Modal Auxiliaries From Late Old To Early Middle English

Why do Modern English modal auxiliaries ought to, should, and must, meaning OBLIGATION, occur in the present tense, yet their forms are in the preterite? Why does to accompany ought? One of the solutions to these questions is to look at the history of the English language. This monograph deals with the history of ought to, should, and must, which are of different syntactic and semantic origins: ought to stems from a main verb of Old English āgan ‘to have’ (POSSESSION) along with to; should derives from sculan ‘must’ with its ‘deviation’ to shall, and mōtan originates in ‘to be allowed to’ (PERMISSION). The work concentrates on the transition from Old English (700-1100) to Middle English (1100-1500), which is a crucial period in the history of the English language. Topics addressed include the linguistic review of modality, the philological reading of primary texts, and the occasional reference to the other Germanic languages.

This volume offers a coherent and detailed picture of the diachronic development of verbal categories of Old English, Old High German, and other Germanic languages. Starting from the observation that German and English show diverging paths in the development of verbal categories, even though they descended from a common ancestor language, the contributions present in-depth, empirically founded studies on the stages and directions of these changes combining historical comparative methods with grammaticalisation theory. This collection of papers provides the reader with an indispensable source of information on the early traces of distinct developments, thus laying the foundation for a broad-scale scenario of the grammaticalisation of verbal categories. The volume will be of particular interest to scholars of language change, grammaticalisation, and diachronic sociolinguistics; it offers important new insights for typologists and for everybody interested in the make-up of verbal categories.

Using increasingly sophisticated databases, this volume explores grammatical usage from the Late Modern period in a broad context.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

The future of English linguistics as envisaged by the editors of Topics in English Linguistics lies in empirical studies, which integrate work in English linguistics into general and theoretical linguistics on the one hand, and comparative linguistics on the other. The TiEL series features volumes that present interesting new data and analyses, and above all fresh approaches that contribute to the overall aim of the series, which is to further outstanding research in English linguistics. For further publications in English linguistics see also our Dialects of English book series. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Natalie Fecher.

Spanning the time from Old English to modern American English, this volume provides fresh perspectives on core issues and theories in the morphosyntactic history of English nominal, verbal and adverbial constructions. The contributions discuss the loss, rise and restructuring of morphonological marking, periphrastic verbal constructions, auxiliary variation and evolution, as well as changing word order options. Favouring corpus-linguistic, frequency-based and statistical approaches, the studies are firmly empirically grounded. The book is aimed at scholars interested in the history of the English language and in language variation and change.

The volume contains 37 papers originally presented at the 8th International Conference on Historical Linguistics in Lille, France. The papers bring historical data to bear on issues in theoretical linguistics, both descriptive and diachronic or deal with specific questions in the history of individual languages. The theoretical issues range from phonology over morphology and syntax to the lexicon, as well as questions of historical dialectology, language contact, the theory of linguistic change, and problems of comparative reconstruction. The languages discussed are Finno-Ugric and Indo-European, most of the papers dealing with Germanic and Romance languages (especially English and French), but some being devoted to Greek, Celtic, Slavic, and Hittite.