Old English subordinate clauses and the shift to verb-medial order in English

Heggelund, Øystein

doi:10.1080/00138380701270572

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

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“…We do not see how this example supports the claim that Middle English is Norse, unless it is the point that E&F make about the word order of the subordinate clause being ‘the word order of Anglicized Norse’ (p. 116). But Old English subordinate clauses very frequently had this word order, too, as (29) and (30) show; it is not the case that Old English subordinate clauses were always verb-final (see Heggelund 2009:77). As far as we are concerned, then, there is nothing special about (28) – it is an early Middle English sentence which shows continuity from Old English, both as regards correlative adverbs and as regards word order.…”

Section: Empirical and Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

English is (still) a West Germanic language

Bech¹,

Walkden²

2015

Nord J Linguist

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In their recent book,English: The Language of the Vikings, Joseph Embley Emonds and Jan Terje Faarlund attempt to make the case that from its Middle period onwards, English is a North Germanic language, descended from the Norse varieties spoken in Medieval England, rather than a West Germanic language, as traditionally assumed. In this review article we critique Emonds & Faarlund's proposal, focusing particularly on the syntactic evidence that forms the basis of their argumentation. A closer look at a number of constructions for which the authors suggest a Norse origin reveals that the situation is not as they present it: in many cases, the syntactic properties of Old and Middle English are not given careful enough consideration, and/or the chronology of the developments is not compatible with a Norse origin. Moreover, the authors do not engage with the large body of sound changes that constitute the strongest evidence for a West Germanic origin. We conclude that Emonds & Faarlund fail to make a convincing case either for a North Germanic origin or against a West Germanic origin.

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Section: Empirical and Theoretical Issuesmentioning

confidence: 99%

English is (still) a West Germanic language

Bech¹,

Walkden²

2015

Nord J Linguist

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“…2.1. Property (ii) is discussed in particular in Allen (1995), Heggelund (2007Heggelund ( , 2010 and Speyer (2010). Illustrating examples are given in (29).…”

Section: The A-series and Aelcmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indeterminate pronouns in Old English: a compositional semantic analysis

Beck

2020

J Comp German Linguistics

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Indeterminate pronouns in Old English (expressions like hwa ‘who/what’ and hwelc ‘which’) permit several interpretations in addition to their use as interrogative pronouns, for example readings as universal or existential quantifiers. They combine with morphological prefixes (ge- ‘and, also’ and a- ‘always, ever’), which change the range of possible interpretations. Old English indeterminate pronouns are shown to contribute a crosslinguistically hitherto unattested pattern of available interpretations. In particular, bare indeterminate pronouns have a universal interpretation and ge-indeterminate pronouns can be both universal and existential. This paper offers an alternative semantic analysis in the spirit of Hamblin (Found Lang 10:41–53, 1973) and Shimoyama (Nat Lang Semant 14:139–173, 2006). A compositional semantics is given for the pronouns and the prefixes, which derives the available readings. The paper ends with a proposal for compositional semantic change relating Old English indeterminate pronouns to their modern descendants.

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“… 21 Provided we accept that subordinate clauses are usually verb-final, an issue that also merits further study, see Heggelund (2009). …”

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Old ‘truths’, new corpora: revisiting the word order of conjunct clauses in Old English

Bech

2016

English Language and Linguistics

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In Bech (2001a, 2001b), I took issue with the oft-repeated claim that Old English conjunct main clauses are commonly verb-final, and disproved it. However, the myth persists. In the meantime, theYork–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose(YCOE, Tayloret al.2003) has been created, so the time has come to revisit this topic and consider it in light of new, extensive and generally accessible data. Using the YCOE corpus, I confirm and expand on Bech's (2001a, 2001b) empirical findings, showing that (i) OE conjunct clauses are neither typically verb-final nor verb-late, but they are more frequently verb-final and verb-late than non-conjunct clauses are; and (ii) verb-final and verb-late clauses are typically conjunct clauses. These two perspectives must be kept apart: in the first, the starting point is the entire body of conjunct clauses, and in the second it is the entire body of verb-final/verb-late clauses. I propose that the failure to distinguish between the two perspectives, i.e. whether it is conjunct clauses or word order that constitutes the point of departure, is the origin of the misconception concerning conjunct clauses and word order. In order to establish whether this distinction has been fuzzy all along, or whether it must be ascribed to distorted referencing in the course of a century of research, I trace the research on this topic back to the end of the nineteenth century. I show that the alleged verb-finality of conjunct clauses may be ascribed to awhisper-down-the-laneeffect – the retelling of the story has changed the story.

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Old English subordinate clauses and the shift to verb-medial order in English

Cited by 5 publications

References 9 publications

English is (still) a West Germanic language

English is (still) a West Germanic language

Indeterminate pronouns in Old English: a compositional semantic analysis

Old ‘truths’, new corpora: revisiting the word order of conjunct clauses in Old English

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