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preliminary investigation of Old English poetic instrumental interrogative pronouns

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Date Issued:
1990
Summary:
Among the first Old English inflectional forms to vanish were the instrumentals, surviving only in the interrogative pronoun that became the Modern English word "why." Its four synonymous forms were the only Old English words that had exclusively "instrumental" meanings. Despite their apparent importance, in all 30,535 Old English poetry lines, they occur only forty-eight times. This suggests that the Old English poetic instrumental merely imitated the Latin ablative's instrumental usage. Old English poets tried to graft onto it their own dative-instrumentals, anticipating in their meanings the goals of their clauses' subjects and in their forms the invariant preposition-plus-dative caseforms gradually replacing most Old English case inflection. This Latin-Old English discord attends all Old English instrumental interrogative clauses.
Title: A preliminary investigation of Old English poetic instrumental interrogative pronouns.
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Name(s): Balis, Nathaniel Cogswell
Florida Atlantic University, Degree Grantor
Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters
Department of English
Type of Resource: text
Genre: Electronic Thesis Or Dissertation
Issuance: monographic
Date Issued: 1990
Publisher: Florida Atlantic University
Place of Publication: Boca Raton, Fla.
Physical Form: application/pdf
Extent: 50 p.
Language(s): English
Summary: Among the first Old English inflectional forms to vanish were the instrumentals, surviving only in the interrogative pronoun that became the Modern English word "why." Its four synonymous forms were the only Old English words that had exclusively "instrumental" meanings. Despite their apparent importance, in all 30,535 Old English poetry lines, they occur only forty-eight times. This suggests that the Old English poetic instrumental merely imitated the Latin ablative's instrumental usage. Old English poets tried to graft onto it their own dative-instrumentals, anticipating in their meanings the goals of their clauses' subjects and in their forms the invariant preposition-plus-dative caseforms gradually replacing most Old English case inflection. This Latin-Old English discord attends all Old English instrumental interrogative clauses.
Identifier: 14574 (digitool), FADT14574 (IID), fau:11371 (fedora)
Collection: FAU Electronic Theses and Dissertations Collection
Note(s): Adviser: Allen W. Greer.
Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 1990.
Subject(s): Language, Ancient
Literature, English
Held by: Florida Atlantic University Libraries
Persistent Link to This Record: http://purl.flvc.org/fcla/dt/14574
Sublocation: Digital Library
Use and Reproduction: Copyright © is held by the author, with permission granted to Florida Atlantic University to digitize, archive and distribute this item for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires permission of the copyright holder.
Use and Reproduction: http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Host Institution: FAU
Is Part of Series: Florida Atlantic University Digital Library Collections.