Functional Transposition of After from a Diachronic Perspective
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22364/BJELLC.12.2022.05Keywords:
preposition, conjunction, adverb, functional transposition, diachronic analysisAbstract
The paper aims at tracing the origin of the preposition, adverb, and conjunction after, starting with the first examples registered before 850; distinguishing the primary and transposed categories; and reconstructing the process of functional transposition in general. The analysis is undertaken on the basis of the examples, which have been manually selected from the HCET and the CLMET and have undergone the following PoS tagging, and the statistical data retrieved from the COHA and the BNC. It is proved that after emerges as the preposition and transposes into the adverb and conjunction. The preposition, which predominates throughout Old English, loses its position in favor of the adverb in the second half of the Middle English period. Later, it stabilizes the correlation, which remains more or less consistent up to now. The adverb reaches its peak in Early Modern English, then it starts rapid declension, and now its quantity is close to null. The conjunction, being neglected up to the middle of the Early Modern English period, starts its increase and is at the peak in Present-Day English. It testifies that functional transposition, which is undeservingly disregarded in linguistics, is still remaining in progress for fundamental and newly-coined lexical units.
References
Adams, V. (1973) An Introduction to Modern English Word-Formation. London: Longman.
Adamska-Sałaciak, A. (2008) Prepositional entries in English-Polish dictionaries. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: International Review of English Studies, 44: 339–372.
Akimoto, M. (1999) The idiomatization and grammaticalization of complex prepositions. Lacus Forum XXV, 25: 289–297.
Bally, C. (1932) Linguistique Générale et Linguistique Française. Paris: Librairie Ernest Leroux.
Bauer, L. (1983) English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139165846
Baugh, A. C. and Cable, T. (2002) A History of the English Language. London: Routledge.
Bloch-Trojnar, M. (2013) The Mechanics of Transposition. A Study of Action Nominalisations in English, Irish and Polish. Lublin: Wydawnictwo KUL.
Cappelle, B. (2004) The particularity of particles, or why they are not just ‘intransitive prepositions’. Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 18 (1): 29–57. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/bjl.18.04cap
Elenbaas, M. (2007) The Synchronic and Diachronic Syntax of the English Verb-Particle Combination. Utrecht: LOT.
Fontaine, L. (2017) On prepositions and particles: a case for lexical representation in systemic functional linguistics. WORD, 63 (2): 115–135. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2017.1309029
Golban, P. (2011) Mastering the genres: neoclassicism influencing the rise of the novel and the rise of theory of the novel in the eighteenth century English literature. Studia Universitatis, 10 (50): 35–42.
Halliday, M. A. K. and Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (1999) Construing Experience through Meaning: A Language-based Approach to Cognition. London: Cassell.
Heaton, J. B. (1965) Prepositions and Adverbial Particles. London: Longmans.
Hogg, R. M. (1992) The Cambridge History of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521264747
Horn, L. (2010) Double negation in English and other languages. In L. Horn (ed.) The Expression of Negation (pp. 111–148). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110219302.111
Jespersen, O. (1954) A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles. Part VI. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd.; Copenhagen: Ejnar MunksGaard.
Ježek, E. and Ramat, P. (2009) On parts-of-speech transcategorization. Folia Linguistica, 43 (2): 391–416. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/FLIN.2009.011
Komarek, M. (1999) Autosemantic parts of speech in Czech. In E. Hajicova et al. (eds.) Prague Linguistic Circle Papers, 3 (pp. 195–210). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/plcp.3.14kom
Kovbasko, Y. (2020) On the problem of parts of speech identification in the English language: a historical overview. Studies about Languages, 36: 30–45. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.sal.0.36.24312
Kovbasko, Y. (2022) Procedure of functional transposition analysis in the English language. Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 58 (1): 59–98. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/psicl-2022-0003
Kruisinga, E. (1932) A Handbook of Present-Day English. Part 3. Groningen: P. Noordhoff.
Kurilowicz, J. (1962) Ocherki po Lingvistike [The Outline on Linguistics]. Moscow: Izdatelstvo inostrannoi literatury.
Langacker, R. (1999) Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Vol. I. Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Leech, G. (1981) Semantics. The Study of Meaning, 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Lipka, L. (1992) An Outline of English Lexicology. Lexical Structure, Word Semantics, and Word-Formation. Tübingen: M. Niemeyer.
Lipka, L. (1971) Grammatical categories, lexical items and word-formation. Foundation of Language. International Journal of Language and Philosophy, 7: 211–238.
Marchand, H. (1967) Expansion, transposition and derivation. La Linguistique, 1: 13–26.
Marchand, H. (1969) The Categories and Types of Present-Day English Word-Formation. A Synchronic-Diachronic Approach. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
O’Dowd, E. (1998) Prepositions and Particles in English: A Discourse-Functional Account. New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195111026.001.0001
Old, L. J. (2003) An analysis of semantic overlap among English prepositions in Roget’s Thesaurus. In P. Saint-Dizier (ed.) Proceedings of the Association for Computational Linguistics SIG Semantics Conference (pp. 13–19). Toulouse: IRIT.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. and Svartvik, J. (1985) A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Ramat, P. (2019) The limits of transcategorization. In F. Serra (ed.) Incontri Linguistici, 42 (pp. 155–169). Pisa, Roma: Fabrizio Serra Editore.
Robert, S. (2004) The challenge of polygrammaticalization for linguistic theory. In Z. Frajzyngier et al. (eds.) Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories (pp. 119–142). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.72.07rob
Sanders, G. (1988) Zero derivation and the overt analogue criterion. In M. Hammond and M. Noonan (eds.) Theoretical Morphology. Approaches in Modern Linguistics (pp. 155–175). San Diego: Academic Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004454101_012
Simone, R. and Masini, F. (2014) New approaches to old word class issues. In R. Simone et al. (eds.) Word Classes. Nature, Typology and Representations (pp. 1–17). Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332.01int
Sweet, H. (1900) A New English Grammar. Logical and Historical. Part 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
ten Hacken, P. (2015) Transposition and limits of word formation. In L. Bauer (ed.) Semantics of Complex Words, Studies in Morphology (pp. 131–160). Cham: Springer. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14102-2_10
Tesniere, L. (1959) Elements de Syntaxe Structurale. Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck.
Tyler, A. and Evans, V. (2003) The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Senses, Embodied Meaning and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486517
Valera, S. (2017) Conversion and figurative extension of meaning. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 14 (2): 2–17.
Valera, S. (2004) Conversion vs. unmarked word-class change. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, 1 (1): 20–42.
Vinay, J. P. and Darbelnet, J. (1958) A methodology for translation. In L. Venuti (ed.) The Translation Study Reader (pp. 84–93). London: Routledge.
Yin, R. (2014) Case Study Research: Design and Methods, 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 University of Latvia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
