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Sociocultural Dimensions of Lexis and Text in the History of EnglishEdited by Peter Petré, Hubert Cuyckens and Frauke D'hoedt
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 343] 2018
► pp. 151–180
This article presents and refines the main results of a larger study on left-shifted arguments in congregational song (see Gather 2014) and discusses its implications for genre studies in general. Argument shifting is defined as the deviation from any unmarked order of obligatory arguments, as in the title of the famous carol We three kings of Orient are. Very often, requirements of meter and rhyme are evident causes of shifting. In this article, I provide the results obtained for congregational song, which lead to two major patterns of argument shifting with distinct syntactic and poetic criteria. The comparison to secular poetry shows the uniqueness of the phenomenon in congregational song and the conservatism of the genre.