Constructions and Language Change - Core

Constructions and Language Change

edited by

Alexander Bergs Gabriele Diewald

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Constructions and language change / edited by Alexander Bergs and Gabriele Diewald. p. cm. (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 194) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-019866-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Linguistic change. 2. Grammar, Comparative and general. I. Bergs, Alexander. II. Diewald, Gabriele. P142.C67 2008 4171.7dc22 2008032045

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Bedusted, yet not beheaded: The role of be-’s constructional properties in its conservation∗ Peter Petré and Hubert Cuyckens 1. Introduction When leafing through a dictionary of Old English (OE), one is bound to find a considerable number of verbs that are prefixed by inseparable prefixes derived from Germanic. By way of illustration, Table 1 lists those prefixes that have the highest type frequency (in that they combine with the highest number of different root verbs) and that also have the highest token frequency (see de la Cruz 1975: 47 for an exhaustive list). For each of these prefixes, the suggested original spatial meaning (which is not always undisputed) is indicated, and a transparent example is given. Table 1. Old English inseparable prefixes derived from Germanic OE prefix abege-

Meaning

Example

Gothic cognate out, away (Gmc. *ar-) adrifan ‘drive out/away’ uz-, uraround berowan ‘row round’ bion, to (cf. Lehmann gecuman ‘come together, ga1986, Hiltunen 1983: arrive’ 49–50) for?round about, all over forfaran ‘pass away, fairperish’ ofaway from ofhealdan ‘withhold, afretain’ on-/and- against andswarian ‘answer’ anatoapart tobrecan ‘break asunder’ dis- (?), twis-

German cognate erbege-

verabentzer-

In dictionaries of Middle English (ME), the number of (prefix–verb) entries is considerably smaller; in Present-Day English (PDE), it has dwindled to an altogether insignificant number. However, there is one prefix which is a notable ex-

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ception, namely, be-. It is the only prefix from the above list which has not disappeared from the English language and which is still somewhat productive today (cf. such neologisms found on the Internet as besocked or unbesocked [created July 2007, http://sisypheanknits.blogspot.com/], betied ‘wearing a tie’ [created spring 2005, http://www.oufoundation.org/sm/spring2005/thams.asp?ID=153]; see section 6.3 for a brief discussion of PDE productivity). In this article, we will try to account for the preservation of the prefix be-, and for its productive capacity, by making use of the construction grammar model (CxG) as mainly developed by Goldberg (1995, 2006), and based on research on constructions by, for instance, Lakoff (1987), Fillmore, Kay, O’Connor (1988), and Michaelis (1994). The structure of the paper is as follows. Before getting down to explaining the unique behaviour of the prefix be-, we will discuss its frequency history in somewhat more detail and contrast it with another prefix, namely to-, whose frequency history we believe to be representative of the other inseparable prefixes in Table 1 (section 2). Following this frequency overview, section 3 will describe the Construction Grammar approach to verb prefixes. Section 4 will describe the two types of prefix constructions that are relevant for our study, namely, predicative and non-predicative prefix constructions (Blom 2004). On the whole, predicative prefix constructions can be defined as those constructions in which the prefix functions as a secondary predicate denoting the result of the action of the verb (the primary predicate). Non-predicative prefixes refer to another set of prefixes, which license a direct object and have a function similar to that of a preposition in a prepositional phrase (there are other types of non-predicative prefixes, but they do not play a role in this paper). It will be seen that the differences in life span and development of the various prefixes depends on the distinct syntactico-semantic properties of each of these prefix constructions. While predicative prefixes could easily be replaced by functionally and semantically equivalent phrasal particles during the transitory period when English shifted from an OV-language to a VO-language, the salient syntactico-semantic makeup of the non-predicative construction marked by the prefix be- (which we will call from now on the non-predicative be-construction) largely prevented a similar replacement (section 5). It is precisely this salient non-predicative construction that will serve as the prototype for various extensions. In three of the resulting new constructions, be- assumes a more grammatical function, thus illustrating how a construction can grammaticalize and/or be the result of a grammaticalization process (cf. also Kemmer and Hilpert 2005, on the make-causative; Booij, this volume, on the Dutch aan het + INF construction; Traugott, this volume, on NP of NP constructions). This set of three extensions will be referred to as the major grammaticalized uses of be- (section 6). Finally, it will be shown that the highly salient constructional properties of

be-’s constructional properties in its conservation

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the core of be-, that is these major grammaticalized uses together with the spatial prototype on which they are ultimately based, and their high degree of type entrenchment are major factors in the conservation of the prefix be- (section 7). The present analysis focuses on the Old English period. During this period, the Germanic-based prefix system was still fairly intact, which easily permits us to compare the syntactic and semantic properties of its members. To determine these properties, we have extensively drawn upon corpus data, taken mainly from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) and the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry (YPC). Additional corpus material has been collected to accurately describe the development of the inseparable prefixes before and after OE. This material includes the corpus of Gothic texts, electronically available through the website of the Wulfila project (http://www.wulfila.be); the Helsinki Corpus (HC); the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, 2nd edition (PPCME2); the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts (CLMET; see De Smet 2005); and the British National Corpus (BNC World; all rights in the texts cited are reserved).

2. The frequency history of be-/toIt had been our initial assumption that all prefixes decreased from late OE on, and that be- did so as well, but at a slower pace. However, our corpus analysis revealed that be- takes up an exceptional position in that its token frequency still increased in the early ME period, right when the token frequency of the other prefixes (e.g., to- ‘asunder’) had started declining, as is shown in Figure 1.1 In contrast to the other prefixes as well, its type frequency decreased only slightly, from 75 to 72 types. Furthermore, be- is still productive today, or at the least, new be-verbs are still coined occasionally, whereas most of the other prefixes have disappeared. A common explanation for the loss of the Germanic prefixes is that their semantics had bleached to such an extent that their presence was of no importance any longer and that they could therefore be easily omitted (Kastovsky 1992: 377–381). However, a prefix such as to- ‘asunder’, while in use, had a much more concrete and specific semantic content than be-; still, to- disappeared from the language, while be-, which has retained hardly any lexical meaning, is still in use today.

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50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Gothic (c350)

OE (800-1000)

ME (1150-1350) Be-

EModE (1470-1640)

LModE (1780-1850)

PDE (1961)

To-

Figure 1. Prefix occurrences per 1,000 lexical verbs* * OE = sample from Old English; ME = Middle English sample; EModE = Early Modern English sample; LModE = Late Modern English sample; PDE = Present-Day English sample (based on The Tagged LOB corpus)

3. A constructional approach to prefixes The question we need to address in this section, then, is how we can account for the conservation of be-, which has largely lost its concrete lexical meaning, in the face of the loss of the other prefixes, some of which (e.g., to-) had a much more concrete semantic content than be-. In answering this research question, we will make use of theAdele Goldberg’s (1995, 2006) construction grammar model, supplemented with insights from Construction Grammar as developed by Kay and Fillmore (1999). According to Goldberg’s view of construction grammar, “phrasal patterns are considered constructions if something about their form or meaning is not strictly predictable from the properties of their component parts or from other constructions” (Goldberg 1995: 4).2 By way of example, let us consider Goldberg’s ditransitive and caused-motion constructions, which can be characterized as cause-receive [agt rec theme] and cause-move [cause goal theme], respectively, and which are exemplified by sentences, or constructs, (1) and (2).


(1) (2)

a. He gave her a fish taco. b. He baked her a muffin.

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(Goldberg 2006: 5)

a. She put the phone on the desk. (Goldberg 1995: 60) b. Frank sneezed the tissue off the table. (Goldberg 1995: 152)

On a constructional approach, the semantic aspects of transfer in (1) and caused motion in (2) are contributed by the respective constructions, as are the argument roles; classes of verbs are then associated (fused, integrated, unified) with these constructions. The ditransitive construction, for example, can be defined to be associated directly with agent, patient, and recipient roles, with its central sense involving transfer between a volitional agent and a willing recipient (cf. Goldberg 1995: 10, 141). When a verb such as give (or hand) is associated with the construction, as in (1a), its lexical semantics – which can be characterized as ‘successful transfer of an entity by an agent to a recipient’ – is identical with the construction’s semantics; in other words, “the constructional meaning is entirely redundant with the verb’s meaning” (Goldberg 1995: 51). The verb to bake, however, as an item in the lexicon, does not have this ‘intended transfer’ meaning, nor is it associated with a recipient role. As such, when bake is fused with the ditransitive construction, as in (1b), its meaning ‘to bake something with the intention of transferring it to someone else’ can only be licensed by the construction itself; or conversely, the ‘intended transfer’ and recipient components of the ditransitive construction are not predictable from the construction’s component verb. A schematic representation of the composite structure fusing the ditransitive construction and the verb bake is provided in Figure 2. Sem

CAUSE-RECEIVE < agent recipient bake

Syn

V

< baker

SUBJ

patient

>

thing.baked >

OBJ

OBJ2

Figure 2. Unification of the ditransitive construction with the verb bake

Constructions not only occur at argument-structure level, but also at the morphological level (cf. Croft 2001: 17; Goldberg 2006: 5): not only such complex syntactico-semantic pairings as studied in Goldberg’s work can be represented as constructions, but also morphological structures. As such, the [prefix – verb stem] structure, and more particularly the [be – verb stem] structure to be dis-

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cussed in this paper, will be regarded as a construction to be treated on a par with argument structure constructions. In line with Goldberg (1995: 22–23), then, we would like to argue that the inseparable prefix be- can be regarded as analogous to the (skeletal) argument structure, whereby the root verb plays the role of the main verb, and that “the semantic integration of morpheme [i.e., beprefix] and verb stem is analogous to the integration of construction and verb”. The constructs resulting from this integration (or fusion) will be referred to as inseparable complex verbs (ICVs). What distinguishes these [prefix – verb stem] or prefix constructions from argument structure constructions is that the former can be situated at a level similar to Croft’s verb-class-specific constructions (cf. Croft 2003), which is a level less schematic, or more substantive, than argument structure constructions. Importantly, Goldberg’s definition of constructions, with its condition of noncompositionality or non-predictability, also applies to prefix constructions, as instantiated by ICVs. For one, the semantics of ICVs is not predictable, because adding up the meaning of the simplex/root verb (including its participant roles) and that of the prepositional cognate of the prefix (if it still exists, like OE of for of- or be ‘by’ for be-) does not yield the semantics of the composite ICV. Second, the form of the ICV is not compositional either because the prefix does not constitute an independent component: an inseparable prefix only exists by virtue of the ICV of which it forms a part. The fact that inseparable prefix constructions satisfy the defining characteristics of a construction does not imply that all of its instances belong to one type of construction only. On the contrary, it will be seen that inseparable prefixes may occur in two types of constructional patterns, each of them with different semantics and different valency frames (the concept of valency frame here refers to the pairing of arguments to syntactic functions). Even prefixes with a single phonetic form, such as be-, may belong to two types of inseparable prefix construction. The constructional patterns are those which have recently been described for prefixes in Dutch (Blom 2004), namely predicative and nonpredicative constructions. An instance of a prefix construction can be found in (3) and is schematically represented in Figure 3. (3)

Læt hine gyt þis gear, oð ic hine bedelfe & ic hine bewurpe Let him alone this year, till I him be-delve.subj and I him be-throw mid meoxe with dung ‘Let it [a fig tree] alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it’. (c1025. Lk [WSCp]: 13.8. Trans. from the King James Bible)


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In particular, the verb form bewurpe (from beweorpan ‘surround/cover by throwing’) in (2) is an instance of a non-predicative, trivalent be- construction (see also Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001: 61). (Other be- constructions, such as the predicative and non-predicative bivalent be- constructions, will be discussed below.) This ICV shows a number of properties which cannot be predicted from its component verb wurpe ‘throw’ (from weorpan ‘throw’). As can be seen from Figure 3, when a root verb such as wurpe is unified (integrated, fused) with the verb-headed be-construction,3 the construction may arrange the participant role array of the simplex verb in such a way that in the resulting active transitive sentence, the agent argument is realized as subject, the location argument as direct object, and the theme as an oblique object of the preposition mid ‘with’ (alternatively, the theme could also be realized in the instrumental case).4 Sem ‘around, over’ + ‘affected’

SUBJ

OBJ

OBLINST/PP(mid)

Figure 3. Unification of the trivalent be- construction with the verb wurpe

Note that in this particular example the target participant associated with the verb weorpan ‘throw’ is between square brackets. This means that, despite the fact that it is lexically profiled (cf. Goldberg 1995: 44), it can be omitted if recoverable from context. In the prefixed form beweorpan ‘surround/cover by throwing’, however, wurpe’s target participant cannot be omitted any longer, since the location argument in the be-construction lines up with the direct grammatical function of OBJ. By contrast, the thing.thrown role, though profiled as a participant role of the verb, is represented by an unprofiled argument role in the be-construction and realized as an oblique syntactic argument (cf. Goldberg 2006: 40). Importantly, the location argument syntactically realized as OBJ in the prefix construction carries with it certain characteristics typical of patienthood not associated with the corresponding target participant role of the simplex. More specifically, the fig tree in (3) is affected by the action of dung thrown around it, because it can feed on that dung. In view of the fact, then, that prefixed verbs may reveal an argument pattern and a semantics that are not directly derived from the simplex verb, we have opted not to use the label ‘derived verb’ for prefixed forms such as beweorpan, but rather ‘inseparable complex verb’ (ICV) (adopted from Lexical Functional Grammar; see for instance Van Kemenade and Los 2003). Tradition-

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ally, derivations are seen as altering the meaning of their input (in this case, a verb). According to CxG, however, which is basically a non-derivational theory, verb meaning is constant across syntactic contexts (Goldberg 1995: 9–10, 27– 31). The difference in semantic content, then, between simplex verb and ICV is not the result of a derivational rule but rather of a fusing process, in which the meaning of the verb is lined up with that of the prefix construction, which possesses its own semantic content and (possibly) argument structure. A construction in CxG which possesses its own argument structure is called a linking construction. As has already been indicated, the mechanism which ensures the appropriate interaction between simplex/root verb and construction (and also between distinct constructions) is called unification, as described by Kay and Fillmore (1999). Michaelis and Ruppenhofer make use of the following metaphor to explain this process: Unification of constructions [in CxG, lexemes are also considered to be (lexical) constructions, PP & HC] can best be described in terms of a metaphor involving the superimposition of slides. Any slide (construction) can be superimposed upon any other as long as the semantic and syntactic specifications on each slide ‘show through’ – that is, provided there is no conflict among the specifications on the slides in the stack (Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001: 54).5 Thus, one can think of a prefix construction as being superimposed upon (or stacked on top of) the lexical entry of a given verb (or noun or adjective). The lexical entry contains a minimal valency, i.e., an array of thematic roles [Goldberg’s participant roles, PP & HC], whose grammatical expression is determined by the linking construction or constructions applied. A [...] lexical entry which is unified with linking constructions is said to be a fully specified lexical entry: one in which every thematic role supplied by the lexical entry is linked with a grammatical function (Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001: 55). An approach based on the unification of constructions has particular advantages for explaining language change. For instance, it elegantly explains the phenomenon of structural reanalysis (cf. Hopper and Traugott 2003: 40) as a reinterpretation of the constructional make-up of a certain set of constructs instantiating one or more constructions. For instance, a process of reanalysis probably caused the beprefix construction to be verb-headed in the first place. It is commonly assumed that prefixes originated in preverbs, which were originally free adverbs (cf. Watkins 1964; Hopper 1975; Booij and Van Marle 2003;


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Bubenik 2004). Later on, due to frequent adjacency to verbs in actual constructs, preverbs became inherently associated with verbs (and became bound morphemes). On the constructional level, this shift to boundedness seems to presuppose a change in the constructional status of these preverbs, brought about by the reanalysis of the actual constructs from being instantiations of a preverb (construction) functioning as an adjunct plus a verb (construction) into ICVs, that is, instantiations of a prefix construction with a verb (Bubenik 2004 gives an idea of how this development took place in Hittite). While the development of a prefix construction out of a preverb (construction) is presupposed in this paper, and will not be pursued any further, the construct-based reanalysis of a preverb construction plus verb into a prefix construction plus verb is similar to a type of reanalysis occurring within the prefix construction that will be discussed below in more detail (see section 6.2). For now, it will be assumed that constructs provide the relevant level of language change, but that it is the constructions instantiated by them that change (see also Traugott’s conclusion on the locus of change in Traugott, this volume).

4. A description of prefix constructions 4.1.

Predicative prefix constructions

A first type of prefix construction found in the data is the predicative one. In OE, this type occurs both with intransitive and transitive verbs of motion. Sentences (4)–(6) are instances of intransitive simplex verbs unified with a predicative prefix construction; sentences (7)–(9) provide examples containing transitive simplex verbs. (4)

nu of rode. Gif godes sune siæ Astig If god’s son be of-come:IMP.PRS.2SG now from cross. ‘If you be god’s son, come down from the cross now.’ (c950. MtGl [Ru1]: 27.40)

(5)

Ic ongite þæt ealla gesceafta TOflowen swa swa I understand that all creatures to-flew:SBJV.PRS.3SG as like wæter [...] gif hi næfdon ænne God þe him eallum stiorde. water [...] if they not-had one God who them all guided. ‘I understand that all creatures would flow AWAY[i.e. perish] like water [...] if they did not have one God who guided them all.’

(c950. Bo: 34.94.8)

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(6)

Gewat ða neosian, syþðan niht BEcom [He] went then [to] seek, when night be-came:IND.PST.3SG, hean huses. high house. ‘So he went to seek, when night came BY, the lofty house.’ (c1015. Beo: 115)

(7)

Þa Maximianus geacsade þæt his sunu feng to þæm When Maximianus discovered that his son came into the onwalde, he þa [...] þohte his sunu to beswicanne, & power, he then [...] thought his son to supplant, and him siþþan fon to þæm onwalde. Ac þa hit se sunu him after come into the power. But when it the son anfunde, þa Adræfde he þone fæder. out-found, then a-drove:IND.PST.3SG he the father. ‘When Maximianus discovered that his sone came into power, he [...] thought to supplant him, and ascend the throne after him. But when his son discovered this, he drove his father AWAY’ (c925. Or 6: 30.148.16)

(8)

Ac mid þæm þe he from þære clusan But with that that he [= Maximus] from the prisons afaren wæs wiþ þara scipa, þa com Theodosius away-travelled was with the ships, then came Theodosius þærto & funde þæræt feawa men, [...] & he hie thereto and found thereat few men, [...] and he them raðe aweg aþewde, & þa clusan TObræc quickly away away-drove, and the prisons to-broke:INDPST3SG. ‘But after [Maximus] had travelled away from the prisons with his ships, Theodosius arrived there and found there only few men, [...] and quickly drove them away, and broke the prisons ASUNDER’ (c925. Or 6: 36.154.13)

(9)

Her hiene BEstæl se here [...] to Cippanhamme Here him be-stole:IND.PST.3SG the army [...] at Chippenham & geridon Wesseaxna lond. and occupied West-Saxons’ land. ‘This year the army stealthily moved itself in [...] at Chippenham and occupied the territory of the West-Saxons.’ (c890. ChronA [Plummer]: 878.1)


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In all these examples, the prefix is functionally equivalent to a secondary predicate, as can be seen from (4′ )–(9′ ). Secondary predicates “are verbal constructions in which an embedded predicate denotes the result of the action of the verb” (Van Kemenade and Los 2003: 86).6 They are predicated of the theme of the clause, which, in these predicative constructions, may be the subject in the case of intransitive motion verbs or the object in the case of transitive verbs. It is precisely because of their equivalence with these secondary predicates that each of the prefixes illustrated in (4)–(9) can be said to constitute a predicative prefix construction. (4′ ) (5′ ) (6′ ) (7′ ) (8′ ) (9′ )

→ You come + you are down. → All creatures flow + all creatures are away. → Night came + night was by. → He drove his father + his father is away. → He broke the prisons + the prisons are asunder. → The army moved itself + it is in.

A schematic representation of sentence (8) containing a transitive ICV can be found in Figure 4 (the representation of an intransitive ICV, such as astigan ‘come down’, in (4), would link the theme to SUBJ and have neither an agent nor an OBJ). Sem R: means

Syn

to- ‘be apart’ bræc

to-bræc

SUBJ

OBJ

Figure 4. Unification of the to- construction with the verb bræc

It can be seen from Figure 4 that the argument role pattern of the prefix construction in OE is basically not different from that of the participant roles of the simplex verb. In other words, there exists an isomorphism between participant roles and argument roles such that intransitive verbs of inherent directed motion (see sentences (4)–(6)) remain intransitive and transitive verbs remain transitive (sentences (7)–(9)) when unified with the predicative prefix construction. In fact, prefix constructions which contribute a participant and link it to a grammatical function, as in Goldberg’s well-known instance of the caused-motion construction He sneezed the napkin off the table, are extremely rare in OE, if they exist at all. The random sample we used of 235 sentences containing toonly revealed one possible example:

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(10) Seo Wisle is swyðe micel ea & tolið Witland & The wisl is very big stream and to-lies Witland and Weonodland Weonodland → causes Witland and Weonodland to be ASUNDER by lying in be(c1025. Or 1 [c]: 1.16.29) tween As we will see below, precisely because of the isomorphic line-up between a simplex verb’s participant roles and the construction’s argument roles, the predicative prefix construction can be said to be less salient than the non-predicative prefix construction. Predicative prefix constructions are not entirely redundant with, or predictable from, the meaning of their root verb: they often involve a shift in telicity if the root verb is atelic. For instance, the root verb stelan ‘move stealthily’ underlying bestæl in (9) is atelic, whereas the ICV is telic ‘stealthily move in(to some place)’, as it has as a natural endpoint the place moved into. The idea that predicative prefixes are telicizing also receives support from their frequent occurrence in bounded clauses, that is, clauses that represent the situation as reaching a goal or an endpoint (see Declerck Forthc for the relation between boundedness and telicity). This tendency is statistically highly significant, as a comparison to the frequency with which simplex verb forms occur in bounded clauses reveals (p =< 0.01). Finally, this shift in telicity also lies at the basis of aspectual extensions, as for instance adruwian ‘dry up’ or oflætan ‘give up’ (see Brinton 1988: 204–212).

4.2.

Non-predicative prefix constructions

Not all prefix usages are examples of predicative constructions or extensions from it. In particular, prefixes whose adverbial etymon denotes route paths such as around, over, or along (see Dewell 1996: 111; Blom 2004: 20ff.) are often morphological markers belonging to another type of construction. Consider in this respect the prefix be-, which frequently has the sense of ‘around, over’, as in (11), and also in (3), here repeated as (12): (11) & [Cyneheard] hine [= Cynewulf] þær berad And [Cyneheard] him [= Cynewulf] there around-rode:INDPST3SG ond þone bur utan beeode and the chamber from outside around-went ‘And [Cyneheard] surrounded him (by riding) there and surrounded the chamber from outside.’ (c890. ChronA [Plummer]: 755.10)


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(12) Læt hine gyt þis gear, oð ic hine bedelfe & ic Let him alone this year, till I him be-delve.subj and I hine bewurpe mid meoxe him be-throw with dung ‘Let it [a fig tree] alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it’. (c1025. Lk [WSCp]: 13.8. Trans. from the King James Bible) A comparison of these ICVs with the predicative construction ICVs described above reveals considerable differences. In transitive predicative ICVs, the prefix is the equivalent of a secondary predicate predicated of the object of the sentence, which, in such ICVs is the realization of the theme. However, in the kind of transitive ICV illustrated by the two occurrences of be- in (11), the prefix cannot be paraphrased as a secondary predicate predicated of the object of the transitive sentence, as can be seen from (13). (13) *He rode + the king was around. *He went + the chamber was around. Rather, the prefix expresses a prepositional relationship between Cyneheard/he (the agent/subject/trajector) and Cynewulf/the king (the location/object/landmark) – and, together with the root verbs ridan ‘ride’ and gan ‘go’, constitutes the relationship between the trajector and the landmark. As a first approximation, the prefix usages in (11) and (12) could be paraphrased as in (11′ ) and (12′ ), but this paraphrase will have to be substantially revised; see below. (11′ ) He rode around the king. He went around the chamber. ′ (12 ) He threw dung around the tree. Because these prefix constructions are not equivalent to constructions involving a secondary predicate – but rather to constructions involving a prepositional object – they will be called non-predicative constructions. Two types of non-predicative be- construction will be distinguished: bivalent constructions (with an intransitive simplex verb) and trivalent ones (with a transitive simplex verb). As the latter type has already been discussed in some detail in section 3, we will here give most attention to the bivalent type. This beconstruction is instantiated by He berad þone cyning ‘He surrounded the king’, or by sentence (11), which can schematically be represented as in Figure 5. There are a number of ways in which this non-predicative be-construction can be said to be non-predictable from its component parts.

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Peter Petré and Hubert Cuyckens Sem R: instance

Syn

be- ‘around’ + ‘affected’ rad

be-rad

OBJ

Figure 5. Unification of the bivalent be- construction with the verb rad

First, in the two ICVs in (11), the prefix be- and the root verbs ridan and gan co-constitute the (spatial) relation between subject (trajector) and object (landmark), indicating that the direct object is subjected to the activity expressed by the verb in all the (spatial) points of the path denoted by the prefix – whereby all of these points are subjected to the verb’s activity simultaneously (that is, not sequentially). As such, the castle in (14) is subjected to the army’s ‘sitting’ (i.e., occupation) in all the points of a path surrounding the castle. This situation of complete and simultaneous surrounding gives rise to the notion of ‘total affectedness’; indeed, the castle and in particular its inhabitants are highly affected by the army’s action of ‘sitting’ (i.e., by the occupation), because in the end they are conquered and their king is slain. Importantly, this notion of ‘total affectedness’ is not part of the semantic content of the root verbs, i.e., is contributed by the construction itself. (14)

þæs ilcan sumeres gegadorode micel folc hit on Eadweardes The same summer gathered much people itself in Edward’s cynges anwalde. Of þam niehstum burgum, [...] & foron king’s power. From the nearest fortresses, [...] and travelled to Tæmeseforda. & besæton ða burg. & fuhton to Tempsford, and be-sat:IND.PST.3SG the fortress, and fought ðær on oð hi hie abræcon, & ofslogon þone cyning. there on until they them conquered, and of-slew the king. ‘The same summer many people gathered under the dominion of king Edward from the nearest fortresses, [...] and travelled to Tempsford, and besieged [i.e., sat AROUND AND THEREBY TOTALLY AFFECTED] the fortress, and fought there until they conquered them, and slew the king.’

(921. ChronA [Plummer]: 921.29) The notion of ‘total affectedness’ is also present in (11), and as such, (11′′ ) and (12′′ ) provide a more adequate rendering of (11) and (12) than did (11′ ) and (12′ ): (11′′ ) He rode AROUND [i.e., surrounded] the king, He went AROUND [i.e., surrounded] the chamber, [i.e. its WAS TOTALLY AFFECTED. inhabitants] WAS TOTALLY AFFECTED.

WHO WHICH


(12′′ ) He

THREW

dung around the tree,

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WHICH WAS TOTALLY AFFECTED.

This specific semantic characterization of the non-predicative prefix construction, as exemplified in (11) and (14), distinguishes it in a salient fashion from its prepositional cognate, as can be seen from the paraphrases in (11′ ) and (14′ ), where the ‘total affectedness’ meaning is absent. (14′ ) The army sat around the castle. One could argue that this contrast results from a particular development of the prefix be-, by which it has been removed semantically from its OE prepositional cognate be ‘by, along’(PDE by). However, a similar contrast apparently holds for other prefix–preposition pairs with route path semantics. Consider the following examples, where a sentence containing OE ofer- ‘over’ is contrasted with a sentence containing its cognate preposition ofer ‘over’. (15) Þa forleton hie hie, & eodon ofer land þæt hie Then left they them, and went over land that they gedydon æt Cwatbrycge be Sæfern arrived at Bridgenorth by Severn ‘Then they left them and went over land till they arrived at Bridgenorth by Severn’. (896. ChronA [Plummer]: 896.14) (16) Her on ðissum geare com Unlaf mid þrim & hund Here in this year came Unlaf with three and hunderd nigentigon scipum to Stane, & forhergedon þæt on ninety ships to Stone, and harried:ind.pst.3pl that from ytan, & for ða ðanon to Sandwic, outside, and travelled:ind.pst.3sg then thence to Sandwich, & swa ðanon to Gipeswic, & þæt eall ofereode, and so thence to Ipswich, and that completely overran & swa to Mældune and so to Maldon ‘In this year Unlaf arrived with hunderd ninety three ships at Stone and they harried it from outside and he travelled then from that place to Sandwich, and so to Ipswich, and completely overran it, and so to Maldon’. (993. ChronA [Plummer]: 993.1) Sentences (15) and (16) show the same difference between preposition and prefix as did (11′ ) and (11). While the landmark of ofer, in (15), i.e., land, is

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left unaffected once the army has passed over it, the landmark Ipswich in (16) is completely devastated by the action denoted by the ICV ofergan ‘overrun’. In PDE, only few verbs prefixed by over- still carry this original route path semantics. One example, which is actually well-known to CxG, is the verb override. It is not only the addition of the ‘affectedness’connotation that makes the nonpredicative be- construction non-predictable. Indeed, its argument role pattern contains a ‘location’ role which is not a participant of the intransitive input verb, but is contributed by the prefix construction itself. One could say, then, that the prefix be- has a valency pattern of its own (unlike most of the predicative prefixes), or that employing a simplex in a construction with a non-predicative route path prefix entails a valency shift. More specifically, when intransitive verbs of motion such as ridan and gan are employed in a non-predicative prefix construction, they become transitive, with the construction’s location argument (i.e., the landmark around which the motion is directed) being linked with the syntactic function of direct object (the king and the chamber in (11), Ipswich in (16); see also Figure 5). Finally, just as for verbs in the predicative construction, the addition of the prefix be- turns atelic verbs in the non-predicative construction into telic ones (this can be inferred from their frequent presence in bounded clauses, with an ever higher statistical significance [p =< 0.001] than in the case of predicative prefix constructions; compare section 4.1). A second type of non-predicative be- construction is trivalent, and contains a transitive simplex. Examples are in (17) and (3), which was discussed earlier and schematically represented in Figure 3. The non-predictable nature of this type of be- construction derives (i) from its inherent affectedness meaning, and (ii) from its argument pattern which is not isomorphic with the participant roles of the simplex. In particular, a prepositional paraphrase of this type of predicative construction would not convey ‘affectedness’: when one ‘around-throws a tree with dung’ (cf. 3), the whole tree is affected, and as a result, it might grow better; throwing dung around a tree just states that the tree is the goal of the throwing event – it might just be an indeliberate act – and no affect-relationship is implied. Furthermore, the transitive verbs employed in this construction show a particular kind of valency alternation, known as the applicative alternation. In particular, the theme argument in the ‘applicative’ construction, which was syntactically realized as direct object of the transitive simplex, is now realized as a PP/instrumental adjunct:


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(17) Sume ða yða he becerð mid ðy scipe. Some those waves he be-turned with the ship. ‘Some of those waves he by-passed with his ship.’ (894. CP: 56.433.5) As a result of its specific semantic and syntactic makeup, the non-predicative construction can be regarded as a salient construction: (i) the presence of the ‘affectedness’ component makes this construction more salient than its prepositional cognate; (ii) the alternations in valency structure make it syntactically salient in contrast to simplex verbs.

5. The development of prefix constructions It is commonly known that during the OE period English shifted from an OV language, where objects tend to precede the verb they specify, to a VO language, where objects tend to follow (e.g., Fischer et al. 2000: 138–139). This shift was not restricted to nominal objects, but it also held for other types of verb specifiers, such as adverbs, or, as for instance Hiltunen (1983) and Ogura (1995: 79) argue, for Old English prefixes. Those prefix uses where the prefixes were still felt to be specifiers of the verb in Old English came under pressure to be replaced with new patterns adapted to the new VO order of English. In the case of spatial predicative prefixes, this replacement could be made without any substantial loss of the functional/conceptual qualities of the prefix construction. As examples (18) and (19) show, the construction with a phrasal verb particle retained the argument roles/syntactic functions and semantics of the predicative prefix construction: (18a) and (18b) are both intransitive, just as (19a) and (19b) are transitive; furthermore, the (b) sentences retain the telicity of the (a) sentences. Note that this type of replacement of one structure by a functionally/conceptually equivalent one falls under the rubric of what Croft (2000) calls ‘intraference’, a mechanism of language change which applies more generally in language (see for instance the replacement of the that-clause with suasive verbs by the to-infinitive; cf. Los 1999). (18) a. Gif godes sune siæ astig nu of rode. (c950. MtGl [Ru1]: 27.40) b. Gyf þu sy godes sunu, ga nyþer of þære rode. (c1025. Mt [WSCp]: 27.40) ‘If you be god’s son, come DOWN from the cross.’

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(19) a. Theodosius [...] þa clusan TObræc ‘Theodosius broke the prisons ASUNDER’ b. He broke the cordes AL

(c925. Or 6: 36.154.13)

ASUNDER.

(Caxton. c1490. Bl: 190.14) Abstract extensions of these spatial predicative constructions, such as aspectual usages, were initially probably less easy to replace, but once the phrasal verbs had developed an aspectual system themselves, this replacement also became unproblematic (see, on this development, Brinton 1988: 212). In many cases, rather than being replaced by verb particle constructions, the prefix could also be left out entirely, because its semantics overlapped with that of the root verb. Night comes is usually equivalent to Night comes by, even though the focus on the result is somewhat lost. The same holds for break and break asunder (Bechler 1909: 76–77): (20) He brake the grete rondes (Caxton. c1490. Bl: 63.3) What about non-predicative prefix constructions? Our claim is that the nonpredicative be-construction was not replaced by a prepositional cognate because this would have meant changing its semantics as well as the overall valency pattern. Indeed, the replacement by a prepositional cognate would have meant losing the semantic component ‘total affectedness’(cf. the situation in present-day German, where the non-predicative prefix construction remains productive because the prepositional alternative is inappropriate to convey affectedness of its participants; Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001; Dewell 1996). In other words, the cause of the preservation of the non-predicative be- construction lies with its specific constructional properties, combining ‘path’ and ‘affectedness’, and linking the location participant to OBJ. The precise character of the conservatory influence of these constructional properties will be discussed in detail in section 7.

6. Major grammaticalized uses of the non-predicative beconstruction It has been seen in section 4.2 that, in contrast to the predicative be-constructions, the bivalent and trivalent spatial be- constructions constituted a highly salient set, semantically as well as syntactically. It is argued that this set, which will be referred to as the ‘Surrounding’ construction, served as a prototype for many extensions, where the original spatial semantics of be- ‘around’ is gradually


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lost and more grammatical meanings develop. There is one major series of nonpredicative extensions which can be said to make up, together with the prototype, the core of be-, in that they are semantically and/or syntactically related most closely to the prototype and to each other, and that they also have, overall, the highest frequency.These extensions can be labelled ‘Extensive Coverage’, ‘Total Affectedness’, and ‘Furnishing’ (this last one, being the most recent one, is also the most productive in PDE). Similar extensions have already been described by Michaelis and Ruppenhofer (2001) for German, but their importance in English has not yet been fully appreciated. Although all these extensions occur in OE, it is still possible to reconstruct their probable chronological order of appearance. An analysis of all be- verbs in Gothic only reveals instances of the ‘Extensive Coverage’ construction, which indicates that the ‘Total Affectedness’ and ‘Furnishing’ sense are of later date. Of these two, the ‘Furnishing’ sense is likely to be the later one, because it is fairly rare in OE, but becomes more frequent in ME and Modern English – the chronology here is, however, less clear. We would like to see the development of the non-predicative be-construction as an instance of the grammaticalization of a construction (cf. Hopper and Traugott 2003; for another example cf. Kemmer and Hilpert 2005).7 Several of the grammaticalization criteria, such as recently proposed by Himmelmann (2004), are satisfied: ‘host-class expansion’, ‘syntactic context expansion’, and ‘pragmatic-semantic expansion’. First, in the extensions described below, hostclass expansion is evident: while originally only spatial verbs of motion with a landmark participant could properly be unified with the non-predicative construction marked by be-, other hosts, where there is no clear sense of spatial motion, could increasingly be used as well (e.g., wyllan ‘boil’ versus bewyllan ‘boil away’). Secondly, although the non-predicative be-construction retains its valency pattern in its extensions, and as such does not prima facie show syntactic context expansion, we would like to argue that the extension through the ‘Furnishing’ construction to nominal and adjectival heads is an instance of syntactic context expansion as well (e.g., bespouse based on the noun spouse, befriend based on the noun friend). Finally, through pragmatic processes such as invited inference, the prefix has expanded to contexts where it is no longer used nonpredicatively. In this type of expansion, its equivalence with a preposition is entirely lost (e.g., beswælan ‘scorch’ versus swælan ‘burn’).

6.1.

Extensive coverage

A very early metonymic extension from the ‘Surrounding’ construction marked by be- is that of ‘Extensive Coverage’, in which be- means ‘(all) over’ and in

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which it denotes a route path as well. The resulting polysemy of the prefix can be compared to the one we find in PDE around and New High German um/herum. These prepositions are “ambiguous between a sense of ‘surrounding an enclosed space’ and ‘being distributed over a surface area”’ (Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001: 89). This development is illustrated by the following bivalent (21a) and trivalent (21b) OE examples: (21) a. Wæs bi eastan þære welneah sumo cirice in are Was by east that.gen well-close some church in honour Sancti Martini geo geara geworht mid þy Romani Saint Martin’s once years’ built when Romans þa gyt Breotone beeodon then still Britain be-walked. ‘Close east of that place a church in honour of Saint Martin was built, when the Romans still occupied [i.e., walked about] Britain.’ (c900. Bede 1: 15.62.2) b. Se apostol hine begeat mid ðam wætere. The apostle him doused [lit. over-poured] with the water. (c1000. ÆCHom II, 31–32: 247.175) The extension can be accounted for as follows: when an agent or theme completely surrounds a landmark, it can be said to be spatially contiguous (and as such metonymically related) to the surface area contained within the landmark’s boundary. It is not surprising, then, that be- also comes to denote the agent/theme extending over a surface area, either by following a path in various directions across the landmark’s surface area (as in 21a) or by being distributed over it (as in 21b). In the ‘Extensive Coverage’ extension, both the ‘affectedness’ meaning characteristic of the ‘Surrounding’ prototype and its shifted valency pattern (with respect to that of the root verb) are preserved. Other OE ICVs instantiating this extension are for instance bebaðian ‘bathe (lit. put water over sb.)’, behelian ‘cover’ (cf. helian ‘conceal’), besettan ‘cover, adorn’ (cf. settan ‘set, place’), besmitan ‘soil, defile’ (cf. smitan ‘daub, smear’), bestyman ‘bedew’ (cf. styman ‘steam’), beswapan ‘clothe, cover over’ (cf. swapan ‘sweep’) (some of these may also belong to 6.2).

6.2. Total Affectedness The extension to ‘Extensive Coverage’is not only instantiated by ICVs where the notion ‘Coverage’ solely derives from the be-prefix, but it also occurs with ICVs


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where the notion of ‘coverage’ is already present in the root verb, as is illustrated by the pair bewreon and wreon, both meaning ‘cover’. In this case, then, there are two types of root verbs the prefix can combine with. The first type consists of simplex verbs whose transitive valency pattern differs from that of the beconstruction after unification with the simplex verb. Compare in this respect the valency pattern of the verb lecgan in the non-attested but plausible example in (22) with the ICV belecgan ‘cover’ in (23), which arranges the participants of lecgan differently – the unification here is similar to that represented in Figure 3. (22) Lege hatte wulle on þæt sar. ‘Put hot wool on the wound’ (23) Belege [þæt sar] æfter þære beþinge mid hatte wulle Be-put [the wound] after the heating with hot wool ‘Cover [the wound] after the heating with hot wool.’ (c950. Lch II [2]: 47.1.4.) The valency pattern in (23) comprising a location OBJ and a theme OBL is identical to the one found in some simplex verbs, such as wreon in (24). These simplex verbs constitute the second type of verbs the construction can combine with, as is illustrated in (25). (24) & wreoh [þa eagsealfe] mid brede ‘And cover [the eye-salve] with bread’

(c950. Lch II [3]: 2.1.3)

(25) & bewreoh [þæt heals] fæste ufan mid leafum. And be-cover [that neck] firmly from above with leaves. ‘And cover over [that neck] firmly with leaves.’ (c950. Lch II [1]: 4.2.3) In cases such as (25), the only semantic component added by the prefix to the verb is that of ‘affectedness’. What seems to be occurring at this stage in the development of the non-predicative be-construction is a process of semantic reanalysis (see Croft 2000: 130) in which the ‘Coverage’sense of be- gets lost and only ‘Total Affectedness’ is retained, together with the separate valency frame of the prefix. Two factors may have contributed to this semantic reanalysis. First, while in the earlier be-ICVs, the notions ‘Surrounding’ and ‘Extensive Coverage’ both enter into the semantic makeup of the be-construction, in the construct unifying wreon and the be-construction, a semantic division of labor seems to be operational whereby the ‘Covering’ semantics is uniquely assigned to the root verb – the ‘Covering’ meaning is, after all, already present in that

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root verb – and the ‘Total Affectedness’ sense to the construction. The slide metaphor mentioned in section 3 allows us to clarify how this may happen. Assuming that a language user is at first only faced with the resulting projection of all superimposed slides, it seems plausible that he or she cannot always clearly tell from the resulting complex ‘slide’, i.e., the construct, from which slide a certain specification originates. In the construct combining wreon and the beconstruction, the semantics of coverage shows through only once. Therefore, if there is not sufficient additional information, the language user may think that this property is encoded only once, either in the simplex verb or in the be-construction, and consequently reanalyse the make-up of one of them or even sometimes both. A second factor that has led to the semantic reanalysis ‘Covering’ > ‘Total Affectedness’ is the process of invited inferencing. In a lot of cases, an event of an agent extensively covering a location will also entail that agent totally affecting that location, to the extent that the ‘Extensive Covering’ notion may become secondary or get lost. A factor that is frequently involved in this process of inferencing is the presence of the semantic component of ‘iteration’, which also leads to the sense of ‘affectedness’: in (24), repeated actions of coverage are necessary before the neck is totally covered over with leaves (or totally affected by the leaves); in (26), repeated hitting is necessary for the body to be totally affected by the whips. (26) We scylen beon on ðisse ælðeodignesse utane beheawene We shall be on this pilgrimage abroad be-hewn mid suingellan. with whips. ‘We have to be beaten all over with whips on this pilgrimage.’ (894. CP: 36.253.17) Once the sense of ‘Total Affectedness’ has been established independently from the ‘Extensive Coverage’ scenario, reanalysis is made apparent in the addition of the prefix to transitive verbs with non-location arguments. The resulting effect of the addition of be- then consists mainly of a strengthening of the transitivity (and concomitant affectedness) of the simplex: (27) Bewyl þara meolce þriddan dæl. Be-boil of the milk third part. ‘Boil away a third part of the milk.’ (c950. Lch II [3]: 22.1.3) Other examples are beswælan ‘burn, scorch’(vs. swælan ‘burn’) and behamelian ‘mutilate’ (vs. hamelian ‘hamstring’).


6.3.

155

Furnishing

It has been seen that throughout the various extensions discussed so far, the valency (or linking) pattern of the prefix construction was preserved. This valency pattern of [agent SU B J be-V location O B J (theme O B L )], now, was so prevalent in the minds of the language users, that it became possible to extend the V-slot to nouns and, rarely, adjectives (valency creation). This extension, however, also meant a new development in the semantics of be-, whereby the noun or adjective had to be provided with a verbal semantics. The sense be- was able to add without the support of a root verb can roughly be captured as ‘Furnishing’ (e.g., bespectacled related to the noun spectacles), or, metaphorically, the causative sense ‘making someone into something’ (as in befool [cf. the noun fool] ‘furnish someone with foolhood’, or befoul, related to the adjective foul). Sentences (28) and (29) are some typical instances of this extension; (29) would have the following valency pattern: [be-spade location O B J (Major and Curate) theme O B L (spades)]. (28) Nis na stude to istreone bicumelic butan ða þe istreonieð beon bispused rihtliche to gedere. ‘No place to procreate is fitting except if those who procreate are be-spoused [‘married’] rightly together.’ (c1225. LambX1: 133) (29) The neighbouring Villages turn out: their able men come marching, to village fiddle or tambourine and triangle, under their Mayor, or Mayor and Curate, who also walk bespaded [‘with spades (on their shoulders)’], and in tricolor sash. (Carlyle. 1837. The French Revolution) One might object that it cannot be the original valency pattern [be-V location O B J theme O B L ] that underlies this extension, as the theme in denominal ICVs is already expressed by the source nominal of the ICV itself. However, while it is true that oblique themes are generally omitted in denominal ICVs, the reason for this omission is of a pragmatic rather than a syntactic nature. Usually, the source nominal renders the theme argument easily recoverable, and this recoverability makes the expression of the theme redundant. However, examples (30)–(32) show that this may not always be the case. (30) Min freond siteð under stanhliþe storme behrimed. My.gen friend sits under stone-cliff storm:ins be-rimed. ‘My friend sits under a cliff of stone, behoarfrosted with storm.’ (c970. Wife’s Lament [Exeter book]: 48–49)

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(31) Too foul-mouthed I am to becollow or becollier him with such chimneysweeping attributes of smoking and parching. (Nashe. 1593(orthography 1871). Lenten stuffe) (32) Shakespeare [...] can be complemented by the sober heft of. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral or spritzed with My Fair Lady in an ingeniously extravagant production that bejewels the stage with chandeliers, dinner jackets and hats. (Time magazine, 22.08.1988, http://www.time.com/time/ magazine/article/0,9171,968174,00.html [19.07.2007]) These examples, and particularly the active clauses in (31)–(32), show that the source nominal of the derivation does not inherently refer to the theme as such, once it is unified with the be- construction, and that the theme has to be expressed separately if it is not recoverable from context (see Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001: 47). This section is also the appropriate place to discuss the productivity status of be- in PDE. As (29), (32), and the recent ICVs (un)besocked and betied given in the introduction show, it is the ‘Furnishing’ extension that provides almost all of the new ICVs from Late Modern English onwards. A glance at the lemma for the prefix be- in the OED2 suggests that this extension was fairly productive during the late Modern English period, with forms such as bedismalled (1751), be-knighted (1794), bedirtied (1803), bedoctored (1806), becowarded (1831), be-lioned (1837), be-baroned (1842) or begreened (1864). In addition, a considerable number of new forms have been attested in the Present-day English BNC corpus. At least forty-six forms occur only once or twice, and at least twentythree of these are hapax legomena which do not occur anywhere in the OED, among them be-costumed, be-hymened, be-mirrored, be-navelled, be-sticked, be-trainered, bebow-tied, beleathered, belipped, beplushed, besweatered, betweeded. One might suspect from this list that be- has become a marker of (participial) adjectives rather than of full-fledged verbs in PDE. While this is certainly a strong tendency, (33) shows that these new forms can also be used in other verb forms. (33) Lyle, as defending champion, had to be-jacket Faldo, and coincidentally it signalled the end of perhaps the finest stretch of golf played by a British golfer. (1989. The guardian [BNC, AAW]) In sum, while it is likely that many of these new forms are conscious coinings, they still seem too widespread to give up the idea of a low productivity rate completely.


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7. The conservatory influence of be-’s core Table 2 shows that during the OE period – when the grammaticalization of behad not yet reached its final stage – the types belonging to be-’s core took up a substantial proportion of the total number of types making up be-’s network (see below for the meaning of the decimals in Table 2). Table 2. Share of core of be- within 235 token sample of be- prefixed verbs Gothic Types from be-’s core

OE

ME

EModE

LModE

22 (41.5%) 44.09 (58.7%) 30.7 (42.6%) 11 (44%) 13 (50%)

Total number of types 53

75

72

25

26

Among the other types falling outside of be-’s core were: (i) Predicative types instantiated by verbs like becuman ‘come by’or belimpan ‘happen’[lit. ‘fall/limp by’], which were either replaced by phrasal particles or lexicalize (like become); (ii) Types making up the ‘privative construction’ and instantiated by such verbs as behead (OE beheafdian) or bereave (OE bereafian). This extension from the ‘Surrounding’ prototype, while very productive in OE, had gradually distanced itself in meaning and function from its prototype, and this may have influenced the consequent loss of productivity of this construction in ME. The shift in case assignment for the theme from instrumental to genitive may have further added to the distancing and consequent loss (Lenze 1909: 113); (iii) Idiomatic extensions from the prototype, with verbs of deception as a fairly productive set in late OE and early ME, and still seen in PDE beguile, betray, and bewray (see Petré 2006 for a detailed account). From the figures in Table 2, it can be inferred that the relatively high type frequency of the core of the be- non-predicative construction had come to play an important role in the conservation of the prefix. In other words, even when the spatial prototype, i.e., the ‘Surrounding’ construction, was gradually given up, the high type frequency of its extensions preserved the high degree of entrenchment of the non-predicative be- construction; an important reason why the high type entrenchment of these major grammaticalized usages exerted this conserving influence is that, in addition to the fact that they shared a (salient) semantics which was not predictable from the simplex verb, they preserved to a large extent the salient valency pattern of the original non-predicative construction, with a location participant construed as a direct object, and, in case of the trivalent construction, an optional theme participant as an oblique (either a mid-

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PP ‘with ...’ or an instrumental). This valency pattern often differed from that of the simplex verb unified with an Active or Passive construction.8 By contrast, predicative constructions such as those marked by the prefix to- almost always preserved the valency patterns of the verbs they attached to. The independent valency pattern of the verb-headed be- construction is made particularly visible when it is superimposed on a non-verbal lexical entry. Examples of this kind of unification are ICVs formed with nouns like bespaded or bespectacled. In such cases, the verb-specification of the be- construction (i.e., the verbal status imposed by it on the ICV) not only overrides the nominal specification of the root noun, it also provides an entirely non-derived argument structure of its own. While one could argue that a noun like spade also has some participants associated with it in its semantic frame, such as a spader, these are completely absent in the argument structure of the resulting ICV. Hence, the contrast between root noun and ICV becomes particularly clear. Also, recall examples (23) and (22), repeated here as (34) and (35), respectively. ICV with valency pattern of be- construction: (34) Belege [þæt sar] æfter þære beþinge mid hatte wulle Be-put [the wound] after the heating with hot wool. ‘Cover [the wound] after the heating with hot wool.’ (c950. Lch II [2]: 47.1.4) Simplex verb in a default active realization with a different valency pattern: (35) Lege hatte wulle on þæt sar. ‘Put hot wool on the wound’ The example in (35) is non-attested, yet plausible and has been added, in a way similar to minimal pairs, to make the syntactic contrast with (34) particularly salient. Language users also make use of such techniques to establish the meaning of a certain word or phrase, for instance in second language acquisition. While it is not very likely that native speakers do this as consciously as linguists, frequent exposure to this type of contrast in valency pattern frequently enables them to establish the particular contribution of the prefix construction to the semantics and syntax of the verb more easily. In psycholinguistic terms, the more the language users are exposed to differences in valency pattern, the more salient the construction will be syntactically. If the construction is sufficiently salient, our prediction is that it will remain in use. How can this saliency actually be measured in our data? As we do not have access to OE native speakers, we have worked out an alternative way to measure this degree of salience. Each sentence containing an ICV containing the prefix


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be- within a representative sample of about 200 tokens was matched with another sentence from the corpus containing the simplex cognate of this ICV. For instance, we compared the three occurrences of befon to three occurrences of fon to find out if they were used with different valency patterns in their particular contexts. We then performed a similar comparison for the prefix to-. This procedure also accounts for the decimals in Table 3 below. In two out of its three occurrences, befon has a direct object and a prepositional phrase in its valency (meaning ‘surround’), and only once a prepositional phrase (meaning ‘have to do with’). By contrast, fon ‘lay hands on, take to’ always has only the prepositional phrase. Consequently, in Table 3, the type befon receives a 0.33 rating for ‘No difference in valency’ and a 0.67 rating for ‘Difference in valency’. Mutatis mutandis, the fact that different tokens of the same type can be instantiations of different constructions also accounts for the decimals in Table 2. The following are some examples of resulting excerpt pairings. The prefix beExcerpt pairings with different valency patterns. 1. The simplex smitan ‘smear’ in the following excerpt licenses a theme as direct object and a landmark as a prepositional adjunct introduced by on: (36) Wiþ gongelwæfran bite, smit on isen swat. Against spider’s bite, smear on iron sweat. ‘Smear sweat on iron against spider’s bites.’ (c950. Lch II [2]: 65.5.9) The ICV besmitan ‘soil, defile’ in (37), however, licenses a patient (equivalent to the landmark of the simplex in (36)) as a direct object and the theme (in (34) the direct object) in the instrumental case. (37) Þu ellþeodig usic woldest on þisse folcsceare You foreign us wished:ind.pst:2sg in this nation facne besyrwan, synnum besmitan. treachery:ins be-plan, sins:ins be-smear. ‘You stranger wished to deceive us within this nation with treachery and defile us with sins.’ (?c1000 Genesis [Krapp]: 79.2680ff) 2. The simplex ridan ‘ride’ in (38) is intransitive, whereas the ICV beridan ‘surround’ in (39) is transitive, the affected landmark being construed as the direct object.

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(38) Her rad se here ofer Mierce innan East Engle. Here rode the army over Mercia into East Anglia. ‘This year the army rode through Mercia into East Anglia’ (c890. ChronA [Plummer]: 870.1) (39) & And ond and

[Cyneheard] hine [= Cynewulf] þær berad [Cyneheard] him [= Cynewulf] there around-rode:IND.PST.3SG þone bur utan beeode. the chamber from outside around-went. ‘And [Cyneheard] surrounded him there and surrounded the chamber from outside.’ (c890. ChronA [Plummer]: 755.10)

3. The simplex geotan ‘flow’ in (40) has a dative object as ‘malefactee’, whereas the ICV begeotan in (41) is transitive and construes a patient-landmark as direct object and a theme as PP introduced by mid: (40) He nawuht ne wyrcð, ac sio slæwð him giet on He naught not produces, but the sloth him.dat flows in ðone slæp. the sleep. ‘He will produce nothing, instead sloth will overwhelm him during his sleep.’ (894. CP: 39.283.6) (41) Þa yrsode he ond gebealh hyne ond het hig Then raged he and angered him and commanded them aðenian on yren bed ond hig begeotan myd out-stretch on iron bed and themacc be-pour with weallende leade boiling lead ‘Then he raged and became angry and commanded to stretch them out on the iron bed and to cover them with boiling lead’ (c1060. Mart 2.1 [Herzfeld-Kotzor]: De10, A.10.280) Excerpt pairings with identical valency patterns 1. The sentence pair (24)-(25) containing wreon and bewreon respectively, and here repeated for convenience as (42)–(43): (42) & wreoh [þa eagsealfe] mid brede. ‘And cover [the eye-salve] with bread.’

(c950. Lch II [3]: 2.1.3)


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(43) & bewreoh [þæt heals] fæste ufan mid leafum. And be-cover [that neck] firmly from above with leaves. ‘And cover over [that neck] firmly with leaves.’ (c950. Lch II [1]: 4.2.3) 2. Both drifan in (44) and bedrifan in (45) have a theme in direct object-position (and a prepositional adjunct of place). (44) Hu Orosius spræc ymbe Romano gielp, hu hie monega How Orosious spoke about Romans’ glory, how they many folc oferwunnon; & hu hie monege cyningas beforan peoples conquered; and how they many kings before hiora triumphan wið Rome weard drifon. their triumphs against-Rome-wards drove. ‘How Orosius spoke about the glory of the Romans, how they conquered many peoples; and how they drove many kings in front of their triumphal processions towards Rome.’ (c1025. OrHead [c]: 5.1.48) (45) Þæ [Ælle & his iü suna] ofslogon monige Wealas, & sume There [Al and his three sons] slew many Britons, and some on fleame bedrifon on þone wudu þe is genemned to flight be-drove into the wood that is called Andredes leage. Andred’s lea. ‘There Al and his three sons slew many Britons, and put some to flight into the wood that is called Andred’s lea.’ (c890. ChronA [Plummer]: 477.1) 3. Both swingan ‘beat’ and beswingan ‘flog’ in (46) and (47) have a (highly) affected patient as a direct object. (46) For ðan symle God her wundað & swingð ða þe Because always God here wounds and beats those that he wile habban & to þam ecan life gelædan. he wishes have and to the eternal life lead. ‘Because God always wounds and beats here [on earth] those whom he wishes to have and lead to eternal life.’ (c950–1000. HomU 7 [ScraggVerc 22]: 81) (47) Gif hine mon beswinge, mid XX scillingum gebete. If him people be-swing, with 20 shilling amend. ‘If people flog him, amend it with 20 shilling.’ (c1000. LawAf 1: 35.1)

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The prefix toExcerpt pairing with different valency patterns. The simplex lætan ‘let’ in (48) has a direct object and an object complement, whereas the ICV tolætan ‘relax’ in (49) is intransitive. (48) He mid ungemetlicre grimsunge his hieremonna wunda to He with immense harshness his servants’ wounds too suiðe ne slite ne ne ice, ne eft for much neither tears nor not enlarges, nor again for ungemetlicre mildheortnesse he hie ne læte unwriðena. immense mildheartedness he them not lets unbound. ‘Neither does he, out of excessive harsness, tear apart or enlarge the wounds of his servants very much, nor does he, out of excessive mercy, let them be assuaged.’ (894. CP: 17.125.12) (49) Ond ðonne he bið utane ymbhringed mid ungemetlicre And when he is outside surrounded with excessive heringe, he bið innan aidlad ðære ryhtwisnesse, praise, he is within deprived the.gen righteousness:gen, & forgiet hine selfne ðonne he tolætt. and forgets him self when he to-lets. ‘And when he is surrounded by excessive praise from the outside, within he is deprived of his righteousness, and forgets himself when he relaxes.’ (894. CP: 17.111.8) Excerpt pairing with identical valency patterns. (50) Gif se geswollena mon on þære lifre oððe se aþundena If the swollen man on the liver and the swelling swa aswollen gebit oþ þone fif & twentigeþan dæg so swollen remains until the five and twentieth day swa se swile ne bersteþ þonne onginð sio lifer so the swelling not bursts then begins the liver heardian. harden. ‘If a man has a swollen liver and the swelling remains swollen for twenty five days and if the swelling does not burst, then the liver begins to harden.’ (c950. Lch II [2]: 19.1.3)


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(51) & on Somnia þæm londe seo eorþe tobærst And in Somnia the land the earth to-burst. ‘And in the land Somnia the earth burst asunder.’ (c925. Or 5: 10.123.18) Table 3. Comparison of valency patterns of type pairings in OE beFrom core

toOther

Total

Difference in Valency 24.54 10.46 35* 7.53 No Difference in Valency 10.8 10.2 21 30.47 No simplex found 0 1 1 2 Total amount of types 35.34 21.66 57 40 *Fisher Exact: The probability in the grey area table of a larger value for * is < 0.001

The results of this sample pairing are presented in Table 3, which makes clear that the behaviour of be- is the reverse of that of to-. For be-, 61.4% of the types found in the sample have a different valency pattern relative to their simplex counterparts (Column ‘Total’). The majority of these types derive from the core grammaticalization derived from the non-predicative prototype (Column ‘From core’), which also provided the highest number of types within be-’s lexical network (58.7 %, see Table 2). For to- this is only 18.8%. It would appear, then, that the high type entrenchment of the be- non-predicative construction can to a large extent be quantified in terms of high type frequency of the construction’s specific valency pattern. The different figures for be- and to- correlate perfectly with the different behaviour of the frequencies given in Figure 1. Be-, being syntactically highly salient, still increased in token frequency in ME, whereas to-, being low in syntactic salience, diminished. Therefore, we believe that together with the different semantics of these prefixes – non-predicative be- combining ‘path’ with ‘total affectedness’ and to- merely adding the result of the action of the verb – the factor of syntactic salience/entrenchment has played an important part in the conservation of the prefix.

8. Conclusions We have tried to show how the original non-predicative properties of certain constructions marked by be- could have played a major part in the conservation of this prefix. The spatial prototype construction, with its combination of ‘path’ and ‘affected object’, was highly salient in terms of semantics and syntax. This

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initially slowed down a possible wearing out of the prefix and at the same time provided a good basis for useful extensions such as those of ‘Extensive Coverage’, ‘Total Affectedness’ and ‘Furnishing’. The high degree of entrenchment of these salient extensions made it possible for be- to be conserved after the storm of the shift from OV to VO had calmed down. We hope to have shown how a constructional framework can provide interesting insights in language change. Some constructions can be more salient than others and therefore resist tendencies the others cannot. We further believe that this concept of constructional salience, if properly developed and implemented, may shed light on the factors that determine the pace and character of a particular grammaticalization process as compared to the grammaticalization of other constructions.

Notes *

1.

2. 3.

4.

We would like to thank Elizabeth Traugott, Hendrik de Smet, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and constructive criticism on earlier versions of this article. Instead of the commonly used denominator of 1,000,000 words of running text (including every kind of word), we take as a reference point the number of lexical verbs. Frequencies per 1,000 lexical verbs give a more representative picture of the frequency history of verbal prefixes, because the total number of words in English has gradually increased over time as a result of its shift to an increasingly analytic language. This tendency can be observed, for instance, in the increased use of auxiliaries instead of inflectional endings (e.g., the replacement of he dyde it by he has done it) and of prepositional phrases instead of bare case endings. To control the possible distortion caused by the increase of auxiliaries, auxiliary verbs have also been excluded from the verb count. As such, with the number of lexical verbs as a denominator, ME shows an increase in be-verbs of 25.7% as compared to OE; if calculated relative to the total number of words, this increase would only have been 16.9%, which is significantly less. In her recent publications, Goldberg has also included patterns that “are fully predictable as long as they occur with sufficient frequency” (Goldberg 2006: 5). ‘Verb-headed’ here means that the construction imposes verbal status on the ICV of which it forms a part; in Construction Grammar terms, the be-construction has in its syn-component the cat-value V (compare Michaelis and Ruppenhofer 2001: 61). Our diagrammatic representations as in Figure 3 follow the Goldbergian formalism, and suggest that the prefix construction is the only linking construction at work, whereby all of the verb’s participants are linked to grammatical functions. By contrast, Michaelis and Ruppenhofer (2001: 51–63) follow Kay and Fillmore’s formalism and distinguish the prefix construction from the Subject construction, the


5.

6.

7.

8.

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Oblique theme construction, the Active construction, and the Passive construction. It should be kept in mind, then, that our diagrams represent the be-construction as co-occurring with an Active construction (with which it probably, due to its collostructional entrenchment, forms a cognitive chunk, and which, in turn, justifies Goldberg’s way of representing them). If it co-occurred with a Passive construction, there would be no Agent argument, the Location argument being linked to the syntactic function of SUBJ instead. For the sake of clarity, we have not provided representations of these Passive + prefix constructions. Still, in particular cases, a syntactic specification of an open-class (lexical) element can be overridden by that of a schematic (non-lexical) construction (a phenomenon known as coercion, see Michaelis 2005: 49). This happens for instance when a noun or adjective unifies with the be-construction, which is verb-headed. An example of such a secondary predicate is kept ... open in He kept the doors open, which is embedded within the primary predicate kept the doors in the sense that open is predicated of the direct object of this primary predicate doors. Of course, the prefix be- itself results from a more prototypical type of grammaticalization change, whereby a lexical item had developed into a (morpho)syntactic one – a development which had probably already been completed in Proto-Germanic. Within a framework that sticks to a kind of subcategorization frame of the lexical entry, such as the PAS-structure proposed by Booij (this volume), the argument structure of the be-construction can even be said to override the valency frame of the simplex verb. While we adhere to Goldberg’s distinction between participants of a verb and arguments of a construction (e.g., the transitive construction), entrenchment of verb + (in)transitive construction is likely to exert an influence on the cognitive perception of the verbal lexical entry (on similar frequency effects, see e.g. Bybee 2001; 2003). Unfortunately, this issue is beyond the scope of our present research.

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