Pre-article use of the protoarticle se in
Old English
DOI:10.30842/alp23065737191230255
Pimenova N. B. Predartiklevyye
upotrebleniya protoartiklya se v drevneangliyskom yazyke. Acta
Linguistica Petropolitana. 2023. 19(1): 230–255.
The article explores the use of the Old English proto-article
pronoun se in dialogues with reference to some object in
the proximal zone located near both the speaker and the addressee.
Since the weak demonstrative se with the «weakly deictic
meaning» had not yet completely undergone desemantization and
grammaticalization by then (and could not be used to denote unique
reference only), the proximal deixis pronoun þes would
normally occur in this position. However, there were two types of
contexts in which the proto-article pronoun se could be
found. First, se occurred in cases of cataphoric reference
to relative clauses, which reveals asymmetry of the anaphoric and
cataphoric relations in terms of the distribution of the
proto-article. Second, the proto-article pronoun would replace the
proximal demonstrative þes when a switchover to the point
of view of a third person mentioned in the narrative took place.
Since the West German proto-article pronoun is often attributed to
indicate the sphere of the third person (presumably, an element of
a person-oriented system of deixis in Proto-Germanic and in Old
Germanic languages), the hypothesis of an indirect reflection of
the original meaning of se in such contexts seems to be
quite likely. The anaphoric function of the proto-article pronoun
se, i.e., that of reference in a narrative context, could
be identified with an indication of the external space of
communication. By their nature, both uses are due to the properties
of the pronoun in discourse and can be attributed to the
pre-article use. The pre-article distribution of se is
revealed on the evidence of Old English poetic texts (the main
source for this analysis is the oldest surviving epic poem
Beowulf) where the anaphoric use of the proto-article in
narratives is only sporadic. The findings may help to expand our
understanding of pronouns distribution and of the functional
background behind the grammaticalization of the West Germanic
article.
Keywords
article, proto-article, proximal deixis,
speech event, grammaticalization, Germanic languages, Old
English
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Keywords
article, proto-article, proximal deixis,
speech event, grammaticalization, Germanic languages, Old
English
