss of an Old English grammatical subsystem that encouraged the expression of narrative by bounded sentence constructions. This type of construction represents a situation as reaching its goal or endpoint, and serves to mark progress in a narrative (e.g. then he walked over to the other side). Instead of this system, from Middle English onwards a mixed system emerges with differently structured bounded sentence constructions as well as, increasingly, unbounded sentence constructions – which structure events as open-ended, usually by means of a progressive form (e.g. he was walking). I show how weorðan in Old English was strongly associated with the Old English system of bounded sentence constructions – an association with boundedness is not surprising given its meaning of ‘(sudden) transition into another state’. In the thirteenth century this rigid Old English system started to break down, as primarily evidenced by the disappearance of the time adverbial þa and the loss of verb-second. Wearð, being strongly associated with the old way of structuring narrative, decreased too and eventually disappeared.

The Status of Passive Constructions in Old English

“…This suggests that passive constructions played an enabling rather than a leading part in the disappearance of weorðan from English: the lack of grammaticalization in the passive meant that the loss of this lexeme (along with its replacement by others, notably becuman and weaxan ) could occur without great disruption to the capacity of the language to denote passive situations. This would be compatible with an account in which the trigger for the loss of weorðan came, not from the passive, but from elsewhere, for example from the blurring of the early OE semantic distinction between weorðan ‘become’ and geweorðan ‘happen’ (see fn 19), or from the shift the language from ‘bounded’ to ‘unbounded’ sentences (see Petré ).…”

“…Mitchell , i , 331), weorðan occurs with significantly greater frequency in the preterite than in the praesens (χ²(2) = 35.24, p < 0.001). This may be connected with the observed use of weorðan as a frequent structural device in narrative sequences (see Petré ); such narrative structures would naturally be most frequent in the preterite. The variation between praesentia and non‐finite forms is not statistically significant (χ²(1) = 1.92, p > 0.05).…”

“…However, given that weorðan ’s marginal status in the passive does not become any more pronounced during the period, it is possible that, while the marginal position of weorðan in the passive facilitated its eventual loss to the language, it did not trigger it, and that the decisive push came from elsewhere. Possible candidates are the blurring of the semantic distinction between weorðan ‘become’ and geweorðan ‘happen’ during the OE period and, as proposed by Petré (), the shift in the language from ‘bounded’ to ‘unbounded’ sentences…”

“…Recent work relating to the OE passive has addressed two broad topics. The first is the loss of weorðan from the lexicon (in passive constructions and elsewhere) between OE and ME; for example, Petré () argues that there was a move between OE and ME from ‘bounded’ to ‘unbounded’ (usually progressive) sentences, and that weorðan was particularly associated with bounded sentences. The second recent topic is the question of the status of weorðan and wesan / beon + passive participle constructions; thus Mailhammer and Smirnova () explore whether such constructions in OE (and OHG) are compositional (i.e.…”

Why is there a Present-Day English absolute?

“…); this is represented schematically in Figure 10 Th e hypothesis that there has been a structural increase in unbounded construal, while still somewhat speculative, seems worth examining, as it makes it possible to relate a number of superfi cially local and unrelated changes that take place in the English language around the same time. Changes that have been linked to this shift so far have been the loss of verb-second, which is generally considered to be the trigger that got everything moving (Los 2009, Los 2012, the decrease of time adverbials in clause-initial position (van Kemenade & Westergaard 2012, Petré 2014, the loss of the copula of change weorðan 'become' , by its association with verb-second word order (Petré 2010), unusual passives and cleft s (Los 2012), or the progressive (Petré accepted).…”