Habban + Participle II in Old English Poetry and Prose: A Comparative Analysis
The article deals with the analysis of semantic properties of the habban + participle II construction in Old English prose and poetry. Based on application of a range of morphosyntactic and semantic criteria to contexts with the construction it is argued that habban + participle II in poetry was semantically close to similar examples retrieved from late Old English prose texts. Presence both in prose and poetry of a variety of semantic characteristics of the construction makes it possible to claim that variation of the construction with resultative and temporal semantics is traced within the frame of a synchronic layer, the upper boundary of which was marked by the development of a peripheral meaning of the temporal-perfect semantics.