The rise of expletives in English

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There Appeared a Dummy SubjectExpletives throughout the History of the English

Cerro de Miguel, M., Fernndez Chana, M. & Gonzlez de la Higuera Rojo, [email protected], [email protected]& [email protected]

Figure 1. Percentage of Dummy Theres in HEL(Adapted from Breivik (1991)

Typological Comparison

Finnish existential (agglutinative): Tulkoon kaartuva

kansi vesien vliin (haya/ tapa-curvada / aguas/ entre)

Spanish existential (inflective): Haya una bveda enmedio de las aguas

Chinese existential (isolating): (agua /las/ entre/ obligacin/ HABER/ cielo/aire)

ReferencesBreivik, L.E. 1991. On the Typological Status of OE. In D., Kastovsky (ed.). Historical English S yntax. New York:

Mouton de Gruyter.

Campbell, L. 1991. Some Grammaticalization Changes in Estonian and their Implications. In E., Traugott and B.,

Heine (eds.). Approaches to Grammaticalization. Amsterdam: John Benjamin Publishing Company.Denison, D. 1993. English Historical Syntax: Verbal Constructions. London: Longman.Hewings, A. and M., Hewings. 2005. Grammar and Context: An Advanced Resource Book. New York: Routledge.Shopen, T. 2007. Language Typology and Syntactic Description. Volume 1: Clause Structure. Second Edition.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Huumo, T. 2003. Incremental Existence: The World According to Finnish Existential Sentences. In Linguistics.41/3: 461 493.

Yang, L. 2010. A Cognitive Analysis of the English Existential Construction from the perspective of Iconicity. In

J ournal of Language teaching and Research. 1/4: 505 511.

Introduction

The typological shift undergone by

English, both in morpho-syntactic and

phonological terms, could be regarded as

one of the most decisive and remarkable

changes in the history of the language.

Leaving aside the phonological sphere, the

change from a synthetic structure to an

analytic one is responsible of most of the

differences between English and other

Germanic and Indo-European languages. The

main characteristic of this process is the loss

of inflections and the fixity of, and reliance

on, syntax in order to provide constituentswith meaning.

Causes

The main reason for dummy subjects to

appear in English may be summarized in

Breiviks (ibid.) words: a compromise

between pragmatics and syntax. Both

elements are used when the notional subject

is at the end of the clause (Shopen (2007) and

Hewings and Hewings (2005) and, only dummy

it, when the verb is argumentless (Hewingsand Hewings (ibid.).

Therefore, as word order was increasingly

fixed, they felt the need (c.f. Chinese) to have

an element in subject position to remark that

this place in the sentence was empty.

Why there? Yang (2010) and Huumos (2003)cognitive model: grammaticalization of a

locative element since it refers to a location

(however abstract this may be).

Why it? Already genderless element existentin the paradigm that motivated analogy.

HEL Examples (The Bible)

ExistentialThere:

PDE (1901): Let there be a firmament in the midstof the waters

King James Bible (1611): Let there be a firmamentin the midst of the waters

Wycliffes Bible (1380): Be maad a firmament in themyddel of waters

King Alfreds Bible (900): Gewure nu fstnystomiddes am wterum

Dummy It:

PDE (1901): God had not caused it to rain upon theearth

Kings James Bible (1611): the LORD God had notcaused it to raine vpon the earth

Wycliffes Bible (1380): The Lord God forsothe hadnot reyned vpon the erthe

King Alfreds Bible (900): God solice ne sendennne ren ofer eoran a gyt

Objectives

The main objectives of this research are

both synchronic and diachronic:

To provide a description of the history of

expletives from Old English until Present

Day English (there and it).

To analyze the main causes of their

appearance

To show the structures that different

languages have to express these

constructions.

Diachronic description

Both types of expletives are already

found in OE (see Breivik (1991) for

existential there and Denison (1993) forimpersonal it). However, They were sporadicand mostly in main clauses (ibid.). This may

show that it was already an on-going change

due to the general tendency that changes

occur firstly in root clauses and afterwards

in embedded ones (Campbell, 1991).

As inflections were lost and the SVO

pattern reinforced, both subjects became

frequent (Figure 1) and, in PDE, compulsory.

ConclusionHistorical description can explain arbitrary

synchronic data and give insights into the nature of

languages and how human conceptualize reality.
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The rise of expletives in English

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