集合数詞 many の史的発達

抄録

The indefinite article a introduced in the beginning of the thirteenth century contributed to the predominance of distributive use of many in the form of many a, as observed in the poetical works like The Canterbury Tales, which eventually ousted other forms of the same use like ‘many + a singular noun’ inherited from Old English. However, the loss of the plural ending -e in manye started in the late Middle English period resulted in requiring a plural form to the head-word of many, which led to the rapid and considerable increase of collective use of many in the form of ‘many +a plural noun’ and also to the marked and progressive decrease of distributive use of many a, as attested in the poetical works of Spenser and Shakespeare in the early Modern English period. The two types of phonetic forms of many with or without cliticization do not affect the rhythm of almost all lines of the poetical works involved in the present analysis.