Semantic primes in historical languages. The identification of the Old English exponent for DO
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.4467Keywords:
Natural Semantic Metalanguage, semantic primes, historical linguistics, Old English, valency optionsAbstract
This journal article follows the research line opened on the search for semantic primes’ exponents in Old English within the frame of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage theory (Goddard 1997, 2012; Goddard and Wierzbicka 2002). The aim of this study is to complete the line of research on prime identification opened on the category Actions, events, movement, contact by establishing the Old English exponent of the prime DO. With this purpose, this paper discusses the adequacy of different OE verbs as possible prime exponent on the basis of textual frequency, morphology, semantics and syntactic complementation. Relevant data of analysis have been retrieved mainly from the lexical database of Old English Nerthus, the Dictionary of Old English (Healey et al. 2018) and the Dictionary of Old English Corpus (Healey et al. 2009).
Downloads
References
Bauer, L. 2001. Morphological Productivity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Bosworth, J. and N. T. Toller 1973 (1898). An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Available online at: http://www.bosworthtoller.com.
de la Cruz Cabanillas, I. 2007. “Semantic Primes in Old English: a Preliminary Study of Descriptors”. SELIM 14: 37-58.
Denison, D. 1993. English Historical Syntax. New York: Longman Publishing.
Diamond, R. E. 1970. Old English Grammar and Reader. Detroit, Michigan: Wayne State University Press
Goddard, C. 1997. “The universal syntax of semantic primitives”. Language Sciences 19 (3): 197-207.
Goddard, C., ed. 2008. Cross-Linguistics Semantics. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Goddard, C. 2011. Semantic Analysis: A Practical Introduction. New York. Oxford University Press.
Goddard, C. 2012. “Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology”. Linguistics (Special issue on “Lexical Typology”. Eds. M. Koptjevskaja-Tamm and M. Vanhove) 50 (3): 711-743.
Goddard, C. 2015. Verb classes and valency alternations (NSM approach), with special reference to English physical activity verbs. Eds. A. Malchukov and B. Comrie. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Goddard, C. 2019. “NSM webpage”. http://www.une.edu.au/bcss/linguistics/nsm/ (Accessed 25 January 2019).
Goddard, C. and A. Wierzbicka, eds. 2002. Meaning and Universal Grammar. Theory and Empirical Findings. Volumen 1. Amsterdam. John Benjamins.
Goddard, C. and A. Wierzbicka. 2016. “Explicating the English lexicon of 'doing and happening”. Functions of Language 23 (2): 214-256.
Godden, M. 2016. The Old English History of the World: An Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius. Cambridge - MA - London: Harvard University Press.
Guarddon Anelo, M. C. 2009. “Un Análisis de las Propiedades Combinatorias de los Primitivos Semánticos a través de las Adposiciones Complejas en Inglés Antiguo”. Revista Española de Lingüística 39 (2): 93-122.
Hall, J. R. C. 1996. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
Healey diPaolo, A. Cameron, A., Crandell Amos, A. et al. (eds.). 2018. Dictionary of Old English: A to G online. Toronto. Dictionary of Old English Project.
Healey diPaolo, A., ed., with J. Price Wilkin and X. Xiang. 2009. The Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. Toronto. Dictionary of Old English Project. Available at: http://www.doe.utoronto.ca/pub/webcorpus.htm.
Hogg, R. M. and R. D. Fulk. 2011. A Grammar of Old English (2 Volumes). United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kay, C., Roberts, J., Samuels, M. and I. Wotherspoon. 2009. The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary. University of Glasgow: Oxford University Press.
Kuhn, S. M., 1980. “Middle English Don and Maken: Some Observations on Semantic Patterns”. American Speech 52: 5-18.
Martín Arista, J. et al. 2009. Nerthus: An Online Lexical database of Old English. Available at: www.nerthusproject.com.
Martín Arista, J. and M. V. Martín de la Rosa. 2006. “Old English Semantic Primes: Substantives, Determiners and Quantifiers”. ATLANTIS 28 (2): 9-28.
Mateo Mendaza, R. 2013. “The Old English exponent for the semantic prime TOUCH. Descriptive and methodological questions”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 33 (4): 449-466.
Mateo Mendaza, R. 2016a. “The search for Old English semantic primes: the case of HAPPEN”. Nordic Journal of English Studies 15 (1): 71-99.
Mateo Mendaza, R. 2016b. “The Old English exponent for the semantic prime MOVE”. Australian Journal of Linguistics 36 (4): 542-55.
Miller, T. 1959a. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Part I 1. London-New York-Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Miller, T. 1959b. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Part I 2. London-New York- Toronto: Oxford University Press
Mitchell, B. 1985. Old English Syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Orel, V. 2003. A Handbook of Germanic Etymology. Leiden/Boston: Brill.
Oxford University Press. 2020. Oxford Learner's Dictionary. Available at: www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com.
Quirk, R. and C. L. Wrenn. 1994 (1955). An Old English Grammar. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press.
Ringe, D. and A. Taylor. 2014. The development of Old English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roberts, J., Kay, C. and L. Grundy. 2000. A Thesaurus of Old English. Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi.
Royster, J. F. 1922. “Old English causative verbs”. Studies in Philology 19: 328-356.
Skeat, W. W. 1993. The Concise Dictionary of English Etymology. Great Britain: Wordsworth Edition Ltd.
Sweet, H. 1976 (1897). The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon. New York-London: The MacMillan Company.
Thorpe, B. 2011. The Homilies of the Anglo-Saxon Church. London: Richard and John E. Taylor.
Visser, F. Th. 1984. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. Netherlands: E. J. Brill.
Wierzbicka, A. 1996. Semantics. Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The authors retain copyright of articles and authorize Journal of English Studies the first publication. They are free to share, redistribute, and/or reprint the article without obtaining permission from the publisher as long as they give appropriate credit to the editor and the journal.
Self-archiving is allowed too. In fact, it is recommendable to deposit a PDF version of the paper in academic and/or institutional repositories.
It is recommended to include the DOI number.
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
