?
Ранняя стадия развития артикля по данным древнеанглийского Евангелия от Марка
Basic features of definite articles at early stages of grammaticalization (such as the shift from anaphoric use of the article to its situational use) are well known. However, variation in article distribution in different contexts and with different categories of noun groups found in historical texts is not researched sufficiently. In this paper we aim to specify some patterns of definite proto-article use that are seen in the Old English Gospel of Mark in order to address the lack of details of the early article use.
According to the data of the Gospel, the proto-article follows generally accepted grammaticalization trends: a) concrete singular nouns after the first mention are usually marked with an anaphoric article; b) abstract nouns are, on the contrary, not marked; c) unlike Gothic, anaphoric protoarticle can be used in exophoric contexts and with mass nouns. As for variations in article distribution, they are mainly found in contexts that are important regarding the stages of the extension of the article use. In Old English exophoric (situational) use of the article is noticeably more frequent for singular rather than for plural nouns. The article, like in Gothic, cannot be used in the following discourse with nouns denoting ‘people, crowd’ when the pragmatic accessibility of the referent is violated (for example, when the context indicates the change of location). Gothic locative nouns are mostly unmarked because of being inherently definite as elements of the frame in natural discourse. Variations in the use of the anaphoric article with locative nouns in the Gospel corresponds to the pattern seen in Gothic. The recognitional use and generic contexts are also analyzed.
The analysis demonstrates the importance of the Old English Gospel of Mark for studying the early stage of article grammaticalization and suggests turning to other Anglo-Saxon texts in order to obtain new records of early use of demonstrative pronoun as a definite article.