A quantitative model of verb–object order in Middle English with special reference to the prose–poetry distinction

Abstract

This article reports a regression model for the change from OV to VO in Middle English. It focuses on genre (prose versus poetry) as a predictor by including data from a recently published corpus, the Parsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry (PCMEP; Zimmermann 2015). Other independent variables considered are time, object type, clause type and weight. The results specify the time course of the development in Middle English with great precision and replicate several effects from the previous literature including the importance of the genre variable, poetry being considerably more conservative than prose. It is recommended that poetry texts should be considered in studies on early Middle English syntax more generally to arrive at comprehensive assessments of linguistic changes at the time.