Borrowed PATH verbs in Middle English
Borrowed PATH verbs in Middle English
Chapter 9 analyses the use of the path verbs enter, ish/issue, descend, avale, ascend, mount, and amount in Middle English autonomous texts and translations from French and Latin, focusing on their recurrent contexts and their complementation patterns. It shows that these verbs are borrowed predominantly in specific, often non-literal or manner-enriched senses relating to discourse domains such as administration, military, religion, and the like, rather than being borrowed as verbs for describing general literal motion events. Their application for general literal motion events is shown to be less restricted in translations from French and Latin, in which translators often react to the presence of a path verb in the original by using the same verb in its Middle English form. This and the continued influence of French and Latin after Middle English may eventually have led to a wider application of the verbs in later stages of the language.
Keywords: borrowing, language contact, translation, metaphorical motion, non-literal motion, manner semantics, Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse
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