FUNCTIONAL TRANSPOSITION OF ACROSS IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Abstract

The paper represents a distinctive endeavour to analyse the interrelationship between the preposition and the adverb ACROSS as the initial and transposed categories in the English language. The research traces back the evolution of the preposition and the adverb ACROSS since the late Middle English period, when the first instances of ACROSS were registered, and throughout Modern English. Thus, the study covers 9 historical time periods and is based on 3 examples from the Middle English texts, 25 examples from the Early Modern English texts, 4 059 examples from the Late Modern English texts, which have been processed by means of the Lancsbox software tool, and the statistical data on 275 093 examples retrieved from the British National Corpus and the Corpus of American Historical English, i.e. from Present-Day English. The research proves that the lexical unit ACROSS is formed as the adverb at the end of Middle English (1420–1500). Formation of the adverb ACROSS is the result of lexicalization and development of a new morphological construction by means of compounding, when the morphemes A/IN/ON and CROSS(E) merged into the compound A/IN/ON(-) CROSS(E) and its modern form ACROSS. At the next stage (1500–1570), the adverb ACROSS becomes the subject to functional transposition into the category of the preposition. The statistics on the transposed category of the preposition in Early Modern English – 44.4%, its further development, which shows gradual rise of the preposition, which reaches its peak (93.1%) in Late Modern English, as well as the fact that since that time, the category of the preposition has plateaued and the current correlation between the initial category of the adverb and the transposed category of the preposition is 8.2% to 91.8%, respectively, testify that functional transposition of ACROSS is more than just justified.