The Prefix y-: Grammatical Marker or Meaningless Appendage? A Contrastive Analysis of Selected Manuscripts of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales."

Author / Editor
Wojtyś, Anna.

Title
The Prefix y-: Grammatical Marker or Meaningless Appendage? A Contrastive Analysis of Selected Manuscripts of Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales."

Published
Richard Dance and Laura Wright, eds. The Use and Development of Middle English (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2012), pp. 179-96.

Description
Analyzes the occurrences of the preverbal y- prefix in seven manuscripts of CT, attending to grammatical, syntactic, and metrical considerations. Concludes that, although the construction is used to form passive constructions clearly, the data also indicate that scribes used it to "create an additional syllable or clarify complex phrase structure."

Alternative Title
The Use and Development of Middle English.

Chaucer Subjects
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Language and Word Studies
Style and Versification