Finite and Non-Finite Clauses in 15th Century English
2006 年 2006 巻 22 号 p. 127-131
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2006 年 2006 巻 22 号 p. 127-131
In my Syntax and Style in Early English-Finite and Non-finite Clauses c.900-600 (Tokyo: Kaibunsha,1979) (abbreviated to SSEE below), I have pointed out that both the proportion and number of non-finite clauses approximately equal those of finite clauses in the 15th century corpus (abbreviated to the SSEE corpus below). Only dependent finite clauses are considered, by which I mean clauses which are introduced by subordinators, and make up grammatical sentences only if subordinate to a further clause. Non-finite clauses are verbals which have close functional relations with finite clauses. The corpus there only consists of three prose and two verse texts, and the dates of the texts examined, are not well balanced, since the corpus contains only one text of the last quarter of the 15th century. Hence, I shall try to explore the clauses under consideration more closely for each quarter of the century, by comparing the findings in each quarter century corpus with those in the SSEE corpus. The syntactic description in the research is based on the following four corpora:
