Why does Old English not have syntactic causative active accomplishments of motion?

• Javier Martín-Arista ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidad de La Rioja

     Universidad de La Rioja

     Logroño, España

     
• Localización: 28th International conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature: Book of Abstracts, 2016, pág. 28
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The aim of this paper is to explain why there are no syntactic causative active accomplishments of motion in Old English. The main theoretical basis of this study is Role and Reference Grammar, including some recent developments of the theory as presented in Cortés-Rodríguez (2014) and Van Valin (2014). The analysis of the data confirms that there are no syntactic causative active accomplishments in Old English, but also points out instances of morphological and lexical causative active accomplishments. The conclusion is that three reasons can be adduced for the absence of the syntactic version of the Aktionsart type in question in Old English: the increase in transitivity, the rise of syntactic complexity and the demise of the reflexive construction of motion.