1.5.3. Syntax

Within the dictionaries syntax is often explained implicitly by the use of examples, more rarely explicitly by structural description. Because Palsgrave combined the dictionary with the grammar, there is far greater insertion of syntactic information into the lexical portion. The entire pronoun section is cross-referenced with the grammatical rules presented earlier in book III. In the table of verbs Palsgrave includes a number of long explanations, particularly about compound or periphrastic constructions:

I Do/ is a uerbe moche comenly used in our tonge to be put byfore other uerbes: as it is all one to say/ I do speke [...] and I speke: but in the frenche tonge they use never to put any uerbe that countreuayleth/ I do/ in this sence/ but use the uerbe selfe onely lyke as for I dyd speke [...] they use euer the preter imperfyte tence or the indiffynite tence of the uerbes selfe in their tonge and neuer use to put any uerbe that countreuayleth I dyd in this sence [...]

I Go/ Ie men uas, conjugate in the seconde boke/ & note that like as it is comenly used in our tonge to put this uerbe/ I go/ byfore our uerbes/ where we use no mouynge to a place/ so use they to put the tenses of ie men uas, byfore their partyciples of the present tence/ as the Romant/ Et uont chantans, for chantant, et lors ua deprisant les dames, for lors deprise les dames &c. M. il alla mourir.

Hollyband, repeating a commonplace from the Latin lexicographic tradition, observes that the letter a "serveth many times to express the dative case".

Implicit grammatical relationships are most often represented by generalizing examples. By this term I mean the use of pronominal object to show types of complementation. The choice of pronominal object may also represent the semantic choices available (animate or inanimate):

Hollyband 1593:
Assaillir aulcun, to assaile a man.
Adroit, as c'est un home bien adroit à cecy, ou à cela: an handsome and fit man to this or that thing

Literary examples with nominal complements can serve the same function but in those instances it is less certain that that is the primary function.

Nowhere in the dictionaries do we find the clear description of verbal syntax that most modern dictionaries include: transitivity, intransitivity; ability to take a prepositional or subordinate-clause complement. The inclusion of generalizing examples is a recognition of the importance of this type of information, but the lack of systematic indications is symptomatic of the general weakness of the syntactic portions of the grammars. The notions of complement and governance were slowly developing (see Chevalier, 1968), but still far from widely received. This 'weakness' itself is related to the prevailing attitude toward the word and its part in 'construction'. The primacy of the former might itself be viewed as an artifact of the glossing tradition of Biblical exegesis. These explanations of the syntactic content need to be proven by the kind of evidence that only these databases can provide. In order to extract the data necessary for that task, entries should be tagged for type and manner of presentation of syntactic information.

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