The Genitive in the Earliest English Anthropic and Somatic Phraseology

This article investigates the role of the genitive case in the earliest anthropic and somatic (i.e. human-related and body-related) phraseology of Old English through the cultural linguistics analysis of the Vespasian Psalter (8th–9th centuries), the oldest surviving glossed biblical text in Old English. The study aims to uncover how Latin-derived genitive structures in N+Ngen constructions were adapted into Anglo-Saxon conceptual frameworks, serving as mechanisms for cultural conceptualization. It hypothesizes that anthropic and somatic genitives played a dominant role in early English phraseoogy, reflecting an anthropocentric worldview and facilitating intersemiotic transposition: the transfer of cultural concepts into linguistic symbols. Methodologically, the study combines historical linguistics, comparative linguistics, and cultural linguistics approaches to examine more than 150 N+Ngen collocations from the Vespasian Psalter. By juxtaposing Latin etymons with Old English calques, the analysis identifies seven semiotic domains and categorizes genitive functions. Quantitative and qualitative study reveals that anthropic/somatic genitives constitute a majority of phraseological units, with genitive components often outweighing nominal heads in semantic salience, particularly in metaphors bridging concrete body terms to abstract concepts. Key findings demonstrate that literal calquing from Latin preserved original semiotic mappings while allowing Old English to innovate via culturally resonant pleonastic constructions. These remained non-idiomatic, whereas abstract-concrete pairings became idiomatic. The article argues for a certain revision of phraseologization theories to incorporate the genitive-as-operator principle, where oblique cases actively shaped conceptual blending in early Germanic languages. The study bridges medieval philology and modern cognitive linguistics, offering empirical insights into how grammatical structures encoded cultural meanings. Future research directions include comparative analysis with continental Germanic psalters and cognitive modeling of “dead”-language semantics. This work underscores the Vespasian Psalter’s value as a linguistic artifact, revealing the interplay between Latin influence and Old English creativity at the dawn of written tradition.

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