<ARTICLE>A Historical Study of Psychological Verbs from Middle English to Early Modern English
スポンサーリンク
概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
The aim of this study has been to explore the origin and growth of the usage of the passive construction with psychological verbs (PV), i. e. verbs for expressing mental and emotional states. Although Visser attests the origin of this construction in Old English, we discovered that the majority of PVs currently used appeared in the passive form for the first time after the fifteenth century. Furthermore, the comparison of original texts of selected classics such as Chaucer's and Shakespeare's with their modern translations discloses that the passive construction with PVs was not used as frequently in Middle English as in Modern English ; moreover it was not until Early Modern English that the construction had established itself and had begun to acquire the level of productivity that it has subsequently obtained. In addition to the PVs used in the passive construction, there is another type of PVs : those which occur in the intransitive and / or transitive constructions in presentday English. We give the label 'Type 1' to the PVs occurring in the passive and 'Type 2' to the PVs occurring in the intransitive and / or transitive constructions. Although these two types of verbs have different functions and semantic structuers, historically they exihibit similar development, having taken on the same constructions : the impersonal, reflexive, passive, intransitive and transitive. However, in the course of time, the usage of PVs of Type 1 has become restricted, mostly to the passive (and the corresponding active) uses, while the PVs of Type 2 have settled into the intransitive and transitive constructions. Semantically, this shift means that verbs of Type 1 have retained the causative meaning, while those of Type 2 have not. It appears that as the impersonal construction shifted into the personal construction, part of the semantic field (i. e., the causation involved in mental and emotional states) which the impersonal construction had covered was accommodated by the usage of the passive construction. This may be confirmed by our observation that the increased use of the passive sentences about the time of Early Modern English coincided with the decline of the impersonal construction. The reflexive construction for expressing mental and emotional states was conveniently replaced by the passive because the two forms were readil interchangeable and because the passive could make up for a deficiency inherent in the intransitive verbs : the lack of causation. As the reflexive verbs became intransitive in usagen, this option for the inclusion of causation becomes an important feature. Furthermore, the passive has a stylistic advantage over the reflexive, in that the former has three morphologically-related constructions : the regular passive, its corresponding active, and the semipassive (with no agent phrase). In conclusion, we have found that use of the passive construction with psychological verbs for expressing mental and emotional states was firmly established and began to be productive during the period of Early Modern English. These psychological verbs can be classified into two types, both of which have undergone similar, though different, shifts in usage since Middle English. Both types occurred in multiple constructins such as the impersonal, reflexive, passive, intransitive, and transitive constructions but the usage of psychological verbs classifiable as 'Type 1' has become restricted to mostly the passive (and corresponding active) construction, while the psychological verbs of 'Type 2' have mainly become intransitive and transitive. Our speculation is that the predominance of the passive, especially as a replacement for impersonal and reflexive constructins is to be accounted for by its preserving the feature of causation.
- 沖縄国際大学の論文
- 1988-12-25