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Old English verbs of learning: Information and knowledge acquisition

Paper · 2021 · Miguel Lacalle Palacios

Summary

The paper asks which Old English verbs form a genuine semantic-syntactic class of learning, meaning situations where a Cognizer comes to know some Content, possibly through an Effector. It rejects purely notional definitions. A verb counts as a member only if it shares meaning components with the others (Aktionsart type, thematic roles) and behaves the same way grammatically (how its arguments are realized morphosyntactically). The framework combines Levin's verb classes and alternations with Role and Reference Grammar (RRG), including logical structures, macroroles and linking. Candidate verbs came from dictionaries and were checked against corpus attestations. Each verb was then profiled for Aktionsart, roles, voice, case marking and clausal complement type, and tested against four alternations. Four verbs, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian and onfindan, emerge as clear members, and (ge)fricgan is a plausible one. Two verbs are excluded. Overall, the candidate set does not form a fully consistent class. The study adds to a syntax-aware organization of the Old English verbal lexicon.

Key points

  • Seven candidate verbs were examined: (ge)cneordlǣcan, gefrāgian, (ge)fricgan, (ge)frignan, (ge)leornian, ofācsian and onfindan.
  • Four alternations were tested:
    • Causative.
    • Reflexive, where Effector and Cognizer are the same entity.
    • Effector Prepositional Government, in which the Effector is expressed either by dative case or by a phrase headed by one of seven prepositions (mid, þurh, æt, of, from, on and be).
    • Content Prepositional Government, using be or of.
  • Verbs were profiled by:
    • Aktionsart: Accomplishment, Achievement and their causative variants.
    • Roles: Effector, Cognizer, Content.
    • Voice: active or passive.
    • Case: NOM, ACC, GEN, DAT.
    • Complement type: CP-QUE, CP-THT, IP-INF.
  • (ge)fricgan appears in all constructions but only one alternation. (ge)cneordlǣcan is rare and shows one alternation. gefrāgian is attested only once and is excluded.
  • For learning from a source, the author represents the source with a causative logical structure (Effector CAUSE Cognizer BECOME know Content). This is preferred over treating the source as a peripheral adjunct.

Interesting ideas

  • I1. Class membership is decided by shared alternations and argument realization, and the result is graded (clear member, good candidate, non-member) using frequency as a further check.
  • I2. The source of learning ("learn X from Y") is modelled as a causer of the knowledge change rather than as a loose adjunct.
  • I3. The reflexive alternation treats "learning from oneself" as the case where Effector and Cognizer are identical.
  • I4. Each verb gets a feature matrix covering Aktionsart, roles, case and complement type (question clause, that-clause, infinitive), and verbs are compared on it.
  • I5. A verb with a single attestation is explicitly left without a verdict, since one example cannot show grammatical behaviour.

For Mova

How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests:

  • I1 (world): Verb classes compiled from VerbNet/WordNet could carry graded membership scores based on observed alternations, so inference relies less on weak members.
  • I2 (frames): When prag builds frames for learn/find out/hear, a from/at/by-phrase could fill an Effector/Source role in a CAUSE-BECOME-know structure, so "who taught whom what" becomes answerable.
  • I3 (frames): Constructions like "learned by himself" or "worked it out on her own" could merge the Source and Cognizer slots through coreference instead of leaving the source empty.
  • I4 (tree): Recording complement type under learn-type verbs (learn that / learn how / learn to) would help map UD ccomp/xcomp structures to different frame readings, such as fact vs. skill.
  • I5 (learn): Self-induced rules and class assignments should require a minimum count of silver-data attestations, with too-sparse items flagged rather than assigned.

Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.

 Institutions

🎓Universidad de La RiojaLogroño · Spain13 works · 74 citations

📚 Shelves 2The field of science this work belongs to (OpenAlex fields).Arts and Humanities · 9,296 worksLanguage and Linguistics · 9,206 works

🧭 Topics 2Research subjects and languages the work is about.English · 1,373 worksHistorical linguistics & language change · 159 works

Cite

Cite as Miguel Lacalle Palacios. 2021. Old English verbs of learning: Information and knowledge acquisition. SELIM 26.

The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. DOI 10.17811/selim.26.2021.25-56

@inproceedings{palacios2021old,
  title = {{Old English verbs of learning: Information and knowledge acquisition}},
  author = {Miguel Lacalle Palacios},
  booktitle = {SELIM 26},
  year = {2021},
  doi = {10.17811/selim.26.2021.25-56},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.26.2021.25-56}
}

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