Referential Density of Old/Middle/Present-day English

Abstract

This paper attempts to introduce the referential density of Old English (OE), Middle English and Present-Day English (PDE), to see whether the RD values of different versions of English can tell the diachronic changes in English. RD is to display the correlations between the arguments and the predicate in a clause, RD1 (overt arguments over possible arguments) has been high from OE to PDE despite their up and down ratios. In contrast to the vagueness of RD1, RD2 (overt arguments over the predicate) shows a steady increase in their values from OE to PDE. This increasing pattern in overt arguments(RD2) shows similarity in the English valency study of the increase of transitive verbs from OE to ME. This paper argues that these RD value results can be an explanatory tool to prove the change of English valency as well as the relationship between the loss of the case-marking system and the more frequent occurrence of arguments from OE to PDE.