The Dynamics of Postnominal Adjectives in Middle English

Middle English was a period of transition between the free word order of Old English, with functional variation of adjective form and position with respect to the head noun, and the fixed prenominal placement of single attributive adjectives in Modern English. Aided by the PPCME2 of the Penn-Helsink...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Veronika Volná, Pavlína Šaldová
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Institute of English Studies 2022-09-01
Series:Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies
Subjects:
Description
Summary:Middle English was a period of transition between the free word order of Old English, with functional variation of adjective form and position with respect to the head noun, and the fixed prenominal placement of single attributive adjectives in Modern English. Aided by the PPCME2 of the Penn-Helsinki corpora, this corpus-driven study explores the range of adjectives attested frequently after the head noun, as well as their relative attraction to the position and, sampling the ME period with emphasis on variables in the corpus metadata, compares the frequencies of postnominally placed adjectives in various genres, capturing their declining overall frequency over time. These general tendencies are commented against the background of postpositives in PDE.
ISSN:0860-5734