後期中英語における「知っている」および「できる」を表す動詞についての覚え書

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  • A Note on Verbs Denoting ‘to Know’ and ‘to Be Able’ in Late Middle English
  • コウキ チュウ エイゴ ニ オケル シッテイル オヨビ デキル オ アラワス ドウシ ニツイテ ノ オボエガキ

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論文(Article)

The semantic shift of the meaning 'to be able' from may to can in Late Middle English seems to have been successively supported by the same syntactic environment for modal auxiliaries they could have in common, where the bare infinitive played a crucial role, because at that time its functional areas were being shrunk and shrunk due to the expansion of the prepositional infinitives. In addition, the frequent juxtaposition of may and can in the same sentence structure also must have contributed to reinforce the shift. As lexical verbs, connen, knowen, and witen had the same meaning 'to have knowledge of' so they could be freely used as stylistic variants for fulfilling metrical exigency. And it is obvious that this synonymity and the semantic change that had once occurred in preterite-present verbs did work as the starting point which drove can to have the sense 'to be able' in the end.

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