Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-hfldf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-22T08:29:10.664Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Perfect Auxiliary Selection in the Old Saxon Heliand

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2008

Carlee Arnett
Carlee Arnett
Affiliation:
University of MichiganDepartment of Germanic Languages & Literatures3110 Modern Languages BuildingAnn Arbor, MI 48109–1275 [carnett@umich.edu]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Shannon (1990) argues that the notions of lexical aspect (Aktionsart) and transitivity are a central part of perfect auxiliary variation. This paper builds on Shannon's (1993, 1995) analyses of perfect auxiliary selection in German and other related languages. Shannon accounts for perfect auxiliary variation by means of prototypes for high transitivity and high mutativity as well as the notion of Aktionsart. This paper examines the transitivity/mutativity parameters and the concept of Aktionsart using the examples of perfect auxiliary + past participle found in the Old Saxon Heliand. An examination of some 150 examples reveals that the choice of auxiliary can be explained by Aktionsart and a definition of transitivity that is characterized by conceptual imagery.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Germanic Linguistics , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 23 - 72
Copyright
Copyright © Society for Germanic Linguistics 1997

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Behaghel, Otto. 1932. Deutsche Syntax: Eine geschichtliche Darstellung. Band 4. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Behaghel, Otto. 1966. Die Syntax des Heliands. Wiesbaden: Dr. Martin Söndig oHG. [Rpt. of the 1897 edition.]Google Scholar
Behaghel, Otto. (ed.) 1984. Heliand und Genesis. 9th edn. by Taeger, Burkhard. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burzio, Luigi. 1986. Italian syntax: A government-binding approach. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Coleman, Linda and Kay, Paul. 1981. Prototype semantics: The English word lie. Language 57.26–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dal, Ingrid. 1952. Kurze deutsche Syntax. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Davis, Garry W. 1986. The origin of the ‘to be’ + preterite participle perfect paraphrase in Germanic. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Dieninghoff, Joseph. 1904. Die Umschreibungen aktiver Vergangenheit mit dem Participium Praeteriti im Althochdeutschen. (Dissertation, Bonn.) Bonn: C.Georgi.Google Scholar
Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fagan, Sarah M. B. 1988. The Unaccusative Hypothesis and a reflexive construction in German and Dutch. Germanic linguistics II, ed. by Antonsen, Elmer H. and Hock, Hans Henrich, 21–34. Bloomington: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar
Fagan, Sarah M. B. 1992. The syntax and semantics of middle constructions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles. 1975. An alternative to checklist theories of meaning. Berkeley Linguistics Society 1.123–31.Google Scholar
Foley, William A. and Van Valin, Robert D.. 1984. Functional syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Fridén, Georg. 1948. Studies on the tenses of the English verb from Chaucer to Shakespeare with special reference to the late 16th century. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksell.Google Scholar
Gallée, Johan Hendrik. 1891. Altsächsische Grammatik. Halle: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Grewendorf, Günter. 1983. Reflexivierung in deutschen A.c.I.-Konstruktionen— kein transformationsgrammatisches Dilemma mehr. Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik 23.120–96.Google Scholar
Grewendorf, Günter. 1989. Ergativity in German. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haider, Hubert. 1985. Von sein oder nicht sein: Zur Grammatik des Pronomens sich. Erklärende Syntax des Deutschen, ed. by Abraham, Werner, 223–54. Tübingen: Gunter Narr.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, T. 1984. Transitivity: Grammatical relations in government-binding theory. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Holthausen, Ferdinand. 1899. Altsächsisches Elementarbuch. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul and Thompson, Sandra. 1980. Transitivity in grammar and discourse. Language 56.251–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johannisson, Ture. 1945. Hava och vara som tempusbildande hjälpverb i de nordiska språken. Lund: Gleerup.Google Scholar
Keller, R. E. 1978. The German language. London: Faber and Faber.Google Scholar
Kern, J. H. 1912. De met het participium praeteriti omschreven werkwoords-vormen in 't Nederlands. Amsterdam: Johannes Mueller.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1972. Hedges: A study in meaning criteria and the logic of fuzzy concepts. Chicago Linguistic Society 8.183–28.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1982. Space grammar, analysability, and the English passive. Language 58.22–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical prerequsites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 2: Descriptive application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Meillet, Antoine. 1949. Caractères généraux des langues germaniques. 7th edn.Paris: Hachette.Google Scholar
Murphy, G. Ronald (trans.). 1992. The Heliand: The Saxon Gospel. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Paul, Hermann. 1905. Die Umschreibung des Perfektums im Deutschen mit haben und sein. Abhandlungen der philosophisch-philologischen Klasse der Königlich Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1. Klasse, 22. Band, 1. Abteiling, 161–210. Munich: Verlag der Königlichen Akademie.Google Scholar
Perlmutter, David M. 1978. Impersonal passives and the Unaccusative Hypothesis. Berkeley Linguistics Society 4.157–89.Google Scholar
Rice, Sally. 1987. Toward a transitive prototype: Evidence from some atypical English passives. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13.422–34.Google Scholar
Rompelmann, T. A. 1953. Form und Funktion des Praeteritums im Germanischen. Neophilologus 37.65–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor. 1973. Natural categories. Cognitive Psychology 4.328–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosch, Eleanor. 1978. Principles of categorization. Cognition and categorization, ed. by Rosch, Eleanor and Lloyd, Barbara B., 27–47. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.Google Scholar
Rosen, Carol G. 1984. The interface between semantic roles and initial grammatical relations. Studies in relational grammar 2, ed. by Perlmutter, David M. and Rosen, Carol G., 33–77. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sehrt, Edward H. 1925. Vollständiges Wörterbuch zum Heliand und zur altsächsischen Genesis. (Hesperia, 14.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht; Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.Google Scholar
Shannon, Thomas F. 1987. On some recent claims of relational grammar. Berkeley Linguistics Society 13.247–62.Google Scholar
Shannon, Thomas F. 1988. Perfect auxiliary variation as a function of Aktionsart and transitivity. Proceedings of the Western Conference on Linguistics. WECOL 88, ed. by Edmonds, Joseph, Mistry, P. J., Samilian, Vida, and Thornburg, Linda, 1.254–66. Fresno: Department of Linguistics, California State University, Fresno.Google Scholar
Shannon, Thomas F. 1990. The Unaccusative Hypothesis and the history of the perfect auxiliary in Germanic and Romance. Proceedings of the Eighth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, ed. by Andersen, Henning and Konrad, Koerner, 461–99. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Shannon, Thomas F. 1993. To be or not to be in Dutch: A cognitive account of some puzzling perfect auxiliary phenomena. The Low Countries and beyond, ed. by Kirsner, Robert S., 85–96. Lanham, MD: University Press of America.Google Scholar
Shannon, Thomas F. 1995. Explaining perfect auxiliary variation: Some modal and aspectual effects in the history of Germanic. AJGLL 7.129–63.Google Scholar
Shibatani, M. 1985. Passives and related constructions: A prototype analysis. Language 61.821–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, John R. 1989. Linguistic categorization: Prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
van Oosten, Jeanne. 1986. Sitting, standing, and lying in Dutch: A cognitive approach to the distribution of the verbs zitten, staan, and liggen. Dutch linguistics at Berkeley, ed. by van Oosten, Jeanne and Snapper, Johan P., 137–59. Berkeley: Dutch Studies Program, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zaenen, Annie. 1987. Unaccusative verbs in Dutch and the syntax-semantics interface. Unpublished ms.Google Scholar