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Diachronic Evolution of the Verb Give

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Chinese Lexical Semantics (CLSW 2020)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 12278))

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Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the diachronic evolution of the most typical ditransitive verb, give, and its competition against other word forms with the similar meaning. Statistics from the historical chronicles between the 6th and 15th century show the competing trends. The results demonstrate that in OE and ME, the set of ‘give’ verbs with Germanic origin all have the meaning of taking and holding in their etymology. The prolixity of the verb’s varied forms plays an important role in building its competitiveness.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The stages of English development are divided based on the History of the English Language (Burnley [10]): from Old English (700–1200, OE), Middle English (1200–1500, ME) to early Modern English (1500–1800, Early ModE).

  2. 2.

    1) The Laws of the Earliest English Kings (6–10th centuries) [11]; 2) The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (hereafter Bede, Early 10th) [12]; 3) King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius (Boethius, Mid-10th) [13]; 4) Beowulf (Early 11th) [14]; 5) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (9–12th) including the Parker Manuscript (Manuscript A, 9–10th), Manuscript C&D (11th) and the Peterborough Manuscript (Manuscript E, 12th) [15]; 6) Layamon’s Brut (13th) [16]; 7) The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester (14th) [17]; 8) The Brut or The Chronicles of England (Brut, 15th) [18].

  3. 3.

    When inquired in an email about actual instances of give when used as a transitive verb denoting seizing or reaching in OE, Prof. Kortlandt, responded that “the verb reach can be either transitive or intransitive, e.g. he reached me an orange for he gave me an orange, similarly German jemandem Feuer reichen for ‘to give somebody a light’.”

  4. 4.

    The Laws of the Earliest English Kings contain seven law documents, among which we chose The Kentish Laws (including The laws of Æthelberht (issued around 6–7th century), The Laws of Ine and of Alfred (hereafter, Ine and Alfred); Treaties with the Danes (hereafter, Treaties); The Laws of Edward and the Elder and of Aethelstan (hereafter, Edward) (The Laws of Edward (I, II), the Ordinance relating to Charities, The Laws of Aethelstan (I, II, III, IV, V, VI)).

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Lyu, G., Chen, H., Gao, Y. (2021). Diachronic Evolution of the Verb Give. In: Liu, M., Kit, C., Su, Q. (eds) Chinese Lexical Semantics. CLSW 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12278. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81197-6_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81197-6_12

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