“It is a pity/shame . . .” 構文の発達

Abstract

Examining the change from “It’s pity/shame . . .” to “It’s a pity/shame . . .”, the present paper estimates the dates of the change: “It’s pity . . .” was superseded by “It’s a pity . . .” around the middle of the 18th century, and “It’s shame . . .” gave way to “It’s a shame . . .” around the third quarter of the 16th century. Secondly, this paper points out that some modern writers intentionally dropped the indefinite article before pity/shame in order to medievalize their works. Lastly, this paper argues that the change was caused by a semantic differentiation since the indefinite article, when placed before pity/shame, signals that the noun phrase conveys specific information, while the zero article signals that the following word conveys an abstract idea.