What is it about?
Old English se-demonstratives perform a variety of functions in the clause (e.g. topic shift, topic continuation, deictic referencing) due to richly case- and gender-inflected forms. In this work we show how the loss of this inflectional morphology correlates with the demise of some of these functions, ultimately leading to the emergence of the definie article in the Early Middle English period.
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Why is it important?
This examination allows a detail-oriented insight into the role of levelling of inflectional morphology in contributing to formal/semantic changes in the diachrony of the English determiner system.
Perspectives
This scrutiny will hopefully broaden the current state-of-affairs as regards the change in the semantic and formal/syntactic properties of the Old English determiners and the corresponding reshaping of the syntactic patterns on which Information Structure in the sentence and discourse operates.
Ph.D Rafał Sławomir Jurczyk
University of Opole
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This page is a summary of: The Loss of Grammatical Gender and Case Features Between Old and Early Middle English: Its Impact on Simple Demonstratives and Topic Shift, Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, December 2017, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1515/stap-2017-0008.
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