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Motivations for particle verb word order in Middle and Early Modern English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2013

MARION ELENBAAS
MARION ELENBAAS*
Affiliation:
LUCL/Department of English Language and Culture, Leiden University, PO Box 9515, 2300 RA, Leiden, The [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines possible motivations for the choice of particle verb word order in Middle English (1100–1500) and Early Modern English (1500–1700). The word order alternation of Present-Day English particle verbs, which presents language users with a choice between verb–object–particle and verb–particle–object order, first emerged in Early Middle English (twelfth century). For Present-Day English, several studies (e.g. Gries 1999, 2003; Dehé 2002) have shown that the choice is influenced by a number of linguistic factors, such as the heaviness of the object (morphosyntactic factor) and the givenness of the object (discourse factor). This article reveals the influence of a number of morphosyntactic factors and also shows that the choice is increasingly influenced by the givenness of the object. The differences between Present-Day English on the one hand and Middle and Early Modern English on the other hand are discussed in the light of syntactic changes going on in these periods. It is argued that the developments in particle verb syntax are characterised by an increasing division of labour between the two word orders, which may also explain why both orders survive into Present-Day English.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , November 2013 , pp. 489 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

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Footnotes

1

I would like to thank the audiences at the Symposium on the History of English Syntax, held at the University of York on 22–23 May 2010, and at the 31st TABUdag, held at the University of Groningen on 3–4 June 2010, for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank Eric Hoekstra for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this paper. I am particularly grateful for the insightful feedback I received from Bettelou Los. Of course, any errors are mine.

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