Shall Sweet Bianca Practise How to Bride It? The Role of Dummy Object It in the Diachronic Transitivity Change of Denominal Conversion Verbs

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Present-day English, denominal conversion verbs sometimes take it as a dummy object to express an intransitive meaning (e.g. boss it ‘to act as master’). Recent studies suggest that the function of dummy it is to fix a verb’s status and increase its transitivity. In order to test this claim from a historical perspective, this article investigates the diachronic transitivity change of denominal conversion verbs which were recorded with dummy it. A comprehensive survey of the OED data from the sixteenth to the twentieth century will demonstrate that transitivity increase via dummy it is a minor outcome. In fact, the pronoun is associated more often with detransitivisation, for example by occurring with a verb which already has full transitive use. Furthermore, most commonly, the introduction of dummy it does not change a verb’s overall range of transitivity because both intransitive and transitive uses are already available. In this case, dummy it provides an intermediate stage between the two uses. These varied effects of the pronoun may be ascribable to the fact that it is frequently a nonce use and each verb adopted the usage at a different stage of development.