Diachronic Evolution of the Verb Give · 2020-05-25 · 2. Literature Review •Rappaport Hovav and Levin argue that English verbs that denote transfer of possession such as give,

Diachronic Evolution of the Verb Give

Guoyan Lyu1, Haitao Chen1 , Yanmei Gao2

Beijing Information Science and Technology University1

Peking University2

Outline

1. Research Background

2. Literature Review

3. Main Findings

4. Conclusion

1. Research Background

The verb give:

• Ditransitive verbs have caught the attention of many influential figures in linguistics. Kittilästates that “if a language has only one ditransitive trivalent verb (on the basis of any feature of formal transitivity), then that verb is ‘give’[1].”

• Bresnan and Nikitina found in their corpus study that give is the prototypical ditransitive verb which has the highest frequency, constituting more than 40% of all alternating dative verbs [2].

• Zhang states that the English verb give, might not be the underived general-purpose verb of giving but a substitution for it [3]. Similar hypothesis is also found in Chappell et al. [4] and Chappell and Peyraube [5].

• Zhang made the statement that the scarcity of ‘give’ type Double Object Construction (DOC) in most modern Germanic languages may also be attributed to the mono-transitive origin of their Vgive, as what has been observed in a type of dialect in Southern China.

Research questions:

1. When did the verb give become a verb of giving and involve in the typical dative structure?

2. If there were other verbs expressing the similar sense of giving, how did give manage to become the typical verb of giving?

2. Literature Review

• Rappaport Hovav and Levin argue that English verbs that denote transfer of possession such as give, lend, and offer only have a caused-possession sense [19]. The verb give has only one core meaning (i.e. the meaning components entailed in all uses of the verb independent of context) and this single meaning is expressed in two different structures.

• Goldberg also points out that ‘give’ represents the ‘conceptual archetype’ for ditransitive constructions which expresses the meaning ‘CAUSE-RECEIVE’ [21].

• It seems critical that the sense of caused-possession has to be in the core meaning of the verb, give. Yet if we look closely at the etymology and the early use of the verb, things were quite different.

• Bybee and Hopper document the clear role of frequency in the emergence of grammatical structure.

• Frequencies are also taken to represent degrees of entrenchment, with highly frequent constructions being central to the system, while constructions of lower frequency are regarded as less entrenched.

• The present study focuses more on token frequency; in other words, we pay special attention to the extent to which one particular verb is preferred over the other in discovering the usage differences for the verbs in question.

Texts

The Laws of The Earliest English Kings

The Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Bede)

King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius (Boethius)

Beowulf

The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Layamon’s Brut (vols.1-3 )

The Chronicle by Robert of Gloucester (vols. 1-2) (Metrical Chronicle)

The Brut of England (Brut)

3.1 Etymology of give

• As stated in Indo-European Language Revival Association [22], the verb give is a Germanic neologism, which is a replacement for dō-(Latin) “give”.

• The form gyfan in OE is a relatively new word, a substitution for the Latin word for ‘give’.

• Wedgewood has the dictionary entry for give as related to Gaelic gabh, which means ‘to take, lay hold of, seize’ [23]. It states that “of this perhaps give is the causative, to cause another to take.

• The verb give is not only believed to have the original sense ‘to take or to seize’ which has a causative sense, but it is also similar to the verb take which used to mean ‘to deliver to or to give’.

3. Main findings

3.2 Competition between Gyfan and Syllan

• In Henry Sweet’s The Oldest English Text, there are two verbs mainly used to denote ‘give’: gyfan (‘give’) and syllan (‘sell’).

• The verb gyfan has variants include a-gyfan (‘to give’), for-gyfan(‘to grant’, ‘to give’), of-gyfan (‘to desert’).

• In OE, syllan, has varied forms including asellan, gesyllan andymbsyllan denoting similar meaning of delivering. with subtle distinctions in the manner of giving.

• The verb gyfan, however, has the central meaning of giving as that in Present Day English and its varied forms including agyfan, forgifan, ofgifan and gifu have relatively diversified meanings.

Competition between Gyfan and Syllan

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0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

Syllan

Gyfan

century

ratio

Diachronic Competition between syllan and gyfan

• The suffixed forms of syllan, such as gesyllan (‘to deliver’), forsyllan (‘give out’) and ymbsyllan (‘give around’), have meanings later focused on one sense, which is giving or delivering, just in different manners.

• This partly explains why as the basic form syllan lost its sense of giving or delivering gratuitously, all its varied forms went extinct without even being morphed into phrasal verbs.

• The form syllan itself gradually lost its status of being polysemous, and instead, turned to be the major lexeme, sell, denoting the meaning of rendering things/people for a price.

3.3 Competition among Gyfan, Niman and Tacan

• The form tacan in late OE meaning ‘to take, seize’, came from a Scandinavian source (such as Old Norse taka ‘take, grasp, lay hold’), from Proto-Germanic takan- (Gothic tekan ‘to touch’), perhaps originally meaning ‘to touch’.

• It suggests that the word tacan is originally a verb of ‘taking and touching’, which bears much resemblance to the origin of the verb give, which is also originally a verb of taking and holding in its etymology.

• In Layamon’s Brut, the earlier form bi-tæchen/bitechen (‘bitake’) means ‘to deliver, give’ [16]. For example, in “And Augel ich take þe an hond; al to-gadere Scotlond (‘And to Angel I givethee in hand Scotland altogether’) [16

• The form tacan in the 13th century and occurs in the DOC.

• There is some overlap between the forms tacan/bi-tacan and ʒeuen (‘give’) in terms of the meaning and structure.

• In Layamon’s Brut (12-13th century), there are instances, such as “Nimeð eoure sexes; sele mine bernes (‘Take your axes, my good warries.’) [16].

• The verb niman denotes the sense of taking, and is used as only a transitive verb, taking a DO, as ‘your axes’.

• The verb nimen/niman originated from proto Germanic basically means ‘to take, take away, seize, obtain, have hold, keep’.

Distribution of Four Verbs in Layamon’s Brut (12-13th centuries)

Verbs of takingand holding(12-13th centuries)

Tokens Percentages (%)(each against allfour forms)

ʒeuen 83 34niman/biniman 82 33

bitacan/tacan 70 28syllan 13 5Total 248 100

Verbs of Taking(14th century)

Tokens Token Percentages(%)(each against allfive)

niman (‘take’) 194 53Ӡiuen (‘give’) 81 22tacan (‘deliver/give’) 51 15

bitacan (‘give up’) 21 5biniman (‘take away’) 20 5

Total 367 100

Distribution of Four Verbs in The Metrical Chronicle (14th century)

00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.9

1

Manuscript A(9-10th)

Manuscript E(12th)

Layamon's Brut(13th)

MetricalChronicle

(14th)

The Brut (15th)

(ge) niman

(bi) tacan

Competition between (bi)tacan and niman

• What seems different from the

competition between tacan against

niman and that between gyfan against

syllan is that the competition in the

former case squeezed out the word

niman forever; the latter left a space for

syllan.

• One of the reasons for syllan to survive

in English lexicon has to do with the

word’s etymology, which includes the

meaning ‘sell’ and which is not a space

filled by gyfan; therefore, the word

syllan fills that gap and managed to

maintain its status.

• In contrast, the old form niman has one

single sense, which is later taken away

by the word tacan, and this may cause

the eventual extinction of the form

niman in English.

4. Conclusion

• The verb gyfan, became the unique verb of giving starting around the 13-14th century.

• The most representative examples of ‘give’ verbs in OE and ME were: gyfan (early form of give), syllan (early form of sell), tacan (early form of take), and niman.

• These four verbs all have the meaning of taking and holding in their etymologies.

• In the competition between gyfan and other verbs, its varied forms with diversified meanings play an important role in building the competitiveness of the verb.

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