Syntactic and semantic changes in the history of English with verbs derived from nouns expressing status, occupation or role

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26770174
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: English linguistics
• Research Institution: Kansai Gaidai University
• Principal Investigator: Miura Ayumi 関西外国語大学, 英語キャリア学部, 准教授 (00706830)
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: 名詞派生動詞 / 品詞転換 / 英語史 / 統語論 / 語彙意味論 / OED / 身分 / 職業

Outline of Final Research Achievements

On the basis of illustrative quotations in the OED Online, this project conducted a comprehensive investigation into changes in the use of verbs converted from human nouns (e.g. captain, knight, orphan, referee) in the history of English and revealed part of the diachronic correlation between verb meaning and syntactic use. Over three years the work showed, among other findings, that each of the syntactic features of these verbs in Present-day English becomes conspicuous from the sixteenth century, which coincides with the start of the period when it becomes difficult to predict the meaning and syntactic use of the converted verb only by the meaning of its parent noun. The project expanded the previous discussion of the verbs in question from the perspective of historical syntax and semantics.

Free Research Field

英語史