Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Home
  • Home
EnglishFrançais
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique

Article contents

Which-hunting in Medieval England

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2020

Robert Truswell  and
Nikolas Gisborne
Robert Truswell
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Nikolas Gisborne
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Corresponding
E-mail address:
rob.truswell@ed.ac.uk
n.gisborne@ed.ac.uk
Get access
Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In many of the first English headed which-relatives, which has an NP complement. Using distributional tests grounded in contrasts revealed by research in formal semantics, we demonstrate that the presence of an NP complement forces a nonrestrictive interpretation of the relative, while ‘bare’ which-relatives may be restrictive or nonrestrictive. We situate this finding in relation to both the formal semantics of relative clauses, and the history of wh-relatives in English.

Résumé

Résumé

Dans les textes du moyen anglais, on constate que pour les phrases relatives avec antécédent qui contiennent le pronom relatif which (Qu-), ce pronom a souvent un complément SN. À l'aide de tests distributionnels basés sur les contrastes révélés par la sémantique formelle, nous démontrons que la présence de ce complément SN force une interprétation non déterminative de ces phrases relatives, alors que des phrases relatives avec which mais sans complément peuvent avoir des interprétations soit déterminatives, soit non déterminatives. Nous situons ce constat par rapport d'une part aux études sur la sémantique formelle des phrases relatives, et d'autre part à l'histoire des phrases relatives-Qu en anglais.

Keywords

relative clauses Middle English discourse anaphora wh-phrases parsed corpora phrase relative moyen anglais anaphore discursive syntagme-Qu corpus annoté
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 65 , Special Issue 3: Formal Diachronic Semantics , September 2020 , pp. 326 - 349
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below.
If you should have access and can't see this content please contact technical support.

Footnotes

Portions of this work were presented at the UCL workshop on movement (2015), a linguistics colloquium at the University of York (2016), and the first Formal Diachronic Semantics workshop (Konstanz, 2016). Thanks to those audiences, to the guest editors of this volume (particularly Igor Yanovich for copious comments on a prefinal version), and to two anonymous reviewers.

References

Allen, Cynthia. 1977. Topics in diachronic English syntax. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Allen, Cynthia. 1980. Movement and deletion in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 11(2): 261–323.Google Scholar
Belyaev, Oleg, and Haug, Dag. 2018. The genesis of wh-correlatives. Unpublished ms., Moscow State University and University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Cecchetto, Carlo, and Donati, Caterina. 2015. (Re)labeling. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cinque, Guglielmo. 2011. On double-headed relative clauses. Revista de Estudos Linguisticos da Universidade do Porto 6: 67–91.Google Scholar
Curme, George. 1912. A history of the English relative constructions. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 11(1): 10–29, 11(2): 180–204, 11(3): 355–380.Google Scholar
Dayal, Veneeta. 1997. Free relatives and ever: Identity and free choice readings. In SALT VII, ed. Lawson, Aaron, 99–116.Google Scholar
Elbourne, Paul. 2001. E-type anaphora as NP-deletion. Natural Language Semantics 9(3): 241–288.Google Scholar
Evans, Gareth. 1980. Pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 11(2): 337–362.Google Scholar
Fabb, Nigel. 1990. The difference between English restrictive and nonrestrictive relative clauses. Journal of Linguistics 26(1): 57–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
von Fintel, Kai. 2000. Whatever. In SALT X, ed. Jackson, Brendan and Matthews, Tanya, 27–39Google Scholar
Gisborne, Nikolas, and Truswell, Robert. 2017a. On the stubborn refusal of English grammar to generate multiple correlatives. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the LAGB, University of Kent.Google Scholar
Gisborne, Nikolas, and Truswell, Robert. 2017b. Where do relative specifiers come from? In Micro-change and macro-change in diachronic syntax, ed. Mathieu, Éric and Truswell, Robert, 25–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1982. The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Heim, Irene. 1990. E-type pronouns and donkey anaphora. Linguistics and Philosophy 13(2): 137–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heim, Irene, and Kratzer, Angelika. 1998. Semantics in generative grammar. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul, and Traugott, Elizabeth. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2nd ed.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1977. $\bar{X}$ syntax: A study of phrase structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Jacobson, Pauline. 1995. On the quantificational force of English free relatives. In Quantification in natural languages, ed. Bach, Emmon, Jelinek, Eloise, Kratzer, Angelika, and Partee, Barbara, 451–486. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Johnsen, Olaf. 1913. On some uses of the indefinite relatives in Old English and the origin of the definite relatives. Anglia 37: 281–302.Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans. 1981. A theory of truth and semantic representation. In Formal methods in the study of language, ed. Groenendijk, Jeroen, Janssen, Theo, and Stokhof, Martin, 277–322. Amsterdam: Mathematisch Centrum.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward, and Comrie, Bernard. 1977. Noun phrase accessibility and universal grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 8(1): 63–99.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice, and Delfs, Lauren. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-1/.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, and Taylor, Ann. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (2nd edition). http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-2/.Google Scholar
Laing, Margaret. 2013. A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English, 1150–1325. Version 3.2, http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/ihd/laeme2/laeme2.html.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul. 1966. On so-called “pronouns” in English. In Report on the seventeenth annual round table meeting on linguistics and language studies, ed. Dinneen, F., 177–206. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, Craige. 1987. Modal subordination, anaphora, and distributivity. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Romaine, Suzanne. 1982. Socio-historical linguistics: Its status and methodology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sells, Peter. 1985. Restrictive and non-restrictive modification. CSLI report CSLI-85-28, Stanford University.Google Scholar
Taylor, Ann, Warner, Anthony, Pintzuk, Susan, and Beths, Frank. 2003. The York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English prose (YCOE). University of York. http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YCOE/YcoeHome.htm.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth, and Dasher, Richard. 2002. Regularity in semantic change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Truswell, Robert. 2016. Matching relatives in Middle English. Paper presented at the workshop on movement, University College London.Google Scholar
Truswell, Robert, Alcorn, Rhona, Donaldson, James, and Wallenberg, Joel. 2019. A Parsed Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English. In Historical dialectology in the digital age, ed. Alcorn, Rhona, Kopaczyk, Joanna, Los, Bettelou, and Molineaux, Benjamin, 19–38. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Truswell, Robert, and Gisborne, Nikolas. 2015. Quantificational variability and the genesis of English headed wh-relatives. In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 19, ed. Csipak, Eva and Zeijlstra, Hedde.Google Scholar
de Vries, Mark. 2002. The syntax of relativization. Doctoral dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam.Google Scholar
de Vries, Mark. 2006. The syntax of appositive relativization: On specifying coordination, false free relatives, and promotion. Linguistic Inquiry 37(2): 229–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Šimík, Radek. 2018. Propositions and properties in the semantics of wh-clauses: Arguments from typology. Paper presented at the syntax–semantics colloquium, University of Potsdam.Google Scholar
Zimmermann, Richard. 2015. The Parsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry. University of Geneva. http://pcmep.net/.Google Scholar

Truswell and Gisborne Supplementary Materials

Truswell and Gisborne Supplementary Materials

File 266 KB

Altmetric attention score

Full text views

Full text views reflects PDF downloads, PDFs sent to Google Drive, Dropbox and Kindle and HTML full text views.

Total number of HTML views: 20
Total number of PDF views: 86 *
View data table for this chart

* Views captured on Cambridge Core between 28th July 2020 - 17th January 2021. This data will be updated every 24 hours.

Hostname: page-component-77fc7d77f9-xbf5p Total loading time: 0.259 Render date: 2021-01-17T13:45:26.518Z Query parameters: { "hasAccess": "0", "openAccess": "0", "isLogged": "0", "lang": "en" } Feature Flags last update: Sun Jan 17 2021 12:53:07 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) Feature Flags: { "metrics": true, "metricsAbstractViews": false, "peerReview": true, "crossMark": true, "comments": true, "relatedCommentaries": true, "subject": true, "clr": true, "languageSwitch": true, "figures": false, "newCiteModal": false, "shouldUseShareProductTool": true, "shouldUseHypothesis": true, "isUnsiloEnabled": true }

Send article to Kindle

To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle.

Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Which-hunting in Medieval England
Available formats
×

Send article to Dropbox

To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox.

Which-hunting in Medieval England
Available formats
×

Send article to Google Drive

To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your <service> account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive.

Which-hunting in Medieval England
Available formats
×
×

Reply to: Submit a response

Your details

Conflicting interests

Do you have any conflicting interests? *