This paper investigates contact-induced changes in the argument structure of Middle English verbs on the model of Old French. We study two issues: i) to what extent did the English system retain and integrate the argument structure of verbs copied from French? ii) did the argument structure of these copied verbs influence the argument structure of native verbs? Our study is based on empirical evidence from Middle English corpora as well as a full text analysis of the Ayenbite of Inwyt and focusses on a number of verbs governing a dative in French. In the first part of the paper we define the contact situation and relate it to model of code copying. In the second part we comment on study of please and some other psych verbs and corroborate her assumptions that i) semantic similarity triggered change within the set of these verbs, and ii) this change has reflexes in the syntactic realisation of the dative argument as a prepositional phrase. We propose a method to identify contact-induced change beyond the verb class originally affected. More explicitly, based on further empirical evidence, we show that the argument structure of the native verb give, a transfer of possession verb, was also affected by these changes and that these effects are stronger in texts that are directly influenced by French.

本文研究了在古法语模型中，中英文动词的论证结构中接触引起的变化。我们研究了两个问题：i）英语系统在多大程度上保留并整合了从法语复制的动词的论点结构？ii）这些复制动词的自变量结构是否影响原生动词的自变量结构？我们的研究基于中古英语语料库的经验证据，以及对Inwyt的Ayenbite的全文分析，并重点研究了控制法语中的多个动词的动词。在本文的第一部分中，我们定义了联系情况，并将其与代码复制模型相关联。在第二部分中，我们评论请研究以及其他一些心理动词，并证实了她的假设：i）语义相似性在这些动词集中触发了变化，并且ii）这种变化反映了介词作为介词短语的句法实现。我们提出了一种方法来识别接触者引起的变化，该变化超出了最初受影响的动词类。更明确地说，根据进一步的实证证据，我们表明，本地动词的说法结构给予，占有动词的转移，也受到这些变化，这些影响在直接由法国影响文本更强。