The Syntax of Early English

Abstract

This book is a guide to the development of English syntax between the Old and Modern periods. Beginning with an overview of the main features of early English syntax, it gives a unified account of the grammatical changes occurring in the language during this period. Written by four leading experts in English historical syntax, the book demonstrates the ways in which syntactic change takes place and how these changes can be explained in terms of grammatical theory and language acquisition. The authors draw upon a wealth of empirical data and through a series of well-selected case studies they cover a wide range of topics including changes in word order, infinitival constructions and grammaticalization processes. This invaluable introduction to the significant changes in early English syntax will appeal to students and researchers in historical linguistics, theoretical linguistics and the history of English.

Transitional syntax: postverbal pronouns and particles in Old English

“…It probably started in Old English (though my material does not allow us to draw this conclusion with certainty), and became the norm in the Middle English period, whereas OV syntax gradually disappeared (for the survival of OV see Fischer et al, 2000: chapter 5, Foster & van der Wurff, 1995Moerenhout & van der Wurff, 2005). In this article I intend to shed more light on this innovation by establishing how many instances there are in Old English, in which constructions they are most frequently found, and what diachronic development took place.…”

“…Main-clause VO can best be understood as due to the effects of a V2 rule (see e.g. Fischer, van Kemenade, Koopman & van der Wurff, 2000), but coordinate main clauses often have OV patterns and subordinate clauses show both VO and OV, with almost equal frequency. We might therefore get the impression that there is little to choose between either order, but this is misleading.…”

Complexity and conflicting grammars in language acquisition

“…It would be interesting if this could be 1 It is often argued that inversion in questions (which was categorical in Old and Middle English) was verb movement to C, while inversion in most declaratives involved verb movement to a lower head (e.g. Fischer et al 2000, van Kemenade & Westergaard 2012 taken as evidence that the German V2 rule should also be split up into several smaller rules.…”

Competing Grammars in Old English (S. Pintzuk, Phrase Structures in Competition: Variation and Change in Old English Word Order)

“…This book is a slightly revised version of P's 1991 doctoral dissertation. Therefore P's insightful proposal has been already referred to in several articles and books, such as van Kemenade (1997), Koopman (1996, 1997, 1998), Kato (1997, Ohkado (2001) and Fischer et al (2001). Though P does not update her previous analysis in her present book, she does revise her discussion on the basis of several works that have been published since the appearance of her dissertation.…”