The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English: information structure and syntax in interaction

Abstract

The consequences of the loss of verb-second in English:information structure and syntax in interaction 1 B E T T E L O U L O SRadboud University Nijmegen (Received 13 February 2008; revised 10 December 2008) English syntax used to have a version of the verb-second rule, by which the finite verb moves to second position in main clauses. This rule was lost in Middle English, and this article argues that its loss had serious consequences for the information structure of the clause. In the new, rigid subject-verb-object syntax, the function of preposed constituents changed, and the function of encoding 'old' or 'given' information in a pragmatically neutral way was increasingly reserved for subjects. Pressure from information structure to repair this situation subsequently led to the rise of new passive constructions in order to satisfy the need for more subjects; the change in the informational status of preposed constituents triggered the rise of clefts. If information structure can be compromised by syntactic change in this way, this suggests that it represents a separate linguistic level outside the syntax. IntroductionEver since the work done by the Neogrammarians in the nineteenth century, we know that sound changes may disrupt morphological paradigms, with morphological regularity often being restored by the process known as 'analogy'. An example is the Latin intervocalic -s-> -r-that disrupted the paradigm of the s-stem nouns: the -s remained in nominative honos 'honour' because it was not intervocalic in that position, but changed to -r-in the rest of the paradigm: honoris, honorem, etc. Analogy then intervened by 'regularizing' the nominative honos to honor (Hock 1986: 180). Similar disruption was caused by Verner's Law, where a sound change that was conditioned by syllable stress applied exclusively to some but not to other forms in the verbal paradigm (Verner 1875). Such changes exemplify the relative autonomy of the various linguistic levels: phonological change is 'blind' to the disruption it causes to other levels. Another example is Roberts & Roussou's (2003) hypothesis that syntactic change (more especially grammaticalization) is driven by morphological loss. The situation could be summed up by Lightfoot's dictum: 'grammars practise therapy, not prophylaxis' (Lightfoot 1979: 123).The present article will argue that changes in syntax may similarly disrupt information structure (IS). Its case study will be the loss of verb-second in English, which prompted 'therapy' in early Modern English in the form of new clefts and new passive structures -even to structures that are typologically very marked. The change 1 I would like to thank Anthony Warner and two anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. in the syntax apparently ran its course in spite of the havoc caused at the IS level, which demonstrates that IS and syntax are just as autonomous as the phonology and morphology of the Neogrammarian examples above. Syntax and information structureInformation structure is about...

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