2022 Fiscal Year Final Research Report
The historical development of comment clauses including the third-person pronoun it from the perspectives of grammaticalization and subjectification
Project/Area Number |
20K00693
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Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
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Allocation Type | Multi-year Fund |
Section | 一般 |
Review Section |
Basic Section 02080:English linguistics-related
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Research Institution | Hosei University (2021-2022) Hiroshima Shudo University (2020) |
Principal Investigator |
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Project Period (FY) |
2020-04-01 – 2023-03-31
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Keywords | 英語史 / 評言節 / 文法化 / 主観化 |
Outline of Final Research Achievements |
The focus of the present research has been to explore the historical development of comment clauses including the third-person pronoun it from the perspectives of grammaticalization and subjectification. In the Middle English period, there were many examples in which the personal pronoun occurred with a complementizer that. In the Early Modern English period, however, the conjunction was dropped in some examples. Then, the expressions without the conjunction began to be used not only at the beginning of a sentence, but also in the middle or at the end of a sentence. Later, some examples show the omission of the subject it. It has been revealed from this research that some comment clauses including the third-person pronoun it have undergone the process of grammaticalization and subjectification.
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Free Research Field |
英語学
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Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements |
本研究における学術的意義としては、三人称代名詞Itを主語とする表現が英語史のなかで補文標識thatや主語Itの脱落とともに文法化していく様子を明らかにすることができた。このことはこれまであまり扱われてこなかった評言節の史的発達に貢献できると思われる。その一方で、中英語期や初期近代英語期においてよく使用されていた三人称代名詞Itを主語とする表現が次第に見られなくなる例もあることを指摘することができた。
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