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Morphological case and word order in Old English
Language Sciences 24 (2002) 381–395 www.elsevier.com/locate/langsci
Morphological case and word order in Old English Susan Pintzuk University of York, York, UK
Abstract In this article I examine the effects of morphological case on the position of objects in Old English, in terms of both formal syntactic accounts and functional explanations. Quantitative analysis of Old English clauses with non-finite main verbs and NP objects demonstrates that overt case-marking, whether ambiguous or unambiguous, has no effect on the position of the object with respect to the verb. I show that a formal syntactic account with case-marking linked to feature strength fails to make the correct predictions for the diachronic trends. Support for a functional explanation is weakened by the fact that in most clauses, even those where the case of the object is ambiguous in isolation, the subject and object can be distinguished by other morphological, syntactic, semantic or discourse cues. I conclude that casemarking has no effect on the position of objects in Old English, and that it is instead determined by other factors such as heaviness and clause type and structure, as shown in previous work. Crown Copyright # 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Old English; Morphological analysis; Word order; Case
1. Introduction The relationship between morphological case and constituent order is well-known: in general, languages with overt case-marking have freer constituent order than those with little or no overt marking. Partly because of this relationship, changes in constituent order and syntactic structure are frequently linked to changes in morphological case, particularly in languages where the morphology and the syntax seem to change during the same period of time. In the history of English, for example, the language has changed from the rich case morphology and relatively free constituent order of Old English to the severely impoverished morphology and
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relatively fixed order of Middle English. Traditional grammarians and linguists invoked functional and processing explanations for these changes, suggesting either that the loss of overt morphology resulted in the fixing of constituent order so that subjects and objects could be distinguished (e.g. Sapir, 1921, p. 166; Marchand, 1951; Mustanoja, 1960, p. 68; Baugh and Cable, 1993, pp. 162–163), or that the fixing of constituent order permitted the gradual loss of overt morphology (e.g. Classen, 1919, pp. 308–310; Trnka, 1928, 142 ff; Lehnert, 1957.). Traugott (1972, p. 111) combines both approaches and describes ‘a kind of cyclical development with some word order patterns allowing the partial collapsing of inflectional distinctions, this collapsing itself becoming a condition for further restrictions of word order, and these restrictions in turn allowing for more collapsings of inflections, and so on.’ Formal analyses within recent syntactic frameworks incorporate some aspects of morphology into the syntax itself. For example, Roberts (1997) analyses change in verb-complement order in the history of English as a change in the strength of the case feature that triggers the leftward movement of objects from postverbal position. Weerman (1997) analyses this type of change as the loss of an overt morphological head for nominal complements, which results in a change in the licensing conditions on objects. In contrast, in Pintzuk (1997, 2002), I analyse the change from OV to VO in the history of English as involving grammatical competition between two distinct parameter settings, without invoking morphological explanations at all. In this article I examine the possible effects of case-marking on the position of objects in Old English, and I demonstrate that overt morphology plays no role in determining that position. The article is organised as follows. In Section 2, I present the relevant Old English data: I show that objects occur both preverbally and postverbally, and that the frequency of postverbal position increases over the period. In Section 3, I describe the case-marking system of Old English, and show that the language exhibits the common syntactic effects of morphological case. In Section 4, I demonstrate that a formal syntactic analysis based on strong case features forcing movement cannot account for the data. In Section 5, I examine possible functional explanations of the position of objects, and show that neither overt case-marking nor case ambiguity has an effect. Section 6 discusses the implications of these results. The data used for this study were taken from three Old English corpora: the Brooklyn–Geneva–Amsterdam–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English (Pintzuk et al., 2000), the York–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English (Taylor et al., in preparation), and a small corpus of Old English data that I collected for Pintzuk (1999). The data include samples from 27 Old English prose texts written between the last quarter of the ninth century and the end of the eleventh century. The data are restricted to clauses with auxiliary verbs,1 where the order of the (non-finite) main verb and its complements is not affected by finite verb movement (see Pintzuk, 1999, pp. 46–48 for discussion).
1
The term ‘auxiliary verb’ is used for expository convenience to refer to all verbs that take infinitival or participial complements in Old English.
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2. The position of objects in Old English All Old English texts exhibit variation in the position of objects with respect to the verb: in clauses with full NP objects,2 there are five basic patterns,3 all of which occur in both main and subordinate clauses, although their frequency varies by clause type. Examples are given in (1)–(5) below, where O=object, Aux=finite auxiliary verb, V=non-finite main verb. It is clear that objects can appear either before, after, or in the middle of the auxiliary+main verb sequence, and either before or after the main verb+auxiliary cluster.4
(1) O Aux V a. Ne God onne ane hwile his mihta ne his wundra sylf nele cy an Nor God then a while his powers nor his wonders self neg-would reveal ‘Nor would God himself then reveal his powers or his wonders for a while. . .’ (WHom, 138.64–65) b. swa hwider swa se cining Oswi his rice mihte ennan as far as the king Oswy his kingdom could stretch ‘. . . as far as the king Oswy could stretch his kingdom.’ (Chad, 44) (2) Aux V O a. u hafast gecoren one wer you have chosen the man ‘You have chosen the man.’ (ApT 23.1) b. æt he mot ehtan godra manna that he might persecute good men ‘. . . that he might persecute good men . . .’ (WHom, 130.37–38)
2
Pronominal objects are not considered here; pronouns are clitics or weak pronouns in Old English (see van Kemenade, 1987; Koopman, 1992; Pintzuk, 1996; among others), and thus occur in different positions from full NPs. 3 I exclude topicalised objects from consideration. Although many of the examples in this article show the subject in clause-initial position, Old English is a verb-second language and permits topicalisation of objects. The verb-second status of Old English is irrelevant to the central concerns of this article. 4 It is extremely rare that any constituent, either argument or adjunct, appears between the non-finite main verb and the finite auxiliary. See Pintzuk (2002) for discussion.
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(3) Aux O V a. he ne mæg his agene aberan he neg can his own support ‘He cannot support his own.’ (CP, 52.2) b. æt hi mihton heora fynd oferwinnan so-that they could their foes overcome ‘. . . so that they could overcome their foes.’ (Bede, 44.14) (4) O V Aux a. him ær se gionga cyning æs oferfæreldes forwiernan mehte him there the young king the crossing prevent could ‘. . . the young king could prevent him from crossing there.’ (Or, 44.19–20) b. hu he his agene un eawas ongietan wille how he his own faults perceive will ‘. . . how he will perceive his own faults.’ (CP, 22.21–22) (5) V Aux O a. he æs habban sceal ece edlean on Godes rice he therefore have shall eternal reward in God’s kingdom ‘. . . he therefore shall have eternal reward in God’s kingdom.’ (WHom, 164.164–165) b. æt ænig mon atellan mæge ealne one demm that any man relate can all the misery ‘. . . that any man can relate all the misery . . .’ (Or, 52.6–7)
Quantitative analysis of the position of the object (Pintzuk, 1997) reveals that it is not random but is instead influenced by four independent factors: (1) heaviness: the longer the NP, the more likely it is to appear postverbally; (2) clause type: NPs appear postverbally in main clauses more frequently than in subordinate clauses; (3) clause structure: NPs appear postverbally more frequently in clauses where the finite auxiliary is clause-medial than in those where the auxiliary is clause-final (INFLmedial vs. INFL-final clauses); and (4) date of composition of the text: NPs appear postverbally more frequently in later texts than in earlier ones. The last factor will be
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Table 1 The effect of date of composition on the position of objects in clauses with auxiliary verbs in Old English prose texts Date
Total
Postverbal
Before 950 After 950
358 174
87=24.3% 78=44.8%
Total
532
165=31.0%
relevant to the discussion in Section 4, and I show the effect of date of composition in Table 1. Any analysis of the position of objects with respect to the verb in Old English thus must account for both the variation (preverbal vs. postverbal position) and the change (the increase over time of the relative frequency of postverbal objects). I have shown in previous work (Pintzuk, 1997, 1999) that one way of describing these data is in terms of grammatical competition: within both the functional projection IP and the VP itself, head-initial structure competes with head-final structure during the Old English period, and finally replaces it completely during the Middle English period. In Section 4, I examine the effect of overt case on the position of objects in clauses like those above, to determine whether the case-marking system imposes any additional constraints.
3. Case marking in Old English and its syntactic effects Old English has four productive cases,5 nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative; and three genders, masculine, neuter, and feminine. Case is marked overtly on nouns, pronouns, determiners, adjectives, and some quantifiers, as well as on some participles. There is, however, a substantial amount of syncretism throughout the Old English period. I give sample paradigms in Tables 2–8.
Table 2 Masculine a-stems. Example: sta-n ‘stone’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
5
Singular
Plural
sta-n sta-n sta-nes sta-ne
sta-nas sta-nas sta-na sta-num
Adjectives and some pronouns have distinct forms for instrumental case; but for nouns, instrumental case marking and dative case marking are the same.
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S. Pintzuk / Language Sciences 24 (2002) 381–395 Table 3 Neuter a-stems. Example: scip ‘ship’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Singular
Plural
scip scip scipes scipe
scipu scipu scipa scipum
Table 4 Feminine o-stems. Example: giefu ‘gift’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Singular
Plural
giefu giefe giefe giefe
giefa,-e giefa,-e giefa,-ena giefum
Table 5 Weak masculine nouns. Example: nama ‘name’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Singular
Plural
nama naman naman naman
naman naman namena namum
Table 6 Definite determiner/demonstrative pronoun Singular MASC NOM
se-
Plural NEUT æt
ACC
one
æt
GEN
æs æ a- m
æs æ a- m
DAT
FEM
All genders
se-o a-
aa-
æ a- re æ a- re
a-ra æ a- m
Table 7 Strong adjectives Singular
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Plural
MASC
NEUT
FEM
MASC
NEUT
FEM
til tilne tiles tilum
til til tiles tilum
tilu tile tilre tilre
tile tile tilra tilum
tilu tilu tilra tilum
tile,-a tile,-a tilra tilum
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Table 8 Weak adjectives Singular
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Plural
MASC
NEUT
FEM
All genders
tila tilan tilan tilan
tile tile tilan tilan
tile tilan tilan tilan
tilan tilan tilra,-ena tilum
As Allen (1995, p. 159) emphasises, it is important to distinguish here between case-marking categories and the forms that express these categories, i.e. between the system itself and the overt morphological forms. Although there was a great deal of syncretism in forms throughout the Old English period, the system was alive and well until early in Middle English. Given this syncretism, it is clear that Old English objects could be several ways ambiguous, depending on the noun type and on the other heads and modifiers within the NP. Examples are given in (6)–(8) of unambiguous case-marking, and in (9)–(11) of ambiguous case-marking.
(6)
unambiguous accusative object: u scealt oncnawan one gesettan dom you must suffer the appointed doom ‘. . . you must suffer the appointed doom.’ (ApT, 5.8–9)
(7)
unambiguous genitive object: he his willes gehyran nolde that he his will listen-to neg-would ‘. . . that he wouldn’t listen to his will . . .’ (ApT, 4.5–6)
(8)
unambiguous dative object: æt u scealt am ylcan wite onfon that you must the same punishment receive ‘. . . that you must receive the same punishment . . .’ (Bede, 36.7–8)
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(9)
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ambiguous nominative/accusative object: æt hi mihton heora fynd oferwinnan so-that they could their foes overcome ‘. . . so that they could overcome their foes.’ (Bede, 44.14)
(10) ambiguous accusative/genitive/dative object: ac u hæfst beheafdunge geearnad but you have beheading earned ‘. . . but you have earned beheading.’ (ApT, 5.5–6) (11) ambiguous nominative/accusative/genitive/dative object:6 æt ic his sceal her fela oferhebban that I (of) it must here much pass-over ‘. . . that I must pass over much of it here . . .’ (Or, 1.8.4)
Given the existence of a morphological case system in Old English, let us now consider the possible effects on the syntax. Weerman (1997) re-examines the results of research of almost twenty years on the relationship between morphological case systems and syntactic phenomena, and summarises with four generalisations [Weerman, 1997, p. 439, his (33)]:
(12)
6
a. The order of indirect object and direct object has to remain constant unless there is a morphological case system. b. The order of indirect object and direct object with respect to the verb has to remain constant unless there is a morphological case system. c. The complement of N[oun] is a PP unless there is a morphological case system. d. The complement of A[djective] is a PP unless there is a morphological case system.
The quantifier fela ‘much, many’ is invariant, regardless of number or case. It frequently takes a genitive NP, like his ‘of it’’ in (11).
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Certainly all four of the generalisations in (12) hold for Old English. The order of objects can vary, as shown in (13) and (14) [=Koopman, 1990, p. 177, his (128) and (129)]:
(13)
æt he forgeafe godne willan am seocan hæ enan that he granted good will(ACC) the sick heathen(DAT) ‘. . . that he would grant good will to the sick heathen.’ (ÆChom ii.2.12.28)
(14)
gif u geoffrast Gode ænige lac æt his weofode if you offer God(DAT) any sacrifice(ACC) on his altar ‘. . . If you offer God any sacrifice on his altar . . .’ (ÆHom 16.19)
Nouns and adjectives may take NP complements, as shown in (15) and (16):
(15)
æt he wæs swa swi e Drihtnes ege under eoded that he was so severely Lord(GEN) fear(DAT) subjugated ‘. . . that he was so severely subjugated to fear of the Lord . . .’ (Bede 268.10–11)
(16)
hwa ere ic fara feng feore gedigde, si es werig however I foes’ grasp life survived, journey(GEN) weary ‘However, I survived the foes’ grasp with my life, weary of the journey.’ (Beo 578–579)
And as shown above in Section 2, the order of objects with respect to the verb can vary. In this article I leave aside the implications of the generalisations in (12a), (12c), and (12d), and focus on the effect of overt case-marking on the order of verbs and their objects.
4. Functional explanations of the effect of case-marking on the position of objects Let us consider how the case-marking system of Old English might affect the position of objects. One simple and straightforward possibility is that objects with unambiguous case-marking, like those in (6)–(8) above, might behave differently from objects with ambiguous case-marking, like those in (9)–(11). In terms of a functional explanation, we could test the following hypothesis: since the grammatical function of the unambiguous NPs is obvious from their morphology, then clauses with unambiguously case-marked objects should exhibit freer constituent order than clauses
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with ambiguously case-marked objects. With respect to the order of non-finite main verbs and their objects, this would mean that the frequency of postverbal objects would show significant differences for unambiguous vs. ambiguous case-marking. In order to test the above hypothesis, I did a quantitative study of clauses like those in (1)–(5). The results are shown in Table 9. It is clear that case-marking in these clauses has no effect at all: not only is the frequency of postverbal objects about the same for unambiguously and ambiguously case-marked NPs,7 but it is also about the same regardless of whether the unambiguous case-marking is structural (accusative) or inherent (genitive/dative).8 In addition, the effects of the other factors influencing the position of the object (heaviness, clause type and clause structure) are the same in clauses containing unambiguously case-marked NPs as in clauses containing ambiguously case-marked NPs; in other words, there is no difference in the behaviour of the two groups of objects. Notice, however, that functional pressures on the position of the object have not been directly measured here, since the 308 ambiguous NPs in Table 9 are ambiguous in isolation but not necessarily in context. For example, (17) and (18) below contain objects that could be either nominative or accusative according to morphology, but could only be accusative in the syntactic context of the clause. In (17), he is unambiguously nominative and therefore must be the subject; the only possible interpretation of the NP Godes bebod is as an accusative object. In (18), as word is plural, but the finite auxiliary wæs is singular. Therefore, as word cannot be the subject; rather, Dryhten must be the subject, and as word the accusative object. In Table 9 The effect of case-marking on the position of objects in clauses with auxiliary verbs in Old English prose texts Case-marking
Total
Postverbal
Unambiguous Accusative genitive dative Total unambiguous
112 40 72 224
34=30.4% 12=30.0% 20=27.8% 66=29.5%
Ambiguous nominative/accusative accusative/genitive/dative nominative/accusative/genitive nominative/accusative/genitive/dative Total ambiguous
221 46 23 18 308
68=30.8% 18=39.1% 5=21.7% 8=44.4% 99=32.1%
Total
532
165=31.0%
7 Although the differences among the ambiguous categories look large, they are not statistically significant. 8 It is generally accepted that Old English had both structural and inherent case; see, for example, van Kemenade (1987). But these results demonstrate that the structural vs. inherent distinction had no effect on the position of the object.
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contrast, in (19)–(21) the grammatical relations are not uniquely determined by the morphology, with the bold-faced NPs interpretable as either the subject or object.
(17)
æt he sceolde Godes bebod tobrecan that he had-to God’s commandment break ‘. . . that he had to break God’s commandment, ’. . . (ÆHom 18.28–29)
(18)
Dryhten wæs sprecende as word to Moyse Lord was speaking these words to Moses ‘The Lord was speaking these words to Moses . . .’ (Laws Af 26.1–2)
(19)
e a burga healdan scolden that the boroughs hold had-to ‘. . . that the boroughs had to hold . . .’ or ‘. . . that had to hold the boroughs . . .’ (ChronA 894.15)
(20)
& a Deniscan hæfdon hira wif befæst innan East Engle and the Danes had their women secured in East Anglia ‘. . . and the Danes had secured their women in East Anglia . . .’ or ‘. . . and their women had secured the Danes in East Anglia . . .’ (ChronA 896.19)
(21)
æt hie heora sylfra sawla geseon ne magon that they/them their selves’ souls see neg can ‘. . . so that they cannot see their own souls . . .’ or ‘. . . so that their own souls cannot see them . . .’ (BlHom 21.22–23)
Only 64 of the 262 clauses9 where the NP could be either nominative or accusative are of the type illustrated in (19)–(21). Many of the 64 are grammatical but semantically or pragmatically anomalous if subject and object are reversed, as illustrated in (22).
(22)
9
& Botulf ongon mynster timbran æt Icanho And Botwulf began monastery build at Icanho ‘. . . and Botwulf began to build a monastery at Icanho.’ or ???‘. . . and a monastery began to build Botwulf at Icanho.’ (ChronA 654.1)
221+23+18=262 clauses; Table 9.
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Moreover, at least some of the clauses that are syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically well-formed with the two NPs interpreted either as subject and object are disambiguated by discourse context. An example is given in (23), with the two relevant NPs in italics. Obviously, the monks are the object of the pulling rather than the agent.
(23)
Se ylca me sæde, æt Langbearde foron hergiende in Ualeriam a mæg e. a a munecas of æs arwur an mynstre Equities geflugon in æt gebedhus, hi ongunnon teon ut a munecas & hi todrifon urh manegu tintregu. & eac sume mid heora swurdum acwealdon. The same me said, that Lombards went plundering in Valeria the country. When the monks from the honourable monastery Equitius fled into the chapel, they began pull out the monks and them destroyed with many torments. And also some with their swords killed. ‘The same man said to me that the Lombards went plundering in the country of Valeria. When the monks fled from the monastery of the honourable Equitius into the chapel, they [the Lombards] began to pull ut the monks, and destroyed them with many torments, and also killed some with their swords.’ (GDC1,GD_1_[C]:4.42.25.388–391)
It is clear that there are relatively few clauses in which all cues for the assignment of grammatical function are absent; Mitchell (1985; xx9–11) makes this point about clauses with finite main verbs. Although functional effects may have had an influence on word order, it is unlikely that they were the driving force behind the increase in the frequency of VO during the Old English period, when the case system still existed despite some syncretism of forms.
5. Syntactic explanations of the effect of case-marking on the position of objects In this section I discuss the Old English analysis of Roberts (1997).10 Following Kayne (1994), Roberts proposes that all syntactic structure is uniformly head-initial, with complements to the left of heads derived by movement. Overt movement is triggered by strong features of functional heads. In the data under consideration here, the strong feature is the case feature of the functional head AgrO. Objects move overtly to Spec,AgrOP to check case, as shown in (24):
(24)
10
he ne mæg [AgrOP [his agene]i [AgrO’ AgrO [VP aberan ti ]] he neg can his own support ‘He cannot support his own.’ (CP 52.2)
Because of space constraints, this section is necessarily brief. For a full discussion of Roberts (1997) see Pintzuk (2002).
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Objects can escape case checking, and therefore overt leftward movement, by being focused. In clauses with focused objects, there is no overt movement out of the lowest VP, as shown in (25):
(25)
u hafast [AgrOP [AgrO’ AgrO [VP gecoren one wer ]] you have chosen the man ‘You have chosen the man.’ (ApT 23.1)
Roberts analyses the change from OV to VO in early Middle English as a change in the strength of the case feature of AgrO from strong to weak, eliminating overt movement to Spec,AgrOP. He hypotheses that weak features are assumed by language learners in the absence of explicit evidence to the contrary in the primary linguistic data. During the Old English period, the trigger for the acquisition of a strong AgrO feature was both morphological (case marking on NPs) and syntactic (numerous instances of OV order). In Early Middle English, however, the morphological case system broke down, resulting in the loss of the morphological trigger for acquisition of the strong feature; in addition, VO orders in the primary linguistic data weakened the syntactic trigger. Since the weak feature is the default, and was also confirmed by the data, the strong feature on AgrO was lost, which resulted in the loss of OV order. Roberts’ analysis thus links the position of the object in Old English to casemarking requirements and focus, and explains the change from OV to VO by the collapse of the case system in Middle English and the effect of that collapse on language acquisition. His analysis predicts that verb-object order in Old English is determined exclusively by focus; the order of verbs and their objects should vary but not show any particular chronological trend. But this prediction is not correct: as was shown in Table 1 in Section 2, the rate of postverbal objects increases during the Old English period. An analysis that ties the position of objects only to case marking and focus cannot account for this increase.
6. Implications and conclusions I have shown in this article that morphological case in Old English has no effect on the position of objects with respect to the non-finite main verb, either in terms of functional pressures resulting from case ambiguity, or in terms of strong and weak features linked to overt case-marking. Morphological case cannot be used to explain either the variation between OV and VO surface orders during the Old English period or the gradual increase in the frequency of VO order. This should not be a surprising result. Even though changes in both syntax and morphology occurred during approximately the same period in the history of English, we know that these two types of changes are not necessarily connected. In Icelandic, for example, the language changed from OV to VO with no change in overt
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morphological case-marking; and in Dutch, the case system (except for pronouns) was lost entirely without a change from OV to VO. In addition, the position of PP complements with respect to the main verb changes in exactly the same way as the position of NPs (Pintzuk, 1997), lending support to the hypothesis that the change in the position of objects is not directly related to morphological case. Given the results presented here, it becomes difficult to maintain a link between the loss of case morphology and the loss of preverbal objects during the Middle English period. First, we would have to posit two distinct mechanisms to explain the decrease in frequency of preverbal objects during the Old English period and their final loss in Middle English. This is of course a possible scenario, but one to be used only in the case of clear evidence for each of the two mechanisms. Second, the existence of preverbal objects does not terminate abruptly with the loss of the case system in Early Middle English, but continues, albeit at a low frequency, throughout the Middle English period (Foster and van der Wurff, 1995, 1997; van der Wurff, 1997, 1999; Pintzuk and Taylor, 2001). These results suggest that a different and uniform explanation must be found for the gradual decrease and eventual loss of OV order in the history of English.
Acknowledgements Earlier versions of sections of this article were presented at the Tenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics at the University of Manchester in August 1998; at the Staff-Student Seminar, Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York in January 1999; and at the Sixth Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference at the University of Maryland in May 2000. I thank members of those audiences, particularly David Adger, Eric Haeberli, Jairo Nunes, and Anthony Warner, for suggestions and helpful discussion; I thank Anthony for comments on an earlier written version. All errors and misunderstandings remain my own responsibility.
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Koopman, W.F., 1992. Old English pronouns: some remarks. In: Colman, F. (Ed.), Evidence for Old English: Material and Theoretical Bases for Reconstruction. Edinburgh Studies in the English Language 2. John Donald, Edinburgh, pp. 44–87. Lehnert, M., 1957. The interrelation between form and function in the development of the English language. Zeitschrift fu¨r Anglistik und Amerikanistik 5, 43–56. Marchand, H., 1951. The syntactical change from inflectional to word order system and some effects of this change on the relation verb-object in English. Anglia 70, 70–89. Mitchell, B., 1985. Old English Syntax. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Mustanoja, T.F., 1960. A Middle English Syntax. Socie´te´ Ne´ophilologique, Helsinki. Pintzuk, S., 1996. Cliticization in Old English. In: Halpern, A.L., Zwicky, A.M. (Eds.), Approaching Second: Second Position Clitics and Related Phenomena. CSLI Publications, Stanford, CA, pp. 375– 409. Pintzuk, S., 1997. From OV to VO in the history of English. Ms., University of York. Pintzuk, S., 1999. Phrase Structures in Competition: Variation and Change in Old English Word Order. Garland, New York. Pintzuk, S., 2002. Verb-object order in Old English: variation as grammatical competition. In: Lightfoot, D.W. (Ed.), Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Pintzuk, S., Haeberli, E., van Kemenade, A., Koopman, W.F., Beths, F. (Eds.), 2000. The Brooklyn– Geneva–Amsterdam–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old EnglishDepartment of Language and Linguistic ScienceUniversity of York. (Available: http://www-users.york.ac.uk/ sp20/corpus.html). Pintzuk, S., Taylor, A., 2001. The effect of quantification on verb-object order in Old and Middle English. Ms., University of York. Roberts, I., 1997. Directionality and word order change in the history of English. In: van Kemenade, A., Vincent, N. (Eds.), Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 397–426. Sapir, E., 1921. Language. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York and London. Taylor, A., Warner, A., Pintzuk, S., Beths, F. (in preparation). The York-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English. Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York. Traugott, E.C., 1972. A History of English Syntax. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York. Trnka, B., 1928. Analysis and synthesis in English. English Studies 10, 138–144. van der Wurff, W., 1997. Deriving object-verb order in late Middle English. Journal of Linguistics 33, 485–509. van der Wurff, W., 1999. Objects and verbs in modern Icelandic and fifteenth-century English: a word order parallel and its causes. Lingua 109, 237–265. van Kemenade, A., 1987. Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Foris Publications, Dordrecht. Weerman, F., 1997. On the relation between morphological and syntactic case. In: van Kemenade, A., Vincent, N. (Eds.), Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 427–459.
Morphological case and word order in Old English Susan Pintzuk University of York, York, UK
Abstract In this article I examine the effects of morphological case on the position of objects in Old English, in terms of both formal syntactic accounts and functional explanations. Quantitative analysis of Old English clauses with non-finite main verbs and NP objects demonstrates that overt case-marking, whether ambiguous or unambiguous, has no effect on the position of the object with respect to the verb. I show that a formal syntactic account with case-marking linked to feature strength fails to make the correct predictions for the diachronic trends. Support for a functional explanation is weakened by the fact that in most clauses, even those where the case of the object is ambiguous in isolation, the subject and object can be distinguished by other morphological, syntactic, semantic or discourse cues. I conclude that casemarking has no effect on the position of objects in Old English, and that it is instead determined by other factors such as heaviness and clause type and structure, as shown in previous work. Crown Copyright # 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Old English; Morphological analysis; Word order; Case
1. Introduction The relationship between morphological case and constituent order is well-known: in general, languages with overt case-marking have freer constituent order than those with little or no overt marking. Partly because of this relationship, changes in constituent order and syntactic structure are frequently linked to changes in morphological case, particularly in languages where the morphology and the syntax seem to change during the same period of time. In the history of English, for example, the language has changed from the rich case morphology and relatively free constituent order of Old English to the severely impoverished morphology and
E-mail address: [email protected] (S. Pintzuk). 0388-0001/01/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright # 2001 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S0388-0001(01)00039-0
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relatively fixed order of Middle English. Traditional grammarians and linguists invoked functional and processing explanations for these changes, suggesting either that the loss of overt morphology resulted in the fixing of constituent order so that subjects and objects could be distinguished (e.g. Sapir, 1921, p. 166; Marchand, 1951; Mustanoja, 1960, p. 68; Baugh and Cable, 1993, pp. 162–163), or that the fixing of constituent order permitted the gradual loss of overt morphology (e.g. Classen, 1919, pp. 308–310; Trnka, 1928, 142 ff; Lehnert, 1957.). Traugott (1972, p. 111) combines both approaches and describes ‘a kind of cyclical development with some word order patterns allowing the partial collapsing of inflectional distinctions, this collapsing itself becoming a condition for further restrictions of word order, and these restrictions in turn allowing for more collapsings of inflections, and so on.’ Formal analyses within recent syntactic frameworks incorporate some aspects of morphology into the syntax itself. For example, Roberts (1997) analyses change in verb-complement order in the history of English as a change in the strength of the case feature that triggers the leftward movement of objects from postverbal position. Weerman (1997) analyses this type of change as the loss of an overt morphological head for nominal complements, which results in a change in the licensing conditions on objects. In contrast, in Pintzuk (1997, 2002), I analyse the change from OV to VO in the history of English as involving grammatical competition between two distinct parameter settings, without invoking morphological explanations at all. In this article I examine the possible effects of case-marking on the position of objects in Old English, and I demonstrate that overt morphology plays no role in determining that position. The article is organised as follows. In Section 2, I present the relevant Old English data: I show that objects occur both preverbally and postverbally, and that the frequency of postverbal position increases over the period. In Section 3, I describe the case-marking system of Old English, and show that the language exhibits the common syntactic effects of morphological case. In Section 4, I demonstrate that a formal syntactic analysis based on strong case features forcing movement cannot account for the data. In Section 5, I examine possible functional explanations of the position of objects, and show that neither overt case-marking nor case ambiguity has an effect. Section 6 discusses the implications of these results. The data used for this study were taken from three Old English corpora: the Brooklyn–Geneva–Amsterdam–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English (Pintzuk et al., 2000), the York–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English (Taylor et al., in preparation), and a small corpus of Old English data that I collected for Pintzuk (1999). The data include samples from 27 Old English prose texts written between the last quarter of the ninth century and the end of the eleventh century. The data are restricted to clauses with auxiliary verbs,1 where the order of the (non-finite) main verb and its complements is not affected by finite verb movement (see Pintzuk, 1999, pp. 46–48 for discussion).
1
The term ‘auxiliary verb’ is used for expository convenience to refer to all verbs that take infinitival or participial complements in Old English.
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2. The position of objects in Old English All Old English texts exhibit variation in the position of objects with respect to the verb: in clauses with full NP objects,2 there are five basic patterns,3 all of which occur in both main and subordinate clauses, although their frequency varies by clause type. Examples are given in (1)–(5) below, where O=object, Aux=finite auxiliary verb, V=non-finite main verb. It is clear that objects can appear either before, after, or in the middle of the auxiliary+main verb sequence, and either before or after the main verb+auxiliary cluster.4
(1) O Aux V a. Ne God onne ane hwile his mihta ne his wundra sylf nele cy an Nor God then a while his powers nor his wonders self neg-would reveal ‘Nor would God himself then reveal his powers or his wonders for a while. . .’ (WHom, 138.64–65) b. swa hwider swa se cining Oswi his rice mihte ennan as far as the king Oswy his kingdom could stretch ‘. . . as far as the king Oswy could stretch his kingdom.’ (Chad, 44) (2) Aux V O a. u hafast gecoren one wer you have chosen the man ‘You have chosen the man.’ (ApT 23.1) b. æt he mot ehtan godra manna that he might persecute good men ‘. . . that he might persecute good men . . .’ (WHom, 130.37–38)
2
Pronominal objects are not considered here; pronouns are clitics or weak pronouns in Old English (see van Kemenade, 1987; Koopman, 1992; Pintzuk, 1996; among others), and thus occur in different positions from full NPs. 3 I exclude topicalised objects from consideration. Although many of the examples in this article show the subject in clause-initial position, Old English is a verb-second language and permits topicalisation of objects. The verb-second status of Old English is irrelevant to the central concerns of this article. 4 It is extremely rare that any constituent, either argument or adjunct, appears between the non-finite main verb and the finite auxiliary. See Pintzuk (2002) for discussion.
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(3) Aux O V a. he ne mæg his agene aberan he neg can his own support ‘He cannot support his own.’ (CP, 52.2) b. æt hi mihton heora fynd oferwinnan so-that they could their foes overcome ‘. . . so that they could overcome their foes.’ (Bede, 44.14) (4) O V Aux a. him ær se gionga cyning æs oferfæreldes forwiernan mehte him there the young king the crossing prevent could ‘. . . the young king could prevent him from crossing there.’ (Or, 44.19–20) b. hu he his agene un eawas ongietan wille how he his own faults perceive will ‘. . . how he will perceive his own faults.’ (CP, 22.21–22) (5) V Aux O a. he æs habban sceal ece edlean on Godes rice he therefore have shall eternal reward in God’s kingdom ‘. . . he therefore shall have eternal reward in God’s kingdom.’ (WHom, 164.164–165) b. æt ænig mon atellan mæge ealne one demm that any man relate can all the misery ‘. . . that any man can relate all the misery . . .’ (Or, 52.6–7)
Quantitative analysis of the position of the object (Pintzuk, 1997) reveals that it is not random but is instead influenced by four independent factors: (1) heaviness: the longer the NP, the more likely it is to appear postverbally; (2) clause type: NPs appear postverbally in main clauses more frequently than in subordinate clauses; (3) clause structure: NPs appear postverbally more frequently in clauses where the finite auxiliary is clause-medial than in those where the auxiliary is clause-final (INFLmedial vs. INFL-final clauses); and (4) date of composition of the text: NPs appear postverbally more frequently in later texts than in earlier ones. The last factor will be
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Table 1 The effect of date of composition on the position of objects in clauses with auxiliary verbs in Old English prose texts Date
Total
Postverbal
Before 950 After 950
358 174
87=24.3% 78=44.8%
Total
532
165=31.0%
relevant to the discussion in Section 4, and I show the effect of date of composition in Table 1. Any analysis of the position of objects with respect to the verb in Old English thus must account for both the variation (preverbal vs. postverbal position) and the change (the increase over time of the relative frequency of postverbal objects). I have shown in previous work (Pintzuk, 1997, 1999) that one way of describing these data is in terms of grammatical competition: within both the functional projection IP and the VP itself, head-initial structure competes with head-final structure during the Old English period, and finally replaces it completely during the Middle English period. In Section 4, I examine the effect of overt case on the position of objects in clauses like those above, to determine whether the case-marking system imposes any additional constraints.
3. Case marking in Old English and its syntactic effects Old English has four productive cases,5 nominative, accusative, genitive, and dative; and three genders, masculine, neuter, and feminine. Case is marked overtly on nouns, pronouns, determiners, adjectives, and some quantifiers, as well as on some participles. There is, however, a substantial amount of syncretism throughout the Old English period. I give sample paradigms in Tables 2–8.
Table 2 Masculine a-stems. Example: sta-n ‘stone’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
5
Singular
Plural
sta-n sta-n sta-nes sta-ne
sta-nas sta-nas sta-na sta-num
Adjectives and some pronouns have distinct forms for instrumental case; but for nouns, instrumental case marking and dative case marking are the same.
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S. Pintzuk / Language Sciences 24 (2002) 381–395 Table 3 Neuter a-stems. Example: scip ‘ship’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Singular
Plural
scip scip scipes scipe
scipu scipu scipa scipum
Table 4 Feminine o-stems. Example: giefu ‘gift’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Singular
Plural
giefu giefe giefe giefe
giefa,-e giefa,-e giefa,-ena giefum
Table 5 Weak masculine nouns. Example: nama ‘name’
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Singular
Plural
nama naman naman naman
naman naman namena namum
Table 6 Definite determiner/demonstrative pronoun Singular MASC NOM
se-
Plural NEUT æt
ACC
one
æt
GEN
æs æ a- m
æs æ a- m
DAT
FEM
All genders
se-o a-
aa-
æ a- re æ a- re
a-ra æ a- m
Table 7 Strong adjectives Singular
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Plural
MASC
NEUT
FEM
MASC
NEUT
FEM
til tilne tiles tilum
til til tiles tilum
tilu tile tilre tilre
tile tile tilra tilum
tilu tilu tilra tilum
tile,-a tile,-a tilra tilum
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Table 8 Weak adjectives Singular
NOM ACC GEN DAT
Plural
MASC
NEUT
FEM
All genders
tila tilan tilan tilan
tile tile tilan tilan
tile tilan tilan tilan
tilan tilan tilra,-ena tilum
As Allen (1995, p. 159) emphasises, it is important to distinguish here between case-marking categories and the forms that express these categories, i.e. between the system itself and the overt morphological forms. Although there was a great deal of syncretism in forms throughout the Old English period, the system was alive and well until early in Middle English. Given this syncretism, it is clear that Old English objects could be several ways ambiguous, depending on the noun type and on the other heads and modifiers within the NP. Examples are given in (6)–(8) of unambiguous case-marking, and in (9)–(11) of ambiguous case-marking.
(6)
unambiguous accusative object: u scealt oncnawan one gesettan dom you must suffer the appointed doom ‘. . . you must suffer the appointed doom.’ (ApT, 5.8–9)
(7)
unambiguous genitive object: he his willes gehyran nolde that he his will listen-to neg-would ‘. . . that he wouldn’t listen to his will . . .’ (ApT, 4.5–6)
(8)
unambiguous dative object: æt u scealt am ylcan wite onfon that you must the same punishment receive ‘. . . that you must receive the same punishment . . .’ (Bede, 36.7–8)
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(9)
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ambiguous nominative/accusative object: æt hi mihton heora fynd oferwinnan so-that they could their foes overcome ‘. . . so that they could overcome their foes.’ (Bede, 44.14)
(10) ambiguous accusative/genitive/dative object: ac u hæfst beheafdunge geearnad but you have beheading earned ‘. . . but you have earned beheading.’ (ApT, 5.5–6) (11) ambiguous nominative/accusative/genitive/dative object:6 æt ic his sceal her fela oferhebban that I (of) it must here much pass-over ‘. . . that I must pass over much of it here . . .’ (Or, 1.8.4)
Given the existence of a morphological case system in Old English, let us now consider the possible effects on the syntax. Weerman (1997) re-examines the results of research of almost twenty years on the relationship between morphological case systems and syntactic phenomena, and summarises with four generalisations [Weerman, 1997, p. 439, his (33)]:
(12)
6
a. The order of indirect object and direct object has to remain constant unless there is a morphological case system. b. The order of indirect object and direct object with respect to the verb has to remain constant unless there is a morphological case system. c. The complement of N[oun] is a PP unless there is a morphological case system. d. The complement of A[djective] is a PP unless there is a morphological case system.
The quantifier fela ‘much, many’ is invariant, regardless of number or case. It frequently takes a genitive NP, like his ‘of it’’ in (11).
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Certainly all four of the generalisations in (12) hold for Old English. The order of objects can vary, as shown in (13) and (14) [=Koopman, 1990, p. 177, his (128) and (129)]:
(13)
æt he forgeafe godne willan am seocan hæ enan that he granted good will(ACC) the sick heathen(DAT) ‘. . . that he would grant good will to the sick heathen.’ (ÆChom ii.2.12.28)
(14)
gif u geoffrast Gode ænige lac æt his weofode if you offer God(DAT) any sacrifice(ACC) on his altar ‘. . . If you offer God any sacrifice on his altar . . .’ (ÆHom 16.19)
Nouns and adjectives may take NP complements, as shown in (15) and (16):
(15)
æt he wæs swa swi e Drihtnes ege under eoded that he was so severely Lord(GEN) fear(DAT) subjugated ‘. . . that he was so severely subjugated to fear of the Lord . . .’ (Bede 268.10–11)
(16)
hwa ere ic fara feng feore gedigde, si es werig however I foes’ grasp life survived, journey(GEN) weary ‘However, I survived the foes’ grasp with my life, weary of the journey.’ (Beo 578–579)
And as shown above in Section 2, the order of objects with respect to the verb can vary. In this article I leave aside the implications of the generalisations in (12a), (12c), and (12d), and focus on the effect of overt case-marking on the order of verbs and their objects.
4. Functional explanations of the effect of case-marking on the position of objects Let us consider how the case-marking system of Old English might affect the position of objects. One simple and straightforward possibility is that objects with unambiguous case-marking, like those in (6)–(8) above, might behave differently from objects with ambiguous case-marking, like those in (9)–(11). In terms of a functional explanation, we could test the following hypothesis: since the grammatical function of the unambiguous NPs is obvious from their morphology, then clauses with unambiguously case-marked objects should exhibit freer constituent order than clauses
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with ambiguously case-marked objects. With respect to the order of non-finite main verbs and their objects, this would mean that the frequency of postverbal objects would show significant differences for unambiguous vs. ambiguous case-marking. In order to test the above hypothesis, I did a quantitative study of clauses like those in (1)–(5). The results are shown in Table 9. It is clear that case-marking in these clauses has no effect at all: not only is the frequency of postverbal objects about the same for unambiguously and ambiguously case-marked NPs,7 but it is also about the same regardless of whether the unambiguous case-marking is structural (accusative) or inherent (genitive/dative).8 In addition, the effects of the other factors influencing the position of the object (heaviness, clause type and clause structure) are the same in clauses containing unambiguously case-marked NPs as in clauses containing ambiguously case-marked NPs; in other words, there is no difference in the behaviour of the two groups of objects. Notice, however, that functional pressures on the position of the object have not been directly measured here, since the 308 ambiguous NPs in Table 9 are ambiguous in isolation but not necessarily in context. For example, (17) and (18) below contain objects that could be either nominative or accusative according to morphology, but could only be accusative in the syntactic context of the clause. In (17), he is unambiguously nominative and therefore must be the subject; the only possible interpretation of the NP Godes bebod is as an accusative object. In (18), as word is plural, but the finite auxiliary wæs is singular. Therefore, as word cannot be the subject; rather, Dryhten must be the subject, and as word the accusative object. In Table 9 The effect of case-marking on the position of objects in clauses with auxiliary verbs in Old English prose texts Case-marking
Total
Postverbal
Unambiguous Accusative genitive dative Total unambiguous
112 40 72 224
34=30.4% 12=30.0% 20=27.8% 66=29.5%
Ambiguous nominative/accusative accusative/genitive/dative nominative/accusative/genitive nominative/accusative/genitive/dative Total ambiguous
221 46 23 18 308
68=30.8% 18=39.1% 5=21.7% 8=44.4% 99=32.1%
Total
532
165=31.0%
7 Although the differences among the ambiguous categories look large, they are not statistically significant. 8 It is generally accepted that Old English had both structural and inherent case; see, for example, van Kemenade (1987). But these results demonstrate that the structural vs. inherent distinction had no effect on the position of the object.
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contrast, in (19)–(21) the grammatical relations are not uniquely determined by the morphology, with the bold-faced NPs interpretable as either the subject or object.
(17)
æt he sceolde Godes bebod tobrecan that he had-to God’s commandment break ‘. . . that he had to break God’s commandment, ’. . . (ÆHom 18.28–29)
(18)
Dryhten wæs sprecende as word to Moyse Lord was speaking these words to Moses ‘The Lord was speaking these words to Moses . . .’ (Laws Af 26.1–2)
(19)
e a burga healdan scolden that the boroughs hold had-to ‘. . . that the boroughs had to hold . . .’ or ‘. . . that had to hold the boroughs . . .’ (ChronA 894.15)
(20)
& a Deniscan hæfdon hira wif befæst innan East Engle and the Danes had their women secured in East Anglia ‘. . . and the Danes had secured their women in East Anglia . . .’ or ‘. . . and their women had secured the Danes in East Anglia . . .’ (ChronA 896.19)
(21)
æt hie heora sylfra sawla geseon ne magon that they/them their selves’ souls see neg can ‘. . . so that they cannot see their own souls . . .’ or ‘. . . so that their own souls cannot see them . . .’ (BlHom 21.22–23)
Only 64 of the 262 clauses9 where the NP could be either nominative or accusative are of the type illustrated in (19)–(21). Many of the 64 are grammatical but semantically or pragmatically anomalous if subject and object are reversed, as illustrated in (22).
(22)
9
& Botulf ongon mynster timbran æt Icanho And Botwulf began monastery build at Icanho ‘. . . and Botwulf began to build a monastery at Icanho.’ or ???‘. . . and a monastery began to build Botwulf at Icanho.’ (ChronA 654.1)
221+23+18=262 clauses; Table 9.
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Moreover, at least some of the clauses that are syntactically, semantically, and pragmatically well-formed with the two NPs interpreted either as subject and object are disambiguated by discourse context. An example is given in (23), with the two relevant NPs in italics. Obviously, the monks are the object of the pulling rather than the agent.
(23)
Se ylca me sæde, æt Langbearde foron hergiende in Ualeriam a mæg e. a a munecas of æs arwur an mynstre Equities geflugon in æt gebedhus, hi ongunnon teon ut a munecas & hi todrifon urh manegu tintregu. & eac sume mid heora swurdum acwealdon. The same me said, that Lombards went plundering in Valeria the country. When the monks from the honourable monastery Equitius fled into the chapel, they began pull out the monks and them destroyed with many torments. And also some with their swords killed. ‘The same man said to me that the Lombards went plundering in the country of Valeria. When the monks fled from the monastery of the honourable Equitius into the chapel, they [the Lombards] began to pull ut the monks, and destroyed them with many torments, and also killed some with their swords.’ (GDC1,GD_1_[C]:4.42.25.388–391)
It is clear that there are relatively few clauses in which all cues for the assignment of grammatical function are absent; Mitchell (1985; xx9–11) makes this point about clauses with finite main verbs. Although functional effects may have had an influence on word order, it is unlikely that they were the driving force behind the increase in the frequency of VO during the Old English period, when the case system still existed despite some syncretism of forms.
5. Syntactic explanations of the effect of case-marking on the position of objects In this section I discuss the Old English analysis of Roberts (1997).10 Following Kayne (1994), Roberts proposes that all syntactic structure is uniformly head-initial, with complements to the left of heads derived by movement. Overt movement is triggered by strong features of functional heads. In the data under consideration here, the strong feature is the case feature of the functional head AgrO. Objects move overtly to Spec,AgrOP to check case, as shown in (24):
(24)
10
he ne mæg [AgrOP [his agene]i [AgrO’ AgrO [VP aberan ti ]] he neg can his own support ‘He cannot support his own.’ (CP 52.2)
Because of space constraints, this section is necessarily brief. For a full discussion of Roberts (1997) see Pintzuk (2002).
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Objects can escape case checking, and therefore overt leftward movement, by being focused. In clauses with focused objects, there is no overt movement out of the lowest VP, as shown in (25):
(25)
u hafast [AgrOP [AgrO’ AgrO [VP gecoren one wer ]] you have chosen the man ‘You have chosen the man.’ (ApT 23.1)
Roberts analyses the change from OV to VO in early Middle English as a change in the strength of the case feature of AgrO from strong to weak, eliminating overt movement to Spec,AgrOP. He hypotheses that weak features are assumed by language learners in the absence of explicit evidence to the contrary in the primary linguistic data. During the Old English period, the trigger for the acquisition of a strong AgrO feature was both morphological (case marking on NPs) and syntactic (numerous instances of OV order). In Early Middle English, however, the morphological case system broke down, resulting in the loss of the morphological trigger for acquisition of the strong feature; in addition, VO orders in the primary linguistic data weakened the syntactic trigger. Since the weak feature is the default, and was also confirmed by the data, the strong feature on AgrO was lost, which resulted in the loss of OV order. Roberts’ analysis thus links the position of the object in Old English to casemarking requirements and focus, and explains the change from OV to VO by the collapse of the case system in Middle English and the effect of that collapse on language acquisition. His analysis predicts that verb-object order in Old English is determined exclusively by focus; the order of verbs and their objects should vary but not show any particular chronological trend. But this prediction is not correct: as was shown in Table 1 in Section 2, the rate of postverbal objects increases during the Old English period. An analysis that ties the position of objects only to case marking and focus cannot account for this increase.
6. Implications and conclusions I have shown in this article that morphological case in Old English has no effect on the position of objects with respect to the non-finite main verb, either in terms of functional pressures resulting from case ambiguity, or in terms of strong and weak features linked to overt case-marking. Morphological case cannot be used to explain either the variation between OV and VO surface orders during the Old English period or the gradual increase in the frequency of VO order. This should not be a surprising result. Even though changes in both syntax and morphology occurred during approximately the same period in the history of English, we know that these two types of changes are not necessarily connected. In Icelandic, for example, the language changed from OV to VO with no change in overt
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morphological case-marking; and in Dutch, the case system (except for pronouns) was lost entirely without a change from OV to VO. In addition, the position of PP complements with respect to the main verb changes in exactly the same way as the position of NPs (Pintzuk, 1997), lending support to the hypothesis that the change in the position of objects is not directly related to morphological case. Given the results presented here, it becomes difficult to maintain a link between the loss of case morphology and the loss of preverbal objects during the Middle English period. First, we would have to posit two distinct mechanisms to explain the decrease in frequency of preverbal objects during the Old English period and their final loss in Middle English. This is of course a possible scenario, but one to be used only in the case of clear evidence for each of the two mechanisms. Second, the existence of preverbal objects does not terminate abruptly with the loss of the case system in Early Middle English, but continues, albeit at a low frequency, throughout the Middle English period (Foster and van der Wurff, 1995, 1997; van der Wurff, 1997, 1999; Pintzuk and Taylor, 2001). These results suggest that a different and uniform explanation must be found for the gradual decrease and eventual loss of OV order in the history of English.
Acknowledgements Earlier versions of sections of this article were presented at the Tenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics at the University of Manchester in August 1998; at the Staff-Student Seminar, Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York in January 1999; and at the Sixth Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference at the University of Maryland in May 2000. I thank members of those audiences, particularly David Adger, Eric Haeberli, Jairo Nunes, and Anthony Warner, for suggestions and helpful discussion; I thank Anthony for comments on an earlier written version. All errors and misunderstandings remain my own responsibility.
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