The development of strengthened possessive pronouns in English
Date
2002
Authors
Allen, Cynthia
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Publisher
Pergamon-Elsevier Ltd
Abstract
This paper investigates the developments of 'strengthened' possessives such as hers and hers (earlier her) through a fresh examination of a substantial number of Middle English texts. These forms are first found in North Midlands and West Midlands texts of the thirteenth century, with the later -n forms of Southeastern dialects representing dative case rather than true 'strengthened' possessives. While the -s forms developed in rather different ways, both resulted in a processing advantage, as they signal to the hearer that no head NP is following. It is suggested that considerations of language processing have the potential to give more coherence to the traditional concept of 'analogy'.
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Keywords
Keywords: Analogy; Case marking; Language processing; Middle English; Morphosyntax; Possessives
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Language Sciences
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Journal article
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2037-12-31
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