Specificity in the context and acceptability of adverbial nouns in Old English: A particular focus on the use of dæg ‘day’ and niht ‘night’

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  • 古英語の副詞的格の用法とTime Positionの特定可能性について： --‘day’と‘night’の用例を中心に--

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Abstract

In Old English, nouns with oblique case-forms were used as adverbs. Modern English has lost explicit inflectional case-forms except for genitives, but nouns with deictic modifications such as that moment are used as adverbs. This paper discusses whether case-forms functioning as adverbs in Old English can be explained by the same theoretical device that accounts for the acceptability of adverbial nouns in Modern English. Previous studies on adverbial nouns in Modern English indicate that their acceptability depends on temporal specificity in context. Drawing attention to instances of the adverbial case found in Old English poetry, this paper first outlines its usage, and then argues for the possibility that specificity was also significant in cases where nouns with adverbial case-forms referred to certain time positions.

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  • 言語科学論集

    言語科学論集 27 55-79, 2021-12

    Department of Linguistic Science, Graduate School of Human and Environmental Studies, Kyoto University

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