Aspects of evolution of ditransitive construction in Old English
The paper analyzes diachronic development of Old English ditransitive construction involving verbs sellan and giefan in their either simplex or prefixed forms within the timespan of around five hundred years. It is claimed that sellan as one of the most widespread and polysemous verbs in earlier OE records has suffered a gradual decrease in frequency since then. This process was accompanied by the rise of giefan and its variants, of which prefixed forms forgiefan and agiefan played the major role, allowing for simplifying the construction, specifying the meaning and avoiding possible homonymy.