Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:57:23.615Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Old ‘truths’, new corpora: revisiting the word order of conjunct clauses in Old English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2016

KRISTIN BECH
KRISTIN BECH*
Affiliation:
Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, PO Box 1003, Blindern, 0315 Oslo, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

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, the York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE, Taylor et 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 a whisper-down-the-lane effect – the retelling of the story has changed the story.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 1 - 25
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I would like to thank Laurel Brinton, Kari Haugland, Kristian Rusten, George Walkden and two anonymous referees for their helpful comments and observations.

References

Andrew, S. O. 1940 [reissued 1966]. Syntax and style in Old English. New York: Russell & Russell.Google Scholar
Bacquet, Paul. 1962. La structure de la phrase verbale à l’époque Alfrédienne. Strasbourg: Publications de la Faculté des lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg.Google Scholar
Baker, Peter S. 2012. Introduction to Old English, 3rd edn. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Bech, Kristin. 2001a. Word order patterns in Old and Middle English: A syntactic and pragmatic study. PhD dissertation, University of Bergen. https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/3850 Google Scholar
Bech, Kristin. 2001b. Are Old English conjunct clauses really verb-final? In Brinton, Laurel J. (ed.), Historical Linguistics 1999: Selected papers from the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999, 49–62. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bech, Kristin. 2012. Word order, information structure, and discourse relations: A study of Old and Middle English verb-final clauses. In Meurman-Solin, Anneli, López-Couso, María José & Los, Bettelou (eds.), Information structure and syntactic change in the history of English, 66–86. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 1964. Review of La structure de la phrase verbale à l’époque Alfrédienne by Paul Bacquet. The Review of English Studies 15 (58), 190–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Alistair. 1970. Verse influences in Old English prose. In Rosier, James L. (ed.), Philological essays: Studies in Old and Middle English language and literature in honour of Herbert Dean Meritt, 93–8. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Cichosz, Anna. 2010. The influence of text type on word order of Old Germanic languages: A corpus-based contrastive study of Old English and Old High German. Frankfurt: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Cohen, Jacob. 1988. Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Dahlstedt, August. 1901. Rhythm and word-order in Anglo-Saxon and Semi-Saxon. Lund: Malmström.Google Scholar
Enkvist, Nils Erik & Wårvik, Brita. 1987. Old English þa, temporal chains, and narrative structure. In Ramat, Anna Giacalone, Carruba, Onofrio & Bernini, Giuliano (eds.), Papers from the 7th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 221–37. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Fourquet, Jean. 1938. L'ordre des éléments de la phrase en germanique ancien. Strasbourg: Publications de la Faculté des lettres de l'Université de Strasbourg.Google Scholar
Haeberli, Eric & Pintzuk, Susan. 2012. Revisiting verb (projection) raising in Old English. In Jonas, Dianne, Whitman, John & Garrett, Andrew (eds.), Grammatical change: Origins, nature, outcomes, 219–38. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heggelund, Øystein Imerslund. 2009. Word order in Old English and Middle English subordinate clauses. PhD dissertation, University of Bergen. https://bora.uib.no/handle/1956/4002 Google Scholar
Kemenade, Ans van. 1987. Syntactic case and morphological case in the history of English. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kohonen, Viljo. 1978. On the development of English word order in religious prose around 1000 and 1200 AD: A quantitative study of word order in context. Åbo: Åbo Akademi Foundation.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Hans. 1933. Zur Wortstellung und -betonung im Altgermanischen. Halle and Saale: Max Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1964. Syntax and word order in The Peterborough Chronicle 1122–1154. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 65, 113–44.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English syntax, vols. I and II. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mitchell, Bruce & Robinson, Fred C.. 2007. A guide to Old English, 7th edn. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Pintzuk, Susan. 1995. Variation and change in Old English clause structure. Language Variation and Change 7, 229–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pintzuk, Susan & Haeberli, Eric. 2008. Structural variation in Old English root clauses. Language Variation and Change 20, 367–407.Google Scholar
Taylor, Ann, Warner, Anthony, Pintzuk, Susan & Beths, Frank. 2003. The York–Toronto–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). Department of Linguistics, University of York. Oxford Text Archive, 1st edn. www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YcoeHome1.htm Google Scholar
Todt, August. 1894. Die Wortstellung im Beowulf. Anglia 16 (N.F. 4), 226–60.Google Scholar
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. Syntax. In Hogg, R. M. (ed.), The Cambridge history of the English language, vol. I, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wårvik, Brita. 2011. Connective or ‘disconnective’ discourse marker? Old English þa, multifunctionality and narrative structuring. In Anneli Meurman-Solin & Ursula Lenker (eds.), Connectives in synchrony and diachrony in European languages. VARIENG open access e-series. www.helsinki.fi/varieng/journal/volumes/08/warvik/ Google Scholar