Genitive in Deor : Morphosyntax and Beyond

ISSN： 0034-6551

Source： Review of English Studies, Vol.52, Iss.208, 2001-11, pp. : 485-499

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Abstract

The Anglo-Saxon poem Deor has a sentence that is repeated six times as the refrain, in which the verb ofergan occurs with two genitive pronouns, þæs and þisses. The extant data show no other clear case of ofergan with a genitive noun phrase; it is thus morphosyntactically peculiar, and causes interesting problems of interpretation. Although many proposals have been made to explain the Deor-genitive, few are supported by an adequate linguistic argument. Furthermore, no study has yet examined what lies behind the rare use of a genitive noun phrase with ofergan, nor with ofercuman in line 26, a question which may turn out to be more important for the understanding of the poem than the morphosyntactic analysis itself. After determining the linguistically most plausible morphosyntactic analysis, this article presents a further interpretation of the Deor-genitive which not only explains the underlying motivation for its use but also retains the linguistically nost justifiable but conetextually flawed analysis. In particular, it is shown that the use of a genitive NP with ofergan and ofercuman is not arbitrary or purposeless but is intended to represent a low degree of affectedness, which is difficult to achieve by the use of the accusative case usually found with the two verbs. It is also shown that both the relevant contexts and the overall tone of the poem strongly support such an interpretation, which in turn illuminates the meaning of the passages involved.