The semantics and syntax of Old English verbs of change of statedepriving, increasing, and learning

Abstract

This thesis deals with the verbal lexicon of Old English from a synchronic perspective with the aim of studying the linking between semantics and the syntax of three classes of Old English verbs of change of state: depriving, increasing, and learning. The theoretical models of this work are verbal classes and Role and Reference Grammar. The data for the analysis have been extracted from two textual sources (the Dictionary of Old English Corpus and the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English) and several lexicographic sources which comprise dictionaries, electronic dictionaries, thesauri, and lexical databases. The main conclusions drawn from this study have to do with the consistency of the Old English verbal classes of depriving and increasing as to the alternations and constructions in which these verbs participate, and with the flexibility of Role and Reference Grammar, since it allows a semantically oriented theoretical analysis of Old English verbs of learning.