The adhortative let’s construction is a well-known instance of grammaticalisation (see e.g. Hopper and Traugott 2003). For some varieties of present-day English there is evidence that let cannot even be treated as a verb (main or auxiliary) any longer in this construction (Huddleston and Pullum 2002).
Old English has a construction with a similar use as let’s formed by combining uton with a bare infinitive, as illustrated in (1).
(1) | Uton nu aspendan ure speda on þearfum |
let-us now spend our possessions on paupers | |
‘Let’s now distribute our wealth among the poor’ | |
(ÆLS (Basil) 49) |
Historically, uton derives from a form of the main verb witan ‘depart’. Precisely what it is from a synchronic point of view in Old English, however, is less clear. Some essentially still treat it as a main verb, i.e. the construction is analysed as biclausal (e.g. Wallage 2005), while others regard uton as an auxiliary (e.g. Ogura 2000), and in dictionaries/glossaries it has even been labelled an interjection, a (verbal) conjunction or a particle (e.g. Smith 2009).
In this talk, I will be taking a closer look at the properties of the Old English uton construction. I will show not only that it would be problematic to treat uton as a main verb, but also that there is some evidence indicating that it is no longer a verb form at all.
Hopper, Paul J. and Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huddleston, Rodney and Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ogura, Michiko. 2000. ‘Gewat + infinitive’ and ‘uton + infinitive’. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 101, 69–78.
Smith, Jeremy J. 2009. Old English: a linguistic introduction. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press.
Wallage, Phillip. 2005. Negation in Early English: parametric variation and grammatical competition. Ph.D. dissertation,University ofYork.