|
|
Article: The status of Dearr and ??earf in Old English.(Critical Essay)
- Article from:
- Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies
- Article date:
- August 6, 2002
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
|
ABSTRACT
This article is concerned with the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of dearr and pearf, which in Old English were clearly distinct preterite-present verbs. Nothing yet foreshadowed their future merger and the Middle English replacement of thar(f) with need. Their most significant syntactic restriction was that unlike other Old English premodal verbs they tended to occur only in nonassertive (negative, interrogative and conditional) contexts. Another interesting phenomenon was the occasional occurrence of third person singular forms ending in -ep in northern glosses to gospels.
1. Introduction
Dearr and pearf, whose semantic and ...