This thesis provides a descriptive study of element-order (or word-order) within clauses in a corpus drawn from Ælfric's Catholic Homilies and Supplementary Homilies. A sample of 11,543 clauses has been analysed, divided into fourteen clause categories. A survey of element-order within each clause category is presented, with copious examples and full statistics. Attention is paid both to the order of single elements in relation to the verb phrase, and to patterns of clause order. An extensive description of the position of adverbial elements is included. Discussion includes a comparison of the rhythmic and non-rhythmic prose of Ælfric, showing that though there is broad similarity between the two styles, significant differences do exist. The results obtained reveal many regularities or marked tendencies in element-order, as well as a substantial measure of stylistic freedom.

The primary aim of the present study is to give a semantic/conceptual analysis to the genitive case in Old English (= OE) within a Cognitive Grammar (=CG) framework (specifically Langacker's version; Langacker 1987, 1991) and explain the diversity of its use (adnominal, adverbal, adjectival, prepositional, and adverbial), as constituting a coherent network, wherein all variants share a unified semantic structure. My analysis is partly based on Roman Jakobson's (1936/1971) study on the Russian case system, which is recast and updated within a CG framework. Pivotal to my analysis of the semantic structure of the genitive case is the notion of "deprofile", whereby an already profiled (i.e. most prominent) entity in a given predicate becomes unprofiled, to reduce the amount of attention drawn onto the designatum, making it conceptually less prominent. Specifically, the function of the genitive case in OE is to deprofile the profile of the nominal predicate to which the genitive inflection is attached. The crucial claim is that a genitive nominal is a nominal predicate, in that it still profiles a region in some domain, in accordance with the schematic characterisation of the semantic structure of a noun in CG. The nominal character of a genitive nominal means that it can occur in various syntactic contexts where any other nominal expression can occur, namely in a position for a verbal, adverbial, and prepositional complement, as well as in a modifier/complement position for a noun. This account ties in with the subsequent history of the genitive case after the end of the OE period, in which some of its uses became obsolete, especially the partitive function of adnominal genitive, and all functions of the adverbal, adjectival, prepositional genitives. The cumulative effect of this is that a genitive nominal ceased to be a nominal predicate, and its determinative character which had already existed in OE side by side with its nominal character, became grammaticalised during the ME period as a general function of a genitive nominal. Chapter l outlines the history of the genitive case from OE to early ME, to introduce the problems to be dealt with in this dissertation, particularly the diversity of the genitive functions. Reviews of some previous studies relevant to the problems are also provided. Chapter 2 and 3 introduce the framework of CG. Chapter 2 summarises some basic assumptions about grammar, and Chapter 3 focuses on how syntactic issues are dealt with in CG, based on the assumptions summarised in Chapter 2. Here I also introduce Langacker's (1991) and Taylor's (1996) account of a Present Day English possessive construction, using Langacker's reference point analysis, and examine its applicability to the OE genitive. As an alternative, the notion of deprofile will be introduced. Chapters 4 and 5 are the application to the actual examples of genitive nominals, taken from Ælfric's Catholic Homilies first series; Chapter 4 deals with adnominal genitive, and chapter 5 covers all the non-adnominal genitives. Finally, Chapter 6 discusses how the diversity of the genitive functions in OE and its subsequent history may be accounted for in the light of the findings in this study.

<p>The aim of this degree project has been to examine, analyze and describe which intra-linguistic factors influence how relative clauses are formed in Old English.</p><p>The key to successfully performing the task of identifying which factors influences the relative causes is to examine how these factors are distributed among the relative clauses in the text. The main focus of this investigation thus was to investigate how the grammatical features of the antecedents of the relative clauses in Old English were distributed. By analyzing a text sample of the work of the Old English writer Ælfric, taken from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus at the University of Toronto, also known as the Toronto Corpus, several features of the antecedent will ideally become evident as influencing factors.</p><p>The relative clauses that are found to be relevant for this investigation in the Ælfric text sample have been categorized and analyzed in order to identify any grammatical pattern that could indicate which factors influence how relative clauses in Old English are formed. The findings have been analyzed according to quantitative and statistical principles, and the chi-square test has been employed to verify the statistical significance of these findings. By doing this some linguistic factors have been verified as influencing factors.</p>

The aim of this degree project has been to examine, analyze and describe which intra-linguistic factors influence how relative clauses are formed in Old English. The key to successfully performing the task of identifying which factors influences the relative causes is to examine how these factors are distributed among the relative clauses in the text. The main focus of this investigation thus was to investigate how the grammatical features of the antecedents of the relative clauses in Old English were distributed. By analyzing a text sample of the work of the Old English writer Ælfric, taken from the Dictionary of Old English Corpus at the University of Toronto, also known as the Toronto Corpus, several features of the antecedent will ideally become evident as influencing factors. The relative clauses that are found to be relevant for this investigation in the Ælfric text sample have been categorized and analyzed in order to identify any grammatical pattern that could indicate which factors influence how relative clauses in Old English are formed. The findings have been analyzed according to quantitative and statistical principles, and the chi-square test has been employed to verify the statistical significance of these findings. By doing this some linguistic factors have been verified as influencing factors.

Medieval rhetoric, as a field and as a subject, has largely been under-developed and under-emphasized within medieval and rhetorical studies for several reasons: the disconnect between Germanic, Anglo-Saxon society and the Greco-Roman tradition that defined rhetoric as an art; the problems associated with translating the Old and Middle English vernacular in light of rhetorical and, thereby, Greco-Latin precepts; and the complexities of the medieval period itself with the lack of surviving manuscripts, often indistinct and inconsistent political and legal structure, and widespread interspersion and interpolation of Christian doctrine. However, it was Christianity and its governance of medieval culture that preserved classical rhetoric within the medieval period through reliance upon a classic epideictic platform, which, in turn, became the foundation for early medieval rhetoric. The role of epideictic rhetoric itself is often undervalued within the rhetorical tradition because it appears too basic or less essential than the judicial or deliberative branches for in-depth study and analysis. Closer inspection of this branch reveals that epideictic rhetoric contains fundamental elements of human communication with the focus upon praise and blame and upon appropriate thought and behavior. In analyzing the medieval world’s heritage and knowledge of the Greco-Roman tradition, epideictic rhetoric’s role within the writings and lives of Greek and Roman philosophers, and the popular Christian writings of the medieval period – such as Alfred’s translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Alfred’s translation of Gregory the Great’s Pastoral Care, Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, Wulfstan’s Sermo Lupi ad Anglos, and the anonymously written Vercelli and Blickling homiles – an early medieval rhetoric begins to be revealed. This Old English rhetoric rests upon a blended epideictic structure based largely upon the encomium and vituperation formats of the ancient progymnasmata, with some additions from the chreia and commonplace exercises, to form a unique rhetoric of the soul that aimed to convert words into moral thought and action within the lives of every individual. Unlike its classical predecessors, medieval rhetoric did not argue, refute, or prove; it did not rely solely on either praise or blame; and it did not cultivate words merely for intellectual, educative, or political purposes. Instead, early medieval rhetoric placed the power of words in the hands of all humanity, inspiring every individual to greater discernment of character and reality, greater spirituality, greater morality, and greater pragmatism in daily life.