Prepositions in Old and Middle English. A study of prepositional syntax and the semantics of at, in and on in some Old and Middle English texts By Tom Lundskær-Nielsen (review)

610 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 70, NUMBER 3 (1994) figured out how Zwicky's paper is related to the other papers in the volume. Martin Kay's comments at the conference might plausibly have contrasted Zwicky's assumptions with a more computational perspective on morphology, but unfortunately these comments are not included. To sum up, Formal grammar is a rather heterogeneous collection of interesting papers on formal linguistics tied together more by the editor 's preface than by thematic coherence. Although most papers are loosely related to implementational issues in Levine's sense, they do not constitute a coherent volume on the relationship between theory and implementation, as the subtitle would suggest. In short, while most of the articles are excellent in their own right, the printed assortment does not quite live up to the expected sum of its parts. [Tibor Kiss, IBM Germany.] Prepositions in Old and Middle English . A study of prepositional syntax and the semantics of at, in and on in some Old and Middle English texts. By Tom Lundskjer-Nielsen. (North-Western European language evolution, supplement 9.) Odense, Denmark: University Press, 1993. Pp. x, 203. Paper DM 58.00. The primary purpose of this book, 'based on' an Odense University Ph.D. thesis, is well-described in its subtitle. L-N investigates the prepositions of, in, and on first in the OE AngloSaxon Chronicle entries for the period 892-900 and the very late OE Peterborough Chronicle for the years 1 122-54, then in the ME Ancrene Wisse, Vices and Virtues (both ca. 1200), and Chaucer's A Treatise on the Astrolabe (1391). The results, clearest in the cases of on and in, show an overall increase in the usage and frequency of the latter relative to the former, including an increase in idiomaticity, i.e. usage in certain set collocations or construction types where the original meaning of the preposition has been lost—in some instances to the point of its being employed very nearly as a grammatical marker (as, for example, in the case of in + gerund in -ing, e.g. in doing so). This process, according to L-N , occurs in two stages. The first involves a shift from a concrete spatial meaning to a more abstract one in which the spatial notion is still present to some extent. This is then followed by a transfer to contexts where the spatial notion is no longer present. An example of the first type is seen in the citations ond hengen bryniges on her fet 'and hung coats of mail on their feet' and isede onfote to Walingford 'went on foot to Walingford' (Peterborough Chronicle , 1 137 and 1 140, respectively). The notion of physically hanging something from people's feet, seen in the first of these, is contrasted with the more stylized phrase of the second, which abstracts the spatial aspect by freezing the object in the singular (on fate) and not allowing it to be determined, hence removing it from association with a particular person or group of people . The next step is seen where the object of the preposition is an abstract noun, as in the phrase and on swilche wise 'and in such a way' (Ancrene Wisse). L-N wishes to apply the term 'grammaticalization' to such a development. To me, however, 'idiomatization' would be more appropriate, because no actual grammatical category is involved (contrast the 'grammaticalization ' of to in the Modern English infinitive construction). A subsidiary point made by L-N is that prepositional phrases may have played the role of a Trojan horse in the establishment of SVO word order in English subordinate clauses. For once one could say ser he acenned wses of Marian 'before he was begotten of Mary', with extraposition of the prepositional phrase to the right of the main verb, the firm constraint that the main verb had to appear in final position was weakened , which in turn could have set in motion other changes in the verb-final order of subordinate clauses. All in all, I found this book to be readable but thin in content. Part of the problem is that L-N restricts himself to just three prepositions, one of which (at) shows...