The rightward movement of complements and adjuncts in the Old English of Beowulf

Abstract

Although it has generally been recognized that Old English was a verb-final language with verb-seconding, the existence of clauses with main verb complements and adjuncts appearing after the otherwise clause-final verb seems to contradict the hypothesis that the language was strictly verb-final in underlying structure. There are three possible analyses to explain these clauses: variable word order in the base, leftward verb movement, and rightward movement of NPs and PPs. In this article, we demonstrate that only the third analysis adequately explains the data of the Early Old English poem Beowulf. Moreover, by investigating the mapping between syntactic structures and metrical units, we provide evidence for two types of rightward movement with two distinct structures: heavy NP shift, with a characteristic major intonational boundary between the main verb and the postposed NP, and PP extraposition, where the intonational boundary was much less common.

Changing EPP parameters in the history of English: accounting for variation and change

“…10 In view of the fact that OE appears to have permitted objects (and other VP-material) to remain in situ where this material required focusing (cf. Pintzuk & Kroch 1989 on the obligatorily focus-bearing nature of the postverbal material in Beowulf), it is at least conceivable that postverbal position in OE may have come to rival the preverbal Nuclear Stress position identified by Cinque (1993) as the default locus of focus in Germanic.…”

The HeliPaD

“…Moreover, for certain phenomena the metrical "confound" could turn out to be a positive boon. Pintzuk & Kroch (1989), for instance, are able to make the case for the Old English poem Beowulf that PP extraposition and heavy NP shift are two distinct processes, since postverbal NPs occur in a different half-line significantly more frequently than do postverbal PPs; this type of study is impossible using prose sources. It is now possible to carry out a parallel study on Old Saxon using the HeliPaD, and much more besides.…”

An interview on linguistic variation with Giuseppe Longobardi

“…In fact, in syntax, although great advance in the diachronic application of formal linguistic theory has been made from Lightfoot's (1979) seminal work on, few really historical discoveries can be pointed out, in the sense of actual growth of our factual knowledge of the past. Perhaps it is not accidental that the salient attempt of this kind I have in mind, the syntactic dating of Beowulf developing out of Pintzuk and Kroch's (1989) approach, is precisely the product of the most impressive revolution in the use of quantitative and computational methods in historical linguistics we have recently witnessed, namely corpora syntax.…”