hellog〜英語史ブログ / 2022-12-07

■ #4972. 統語的な橋渡しとしての I not say. (2) [negative][syntax][word_order][negative_cycle][shakespeare][eebo]

　「#2233. 統語的な橋渡しとしての I not say.」 ([2015-06-08-1]) で一度取り上げた，英語史上目立たない否定の語順に関する話題に再び注目したい．
　古英語から中英語にかけて，否定辞として ne が用いられる場合には「S + ne + V」の語順が規則的だった．しかし，否定辞として not が用いられるようになると「S + V + not」の語順が規則となり，「S + not + V」は非常にまれな構造となった．"Jespersen's cycle" と称される否定構造の通時的変化のなかでも「S + not + V」はうまく位置づけられておらず，よくても周辺的な扱いにとどまる．
　しかし，Visser (III, §1440) は，Type 'He not spoke (those words)' の構造についてもう少し丁寧にコメントしており，例文も50件以上集めている．コメントを引用しよう．

Before 1500 this type is only sporadically met with, but after 1500 its currency increases and it becomes pretty common in Shakespeare's time. After c1700 a decline sets in and in Present-day English, where the type 'he did not command' is the rule, the idiom is chiefly restricted to poetry. . . . According to Smith (Mod. Språ 27, 1933) it is still used in Modern literary English in order to contrast a verb with a preceding one, e.g. 'The wise mother suggests the duty, not commands it'. The frequency of the use of this type in the 16th and 17th centuries seems to have escaped the attention of grammarians. Thus 1951 Söderlind (p. 218) calls a quotation from Dryden's prose containing this construction "a unique instance of not preceding the finite verb", and 1953 (Ellegård (p. 198) states: "not hardly ever occurred before the finite verb." Poutsma's earliest example (1928 I, i p. 102) is a quotation from Shakespeare. The following statement is interesting, ignoring as it does the occurrence of the idiom between "O.E." (=?perhaps: Middle English) and modern poetry: 1876 Ernest Adams, The Elements of the English Language p. 217: "Frequently in O.E. and, rarely, in modern poetry, do and the infinitive are not employed in negative propositions: I not repent my courtesies---Ford; I not dislike the course.---Ibid.; I swear it would not ruffle me so much As you that not obey me---Tennyson."

　このコメントの後に1400年頃から20世紀に至るまでの例文が数多く列挙されている．とりわけ初期近代英語期に注目して EEBO などの巨大コーパスで調査すれば，かなりの例文が集められるのではないだろうか．

　・ Visser, F. Th. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. 3 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1963--1973.

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