Skip to the main content

Original scientific paper

On syntactic and morphological negation in biblical English: A diachronic study

Lidija Štrmelj ; Sveučilište u Zadru


Full text: english pdf 292 Kb

page 145-157

downloads: 2.392

cite


Abstract

The article deals with the development of negation in biblical English in the period from the eleventh to the seventeenth century. It explores the morphosyntactic features of negative clauses in Late Old English, Late Middle English and Early Modern English, on the basis of the three English translations of the Gospel according to John, composed after Saint Jerome’s Latin Vulgate and the Greek original. The presented examples show numerous patterns of single and multiple negations, the latter being mostly negative concord, but occasionally with double negation as well. Additionally, the results obtained in the research are compared with the main points of Jespersen’s cycle in order to see to what extent negation in biblical texts fits in the general trends of the history of English.

Keywords

morfološka negacija; sintaktička negacija; Jespersenov ciklus; biblijski engleski

Hrčak ID:

187155

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/187155

Publication date:

4.10.2017.

Article data in other languages: croatian

Visits: 3.356 *