Motion and the English Verb. A Diachronic Study

Huber J (2017)


Publication Type: Authored book

Publication year: 2017

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Series: Oxford Studies in the History of English

City/Town: Oxford

ISBN: 9780190657802

Abstract

In Motion and the English Verb, a study of the expression of motion
in medieval English, Judith Huber provides extensive inventories of
verbs used in intransitive motion meanings in Old and Middle English,
and discusses these in terms of the manner-salience of early English.
Huber demonstrates how several non-motion verbs receive contextual
motion meanings through their use in the intransitive motion
construction. In addition, she analyzes which verbs and structures
are employed most frequently in talking about motion in select Old
and Middle English texts, demonstrating that while satellite-framing
is stable, the extent of manner-conflation is influenced by text type
and style.

Huber further investigates how in the intertypological contact with
medieval French, a range of French path verbs (entrer, issir,
descendre, etc.) were incorporated into Middle English, in whose
system of motion encoding they are semantically unusual. The various
cognitive and contact-linguistic aspects of their integration into
Middle English are studied in an innovative approach which analyzes
their usage contexts in autonomous Middle English texts as opposed to
translations from French and Latin. Huber explains how these verbs
were initially borrowed not for expressing general literal motion,
but in more specific, often metaphorical and abstract contexts. Her
study is a diachronic contribution to the typology of motion
encoding, and advances research on the process of borrowing and
loanword integration.

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How to cite

APA:

Huber, J. (2017). Motion and the English Verb. A Diachronic Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

MLA:

Huber, Judith. Motion and the English Verb. A Diachronic Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.

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