When something happened to ‘happen’: A diachronic study of episode boundary markers in Old and Middle English narratives

An interesting and understudied set of early English constructions that served as ‘simple introductory expressions’ (Gorrell 1895: 404) are the so-called happen-constructions. In Old English, their basic structure is that of an impersonal construction: (it) happened (or an equivalent verb) that X, with the clausal complement expressing what actually happened, as in (1). From late Middle English onwards, their frequency progressively declines. This paper examines possible reasons for this decline. (1) And hit gelamp þæt se gedwola rad on ðære wucan ymbe sum ærende. Þa gestodon hine hundas hetelice swyðe. ‘And it happened that the heretic rode (= was riding) in that week about some errand. Then hounds attacked him very fiercely.’ (ÆLS [Ash-Wednesday]: 51-52, as quoted in Brinton 1996) The pragmatic functions of happen-constructions are highlighted in Brinton (1996: 115-80). Not only do they mark episode boundaries, they also ground the ensuing episode by introducing in the embedded clause that episode’s ‘instigating event’. Brinton argues that their decrease should be linked to the increase of initial when-clauses, illustrated in (2), which took over the same functions as happen-constructions, making them superfluous. (2) Whan sir Bors was departed frome Camelot he mette with a religious man rydynge on an asse, and anone sir Bors salewed hym. (Malory 16, 6, 955, 1-3 as quoted in Brinton 1996) Unfortunately, Brinton’s analysis is mostly limited to Chaucer and Malory. Our own analysis is based on data from the periods 1151-1250, 1421-1500 and 1571-1640 as found in the representative corpus LEON 0.3 (Petré 2011). It takes into account both (i) the viability of the internal structure of happen-constructions in a changing grammatical system as well as (ii) competition with when-clauses. (i) Next to the basic structure, Middle and rarely Old English (Kim 1999) features a type of construction, in which infinitive clauses are used as embedded clauses. The semantic subject of the embedded clause has been raised to the main clause, being realized either as an oblique NP (3) or as the nominative subject (4), in which case the construction is no longer impersonal. (3) So happed him com to a cherch, where he sey a precious crowne ful of charbunculis. ((a1464) Capgr. Chron. (Cmb Gg.4.12): 82) (4) So in hur prayers sho happend to fall on slepe … (c1450. Alph.Tales (Add 25719): 11) When in Middle English impersonal constructions came under pressure due to the obligatorification of subjecttopic alignment (Los 2009), the infinitival variant became predominant. However, its structural identity with a subject noun phrase plus auxiliary made the infinitival type arguably less suitable to mark episode boundaries. (ii) The newly emerging when-clauses generally marked episode boundaries in a fashion similar to happen-constructions. They efficiently establish narrative cohesion (Givón 1987, Silva 1981, Virtanen 2004) by establishing more systematically a frame (in the when-clause) for the episode to come. This property also matched well with various changes in writing style at that period. In sum, the drastic decrease of happen-constructions is best explained as the combination of system-dependent factors (changing grammar) and competition (with when-clauses).status: publishe