Why is there a Present-Day English absolute?
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Nikki van de Pol [1] ; Peter Petré [2]
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[1] KU Leuven
KU Leuven
Arrondissement Leuven, Bélgica
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[2] University of Lille
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- Localización: Studies in language: International Journal Sponsored by The Foundation "Foundations of Language", ISSN 0378-4177, Vol. 39, Nº 1, 2015, págs. 199-229
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This paper examines the divergent evolutions of the Absolute Construction (AC) in the history of the Germanic languages, with a focus on English and Dutch, and provides an explanation of why only the English AC retained its frequency and productivity rate. Three language-internal factors are appealed to in order to account for this divergence: (i) increased with-augmentation of ACs results in fuzzy boundaries with the more frequently used gerunds as well as (regular) prepositional postmodifying constructions; (ii) the overall higher frequency in English of constructions with -ing-forms (gerunds, free adjuncts, and progressives) invites structural priming; and (iii) a possible typological shift of English from strictly bounded construal to a mixture of bounded and unbounded construal. An additional language-external factor is found in different prescriptivist traditions. English never really opposed the use of ACs whereas prescriptivism in other Germanic languages emphatically did.
