Passive auxiliaries in English and German: decline versus grammaticalization of bounded language use

The passive construction constitutes a marked difference between English, which uses the auxiliary be, and German, which uses werden ‘become’. Originally, however, both languages used both verbs. I argue that this changed because English and German developed different systems of boundedness. Bounded language use construes situations as completed sub-events, emphasizing narrative progress, and makes abundant use of time adverbials, which split up an event chronologically and often take up the first position in a verb-second system. In German this type of bounded language use was grammaticalized already from early on, for instance through the fixation of the verb-second system. Consequently, werden, whose change-of-state semantics associated it strongly with bounded clauses with initial time adverb, grammaticalized as the only passive auxiliary. By contrast, the bounded system disappeared in English, as evidenced in the heavy decrease of time adverbials of narrative progress such as þa ‘then’, and the confusion of verb-second-syntax. Weorðan, being highly entrenched in these constructions, disappeared with them. The initial situation will be analysed through a comparison of Tatian to a representative sample of Old English texts – Tatian is the only Old High German which still shows a clear continuation of the Germanic distribution of sein and werden as passive auxiliaries. The different directions the two languages take at a later stage is then examined by a comparison of Otfrid, which already has abandoned the earlier system, to a Middle English data sample. These analyses will show how the bounded-unbounded distinction thus makes it possible to account for a major difference in the auxiliary system between English and German.

ISBN:9789027206053

Jaar van publicatie:2013