TY - CHAP
T1 - Anaphoric reference in Early Modern English
T2 - The case of said and same
AU - Leung, Alex
AU - Van Der Wurff, Wim
PY - 2018/5/14
Y1 - 2018/5/14
N2 - Work on the anaphoric NPs the said + N and the same has shown that both were frequent in sixteenth-century English but declined afterwards. We address the question why this happened. After reviewing earlier work on the two constructions, we present data showing that their properties and development are too dissimilar to assume that they declined for the same reason. Instead, we identify for each of the changes two separate causal factors, which involve tension between form and meaning of the anaphor. In exploring these case histories, we also offer some discussion of the general kinds of explanations that have been proposed for the decline of linguistic forms and constructions, which is an aspect of language change that deserves more systematic investigation.
AB - Work on the anaphoric NPs the said + N and the same has shown that both were frequent in sixteenth-century English but declined afterwards. We address the question why this happened. After reviewing earlier work on the two constructions, we present data showing that their properties and development are too dissimilar to assume that they declined for the same reason. Instead, we identify for each of the changes two separate causal factors, which involve tension between form and meaning of the anaphor. In exploring these case histories, we also offer some discussion of the general kinds of explanations that have been proposed for the decline of linguistic forms and constructions, which is an aspect of language change that deserves more systematic investigation.
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85111152780
U2 - 10.1075/la.246.06leu
DO - 10.1075/la.246.06leu
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9789027200723
T3 - The Noun Phrase in English
SP - 143
EP - 186
BT - The Noun Phrase in English: Past and present
PB - John Benjamins
ER -