1999 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
A Descriptive Study of Deverbal Nouns in Old English
| Project/Area Number |
10610462
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Section | 一般 |
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| Research Field |
英語・英米文学
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| Research Institution | Tokyo Gakugei University |
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Principal Investigator |
KOMA Osamu Tokyo Gakugei University, Education, Professor, 教育学部, 教授 (10110595)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1998 – 1999
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| Keywords | Old English / Derived Noun / Argument Structure / Noun Phrase / Genitive / Action Noun / Deverbal Noun |
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| Research Abstract |
The aim of the present research is to clarify the syntactic structure of the Old English noun phrase whose head is a derived nominal, with special reference to the way in which the arguments of deverbal nouns are realized. This study is based mainly on the investigation of two OE texts, Aefric's Catholic Homilies and Orosius.
The main findings can be summarized as follows:
1. In these texts, there is no instance indicating propeties of the so-called Complex Event Nominal (cf. Grimshaw (1990)).
2. Even the -ing nominal, which shows the characteristics of Complex Event Nominal in Present-day English, had only an interpretation of Simple Event Nominals or Result Nouns.
It remains to solve the mystery --- why OE deverbal nouns lack such a Complex Event Nominal, namely, why they did not have the argument structure in the sense of Grimshaw's theory. Another intriguing issue arises : how and why such "argument-taking" suffixes of deverbal nouns as -ation, -ance, -ence, and so on, which were borrowed from French in the period of Middle English, filled the gap.
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