Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2021
Abstract
This chapter explores the methodological relevance of a recently systematized linguistic source of data on early English, the so-called Updated Old English contained in the edited copies of pre-Conquest texts produced in the late twelfth and the early thirteenth century. The analytical focus of the chapter is on the interplay of linguistic processes affecting the form and functional status of the impersonal construction in these texts.
The continued appearance of the impersonal construction at this time is seen against the backdrop of the linguistic variation in the Updated Old English texts that heralds the typological transformation of English in grammar, word-formation and the structure of lexis.