Open AccessThe origin of the cliticness of the west Germanic definite article: the case of Beowulf
Author(s) -
Janez Orešnik
Publication year - 1984
Publication title -
linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.134
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2350-420X
pISSN - 0024-3922
DOI - 10.4312/linguistica.24.1.383-389
Subject(s) - poetry , philosophy , prime (order theory) , literature , history , linguistics , art , mathematics , combinatorics
The present paper is mainly concerned with the definite ar ticle of Beowulf. The literature about the West Germanic definite article has always allotted a prime place among the old Germanic texts to this poem: it is undisputably archaic (Kuhn 1933: 105, D. Hofmann 1959:189), and suitable for statistical generalisations. Its more than 6,000 hemistichs contain about 300 instances of the. definite article (Lichtenheld 1872:332).