Schedule StuTS 65

In English, as it is the case with many other languages, "one" does not only occur as a numeral and can also be used like a pronoun in different contexts. However, there is a peculiarity (almost) exclusive to English, namely "one" serving as a prop-word - a word that does not carry any meaning and whose sole purpose is to head a noun phrase, accompanied by a modifier. Before the Early Modern English period, it was common and grammatically correct to use an adjective as the head of a noun phrase. This means a sentence such as "I would like the red." when talking about a red and a green apple would make perfect sense in context. However, for reasons not entirely resolved, these phrases underwent a structural change and the prop-word started displacing the adjectival head, resulting in constructions such as "the green one" or "a good one". In this talk, I will present previous attempts at explaining the emergence of the prop-word and discuss its explosive increase in popularity especially during the latter half of the seventeenth century.

Info

Day: 2019-05-24
Start time: 17:30
Duration: 00:30
Room: 114 / Seminarraum links
Track: Historical linguistics
Language: en

Links:

• iCalendar

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