How Contact with French Drove Patient‐Lability in English

Abstract

AbstractThis paper examines whether the argument structure of English verbs of change of state/location was influenced by contact. Scandinavian as a source of influence is rejected for not having had suitable properties. In Old French, including its insular variety, Anglo‐Norman, verbs of change of state/location were labile in the late 13th and 14th c., the period of contact via intense bilingualism. It is proposed that contact with Old French provided models for the generalisation of lability across these English verb classes. Using standard lexicographical resources, change‐of‐state/location verbs are shown to display a great expansion of lability after Old English, reaching a level of 75 per cent attestation of such verbs as labile by 15th c. Middle English. This outcome is taken to be an effect on English of the later medieval bilingual contact situation in England, where French was increasingly used by bilingual speakers, who replicated in English the argument realisations of French verbs expressing change‐of‐state/location concepts. The effect was particularly strong with French loan verbs, where contact influence involved borrowing not only forms and their semantic denotation, but also the borrowed verb's argument structure; lability also increased very markedly with native verbs.