Unhistorical Gender Assignment in Layamon’s «Brut»

A Case Study of a Late Stage in the Development of Grammatical Gender toward its Ultimate Loss

von Seiji Shinkawa

186 Seiten, Taschenbuch

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

This book explains how and why grammatical gender disappeared from English through a detailed analysis of unhistorical gender assignment within the noun phrase in Layamon’s Brut, one of the most important Early Middle English texts. Such deviations do occur capriciously but not randomly, suggesting a development of innovative functions of the attributive forms concerned. These innovations are mainly of two types: gender-insensitive uses as a case marker and a shift from a bipartite to tripartite system of defining words, the, that, and this. The author discusses these innovations, focusing on their implications for the subsequent development and eventual loss of grammatical gender.

• Reihe: Linguistic Insights
• Themen: Sprache und Sprachwissenschaft Sprachwissenschaft, Linguistik Vergleichende Linguistik Umgangssprache, Mundart, Dialekt
• ISBN: 9783034311243
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 14.09.2012
• Größe: 21 x 14.8 cm
• Verlag: Peter Lang Group AG, International Academic Publishers