The loss of local anchoring: From adverbial local anchors to permissive subjects

Abstract

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.

‘Fifty pounds will buy me a pair of horses for my carriage’: the history of permissive subjects in English

“…This property has been used to explain not only their occurrence in PDE, but also their introduction (Hawkins 1986). More recently, Los (2009), Los & Dreschler (2012) and Dreschler (2015) have proposed that it is the changing pragmatic character of the theme position that is crucial: non-subjects have become increasingly marked in initial position, a development that started with the loss of verb second in the fifteenth century and continued in the following centuries. This loss meant that the language needed more strategies to place arguments in subject position, in turn leading to an increase in strategies for creating non-typical subjects: passives, middles and permissive subjects.…”

“…This loss meant that the language needed more strategies to place arguments in subject position, in turn leading to an increase in strategies for creating non-typical subjects: passives, middles and permissive subjects. Rohdenburg (1974), Hawkins (1986) and Los & Dreschler (2012) all describe permissive subjects as innovations, somewhere in the Early Modern period, but there are in fact few data on their frequency and use, either diachronically or synchronically. Crucially, what is missing is information about when these permissive subjects started to occur and when they became more frequent.…”

“…Crucially, what is missing is information about when these permissive subjects started to occur and when they became more frequent. This information is particularly important for the scenario presented by Los & Dreschler (2012): in order for their scenario to work, permissive subjects would have to have been introduced following the changes in the use of the clause-initial position.…”

“…A more recent account, described in Los (2009), Los & Dreschler (2012) and Dreschler (2015), specifically addresses this aspect of the initial position in an investigation into the consequences of the loss of verb second in English. This systemcharacteristic of West Germanic languagesstipulates that the finite verb always occurs in second position in the main clause.…”

Beyond Counting Syntactic Hits

“…The observations discussed are based on experience with the CorpusStudio and Cesax programs, which have so far been used in historical linguistics, second language acquisition and information structure research for Indo-European (Dutch, English, Welsh) as well as Caucasian (Chechen, Lak, Lezgi) languages (Komen 2014;Komen et al 2014;Los and Dreschler 2012;van Vuuren 2013). The CorpusStudio application allows researchers to formulate and execute syntactic searches, store them in a 'Corpus Research Project' , and annotate the search results with features that are determined programmatically.…”