A history of English reflexive pronouns : person, self, and interpretability / Elly van Gelderen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gelderen, Elly van.

Series:

Linguistik aktuell ; Bd. 39.

Linguistik aktuell = Linguistics today ; v. 39

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Pronoun.

English language--Reflexives.

English language--Grammar, Historical.

Physical Description:

xiv, 277 p.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; Philadelphia : John Benjamins Pub. Co., c2000.

Summary:

This book brings together a number of seemingly distinct phenomena in the history of English: the introduction of special reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself), the loss of verbal agreement and pro-drop, and the disappearance of morphological Case. It provides vast numbers of examples from Old and Middle English texts showing a person split between first, second, and third person pronouns. Extending an analysis by Reinhart & Reuland, the author argues that the 'strength' of certain pronominal features (Case, person, number) differs cross-linguistically and that parametric variation accounts for the changes in English. The framework used is Minimalist, and Interpretable and Uninterpretable features are seen as the key to explaining the change from a synthetic to an analytic language.

Contents:

A HISTORY OF ENGLISH REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS

Editorial page

Title page

LCC page

Table of contents

Preface

List of tables

Notes for the user and list of abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1. Old English reflexives

Chapter 2. Reflexives in Middle and later English

Chapter 3. Pro-drop and feature strength

Chapter 4. The loss of verbal agreement and verb-movement

Chapter 5. The loss of inherent case

Chapter 6. Ergativity and the person split

Chapter 7. Conclusion

Appendix

Main Old English Works used

Main Early Middle English used

Middle English Works used

Main Early Modern Works used

References

Name Index

Subject Index

The Series LINGUISTIK AKTUELL/LINGUISTICS TODAY.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (p. [257]-268) and indexes.

ISBN:

9786612163371

9781282163379

128216337X

9789027299178

902729917X

OCLC:

49855196