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Letizia Vezzosi
University of Perugia, Italy
Email vezzosi@unipg.it
The English prototypical reciprocal marker each other was already grammaticalized at the end of the Middle English period (Jespersen 1927, Mustanoja 1960, Gelderen 2000) – when the two elements started to be governed by prepositions – and from the Early Modern English age onwards it has further developed its properties that characterise this two-quantifier marker as a single unit –it occurs as a genitive marker and as a subject of both finite and non-finite clauses and can appear in syntactic slots such as the predicate NP following a copular verb.
Interest in the development of each other has recently been taken by linguists working within the grammaticalization theory (i.e. Haas 2007), but the studies have been mainly concentrated on Early Modern English.
In the present talk I would like to concentrate on the period preceding the emergence of a grammaticalized each other, that is the Middle English, when each other was still discontinous and represented one of several means to express reciprocity, i.e. symmetrical situation (König 2007). The different linguistic devices will be analysed per se and in comparison with one another to highlight similarities and differences. When possible, the results will be evaluated in terms of text genres. Such an semasiologic investigation will allow for a refining of the meaning of the pattern each other and individuate the internal reasons why this pattern has overwhelmed all the others and established itself as the prototypical reciprocal marker.
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