The history of here compounds

Abstract

Here compounds are a kind of compound adverbs that are formed by compounding the locational adverb here with prepositions. Except for Österman (1997)s study which explores the development of there compounds and other texts that discuss here, there and where compounds as a whole (Rissanen, 2000 and Lenker, 2010), not much attention has been made on here compounds. What the previous studies commonly maintain is that these kinds of compounds became popular during Middle English but decreased from EarlyModern English. In this paper, I show a general tendency in development and frequency of here compounds in Helsinki Corpus from Old English to Early Modern English and confirm that their use increased from ME and fell in late EModE. Then I closely examine some of the compounds – hereon, herein, herewith, hereafter, herebefore, and hereby—focusing on their functions and meanings. Finally, I argue that these compounds can be categorized into two groups: those whose components had been used separately and those that were used as one word from the first. While those in the first group include spatial prepositions and therefore retain locational sense, those in the second group are solely used as discourse markers.