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Arguments against a universal base: evidence from Old English

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 May 2005

SUSAN PINTZUK
SUSAN PINTZUK
Affiliation:
University of York
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Abstract

This article presents arguments against a uniform head-initial analysis of Old English clause structure. Three analyses that have been proposed for Old English – variation in the headedness of underlying structure, uniform head-initial structure with object movement, and uniform head-initial structure with pied piping – are presented and evaluated in terms of the Old English data that they are able to account for. In particular, it is argued that the positions of verbs and their complements in constructions with quantified and nonquantified objects, pronominal objects, particles, and double objects cannot be derived without stipulations within uniform head-initial accounts, but can be derived unproblematically within a framework that incorporates a headedness parameter, requiring only a stipulation to block V–O–Aux order.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , May 2005 , pp. 115 - 138
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2005

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Footnotes

Different parts and versions of this article have been presented at the Workshop on Historical Syntax (University of Aarhus, 2004); the University of Geneva (2004); the University of Stuttgart (2003); the University of York (2003); the Second Holland–York Symposium on the History of English Syntax (University of Leiden, 2003); the Eighteenth Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (University of Durham, 2003), the Seventh Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference (University of Girona, 2002); the Sixth Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference (University of Maryland, 2000). I thank the audiences at these talks, especially Eric Haeberli and Ann Taylor, and the two editors of this special issue for helpful discussion. I am particularly grateful to two anonymous reviewers for suggestions that helped to clarify my thinking on the contents of this article, even though I was not able to incorporate all of their comments and ideas. All errors and omissions remain my own responsibility. This work has been supported by AHRB Research Leave Grant 4727 APN 13199 and a matching grant from the Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York; this support is gratefully acknowledged.