Impersonal constructions seem to be one of the subjects most frequently dealt with in English historical syntax. One of the reasons for this interest is probably that they stand out more than other constructions, since such impersonal constructions once widely used in early English but completely disappeared at the threshold of the Modern English period and are no longer found in Present-day English. There have been two hypothesis concerning the cause of impersonal-to-personal change. One was CONFUSIONIST hypothesis that the reanalysis of im-personals must have proceeded through the mediation of constructions that were ambiguous, that contained a preverbal NP which could morphologically be taken either as an object or a subject. But this hypothesis couldn’t explain the construction containing a dative or accusative object which has behavioral property of subject in the subject position of sentence. For solving these problems, we suggest other argumentation, Transparency Principle. Under the SVO rigidification the syntactic reanalysis occured first by transparency principle and then morphological, semantic shifts were accompanied. The syntactic reanalysis occured through a few stages, in the first stage preverbal object had no subject property and then acquired behavioral and coding property. For many impersonal verbs the oblique experiencer exhibits behavioral properties of subject before acquiring the coding properties of subject like nominative case. In other words, the impersonal construction contains an actual subject in itself, though the subject is in the oblique form. Semantic shift, accompanied by syntactic reanalysis, makes the communication between generations possible.
한국중앙영어영문학회 [The Jungang English Language And Literature Association Of Korea]
설립연도
1968
분야
인문학>영어와문학
소개
본 학회는 영미어문학의 학술연구와 이에 부합하는 아래의 사업을 기획 수행하며,
또한 회원 상호간의 친목을 도모함을 목적으로 한다.
1. 학회지 발간
2. 연구 발표회, 강연회, 공동연구
3. 영미어문학 관련 도서출판
4. 영미어문학 관계 도서 및 자료의 모집 및 비치
5. 기타 본회의 목적 달성에 필요한 사업
간행물
간행물명
영어영문학연구 [The Jungang Journal of English Language and Literature]