YPL2 - Issue 5

Issue 5 (March 2006)

Papers from the Third York-Holland Symposium on the History of English Syntax

Editors: Joanne Close, Alexandra Galani, Beck Sinar and Phillip Wallage

On the Emergence of the Verb-Particle-Object Order in English: an Investigation into the Language Contact Factor

1–28

Marion Elenbaas

Abstract

A well-known characteristic of the Present-Day English (PDE, 1800-present) verb-particle combination is its alternating word order. When the object is a full DP, the particle can occur either before or after the object. This word order alternation gained ground in the Middle English (ME, 1150-1500) period, when particles came to occupy a postverbal position with increasing frequency. This paper investigates the sudden rise of the postverbal particle pattern from the transition from Old English (OE, 500-1150) to ME. In particular, attention is paid to the emergence of the verb-particle-object order. The data, collected from the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE) and the second edition of the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME2), show that this pattern was predominant from early ME (1150-1350). Moreover, a comparison between texts from the North-Eastern and South-Western parts of England shows there is a contrast in particle position. It is shown that the postverbal pattern shows up earlier and more often in North-Eastern texts and that the language contact situation with Old Norse (ON) in the tenth and eleventh centuries may have been a factor in this development.

NegV1 and Secondary Negation in Old and Middle English Religious Prose

29–49

Richard Ingham

Abstract

A study of religious prose texts showed that negative inversion (NegV1), e.g. Ne drife ic hine fram me 'I shall not drive him from me' (St. Eufrasia, Ælfric II 338,69) was predominant in main clauses in Old English and Early Middle English but had disappeared by Late Middle English 14th century works, even in those retaining around 95% use of the ne negator. This phenomenon is related here to the grammaticalisation of secondary negation. In OE texts a sharp asymmetry was found in the distribution of the secondary negator na in favour of main clauses as against subordinate clauses. In EME subordinate clauses contexts frequencies of a secondary negator were quite similar across all clause types studied, which is taken to indicate that grammaticalisation of the forms noht/nawt ('not') etc. was already underway. As a grammatical marker of negation, they stood in [spec,NegP], unlike na in OE (contra van Kemenade 2000). In this position the secondary negator became able to check an interpretable [+neg] specifier feature. This eventually replaced the OE grammar in which the interpretable [+neg] feature was a head feature checked by the negative prefix ne. As a result of this change, verb movement to C to check a strong but uninterpretable [+neg] feature (Eythórsson 2002) was lost in later Middle English.

The Loss of Negative Concord: Internal Factors

51–80

Amel Kallel

Abstract

This study re-addresses the loss of Negative Concord (NC) and provides evidence for the failure of certain external factors such as prescriptivism to account for the observed decline and ultimate disappearance of NC in Standard English. A detailed study of negation in Late Middle and Early Modern English reveals that the loss of NC was a case of a natural change, i.e. a change triggered by some internal factors rather than the result of some external ones. This change was preceded by a period of variation for which S-curves for all the contexts studied were obtained. A close study of n-words like nothing, nobody, etc. in negative contexts and their ultimate replacement with Negative Polarity Items (NPIs) like anything, anybody, etc. in a number of grammatical environments shows that the decline of NC follows the same pattern across contexts in a form of parallel curvature, which indicates that the loss of NC is a natural change. However, this study reveals that the decline is not constant across time and thus the Constant Rate Hypothesis (Kroch 1989) does not, in that respect, provide an adequate model for this change. Context behaviour suggests an alternative principle of linguistic change, the context constancy principle. A context constancy effect is obtained across all contexts indicating that the loss of NC is triggered by a change in a single underlying parameter setting. Accordingly, a theory-internal explanation is suggested. N-indefinites underwent a lexical reanalysis whereby they acquired a new grammatical feature [+Neg] and were thus reinterpreted as negative quantifiers, rather than NPIs. This lexical reanalysis was triggered by the ambiguous status of n-words between [±Neg] and thus between single and double negative meanings.

The Dative Alternation in Old English

81–104

Tanja Milićev

Abstract

In this paper I argue that Old English has no alternating structure with ditransitive verbs such as give, as is proposed by McFadden (2002), but that the accusative-dative order is derived by scrambling. The dative alternation similar to the Present-Day English type is observed with verbs such as sendan 'send', but in Old English the DP and PP alternate between the meaning of benefactor and recipient goal, respectively. I adopt Pylkkänen's (2000) high and low applicative structures, for they do not only capture the fact that benefactors and recipients act on a par with sendan 'send' in the double object frame, but also provide a potential account of the subsequent loss of all the datives found with abstract applicative heads expressing relation other than to, as well as the change in the properties of the double object constructions in Old English and Present-Day English. The applicative structure also makes it possible to establish a correlation between the abstract applicative head in the double object construction and the preposition 'to' as a semantically vacuous case marker.

Contact Effects of Translation: Distinguishing two kinds of influence in Old English

105–125

Ann Taylor

Abstract

Many of our surviving Old English texts are translations from Latin originals. Given that the syntax of Latin and Old English differ in a number of ways and the possibility of transference of linguistic features from the source to the target language in translation, translation from Latin may have far-reaching consequences for the study of Old English syntax and syntactic change. In this paper I show that in one syntactic structure where the syntax of the languages differ, the prepositional phrase with pronominal complement, there is clear influence of Latin on the Old English. Overall, translations show more head-initial PP structure (the Latin type) than non-translations. Moreover, while non-biblical translations show a higher rate of head-initial PP structure only when there is a PP in the Latin source, biblical translations show a higher frequency of head-initial PPs whether or not there is a PP in the Latin source.

On the status of ne in Old English Prose and Poetry

127–156

Phillip Wallage

Abstract

This paper examines the evidence for two types of ne in Old English (OE) and Early Middle English (EME), in relation to the changes in negation known as Jespersen's Cycle (Jespersen 1917). Van Kemenade (2000) claims that there are two types of ne at successive stages of Jespersen's Cycle. She posits two forms of ne at stage one of Jespersen's Cycle: a head and a [spec,CP] operator. The operator is reanalysed as a head at stage two of Jespersen's Cycle. Van Kemenade argues that loss of operator ne accounts for change in patterns of negative inversion which correlate with the introduction of secondary negators (na, not) under Jespersen's Cycle. I show that changes in negative inversion are independent of the introduction of these secondary negators. This undermines van Kemenade's motivation for operator ne in Old English. Finally, I argue that assuming ne is an operator located in [spec,CP] is also problematic for the derivation of V-to-C movement in the Old English poem Beowulf.

Types of Inversion in Middle English

157-177

Anthony Warner

Abstract

Inversion in Middle English is known to reflect the weight or informational prominence of the subject and the syntactic properties of the context in which inversion occurs or fails (see, e.g. Kohonen 1978). This paper sets out to disentangle and clarify the contribution of such properties in a database of fourteenth and fifteenth century prose. Inversion is taken here to include clause types where the subject follows the finite verb at some distance. A set of factors is shown to correlate with the presence or absence of different types of inversion. It is further argued that clauses in which a post-verbal subject is final or a pre-verbal subject is followed only by the finite verb behave differently from other contexts, both in terms both of the incidence of inversion and of the rate of ongoing change shown in the database.

DO NOTHING BUT + V: From parallel form to bare infinitive

179–214

Wim van der Wurff

Abstract

This paper examines the development of sentences featuring the sequence do nothing but followed by a lexical verb, as in He has done nothing but improve all season. Data are presented which show that, before 1500, the lexical verb in the construction always had a form parallel to that of do but after 1700, it nearly always takes the form of a bare infinitive. The reason for the change is identified as a convergence of several factors promoting reanalysis of a base form lexical verb as an infinitive.