Language Contact Effects on Verb Semantic Classes: Lability in Early English and Old French

Abstract

Old and Modern English differ sharply in the prevalence of lability, the extent to which verbs alternate between transitive and intransitive frames. Such alternations are often attributed to membership of semantic classes. This study investigates how far verb semantic class membership was a factor conditioning lability in older stages of English, in two semantic areas not displaying lability in PDE, psych verbs, and verbs of the destroy-class. In both classes some expansion took place in the extent of lability. We propose that this occurred under the influence of the corresponding Old French verbs. Lability was present in earlier Old French with some psych verbs and destroy-class verbs, but was declining in the period of maximum French influence on Middle English. Earlier research by the second author argued that this influenced the great expansion of lability in Middle English change of state/position verbs; with these verb classes, unlike with the other two, lability was strongly maintained throughout medieval French. Contact with French strongly influenced English verb lability in the change-of-state/position classes, where Old English had substantial numbers of labile verbs to act as ‘bridgeheads’ for the developing syntactic trend, but was less influential where Old English lacked them, as with psych verbs and destroy-verbs. Lasting contact influence was a composite of factors, influenced by developments in the source language, and also favoured by existing predispositions within the borrowing language.