This article presents a quantitative study of the referential status of PPs in clause-initial pos... more This article presents a quantitative study of the referential status of PPs in clause-initial position in the history of English. Earlier work (Los 2009; Dreschler 2015) proposed that main-clause-initial PPs in Old English primarily function as ‘local anchors’, linking a new clause to the immediately preceding discourse. As this function was an integral part of the verb-second (V2) constraint, the decline of local anchors was attributed to the loss of V2 in the fifteenth century, so that only the contrasting and frame-setting functions of these PPs remain in PDE. This article tests these hypotheses in the syntactically parsed corpora of OE, ME, EModE and LModE texts, using the Pentaset-categories (New, Inert, Assumed, Inferred or Identity; Komen 2011), based on Prince's categories (Prince 1981). The finding is that Identity clause-initial PPs decline steeply from early ME onwards, which means the decline pre-dates the loss of V2. A likely trigger is the loss of the OE paradigm o...
Until the fifteenth century, English was considered a V2 (verb-second) language. The loss of a mu... more Until the fifteenth century, English was considered a V2 (verb-second) language. The loss of a multifunctional first position that could host adverbials and objects as well as subjects, along with unmarked topics and focused material, paved the way for new constructions (clefts) and a redefinition of old positions (with the presubject position increasingly reserved for a subset of contrastive topics). This article explores the interaction between syntax and information structure and argues that the loss of V2 resulted in the loss of a first position capable of hosting contrastive constituents. It suggests that the cleft evolves as a resolution strategy and maneuvers contrastive constituents in a position that fits the new, rigid SVO order while retaining their information-structural status. The article also considers another area where clefts partly stepped in after syntactic loss related to V2 compromised the expression of contrast: Contrastive Left Dislocation (CLD).
Until about the fifteenth century, main clause word order in English was to a large extent subjec... more Until about the fifteenth century, main clause word order in English was to a large extent subject to the verb-second (V2) constraint; this order was achieved by (i) movement of the finite verb into second position and (ii) topicalization of a constituent from the clause into first position. The loss of V2 syntax led to a change in the function of first constituent adverbial phrases, which had mostly been used as local anchors in Old English, i.e. links to the immediately preceding discourse. In Early Modern English, the system of local anchoring by adverbials was largely lost; links to the previous discourse came to be expressed primarily by the subject. This added to the functional load of the subject, and led to subjects being able to encode a wider range of semantic roles. The emergence of such "permissive” subjects in PDE, then, developed as a response to the loss of V2.
In Old English we find considerable variation in the infinitival complementation patterns of verb... more In Old English we find considerable variation in the infinitival complementation patterns of verbs: some verbs take a bare infinitival complement, some verbs take a to-infinitival complement and some verbs can be complemented by either infinitive. This article evaluates two previous attempts to account for the distribution of the two infinitives and offers an alternative account; it also argues that the increase in the use of the to-infinitive occurred mostly at the expense of the finite complement clause rather than at the expense of the bare infinitive, which is the traditional view.
In this chapter, we discuss the syntactic and discourse properties of a number of adverbs in Old ... more In this chapter, we discuss the syntactic and discourse properties of a number of adverbs in Old and Middle English, concentrating on þa and þonne, which both have ‘then’ as their literal meaning. This may seem like a small topic, but in fact, we will show that the syntactic and discourse properties of these adverbs reveal a good deal about the changing organisation of clause structure and discourse during the Old English period and the transition to Middle English. Building our argument around the properties of these adverbs, we will address a number of core issues in the analysis of Old English clause structure, such as the shift from parataxis to hypotaxis, the underlying motivation for the Verb Second constraint, and the changing position of various types of subject. An important implication of our discussion will turn out to be that the syntactic organization of the clause, at least in Old English, is interwoven with discourse organization much more closely than has been thought so far, and that the transition to Middle English is one that results in a more strictly syntactic organization of the clause.
This article presents a quantitative study of the referential status of PPs in clause-initial pos... more This article presents a quantitative study of the referential status of PPs in clause-initial position in the history of English. Earlier work (Los 2009; Dreschler 2015) proposed that main-clause-initial PPs in Old English primarily function as ‘local anchors’, linking a new clause to the immediately preceding discourse. As this function was an integral part of the verb-second (V2) constraint, the decline of local anchors was attributed to the loss of V2 in the fifteenth century, so that only the contrasting and frame-setting functions of these PPs remain in PDE. This article tests these hypotheses in the syntactically parsed corpora of OE, ME, EModE and LModE texts, using the Pentaset-categories (New, Inert, Assumed, Inferred or Identity; Komen 2011), based on Prince's categories (Prince 1981). The finding is that Identity clause-initial PPs decline steeply from early ME onwards, which means the decline pre-dates the loss of V2. A likely trigger is the loss of the OE paradigm o...
Until the fifteenth century, English was considered a V2 (verb-second) language. The loss of a mu... more Until the fifteenth century, English was considered a V2 (verb-second) language. The loss of a multifunctional first position that could host adverbials and objects as well as subjects, along with unmarked topics and focused material, paved the way for new constructions (clefts) and a redefinition of old positions (with the presubject position increasingly reserved for a subset of contrastive topics). This article explores the interaction between syntax and information structure and argues that the loss of V2 resulted in the loss of a first position capable of hosting contrastive constituents. It suggests that the cleft evolves as a resolution strategy and maneuvers contrastive constituents in a position that fits the new, rigid SVO order while retaining their information-structural status. The article also considers another area where clefts partly stepped in after syntactic loss related to V2 compromised the expression of contrast: Contrastive Left Dislocation (CLD).
Until about the fifteenth century, main clause word order in English was to a large extent subjec... more Until about the fifteenth century, main clause word order in English was to a large extent subject to the verb-second (V2) constraint; this order was achieved by (i) movement of the finite verb into second position and (ii) topicalization of a constituent from the clause into first position. The loss of V2 syntax led to a change in the function of first constituent adverbial phrases, which had mostly been used as local anchors in Old English, i.e. links to the immediately preceding discourse. In Early Modern English, the system of local anchoring by adverbials was largely lost; links to the previous discourse came to be expressed primarily by the subject. This added to the functional load of the subject, and led to subjects being able to encode a wider range of semantic roles. The emergence of such "permissive” subjects in PDE, then, developed as a response to the loss of V2.
In Old English we find considerable variation in the infinitival complementation patterns of verb... more In Old English we find considerable variation in the infinitival complementation patterns of verbs: some verbs take a bare infinitival complement, some verbs take a to-infinitival complement and some verbs can be complemented by either infinitive. This article evaluates two previous attempts to account for the distribution of the two infinitives and offers an alternative account; it also argues that the increase in the use of the to-infinitive occurred mostly at the expense of the finite complement clause rather than at the expense of the bare infinitive, which is the traditional view.
In this chapter, we discuss the syntactic and discourse properties of a number of adverbs in Old ... more In this chapter, we discuss the syntactic and discourse properties of a number of adverbs in Old and Middle English, concentrating on þa and þonne, which both have ‘then’ as their literal meaning. This may seem like a small topic, but in fact, we will show that the syntactic and discourse properties of these adverbs reveal a good deal about the changing organisation of clause structure and discourse during the Old English period and the transition to Middle English. Building our argument around the properties of these adverbs, we will address a number of core issues in the analysis of Old English clause structure, such as the shift from parataxis to hypotaxis, the underlying motivation for the Verb Second constraint, and the changing position of various types of subject. An important implication of our discussion will turn out to be that the syntactic organization of the clause, at least in Old English, is interwoven with discourse organization much more closely than has been thought so far, and that the transition to Middle English is one that results in a more strictly syntactic organization of the clause.
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