OBJECT INSERTION IN OLD ENGLISH VERBS OF THROWING: A CORPUS-BASED ANALYSIS
Vol.11, Issue 2, 2025, pp. 265-290 Full text: PDF . HTML
DOI: https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.25.2.5
Web of Science: 001643786800006
Author:
Juan Gabriel Vázquez-González https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5631-5744
Affiliation: University of Huelva, Huelva, Spain 03a1kt624
Abstract
This study demonstrates for the first time that ballistic motion is part of Old English ditransitives, functioning in the Nominative-Accusative-Dative construction. A search for throw terms in A Thesaurus of Old English generates a pilot list of candidates, whose participation in ditransitives is verified through queries performed on the Dictionary of Old English Web Corpus. The findings reveal a relatively diverse group of 14 verb types and 51 tokens expressing deictically directed transfer (i.e., throwing to and from), with some units emphasizing force or manner of motion. In line with Diachronic Construction Grammar, the new verb class is incorporated into a lexicality-schematicity hierarchy, a semantic map proposal for the group is discussed in detail, and the argument structure of Old English throw verbs is formalized into boxes and described. This study pays particular attention to the typological distinction between basic and derived coding frames, and, more specifically, to object insertion as a mechanism for generating ditransitives from primary caused-motion constructions. A comparison of the argument structures found in the Old English corpus with those of their modern English counterparts suggests a lower degree of constructionalization in the Old English throw group, based on the frequent presence of a fourth argument, a directional.
Keywords: Old English ditransitives, throw verbs, Dictionary of Old English Corpus, object insertion, Diachronic Construction Grammar, (non-)compositionality
Article history:
Submitted: 27 August 2025
Reviewed: 8 September 2025
Accepted: 9 September 2025
Published: 20 December 2025
Citation (APA):
Vázquez-González, J. G. (2025). Object insertion in old English verbs of throwing: A corpus-based analysis. English Studies at NBU, 11(2), 265-290. https://doi.org/10.33919/esnbu.25.2.5
Copyright © 2025 Juan Gabriel Vázquez-González
This is an Open Access article published and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Funding: This research was funded by the I+D+I project titled Modelo de lenguaje y aumento de datos para Universal Dependencies. Treebank de inglés antiguo, prueba con cero datos del gótico y estudios lingüísticos relacionados [MAUD: Model of language and data augmentation for Universal Dependencies. Treebank of Old English, zero-shot application to Gothic and related linguistic studies], grant PID2023-149762NB-I00, awarded by the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades through the Agencia Estatal de Investigación, which is gratefully acknowledged here.
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