Liggins, Elizabeth M.; (1955) The expression of causal relationship in Old English prose. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), University of London.

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Abstract

This thesis embodies the results of an investigation into the ways in which the causal relationship is expressed in Old English prose. The concept of cause is regarded as including ideas both of cause or reason and of ground. Over 17,000 examples were collected from works representative of the range of extant prose. In the Introduction, an outline is given of the principles and methods adopted and reference is also made to previous work which has a bearing on this subject. In collecting material, in arranging it into chapters and in discussing the examples, the approach has been a functional one, but, inevitably, the divisions within the chapters have been made on a basis of form. The first to be considered are the examples using a connective whose primary meaning is causal. The next three chapters are concerned with the adverbial clauses in which a causal concept is added to a construction whose basic meaning is temporal, modal or conditional. (With the last group are included the very few examples of causal/concessives.) The next three chapters deal respectively with the expression of a causal iueu through a relative construction, through a pair of coordinate clauses, either linked by and or standing in asyndetic connection, and with expressions which do not contain a finite verb. The interrogative forms associated with causal clauses are then briefly treated. The Conclusion summarizes certain tendencies common to several of the constructions, and also evidence which seems to throw doubt on the accepted authorship of Crosius and of three of the Lives of Saints.

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