RT Journal Article
T1 The Emergence and Loss of the English Minor Complementizers "till" and "until"
A1 Castro Chao, Noelia
AB This article examines the development of the subordinators "till" and "until" as minor complementizers in the Late Middle English and Early Modern English periods. An analysis of data obtained from a number of sources shows that "till"/"until" underwent a process of secondary grammaticalization, emerging as complementizers introducing clauses governed by the desiderative predicate LONG. The findings further suggest that the use of "till"/"until"-clauses with LONG was the result of a process of lexical diffusion from the semantically related pattern THINK ("it") "long till"/"until"-clause (in the sense of ‘to seem or appear long, to be wearisome (to a person) (until something happens)’). In Late Modern English, "till"/"until"-clauses following LONG were lost and replaced by competing patterns with "to"-infinitives and "for. . .to"-infinitives, the latter emerging at the time as a new complement type. The article discusses the motivations and broader implications of the obsolescence of "till"/"until"-complements, which failed to spread to other members of the class of verbs of “desire”, such as DESIRE, THIRST, or YEARN, and thus remained at the margins of the English system of complementation.
PB Sage
SN 0075-4242
YR 2022
FD 2022-12
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/101926
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/101926
LA eng
NO Castro Chao, N. (2022). "The Emergence and Loss of the English Minor Complementizers till and until". Journal of English Linguistics, 50(4), 354-383. https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242221126698
NO Castro Chao, Noelia. «The Emergence and Loss of the English Minor Complementizers till and Until». Journal of English Linguistics, vol. 50, n.o 4, diciembre de 2022, pp. 354-83. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.1177/00754242221126698.
NO The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: For generous financial support I am grateful to the European Regional Development Fund, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grant PID2020-114604GB-100), and the Regional Government of Galicia (grants ED431B 2020/01 and ED481B-2021-046).
NO Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional
NO Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades (España)
NO Xunta de Galicia
DS Docta Complutense
RD 8 abr 2025