Irregularities in Modern English

395 Pages·2007·2.637 MB·English

by  Erik W. Hansen, Hans Frede Nielsen

NORTH-WESTERN EUROPEAN
LANGUAGE EVOLUTION
Supplement vol. 2
(Second edition 2007)
North-Western European Language Evolution (NOWELE) is
a scholarly journal which publishes articles dealing with all
aspects of the histories of – and with intra- and extralinguistic
factors contributing to change and variation within – Icelandic,
Faroese, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Frisian, Dutch, Ger-
man, English, Gothic and the Early Runic language. NOWELE
is edited by Michael Barnes (London), Rolf H. Bremmer Jr.
(Leiden), Gotthard Lerchner (Leipzig) and Hans F. Nielsen
(Odense).
Irregularities
in
Modern English
Erik Hansen
Hans Frede Nielsen
Second edition
revised by Erik Hansen
UNIVERSITy PRESS OF SOUTHERN
DENMARk
2007
Acknowledgements
It is my pleasant duty to thank Thomas kaarsted (Director of the
University Press of Southern Denmark) for having furthered this
project in several important ways; Charlotte Mouret (UniSats)
for all the skill she put in preparing the cover of the volume;
and Elsebeth Jensen (DTP-funktionen, University of Southern
Denmark) for the outstanding job she has done in preparing the
full text for press. I am indebted to my colleague Hans Frede
Nielsen for his kind help in organizing the editorial layout of
this book and for his advice on specific textual points. Finally,
I would like to thank my wife Britta for kindly assisting me
with the proofreading.
Erik W. Hansen
© North-Western European Language Evolution 2007
and the University Press of Southern Denmark
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preface
CONTENTS
Preface ...............................................................................   ix
0.  Introduction ............................................................... 1
0.1. Irregularity: rule and theory................................. 1
0.2. Irregularity as residuum ....................................... 6
0.3. Irregularity as tendency or drift: from
synthesis to analysis.............................................. 6
0.4. Univocity ................................................................ 7
0.5. Balance and symmetry .......................................... 8
0.6. Productivity .......................................................... 10
0.7. Examples ............................................................... 11
0.8. Principles I and II illustrated: isolative and
conditioned change ............................................... 19
0.9. Contact and genetic relationship ......................... 31
1.  Nouns .......................................................................... 43
1.0. Background ........................................................... 43
1.1. The plural form of nouns ...................................... 44
1.2. Gender ................................................................... 52
1.3. The genitive .......................................................... 56
2.  Adjectives ................................................................... 63
2.0. Background ........................................................... 63
2.1. Comparison of adjectives...................................... 64
2.2. The substantival use of the adjective .................. 69
2.3. The position of adjectives ..................................... 74
3.  Adverbs ....................................................................... 79
3.1. The formation of adverbs ..................................... 79
3.2. The comparison of adverbs................................... 84
3.3. Intensifying adverbs ............................................. 85
3.4. Adverbs as an inflexional
grammatical category ........................................... 85
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cpornetfeanctes
4.  Numerals .................................................................... 87
4.1. Cardinal numbers ................................................. 87
4.2. Ordinal numbers .................................................. 91
5.   Pronouns and determiners .................................... 95
5.0. Historical background and theoretical remarks .. 95
5.1. Personal pronouns ................................................ 97
5.2. Self-forms .............................................................. 116
5.3. Demonstrative pronouns ...................................... 122
5.4. The definite article ............................................... 126
5.5. Interrogative pronouns ........................................ 150
5.6. Relative pronouns ................................................. 155
5.7. Indefinite pronouns .............................................. 164
5.8. The indefinite article ............................................ 168
6.  Verbs ........................................................................... 175
6.1. Introductory comments and
the present tense .................................................. 175
6.2. Introductory comments and the past tense
and the past participle ......................................... 191
6.3. The -ing ending ..................................................... 198
6.4. The do-construction .............................................. 203
6.5. Negations .............................................................. 216
6.6. The irregular verbs ............................................... 225
7.  Particles ..................................................................... 263
7.1. Introductory comments and three questions ...... 263
7.2. General comments and modern examples .......... 266
7.3. The functions of particles ..................................... 269
7.4. Demonstrative ‘that’ as a
ME grammatical element ..................................... 281
7.5. Concluding remarks ............................................. 286
8.  Vowels ......................................................................... 289
8.1. Long monophthongs ............................................. 289
8.2. Short monophthongs ............................................ 299
8.3. Diphthongs ............................................................ 307
vi
cpornetfeanctes
9.  Consonants ................................................................ 289
9.0. Introductory comments ........................................ 319
9.1. Stops ...................................................................... 320
9.2. Fricatives .............................................................. 325
9.3. Nasals .................................................................... 332
9.4. The lateral /l/ ........................................................ 334
9.5. Semi-vowels .......................................................... 334
Texts .................................................................................. 339
Bibliography and abbreviations ................................. 353
Word index ....................................................................... 361
vii

preface
PREFACE
From the preface to the first edition in English (1986)
The present book is a translated and revised version of Uregel-
mæssigheder i moderne engelsk, which appeared in 1980. The
translation differs from the Danish version in particularly one
respect: the numerous references to knud Schibsbye’s Engelsk
Grammatik, I-IV (and its English equivalent A Modern English
Grammar) have not been retained, but this has not entailed a
removal of comparisons with Danish. On the contrary, Dutch
and German examples and parallels which might shed light on
English forms and developments have also been included, com-
parisons that are meant not only to heighten linguistic awareness
on the part of the reader, but also to show what exactly happened
in closely related languages. Obviously, this should make the
book more interesting and useful to speakers (and students) of
other Germanic languages as well. The division into nine chapters
has been preserved: chapters 1-7 deal with grammatical irre-
gularities while chapters 8 and 9 are concerned with phenomena
which from the point of view of modern spelling conventions are
regarded as irregularities in sound and/or writing.
The book is innovative in that it reverses the history of the
English language, taking present-day English as its point of
departure, and historical explanations are given only in so
far as they illustrate modern forms. In other words, the book
does not presuppose a reading knowledge of Old and Middle
English, but aims at providing students with ready answers
to questions they may have concerning modern ‘irregularities’.
But also readers with a knowledge of English language history
will be able to benefit from the book, and by means of the Word
Index Modern English phenomena can easily be linked to the
forms of earlier periods.
We have chosen the traditional terminology and division into
seven word classes plus orthography, because it is immediately
ix