Participial perception verb complements in Old English
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Date
2014
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
In this paper, I shall examine the complements of perception verbs in Old English involving a
noun phrase and a present participle. What kind of perception is described by these structures? Do
they evoke the perception of an event, or that of an entity? It will be shown here that there are
good reasons to believe that an NP + present participle sequence could function as the equivalent
of the traditional “AcI” construction when used with perception verbs. I shall also attempt to
determine to what extent the syntax of this construction matches the semantics: is the internal
argument of the perception verb the NP alone, or some kind of combination of the NP and the
participle? This question is particularly interesting in the light of Declerck’s (1982) remarks on
participle perception verb complements in modern English. Finally, I shall take a look at morphological
parametres: sometimes the participle inflects to agree with the NP, whereas on other occasions
it does not. What might the implications of this kind of variation be?
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Keywords
direct perception reports, events, entities, present participles, pragmatic inference, modifiers, grammaticalisation
Citation
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 49.3 (2014), pp. 43-61