シェイクスピアにおけるCANおよびBE ABLE TOについて

概要

論文の詳細を見る
This study analyzes occurrences of CAN and BE ABLE TO in Shakespeare's works in the hope of discovering some characteristics of spoken Early Modern English. In order to clarify the differences, this study compares uses of CAN and BE ABLE TO in Shakespeare's works with those in the Authorized Version (AV) of the Bible, which may safely be said to represent the written English at that time. As I suggested in "BE ABLE TO in the Authorized Version of the Bible" (1995), BE ABLE TO is generally used as a supplemental form of CAN. That is to say, BE ABLE TO supplies the forms which CAN cannot provide, or it is used to satisfy requirements of rhythm and sentence balance, for the sake of euphony, and for other stylistic reasons. Many examples of these uses are found in the AV, but there are also interesting uses of BE ABLE TO that seem unique to the AV. In Shakespeare's works far fewer examples of BE ABLE TO are found and the uses of BE ABLE TO are a little different from those in the AV. This study deals with the problem from three points of view: statistical, syntactic and semantic.
聖学院大学の論文
1997-09-20