Verbo-nominal constructions of necessity withþearfn. andneedn.: competition and grammaticalization from OE to eModE

Abstract

The evolution of verbs expressing necessity in the history of English, such as*þurfanandneed, has been studied in detail, especially their semantic competition and their grammaticalization (see Molencki 2002, 2005; Taeymans 2006; Loureiro-Porto 2009). However, analogous verbo-nominal expressions involving the morphologically related nounsþearfandneedand the verbsbeandhavehave received little attention, despite their relevance as semantic competitors of the verbs and their subsequent fossilization in high-frequency expressions such asif need beandhad need. The current article fills this gap by studying the development of verbo-nominal expressions withþearfandneedfrom Old to early Modern English, and asks: (i) whether the verbs and the verbo-nominal expressions undergo similar processes of grammaticalization, and (ii) whether there is any connection between the evolution of the verbal and the verbo-nominal sets. Analysis of these verbo-nominal constructions in a 4.1 million-word corpus (including theHelsinki Corpusand fragments of theDictionary of Old English Corpus, theCorpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, theLampeter Corpusand theCorpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler) shows that, firstly, both idiomaticization and grammaticalization are relevant in the development of verbo-nominal constructions; secondly, their evolution is key to the understanding of the development of the necessity verbs*þurfanandneed; and finally, the competition between constructions withþearfandneedcalls into question the well-known hypothesis that phonological confusion withdurrancaused the disappearance of*þurfanin the ME period (see Visser 1963–73: 1423, §1343).