RT Journal Article
T1 Constructions in competition: The development of the impersonal verb "hunger" and the adjectival periphrasis "be hungry" in Early Modern English
A1 Castro Chao, Noelia
AB The present study is concerned with the syntactic and semantic development of the impersonal verb "hunger" in Early Modern English. An analysis of corpus data has been carried out on ca. 20 million words drawn from EEBOCorp 1.0 (1473–1700). Results show that, from a semantic perspective, the verb "hunger" undergoes a process of metaphorical extension involving a change from the original meaning ‘to feel hunger’, in the domain of Physical Sensation, to the meaning ‘to desire’, in the domain of Emotion. In this latter sense, the verb becomes predominantly associated with prepositional complements (e.g. 1542, "our hungry soules [...] hunger for y^ word of God"). Also in the course of the Early Modern period, the verb is subject to competition with the adjectival periphrasis "be hungry", especially in the sense ‘to feel hunger’. The article concludes by putting forward hypotheses to explain the motivations for these various developments.
PB Taylor & Francis
SN 0039-3274
YR 2022
FD 2022
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/101878
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/101878
LA eng
NO Castro Chao, N. «Constructions in Competition: The Development of the Impersonal Verb Hunger and the Adjectival Periphrasis Be Hungry in Early Modern English». Studia Neophilologica, vol. 94, n.o 3, septiembre de 2022, pp. 273-96. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1080/00393274.2020.1851297.
NO For generous financial support I am grateful to the following institutions: the European Regional Development Fund, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant FFI2017-86884-P) and the Regional Government of Galicia (Directorate General for Scientific and Technological Promotion, grant ED431B 2020/01).
NO Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional
NO Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (España)
NO Xunta de Galicia
DS Docta Complutense
RD 21 abr 2025