Indo-European linguistics and classical philology
A. A. Eseleva Passive Constructions with Three-Place Verbs of Giving and Deprivation in OE Prose (pp. 242–251)
Author
A. A. Eseleva (Institute for Linguistic Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences)
Pages\n 242–251
Summary\n
The paper analyzes some aspects of passive constructions formed with three-place verbs of giving and deprivation. The material comes from Anglo-Saxon translations of several renowned Latin texts, namely 'The Church History of the English People' by Bede (Bede, unknown translator), 'The World History' by Orosius (Or, translated by King Alfred), 'The Consolation of Philosophy' by Boethius (Bo, translated by King Alfred), 'Dialogues' (GD, translated by Werferth) and 'The Pastoral Care' (CP, translated by King Alfred) by Pope Gregory the Great, the Rule of St. Benedict (BenR, translated by St. Æthelwold), Lives of Saints (ÆLS) and Homilies (ÆCHom), along with the Book of Genesis (Gen), retold by Ælfric. The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts date back to IX–XI cent. Our study has shown that passive as a well-established grammatical category of the time is attested with the three-place verbs of giving and deprivation in all the texts mentioned above. The percentage of passive constructions, however, varies from 5 % in Or and Gen to 28 % in BenR. The dramatic difference in the usage of passive between the two works of the same genre of a history, Or and Bede, is presumably due to dialectal distinctions: while Or belongs to the Alfredian translations, Bede is attributed to an early Mercian school of translating (Kilpiö 1989). Consequently, these differences can also be a result of two distinct translation strategies. Translation strategies are further analyzed concerning two manuscripts of GD. For the following Lat. example (1) an earlier MS GD C and a later MS GD H provide two different versions of a passive construction: (1) Ego namque hunc virum, qui dum quasi hospitalitatem exhiberet orbatus est, non pietatis opere delectatum aestimo, sed episcopi derogatione (Gregorius Magnus, Dialogi, Liber 1, Caput X). While GD C has his suna bereafod wæs for orbatus est, in GD H we find wearð þa æt his suna bereafod. Here we should note the following changes: a) addition of an NP his suna which has no correspondence in the Latin text; b) differences in verbal rection: the verb bereafian can be used both with and without a preposition. Prepositional use seems to stress the newly-added NP his suna; c) the passive constructions in question are formed with different auxiliary verbs – wesan (to be) in GD C and weorðan (to become) in GD H. The similarities and differences of the verbs beon/ wesan and weorðan as passive auxiliaries have been extensively discussed in the literature. The verb weorðan may have been used in order to express a certain degree of actionality, though some scholars refute the statal / actional distinction for OE passive (Mitchell 1985). Some scholars argue that beon/ wesan and weorðan shared the same functions, at least at the end of the OE period (Traugott 1992; Fryd 2009). The texts studied here provide 85 constructions with the present-tense forms the OE verb ‘to be’, 47 constructions with preterite forms (wesan), and only 16 constructions with weorðan, thus proving that weorðan was not obviously a competitor to beon/ wesan in OE.
Keywords\n
Old English, three-place verbs, translation strategies, passive auxiliary.
References\n
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