Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López, Selim 23 (2018): 27–53. ISSN 1132-631X The adjectival and verbal participle with bēon in Old English — A morpho-syntactic analysis1 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López University of La Rioja This article analyses the inflectional morphology of the present and the past participle of Old English, in adjectival function as well as in verbal function with bēon ‘to be’. The aim of the analysis is to determine whether or not the attachment of adjectival inflection depends on the function performed by the participle. The study is based on the evidence provided by the York Corpus of Old English. The role of Latin in the growing importance of the participle in Old English may be confirmed by the fact that in a selection of texts on the grounds of the absolute number of participles, four, out of ten, are translations from Latin. On the other hand, the results of the analysis indicate that translations from Latin present the lowest frequency of inflected participles, while the highest is found in Ælfrician texts. The main conclusion of this article is that the frequency of full inflection depends on the function of the participle. Whereas practically all adjectival participles are inflected for adjectival morphology, only one third of verbal participles receive adjectival inflection. Keywords: Old English; participle; inflection; syntactic function 1. Introduction As Lass (1992: 144) remarks, the non-finite forms of the verb in Old English are the uninflected infinitive (wrītan ‘to write’), the inflected infinitive (to wrītanne ‘to write’), the present participle (wrītende ‘writing’), and the past 1 This research has been funded through the grant FFI2014-59110, which is thankfully acknowledged. We would like to thank Susan Pintzuk for her assistance with the searches on the York Corpus of Old English (YCOE). 28 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López participle (gewritten ‘written’), in such a way that in Old English the infinitive and the participle can be inflected or not. The following example illustrates the topic of this research, which focuses on the inflected and uninflected participles, both with adjectival and verbal function. (1) a. Apol. (2, 8) Þa gyrnde hyre maenig maere man micele maerða beodende. ‘Then, many a famous man desired her, offering many wonderful things.’ b. Apol. (10, 16) Swa hwilc man swa me Apollonium lifigendne to gebringð... ‘Whoever brings Apollonius to me alive...’ c. Apol. (8, 4–5) ...se waes Thaliarcus gehaten. ‘...who was called Thaliarcus.’ d. Apol. (18, 6) Gemiltsa me, þu ealda man, sy þaet þu sy; gemildsa me nacodum, forlidenum, naes na of earmlicum birdum geborenum. ‘Have pity on me, old man, whoever you may be; have pity on me, naked, shipwrecked, and not born from poor origins.’ (from Wedel 1978: 395–396) As is shown in (1), the participle can perform an adjectival function, as in micele maerða beodende ‘offering many things, who offered many things’, and a verbal function, as a lexical verb with bēon ‘to be’ in both active and passive constructions, like se waes Thaliarcus gehaten ‘who was called Thaliarcus’. At the same time, the participle gets both verbal and adjectival inflection in instances like lifigendne ‘living’ and geborenum ‘born’, so that the present participle agrees in case, number, and gender with the noun in apposition (Apollonium lifigendne ‘Apollonius alive’) or with the nominal antecedent (man micele maerða beodende ‘men who offered many wonderful things’). The participle presents verbal inflection only in instances like beodende ‘offering’ and gehaten ‘was called’, which show exclusively the canonical inflectional endings for the present and the past participle, respectively -ende and -en (strong verbs). The starting point of this research is Mitchell’s (1985: 409) remark that “there is no work which gives a complete treatment of the Old English Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 29 participles”. In general, previous research attributes the increase of the use of the participles during the Old English period to Latin influence (Callaway 1901, Wedel 1978, Mitchell 1985, Ogura 2009). The distinction made in this article between the two main functions of the participle draws on authors like Callaway, Mitchell, and Visser. Callaway (1901) concentrates on the appositive participle, which he defines as “the participle that is equivalent to an adjectival clause as well as that which is equal to an adverbial clause. The uses of the appositive participle correspond closely to those of the subordinate adverbial clause” (1901: 149). Mitchell (1985) also deals with the functions of the participle and distinguishes between its adjectival and verbal uses, which he relates to syntactic behaviour. For Visser, who pays heed to the different functions of the participle too, “in Old English the past participle appears with flexional endings; these gradually disappear in Middle English, so that subsequently the zero form is the normal one” (Visser 1966: 2.II.1280). On the diachronic axis, the adjectival segment of the inflection of the participle disappeared during the generalised loss of inflectional endings, whereas the verbal part has been kept. For example, in (1d) the inflected participle geborenum would eventually yield way to geboren, so that the former shows verbal (-en) and adjectival (-um) endings, whereas the latter presents the verbal part only (-en). This is related to the fact that, as Traugott (1992: 190) explains, the origin of the syntactic passive is to be found in adjectival predications with a copulative verb and a fully inflected adjectival form of the participle. This can be seen in (2), in which the first instance presents an inflected participle and the second an uninflected one. On this question, Traugott (1992: 190) points out that “the number of inflected constructions became less frequent during the Old English period”, although the -e plural inflection (as in afliemde ‘banished’ in (2a) is frequent in this period. (2) a. Or 1 10 44.24 On ðære ilcan tide wurdon twegen æðelingas afliemde of Sciððian. ‘At that same time two noblemen were banished from Scythia.’ b. Or Head 64.10 & hu II aðelingas wurdon afliemed of Sciððium. ‘And how two noblemen were banished from Scythia.’ (from Traugott 1992: 199) Wojtyś (2009: 48) dates the loss of the past participle suffixes -n and -d to the thirteenth century and points out that “the suffixal marking in Old 30 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López English needs to be regarded as regular”. Fischer (1992) holds in this respect that in the Late Old English and Early Middle English periods, the inflectional endings of some forms, including the present participle, began to be confused, which also led to syntactic confusion. Ogura (2009), in the same line, finds that, due to their phonemic resemblance, the endings -ende and -enne became interchangeable as variant forms in late Old English (eleventh century). Overall, the works reviewed in Section 1 agree on the loss of the inflection of the participle and the approximate dating of the change, while proposing several causes for the change. However, the loss of the adjectival morphology has not been quantified so far, neither has it been related to the functions of the participle. The remainder of this article deals with these questions, with a view to determining whether or not the function performed by the participle plays any role in the attachment of adjectival inflection. The scope of the article is restricted to non-verbal (adjectival) uses and verbal (with bēon ‘to be’) uses of the participle. The reasons for restricting the scope in this way are both empirical and descriptive. For empirical reasons, the amount of data of the non-verbal and verbal participle with bēon ‘to be’ advises to put aside the participles with habban ‘to have’. For descriptive reasons, the adjectival participle and the verbal participle with bēon ‘to be’ constitute a relatively unified phenomenon from a diachronic point of view. As Traugott explains, the development of the auxiliaries may be related to the disappearance of the inflected participles, as the participles were reanalysed from adjectives into verbs: The inflected participial construction with BE was probably truly adjectival in PrOE. By Old English, however, it appears to have been reanalyzed as a verbal complex (as happened to habban during the Old English period), or at least to have been partially reanalyzed. The evidence for reanalysis is that the participle is typically uninflected. (Traugott 1992: 192–193) Within the scope of the adjectival participle and the verbal participle with bēon ‘to be’, present and past participles are taken into account, including their uninflected forms as well as the various inflections for case (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, instrumental), gender (masculine, feminine, neuter) and number (singular, plural). This article is organised as follows. Section 2 describes the methodology of research, which is applied to the corpus in Section 3 (morphological analysis) Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 31 and Section 4 (syntactic and textual analysis). Then, Section 5 draws the main conclusions of this study. 2. Method This study in the participle of Old English is based on the textual evidence available from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) and the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry (YCOEP). YCOE is a 1.5 million word syntactically-annotated corpus. For its part, YCOEP is a selection of poetic texts from the Old English Section of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (HC) that contains 71,490 words. As in its prose counterpart, the texts are syntactically and morphologically annotated. The prose and the poetry corpus together are referred to in the remainder of this paper as YCOE. The set in (3) presents the tags that have been searched for in the YCOE in order to analyse the form and the function of the Old English participles. These include the present and the past participle of all verbs and the special verbs bēon ‘to be’ and habban ‘to have’. (3) The initial set of the YCOE morphological tags for the participle The verb BE BAG present participle BEN perfect participle The verb HAVE HAG present participle HVN perfect participle All other verbs VAG present participle VBN perfect participle The verbal and adjectival uses of the present and past participles are not distinguished in the YCOE morphological analysis, both being tagged as VAN or VAG, as can be seen in (3). The YCOE parsing makes no distinction in the tag for the auxiliary and the main verb use of bēon ‘to be’. In the parsing, the auxiliary forms of bēon can be distinguished from main verb forms by the presence of a present or a past participle. At the syntactic level, therefore, it is 32 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López necessary to define the search with respect to the nodes IP (Inflectional Phrase) and PTP (Participle Phrase) and specify the following conditions: that the copulative verb and the past participle are immediately dominated by an inflectional phrase or that the past participle is immediately dominated by a participle phrase, in such a way that the copula is shared with the verb phrase and immediately dominated by an inflectional phrase. This can be seen in (4). (4) Query string for the past participle with bēon ‘to be’ node: IP*|PTP* query: ((IP* idoms BED*|BEP*) AND (IP* idoms *VBN^*|*HVN^*|*BEN^*)) OR (PTP* idoms *VBN^*|*HVN^*|*BEN^*) As shown in (5), the adjectival function of the participle holds when there is agreement in case, gender, and number with the head of the noun phrase in which the participle functions as modifier. In the query language of the YCOE, a noun phrase immediately dominates a present or a past participle. This is the case with lyfiendan gast ‘living spirit’ in (5). 2 (5) Syntactic parsing of the participle as adjective in the YCOE ( (IP-MAT (CONJ &) (NP-NOM (PRO^N hi) (Q^N ealle)) (VBD geliff+aste) (PP (P +turh) (NP-ACC (D^A +tone) (VAG^A lyfiendan) (N^A Gast))) (. :)) (ID coaelhom,+AHom_1:70.49)) 2 Clauses in the YCOE are labelled IP with an additional label to indicate type, such as IP-MAT for declarative matrix IPs. The tags in Figure 2 and Figure 3 stand for the following categories and features: syntactic categories: NP (noun phrase); lexical categories: N (noun), NR (proper name), ADJ (adjective), VB (verb), BE (the verb bēon ‘to be’), ADV (adverb), D (determiner), NUM (numeral), P (preposition), CONJ (conjunction); morphological case at word level: ^N (nominative), ^A (accusative), ^G (genitive), ^D (dative); morphological case at phrase level: -NOM (nominative), ACC (accusative), -GEN (genitive), -DAT (dative); tense: P (present); mode: I (indicative), S (subjunctive); non-finite forms: N (past participle). Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 33 The verbal function of the participle is the case when there is agreement in person and number with bēon ‘to be’, while the agreement in case, gender, and number with the subject is not necessarily explicit. This is shown in (6), in which the nominative plural subject heofonas ‘heavens’ agrees in number with the copulative verb synd ‘are’, and in case, gender, and number with the nominative plural gefæstnode ‘fastened’. (6) The syntactic parsing of the participle as verb in the YCOE: IP ( (IP-MAT (NP-NOM (N^N Heofonas)) (BEPI synd) (VBN^N gef+astnode) (PP (P +turh) (NP-ACC (D^A +t+at) (ADJ^A halige) (NP-GEN (NR^G Godes)) (N^A word))) (. ,)) (ID coaelhom,+AHom_1:79.54)) As shown in (6), when the participle functions as a verb, the query language of the YCOE indicates that an inflectional phrase (a clause) immediately dominates a present or a past participle. There are other instances, however, in which more than one participle is immediately dominated by the same inflectional phrase. In these cases, the second participle is analysed as giving rise to a participle phrase. In other words, the second copulative verb is considered to be omitted in the YCOE syntactic parsing. Consider a fragment like Ic fram cildhade wæs Apollonius genemnod, on Tirum geboren ‘I was called Apollonius from my childhood, [I was] born in Tirum’; the parsing in terms of a participle NP is presented in (7). As can be seen in (7), the past participle genemnod ‘named’ belongs, along with the copulative verb, in the verb phrase wæs genemnod ‘was called’ and, therefore, constitutes an instance of participle with verbal function. The same applies to geboren ‘born’. Even though it is not sister-dominated along with a form of bēon ‘to be’ by an inflectional phase, the parsing involves a coordinated construction that omits the second copula. This is done on the basis of a participle phrase which avoids ambiguity with participles that cannot be linked to a verb phrase containing the copulative verb and, as such, are considered to perform the adjectival function in this analysis. 34 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López (7) Syntactic parsing of the participle as verb in the YCOE: PTP (IP-MAT-SPE (NP-NOM (PRO^N Ic)) (PP (P fram) (NP-DAT (N^D cildhade))) (BEDI w+as) (NP-NOM-PRD (NR^N Apollonius)) (VBN genemnod) (, ,) (PTP-NOM (PP (P on) (NP (NR Tirum))) (VBN^N geboren))) For the adjectival and the verbal functions of the participle, the morphological cases nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and instrumental have been searched and quantified, together with the forms without adjectival inflection. In the YCOE morphological tagging, participles formally ambiguous as to case, as well as zero marked cases, count as uninflected participles. The whole set of tags can be seen in (8), in which the columns correspond, respectively, to the present participle of general verbs, habban and bēon; and the past participle of general verbs, habban and bēon. (8) Final set of the YCOE morphological tags for the participle VAG HAG BAG VBN HVN BEN VAG^N HAG^N BAG^N VBN^N HVN^N BEN^N VAG^A HAG^A BAG^A VBN^A HVN^A BEN^A VAG^G HAG^G BAG^G VBN^G HVN^G BEN^G VAG^D HAG^D BAG^D VBN^D HVN^D BEN^D VAG^I HAG^I BAG^I VBN^I HVN^I BEN^I With the searches on the YCOE just defined, two types of analysis are carried out. In the first place, the morphological questions of the undertaking are addressed, including the variables of inflected vs. uninflected participle, morphological case of inflected participles, present vs. past participle, and prose vs. poetry. The data for the morphological analysis include the whole YCOE, both its prose and its poetry segments. This part of the analysis intends to offer an overall picture of the morphology of the participle in Old English prose and poetry. Secondly, the form of the participle is analysed with respect to its function. The data for this part of the study have been extracted from the ten texts that evince the highest number of participles, all of which Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 35 are written in prose (see Appendix): COAELHOM (Ælfric, Supplemental Homilies), COAELIVE (Ælfric’s Lives of Saints), COBEDE (Bede’s History of the English Church), COCATHOM (Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies), COCHRON (Anglo-Saxon Chronicle), COCURA (Cura Pastoralis), COGREGD (Gregory’s Dialogues), COOROSIU (Orosius), COVERHOM (Vercelli Homilies), and COWSGOSP (West-Saxon Gospels). With this selection, the number of participles per text ranges between 947 and 3,379. The variables of this part of the analysis are both syntactic and textual. On the syntactic side, the adjectival and the verbal functions of the participle are distinguished, while, on the textual side, quantification by text (and type of text) has explanatory purposes. 3. Morphological analysis This section presents the morphological side of the analysis, which revolves around the questions of the inflected vs. uninflected participle, morphological case of inflected participles, present vs. past participle, and prose vs. poetry. As just said, the data for the morphological analysis include the prose and the poetry segments of the YCOE, in order to provide an overall assessment of the morphology of the participle in Old English. The total figure or instances of the participle in the YCOE, both prose and poetry, is 35,241: 6,811 of the present participle and 28,430 of the past participle. By text type, 33,655 appear in prose texts and 1,586 in poetry texts. It may be useful at this point to take into account the size of the prose and the poetry parts of the YCOE. If these absolute figures are normalised per 1,000 words, it turns out that the relative importance of the participle is much higher in the poetry than in the prose texts. The poetry texts in the corpus have 30.7 participles per 1,000 words, while the prose texts present 22.4 participles per 1,000 words. Of the 35,241 participles, 20,256 are uninflected, and 14,985 are inflected for the five morphological cases; that is, only 42.5 per cent of the participles in the corpus are inflected. Beginning with the present participle, a total of 6,811 textual forms have been identified. Of these, 6,612 correspond to prose texts whereas 199 have been found in poetry texts. In prose texts, a total of 2,241 present participles are not inflected, as opposed to 4,371 inflected present participles. In percentual terms, 66.1 per cent of the present participles in prose texts are inflected, with the corresponding 33.9 per cent of uninflected participles. The nominative case clearly stands out (60.2% of inflected participles in prose texts 36 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López are inflected for the nominative), although the dative and the accusative also present a considerable number of occurrences. In poetry, out of 199 instances, 105 are inflected (57.2%) and ninety-four uninflected (47.3%). The nominative and the accusative stand out with respect to the other cases in poetry texts. As is the case with the prose, the nominative is by far the most frequent case (58% of inflected participles are marked for this case). The instrumental, which is negligible in prose, does not have any occurrences in poetry. These figures have been tabulated in Table 1. Table 1. Present participle by morphological case and text type in the YCOE Prose Poetry Total Nominative 2,631 61 2,422 Accusative 542 13 555 Genitive 312 17 329 Dative 885 14 899 Instrumental 1 -- 1 Inflected total 4,371 105 4,476 Uninflected total 2,241 94 2,335 Grand total 6,612 199 6,811 Turning to the past participle, the corpus evinces a total of 28,430. This total represents more than four times as much as the total of the present participle. Of the 28,430 past participles, 27,043 have been extracted from prose texts, with poetry texts containing the much lower figure of 1,387. In prose texts, the number of uninflected past participles is 17,062, a much higher figure than that of the inflected past participles, 9,981. In terms of percentages, the uninflected past participle represents 63 per cent whereas the inflected past participle reaches 37 per cent only. In poetry, 859 past participles do not show adjectival inflection (62%) while 528 do (38%). By case, the nominative stands out in prose and poetry (68.6% of past participles in prose and 80% of past participles in poetry are inflected for the nominative), although the accusative also turns out significant figures. These results are in accordance with Kilpiö’s (1989: 134) remark that “towards the late OE period the inflection of the past participle in passive constructions, already simpler Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 37 than that of the adjective in early OE, underwent further simplification so that basically only two forms occurred: an endingless participle in the singular and one ending in -e in the plural”. The results corresponding to the past participle by case and text type are presented in Table 2. Table 2. Past participle by morphological case and text type in the YCOE Prose Poetry Total Nominative 6,852 423 7,275 Accusative 1,617 82 1,699 Genitive 335 13 348 Dative 1,171 10 1,781 Instrumental 6 -- 6 Inflected total 9,981 528 10,509 Uninflected total 17,062 859 17,921 Grand total 27,043 1,387 28,430 Textually, the past participle is far more frequent than the present participle. This is the case with prose and poetry texts, but the gap is wider in poetry than in prose. Although these aspects require further research, from a diachronic perspective this may mean that, whereas the periphrasis of copulative verb plus past participle is well established in the language, the periphrasis involving a present participle is not fixed yet. As Denison (1993: 380) states, “in Old English the progressive is unevenly distributed, its overall frequency low but in certain texts (notably Orosius) remarkably high”. Denison (1993: 380) illustrates the point with examples like the ones in (9). (9) a. Or 100.20 þætte se consul wæs wenende þæt eall þæt folc wære gind þæt lond tobræd, & þiderweard farende wæs... ‘so that the consul assumed wrongly that the army was all scattered throughout the country, and he was heading there...’ b. Or 123.2 Hit wæs þa swiþe oþþyncende þam oþrum consulum... ‘Then it displeased the other consuls greatly...’ 38 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López Synchronically, the higher frequency of appearance of the past participle may be interpreted as the result of the existence of numerous passive constructions, including syntactic passives like (2a) and (2b). 4. Syntactic and textual analysis This section analyses the form of the participle with respect to its adjectival and verbal function with bēon ‘to be’. The data for this part of the analysis comprise the ten texts with the highest figures of participles. As a matter of fact, the ten are written in prose. The present participle is practically always inflected when it performs the adjectival function (97.1% of the participles functioning as adjectives display adjectival case marking). This contrasts with the inflection of the present participle as verb, which is inflected in approximately two thirds of the cases (64.3% is the exact figure). If a closer view is taken of the verbal function, the results indicate that Ælfrician texts (Ælfric’s Homilies, Lives of Saints, Catholic Homilies) show over 80 per cent of inflected present participles in the verbal function. The present participle total largely reflects the results of the verbal function because the present participle is widely inflected in its adjectival function and, consequently, differences among texts arise as to the verbal function, not the adjectival function. Considering the total figures of the present participle, the abovementioned texts by Ælfric turn out the highest figures of inflection and, at the opposite end, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and some translations from Latin (Bede’s Ecclesiastical History and Orosius) contain the lowest number of inflected participles. These aspects are tabulated in Table 3. As in the following tables, the quantification in Table 3 shows the figure of inflected participles by function with respect to the total of participles in verbal and adjectival function. As regards the past participle, in its adjectival function it is inflected even more frequently than the present participle, which nears the total (97.6% of the past participles in the corpus show adjectival inflection when functioning as adjectives). In its verbal function, the past participle is slightly less inflective than the present participle (only 30.2% of the instances present adjectival inflection). Considering these two aspects, the gap between the inflection of the adjectival function and the verbal function is wider in the past participle Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 39 Table 3. Present participle in adjectival and verbal function by text in the YCOE Text Adjectival function Verbal function Present participle total coaelhom 75 / 79 132 / 162 207 / 241 coaelive 151 / 156 328 / 375 479 / 531 cobede 127 / 130 161 / 469 288 / 599 cocathom 264 / 270 605 / 745 869 / 1,015 cochron 10 / 14 30 / 90 40 / 104 cocura 82 / 82 58 / 97 140 / 179 cogregd 183 / 187 432 / 663 615 / 850 coorosiu 15 / 15 29 / 241 44 / 256 coverhom 72 / 74 23 / 73 95 / 147 cowsgosp 40 / 42 293 / 334 333 / 376 Category total (%) 1,019 / 1,049 (97.1%) 2,091 / 3,249 (64.3%) 3,110 / 4,298 (72.3%) than in the present participle. Remarkable differences appear, though, when the results are analysed text by text. Whereas the texts by Ælfric (Homilies, Lives of Saints, Catholic Homilies) show over 80 per cent of inflected present participles in the verbal function, they evince percentages of inflection of the past participle in the same function below 40 per cent. This percentage of inflection is still higher than the percentage displayed by some translations from Latin. Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Orosius, and Cura Pastoralis throw percentages of inflected past participles in the verbal function under 20 per cent. Other Latin translations, such as Gregory’s Dialogues and West-Saxon Gospels, turn out higher percentages but still around 30 per cent. The data on the past participle are tabulated in Table 4. Table 5 summarises the data on the adjectival and the verbal functions of the participle in the corpus and offers absolute as well as relative totals by text. As shown, the selection of ten prose texts from the YCOE comprises a total of 20,023 participles, of which 2,743 function as adjectives and 17,280 perform the verbal function with bēon ‘to be’. With respect to inflectional morphology, the vast majority of participles with adjectival function display, together with the verbal ending, the adjectival inflectional endings. On the other hand, when the function performed by the participle is verbal with bēon ‘to be’, around one 40 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López Table 4. Past participle in adjectival and verbal function by text in the YCOE Text Adjectival function Verbal function Past participle total coaelhom 104 / 110 271 / 700 375 / 810 coaelive 184 / 187 541 / 1,431 725 / 1,618 cobede 174 / 176 399 / 1,645 573 / 1,821 cocathom 449 / 465 1,138 / 3,219 1,587 / 3,684 cochron 56 / 58 205 / 1,166 261 / 1,224 cocura 184 / 189 307 / 1,114 491 / 1,303 cogregd 339 / 341 692 / 2,188 1,031 / 2,529 coorosiu 16 / 16 120 / 650 136 / 666 coverhom 90 / 91 226 / 679 316 / 770 cowsgosp 58 / 61 328 / 1,059 386 / 1,120 Category total (%) 1,654 / 1,694 (97.6%) 4,227 / 13,951 (30.2%) 5,881 / 15,545 (37.8%) third of the participles present adjectival inflection. By text, the count of inflected participles is around one half of the total (ranging between 42% in Cura Pastoralis and 56% in Lives of Saints), except in three texts: Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and Orosius, which evince about 35 per cent, 22 per cent and 15 per cent of inflected participles, respectively. On the other hand, religious prose as represented by Ælfric’s Homilies, Catholic Homilies, and Lives of Saints, shows over 55 per cent of inflected participles. In other words, leaving Anglo-Saxon Chronicle aside, the translations from Latin throw figures below 50 per cent of inflected participles, thus Gregory’s Dialogues (48%), West-Saxon Gospels (48%), Cura Pastoralis (42%), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (35%), and Orosius (15%). Although the total of inflected participles in Gregory’s Dialogues and Cura Pastoralis is similar to those in Vercelli Homilies (44%), Bede’s Ecclesiastical History (35% of inflected participles), and Orosius (15%) confirm the tendency of Old English translations to present fewer inflected participles than the religious prose. Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 41 Table 5. Verbal and adjectival function of the participles by text in the YCOE Text Adjectival function Verbal function Text total coaelhom 179 / 189 403 / 862 582 / 1,051 (55.3%) coaelive 335 / 343 869 / 1,806 1,204 / 2,149 (56.0%) cobede 301 / 306 560 / 2,114 861 / 2,420 (35.0%) cocathom 713 / 735 1,743 / 3,874 2,456 / 4,609 (53.2%) cochron 66 / 72 235 / 1,256 301 / 1,328 (22.6%) cocura 266 / 271 365 / 1,211 631 / 1,482 (42.5%) cogregd 522 / 528 1,124 / 2,851 1,646 / 3,379 (48.7%) coorosiu 31 / 31 149 / 1,161 180 / 1,192 (15.1%) coverhom 162 / 165 249 / 752 411 / 917 (44.8%) cowsgosp 98 / 103 621 / 1,393 719 / 1,496 (48%) Category total (%) 2673 / 2,743 (97.4%) 6,318 / 17,280 (36.5%) 8,991 / 20,023 (44.5%) Interestingly, the translations from Latin show fewer inflected participles while containing more participles than the other texts. As can be seen in Table 6, the translations have at least two participles per 100 words (which amounts to approximately 20,000 words per million, WPM), while presenting lower figures of inflected participles. The word count seems to support the view that the translations from Latin opt for rendering the present and the past participle undeclined even though it is declined as an adjective in the source language. 42 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López Table 6. Textual frequency of the participle in the YCOE Text Word count Text total % coaelhom 62,669 1,051 1.6% coaelive 100,193 2,149 2.1% cobede 80,767 2,420 2.9% cocathom 204,756 4,609 2.2% cochron 104,201 1,328 1.2% cocura 70,675 1,482 2% cogregd 117,146 3,379 2.8% coorosiu 51,020 1,192 2.3% coverhom 52,123 917 1.7% cowsgosp 71,104 1,496 2.1% This higher textual frequency of the participle in the Old English translations from Latin may confirm the role played by Latin influence in the increase in the use of the participle (Callaway 1901, Wedel 1978, Mitchell 1985, Ogura 2009), although Lamont (2015: 351) finds 1,511 Latin present participles in the four gospels, as opposed to the 453 present participles used to render them in Old English. As regards the adjectival inflection of the participle, the data discussed above do not indicate direct influence from Latin. As has already been said, the translations from Latin show lower frequencies of inflected participles than vernacular texts, with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. On the other hand, the texts by Ælfric show the highest rates of inflected participles, particularly with the verbal function. On the question, Sato (2009: 4) holds that Latin influenced Ælfric’s syntax to such an extent that he adopted syntactic constructions from the Latin language, including the absolute participle. Furthermore, Sato (2009: 4) goes on to say that Ælfric could use absolute participles with and without their direct Latin counterparts and “skillfully modified the syntax of the Latin source, inventing a more sophisticated style in his vernacular language than the style of his Latin sources. Thus, Ælfric’s use of this loan syntax should not be dismissed as such a direct Latin influence”. In a similar line, Lamont remarks: Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 43 The translators of both the OE Genesis and the Old English Gospels use Old English present participles even when the Latin does not. There is always the possibility that the Latin exemplar(s) differed from the extant versions of the Vulgate, but it also appears possible that the OE present participle was somewhat idiomatic for the translators of both parts of Genesis and all four Old English Gospels […] While scholars have argued that the OE present participle and progressive developed as reactions to Latin, they do not appear to observe that these unattested participles in the translations suggest more than a reaction to Latin, but perhaps a native idiom, albeit in late Old English. (Lamont 2015: 352) The results of this study are in accordance with this view. Considering the unattested participles noted by Sato (2009) and Lamont (2015), as well as the low level of participial inflection in the translations from Latin, which inflects the participle for case, number and gender on a regular basis, it may be the case that the inflection of the participle in Ælfric is a matter of grammatical purism rather than direct influence from Latin. With respect to Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it is relatively predictable that a highly narrative text has less adjectival modification than more descriptive texts like the ones from the religious prose. Although this question deserves more attention, the narrative style of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle could explain the low count of participles performing the adjectival function (where, as shown above, inflection is much more frequent) and, ultimately, the low level of adjectival inflection of the participle. 5. Conclusions This article has analysed the inflectional morphology of the present and the past participle of Old English, both in adjectival and in verbal function with bēon ‘to be’, in order to answer the question whether or not the function performed by the participle determines the presence of adjectival inflection to the right of verbal inflection. The data, extracted from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose and the York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry, indicate that the verbal function is performed by the participle far more frequently than the adjectival function. With respect to the relation between the function and the inflection of the participle, the analysis of the corpus leads to the conclusion that the adjectival segment in the inflection of the 44 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López participle is functionally motivated. Indeed, nearly all participles with adjectival function are inflected for adjectival morphology, whereas only around one third of participles with verbal function get both verbal and adjectival inflection. Some authors cited in this paper attribute the growing importance of the participle in Old English to Latin influence. This may be confirmed by the fact that in a selection of texts from the corpus made on the basis of the absolute number of participles, four are translations from Latin, out of a total of ten texts. However, the results of the analysis show that the translations from Latin present the lowest frequency of inflected participles. On the other hand, religious prose, as represented by Ælfric’s Homilies, Catholic Homilies, and Lives of Saints, shows the highest rates of inflected participles. It remains for further research to determine whether other texts originally written in the vernacular language also opt for the inflected participle in a number of cases comparable to Ælfrician texts. References Callaway, M. 1901: The Appositive Participle in Anglo-Saxon. Baltimore, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Denison, D. 1993: English Historical Syntax: Verbal Constructions. London, Longman. Fischer, O. 1992: Syntax. In N. Blake ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. II: 1066–1476. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 207–408. Kilpiö, M. 1989: Passive Constructions in Old English Translations from Latin. With Special Reference to the OE Bede and the Pastoral Care. Helsinki, Société Néophilologique. Lamont, G. J. M. 2015: The Present Participle as a Marker of Style and Authorship in Old English Biblical Translation. (Ph.D. dissertation.) Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. Lass, R. 1992: Phonology and Morphology. In N. Blake ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. II: 1066–1476. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 23–155. Mitchell, B. 1985: Old English Syntax. Concord, the Parts of Speech and the Sentence. Vol. 1. Oxford, Oxford University Press. Ogura, M. 2009: The Interchangeability of the Endings -ende and -enne in Old and Early Middle English. English Studies 90.6: 721–734. Sato, K. 2009: The Absolute Participle Construction in Old English: Ælfric’s Exploitation of the Latinate Syntax in his Vernacular Prose. English Studies 90.1: 2–16. Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 45 Traugott, E. C. 1992: Syntax. In R. M. Hogg ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. I: The Beginnings to 1066. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 186–201. Visser, F. T. 1984 [1966]: A Historical Syntax of the English Language. Part Two (Vol. II): Syntactical Units with One Verb (Continued). Leiden, E. J. Brill. Wedel, A. R. 1978: Participial Construction in High German and West Saxon of the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: Latin and Germanic Differences. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 77.3: 383–397. Wojtyś, A. 2009: Suffixal Past Participle Marking in Mediaeval English. Anglica 18: 45–68. YCOE: The York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Poetry. 2001: A. Taylor, A. Warner, S. Pintzuk, F. Beths & L. Plug comps. Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York. http://www- users.york.ac.uk/~lang18/pcorpus.html. YCOEP: The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. 2003: A. Taylor, A. Warner, S. Pintzuk & F. Beths comps. Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York. 46 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López Appendix. Information on texts from the YCOE Source: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YCOE/info/YcoeTextInfo.html coaelhom.o3 Text name Ælfric’s Homilies Supplemental File name coaelhom.o3 DOE short title ÆHom Cameron number B1.4 Manuscript various, see edition Dialect West Saxon Genre Homilies Latin translation No Word count 62,669 Edition Pope, J.C. 1968. Homilies of Ælfric, A supplementary Collection. Early English Text Society, 260. London: OUP. coaelive.o3 Text name Ælfric’s Lives of Saints File name coaelive.o3 DOE short title ÆLS Cameron number B1.3.2 - B1.3.35 Manuscript London, British Museum, Cotton Julius E.VII Manuscript date s. xi in. Dialect West Saxon Genre Biography, lives Latin translation No Word count 100,193 Edition Skeat, Walter William. 1966 (1881-1900). Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. EETS 76, 82, 94, 114. London: OUP. cobede.o2 Text name Bede’s History of the English Church File name cobede.o2 DOE short title Bede Cameron number B9.6 Manuscript Cambridge, University Library Kk.3.18 Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 47 Manuscript date s. xi Dialect West Saxon/Anglian Genre History Latin translation Yes Word count 80,767 Edition Miller, Thomas. 1959-1963 (1890-1898). The Old English Version of “Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People”. EETS 95, 96, 110, 111. London: OUP. cocathom1.o3 Text name Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies I File name cocathom1.o3 DOE short title ÆCHom I Cameron number B1.1.2 - B1.1.42 Manuscript Cambridge, University Library, Gg.3.28 Manuscript date s. x/xi Dialect West Saxon Genre Homilies Latin translation No Word count 106,173 Edition Clemoes, P. 1997. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The First Series. EETS s.s. 17. Oxford: OUP. cocathom2.o3 Text name Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies II File name cocathom2.o3 DOE short title ÆCHom II Cameron number B1.2.2 - B1.2.49 Manuscript Cambridge, University Library, Gg.3.28 Manuscript date s. x/xi Dialect West Saxon Genre Homilies Latin translation No Word count 98,583 Edition Godden, M. 1979. Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies: The Second Series. EETS s.s. 5. London: OUP. 48 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López cochronA.o23 Text name Anglo-Saxon Chronicle A File name cochronA.o23 DOE short title ChronA Cameron number B17.1 Manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 173 Manuscript date s. ix/x-x 2 Dialect West Saxon Genre History Latin translation No Word count 14,583 Edition Plummer, Charles. 1965 (1892-1899). Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reissued D. Whitelock, Oxford 1952. cochronC Text name Anglo-Saxon Chronicle C File name cochronC DOE short title ChronC Cameron number B17.7 Manuscript London, British Museum, Cotton Tiberius B.I Manuscript date s. xi 1 - xi 2 Genre History Latin translation ? Word count 22,463 Edition Rositzke, H.A. 1967 (1940). The C-Text of the Old English Chronicles. Bochum-Langendreer: Beitræge zur englischen Philologie 34. cochronD Text name Anglo-Saxon Chronicle D File name cochronD DOE short title ChronD Cameron number B17.8 Manuscript London, British Museum, Cotton Tiberius B.IV Manuscript date s. xi med. - xi 2 Genre History Latin translation ? Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 49 Word count 26,691 Edition Classen, E. and F.E. Harmer, eds. 1926. An Anglo- Saxon Chronicle. Manchester: Manchester University Press. cochronE.o34 Text name Anglo-Saxon Chronicle E (Peterborough Chronicle) File name cochronE.o34 DOE short title ChronE Cameron number B17.9 Manuscript Oxford, Bodleian, Laud Misc. 636 Manuscript date s. xii 1 , xii med. Dialect West Saxon/X Genre History Latin translation ? Word count 40,641 Edition Plummer, Charles. 1965 (1892-1899). Two of the Saxon Chronicles Parallel. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Reissued D. Whitelock, Oxford 1952. cocura.o2 Text name Cura Pastoralis File name cocura.o2 DOE short title CP Cameron number B9.1.2, B9.1.3 Manuscript Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 20 Manuscript date s. ix ex. Dialect West Saxon Genre Religious treatise Latin translation Yes Word count 68,556 Edition Sweet, Henry. 1958 (1871). King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. EETS 45, 50. London: OUP. cocuraC Text name Cura Pastoralis File name cocuraC 50 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López DOE short title CP (Cotton) Cameron number B9.1.3.1 Manuscript London, British Museum, Cotton Tiberius B.XI Manuscript date s. ix ex. Genre Religious treatise Latin translation Yes Word count 2,119 Edition Sweet, Henry. 1958 (1871). King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. EETS 45, 50. London: OUP. cogregdC.o24 Text name Gregory’s Dialogues File name cogregdC.o24 DOE short title GD (C) Cameron number B9.5.1 - 9.5.6 Manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 322 Manuscript date s. xi 2 Dialect West Saxon/Anglian Mercian Genre Biography, lives Latin translation Yes Word count 91,553 Edition Hecht, Hans. 1965 (1900–1907). Bischof Wærferth von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen. Bibliothek der Angelsaechsischen Prosa, V. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. cogregdH.o23 Text name Gregory’s Dialogues File name cogregdH.o23 DOE short title GD (H) Cameron number B9.5.7, - B9.5.10 Manuscript Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 76 Manuscript date s. xi 1 Dialect West Saxon Genre Biography, lives Latin translation Yes Word count 25,593 Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 51 Edition Hecht, Hans. 1965 (1900-1907). Bischof Wærferth von Worcester Übersetzung der Dialoge Gregors des Grossen. Bibliothek der Angelsaechsischen Prosa, V. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. coorosiu.o2 Text name Orosius File name coorosiu.o2 DOE short title Or Cameron number B9.2.1 - B9.2.7 Manuscript London, British Museum, Add. 47967 Manuscript date s. x 1 Dialect West Saxon Genre History Latin translation Yes Word count 51,020 Edition Bately, Janet. 1980.The Old English Orosius. EETS s.s. 6. London: OUP. coverhom Text name Vercelli Homilies File name coverhom DOE short title HomS (ScraggVerc 1, 3, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 16, 19, 20) HomU (ScraggVerc 2, 4, 6, 7, 15, 22) HomM (ScraggVerc 14, 21) LS (ScraggVerc 17, 18) Cameron number HomS: B3.2.1, B3.2.2, B3.2.3, B3.2.4, B3.2.11.5, B3.2.24, B3.2.34, B3.2.36, B3.2.38, B3.2.39, B3.2.40.6, B3.2.43 HomU: B3.3.6, B3.4.7, B3.4.8, B3.4.9, B3.4.10, B3.4.11 HomM: B3.5.11, B3.5.13 LS: B3.3.17.3, B3.3.19 Manuscript Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, CXVII Manuscript date s. x 2 Genre HomS: Homilies HomU: Homilies 52 Javier Martín-Arista & Ana Elvira Ojanguren-López LS: Biography, Lives Latin translation ? Word count 45,674 Edition Scragg, D.G. 1992. The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts. EETS 300. Oxford: OUP. coverhomE Text name Vercelli Homilies, Homily I File name coverhomE DOE short title HomS 24.1 (Scragg) Cameron number B3.2.24.1 Manuscript Oxford, Bodleian, Bodley 340 and 342 Manuscript date s. xi in. Genre Homilies Latin translation ? Word count 4,463 Edition Scragg, D.G. 1992.The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts. EETS 300. Oxford: OUP. coverhomL Text name Vercelli Homilies, Homily IX File name coverhomL DOE short title HomU 15.1 (Scragg) Cameron number B3.4.15.1 Manuscript Oxford, Bodleian, Hatton 115 Manuscript date s. xi 2 Genre Homilies Latin translation ? Word count 1,986 Edition Scragg, D.G. 1992. The Vercelli Homilies and Related Texts. EETS 300. Oxford: OUP. cowsgosp.o3 Text name West-Saxon Gospels File name cowsgosp.o3 DOE short title Mt (WSCp), Mk (WSCp), Lk (WSCp), Jn (WSCp) Cameron number B8.4.3.1, B8.4.3.2, B8.4.3.3, B8.4.3.4 Manuscript Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 140 Adjectival and verbal participle with bēon 53 Manuscript date s. xi 1 Dialect West Saxon Genre Bible Latin translation Yes Word count 71,104 Edition Skeat, Walter William. 1871-1887. The Four Gospels in Anglo-Saxon, Northumbrian and Old Mercian Versions. Cambridge: CUP. Reprinted Darmstadt 1970. Authors’ address Departamento de Filologías Modernas Universidad de La Rioja Edificio de Filologías C/ San José de Calasanz, 33 26004 Logroño, Spain e-mail: javier.martin@unirioja.es, ana-elvira.ojanguren@unirioja.es revised version accepted: 15 November 2017 received: 11 December 2017