Studies in Middle English Linguistics 9783110814194, 9783110152425

Table of contents :
Preface
The development of an “impersonal” verb in Middle English: The case of behoove
Double trouble: Geminate versus simplex graphs in the Ormulum
Language and style in additions to The Canterbury Tales
The Middle English creolization hypothesis revisited
Infinitive marking in Late Middle English: Transitivity and changes in the English system of case
From syntax to discourse: The function of object-verb order in Late Middle English
Words in -ate and the history of English stress
Assessing the relative status of languages in medieval Ireland
Using the future to predict the past: Old English dialectology in the light of Middle English place-names
When did Middle English begin? Later than you think!
The Old English Anglian/Saxon boundary revisited
Stress, survival and change: Old to Middle English
Against the emergence of the nuclear stress rule in Middle English
#NAME?
Concessive clauses in Chaucer’s prose
Middle English nonrestrictive expository apposition with an explicit marker
On the beginning and development of the begin to construction
The Peterborough Chronicle diphthongs
Middle English phonetics: A systematic survey including notes on Irish and Welsh loanwords
Quasi-impersonal verbs in Old and Middle English
Like father (un)like son: A sociolinguistic approach to the language of the Cely family
Whatever happened to the Middle English indefinite pronouns?
Mutation, variation and selection in phonological evolution: A sketch based on the case of Late Middle English a > au/_l{C/#}
Handmade tales: The implications of linguistic variation in two early manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Middle (and Old) English prerequisites for the Great Vowel Shift
Exclamations in Late Middle English
Index of names
Index of subjects

Citation preview

Studies in Middle English Linguistics

W DE G

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 103

Editor

Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Studies in Middle English Linguistics

edited by

Jacek Fisiak

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

1997

Mouton de Gruyter (formerly Mouton, The Hague) is a Division of Walter de Gruyter & Co., Berlin.

© Printed on acid-free paper which falls within the guidelines of the ANSI to ensure permanence and durability.

Library of Congress

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Studies in Middle English linguistics / edited by Jacek Fisiak. p. cm. - (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 103) Includes papers presented at an international conference on Middle English held in Poland, Apr. 13-16, 1994. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. ISBN 3-11-015242-8 (acid-free paper) I.English language - Middle English. 1100-1500 History. 2. Great Britain - Civilization - 1066-1485. 3. Civilization, Medieval. I. Fisiak, Jacek. II. Series. PE525.S77 1997 427'.02—dc21 97-11738 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek —

Cataloging-in-Publication-Data

Studies in Middle English linguistics / ed. by Jacek Fisiak. Berlin ; New York : Mouton de Gruyter, 1997 (Trends in linguistics : Studies and monographs ; 103) ISBN 3-11-015242-8

© Copyright 1997 by Walter de Gruyter & Co., D-10785 Berlin All rights reserved, including those of translation into foreign languages. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Typesetting and printing: Arthur Collignon GmbH, Berlin. Binding: Lüderitz & Bauer, Berlin. Printed in Germany.

To Angus Mcintosh Tauno Mustanoja Michael L. Samuels

Preface

In 1992 when I was preparing a paper for the conference on English Historical Linguistics in Valencia (Fisiak 1994) I discovered that the concept of "Middle English", as we by and large understand it now, was formulated simultaneously and independently by Henry Sweet and Julius Zupitza in 1874. Therefore, I thought that in 1994 we could properly celebrate the 120th birthday of Middle English by organizing an international conference. This idea was received with enthusiasm. With substantial financial assistance from the Polish Ministry of National Education and A. Mickiewicz University, Poznan, eighty-six scholars from four continents met for four days at a castle sixty miles south-east of Poznan for a fruitful conference from April 13 to 16, 1994. A large number of papers was submitted and eighty per cent of them were presented. Most, though not all, have been included in the present volume in addition to a few papers which have been solicited especilly. Fourteen papers appear in Fisiak, J. ed. 1996. Middle English miscellany. Poznan: Motivex. The conference ended with a resolution to treat this as the first in a cycle of Middle English conferences which would take place every three years. Professor Matti Rissanen, on behalf of Helsinki University, volunteered to host the second conference in what is now one of the strongest Middle English centres. The concept of Middle English, although unquestionably accepted for over 120 years, as it stands now is a fuzzy one, full of arbitrary and controversial elements, beginning with its chronological delimitation and ontological status (for more details see Fisiak 1994) and ending with the numerous problems of the interpretation of phonological (e. g., stress, OSL, GVS), grammatical, and semantic details. The papers included in this volume cover a wide spectrum of questions presented from the point of view of linguistic paradigms and address a number of controversial issues. Apart from purely theoretical and abstract contibution the reader will also find more traditional data-oriented treatments. We hope that the volume as a whole represents a successful attempt to move Middle English studies a step forward and will be appreciated by students of Middle English from both hemispheres.

viii

Preface

The success of the conference and, mutatis mutandis, its result as evidenced by this volume were possible because of the enthusiasm was also shared by the organizers, in particular the conference secretary, Mrs. Katarzyna Rogalinska, who skilfully handled all the administrative duties. It is a pleasure to express here my words of thanks and appreciation for her devotion and efficiency. Poznan, April 1995

Jacek Fisiak

References Fernando, Francisco et al. (eds.) 1992 English historical linguistics 1992. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Fisiak, Jacek 1994 "Linguistic reality of Middle English" in: Fernando et al. (eds.), 4 7 - 6 1 .

Contents

Preface The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English: The case of behoove Cynthia L. Allen

vii

1

Double trouble: Geminate versus simplex graphs in the Ormulum John Anderson—Derek Br it ton

23

Language and style in additions to The Canterbury Tales Norman F. Blake

59

The Middle English creolization hypothesis revisited Andrei Danchev f

79

Infinitive marking in Late Middle English: Transitivity and changes in the English system of case Olga Fischer 109 From syntax to discourse: The function of object-verb order in Late Middle English Tony Foster— Wim van der Wurff

135

Words in -ate and the history of English stress Piotr Gqsiorowski

157

Assessing the relative status of languages in medieval Ireland Raymond Hickey

181

Using the future to predict the past: Old English dialectology in the light of Middle English place-names Richard M. Hogg 207

X

Contents

When did Middle English begin? Later than you think! Peter R. Kitson

221

The Old English Anglian/Saxon boundary revisited Gillis Kristensson

271

Stress, survival and change: Old to Middle English Christopher B. McCully

283

Against the emergence of the nuclear stress rule in Middle English Donka Minkova-Robert R Stockwell

301

-wg-constructions in Middle English Lilo Moessner

335

Concessive clauses in Chaucer's prose Rafal Molencki

351

Middle English nonrestrictive expository apposition with an explicit marker Saara Nevanlinna—Päivi Pahta

373

On the beginning and development of the begin to construction Michiko Ogura

403

The Peterborough Chronicle diphthongs Betty S. Phillips

429

Middle English phonetics: A systematic survey including notes on Irish and Welsh loanwords Herbert Pilch 439 Quasi-impersonal verbs in Old and Middle English George G. Pocheptsov

469

Like father (un)like son: A sociolinguistic approach to the language of the Cely family Helena Raumolin-Brunberg- Terttu Nevalainen 489 Whatever happened to the Middle English indefinite pronouns? Matti Rissanen

513

Contents

xi

Mutation, variation and selection in phonological evolution: A sketch based on the case of Late Middle English a > au/_l{C/#} Nikolaus Ritt 531 Handmade tales: The implications of linguistic variation in two early manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Jeremy J. Smith 551 Middle (and Old) English prerequisites for the Great Vowel Shift Albertas Steponavicius

561

Exclamations in Late Middle English Irma Taavitsainen

573

Index of names

609

Index of subjects

617

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English: the case of behoove* Cynthia L. Allen

1. Introduction English has undergone some sweeping and general syntactic changes in its history, such as the fixing of constituent order, and such changes have been the primary focus of attention by theoretically-oriented modernday investigators of diachronic syntax. But while studies of such general changes are extremely important, our understanding of how a language's syntax can change will never be complete if we restrict our attention to general syntactic changes, and do not look also at changes to the syntax of particular words. In this paper, I want to take a look at how the semantics and syntax of one particular verb, namely behoove (Brit, behove),1 changes in the Early Middle English period. From close examination of the history of individual verbs of this sort, we can increase our understanding of how the assignment of semantic roles to grammatical roles in a language can change. In Middle English, behoove was one of the verbs which are usually called "impersonal". As has often been noted, this is a rather unfortunate term which is used in several different ways. Sometimes the term is restricted to verbs which have no NP which plays the role of subject, such as weather verbs in many languages (e. g., Spanish llueve 'it's raining'). Many linguists would use the term in a broader sense, for sentences which no one would consider "subjectless", such as (1): (1)

Lareow, ne ofpingd hit de gif ic pus wer geceose? Teacher, not regrets it thee if I thus man choose? Teacher, doesn't it bother you if I choose a husband in this way?' (ApT 20.6)

Here, there is a subject (hit), but this subject has no independent reference. The term "impersonal" is sometimes even extended to sentences such as (2), where there is what looks like a normal, meaningful subject:2

2

(2)

Cynthia L. Allen

ac gode ne licode na heora geleafleast, ne but God(D) not liked neither their faithlessness(N) nor heora ceorung their murmuring(N) 'But neither their lack of faith or their murmuring was pleasing to God.' (JE Horn 21 68)

Here, the reason for calling the construction "impersonal" is that the NP which gets nominative case is not (typically) human, rather the human NP gets non-nominative case (dative in this instance). It is convenient to have labels other than "human" and "non-human" for the NPs involved in these constructions, and so I will use labels based on the typical semantics of the "impersonal" verbs. Many (but by no means all) of these "impersonal" verbs are verbs of emotion, and a convenient label for the experiencer of the emotion is "Experiencer". I will use this label to refer to the typically human argument of the "impersonal" verbs, even when this label is questionable as a true designation of the semantic role of this argument; this is the case, for example, with behoove, where it is questionable whether the human NP is experiencing anything at all. I will refer to the other argument (which is usually, but not always, non-human) as the Theme. We can say that the reason for including examples such as (2) in our treatment of "impersonal" constructions is that they are similar to constructions which are more strictly impersonal in that the Experiencer is not treated as an ordinary nominative subject. A further reason for extending the term "impersonal" to these constructions in which there is a subject is that they often involve verbs which are also used in constructions which have no nominative NP, as in (3): (3)

Licad pe nu... pcet ic ne mceg etan...l likes thee now that I not may eat? 'Is it your pleasure now that I not be able to eat?' (GD 1(C) 9.70.2)

Since these verbs have typically undergone similar changes in the construction with two NPs as in the one with no nominative NP, it is convenient to have one term to talk about this class of verbs, and so I will use the term "impersonal" as a cover term to refer to any construction in which the Experiencer NP is either clearly in a non-nominative case but

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English

3

nevertheless preposed3 or looks like an ordinary object in being postposed (especially postverbal), whether it has clear non-nominative case marking or is ambiguous as to case. However, because it is important to distinguish between "impersonal" constructions in which the Experiencer behaves like a normal object in all respects and ones in which the Experiencer combines objective case marking with the position normally reserved for a subject, I will make a distinction between preposed and postposed Experiencers when such a distinction is relevant. The disappearance of the impersonal constructions with a preposed non-nominative Experiencer has been the subject of a great deal of interest, both by earlier students of the history of English syntax and by laterday more theoretically-oriented syntacticians; this topic has recently received attention from Butler (1977), Lightfoot (1979, 1981, 1988, and 1991), Elmer (1981), Fischer and van der Leek (1983 and 1987), Allen (1986), and Ogura (1986), to name but a few. Most of these works incorporate in some modern framework the view, expounded by Jespersen (1927: § 11.2) and van der Gaaf (1904), that the disappearance of these impersonal constructions was largely due to the decline of the case-marking system of English, which often made the preposed Experiencers ambiguous as to case marking and liable to reanalysis as the subject. However, the history of behoove causes some interesting problems for the view that the history of the impersonal verbs is essentially a story of the loss of preposed non-nominative Experiencers when the major case distinctions of English were lost. The fact is that behofian does not seem to have been an impersonal verb in any sense at all in Old English; the earliest examples of it used as an "impersonal" verb date from the twelfth century. I will document this claim in Section 2. In Section 3 I discuss the syntax and semantics of bihoven in the twelfth (Section 3.1) and early thirteenth (Section 3.2) centuries and demonstrate that the verb had truly joined the ranks of the "impersonal" verbs by this period. My conclusions are summarized in Section 4.

2. Behofian in Old English Behoove is a little-used verb in current English, and most speakers will be familiar with it only from writing. But insofar as it is used at all, the Experiencer of the verb is always the object, and the subject is a "dummy" it, with an extraposed infinitival clause, as in it behooves us to

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proceed cautiously. But the etymon of this verb, behofian, was quite different in its syntax and semantics in Old English. In Old English, this verb meant 'to need', and the needer was in the nominative case. The Oxford English Dictionary {OED), after listing variant forms of the verb through the centuries (in the entry behove, behoove v.) and mentioning that the form is cognate with Dutch behoeven, indicates that the literal meaning of the verb is 'to be of behoof or use'. This is somewhat unfortunate because it may give the impression that even at the Old English stage the Experiencer of this verb was some sort of object (although no Old English examples are given which would support this interpretation). The fact is, however, that no examples are to be found in manuscripts from before the twelfth century of behofian used with a clear nonnominative Experiencer in either poetry or prose.4 Instead, the Experiencer, when it was expressed, was always in the nominative case. This statement needs some elaboration in view of the fact that Mitchell (1985: § 1092) states that OE behofian could be either personal, meaning 'to have need of' or impersonal, meaning 'behove, concern, s. o. (dat.)'. I have checked every non-gloss entry of behofian (and its conjugated forms) in Healey and Venezky's (1981) Concordance to Old English but have not found a single example of this verb used with a dative Experiencer in an Old English manuscript. It is possible that Mitchell was including the interlinear glosses which I have excluded for the reasons outlined in footnote 4. It is also possible that Mitchell was thinking of examples like (4): (4)

we nabbad na mare ponne us selfum behofad we not-have no more than us self(D) behooves(SG) 'We do not have any more than we ourselves need' ChomS 48 (TristrApp 3) 18)

While this example is included in Healey and Venezky's Concordance, it in fact comes from MS CCCC 303, dated s. xii2 by Ker (1957: no. 57, art. 39). As we shall see below, manuscripts from the twelfth century had dative5 Experiencers with behoove quite regularly, and twelfth-century copies of texts of Old English composition sometimes substituted a dative Experiencer for a nominative. It is surely significant that all of the (nongloss) "Old English" examples in Healy and Venezky's Concordance are in fact from twelfth-century manuscripts.6 We must exclude all twelfthcentury manuscripts if we want to get a true picture of Old English syntax, although of course such manuscripts are extremely valuable for

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English

5

purposes of comparison. There is no knowing whether the scribe(s) changed the syntax of the original, and in some cases where we have an Old English version it is quite clear that syntactic and morphological changes have been made by the twelfth-century version. For this reason, the examples which Bosworth—Toller and the Supplement to BosworthToller give as "impersonal" must also be excluded for Old English, as they all are either from twelfth-century manuscripts (such as the Peterborough chronicle) or are from interlinear glosses. As mentioned above, behofian in Old English had a meaning of necessity. When two NPs were expressed, the Experiencer was in the nominative case, and the Theme was either genitive (as in (5)—(8)) or (much more rarely) accusative, as in (9)7: (5)

se hlaford heora behofad the Lord(N) them(G) needs 'The Lord needs them' OECHom I, 14.1 206.12)

(6)

Micel wund behofad micles Icecedomes great wound(N) needs great leechcraft(G) Ά large wound requires major medicine' (Bede 4 26.350.19)

(7)

ponne ge min behofiad, ponne ic helpe eow when you(N) my(G) need then I help you 'When you need me, then I will help you.' OELS (Basil) 375)

(8)

we ne behofiad nanes eorplices bigleofan we(N) not need-PL no(G) earthly sustenance 'We will not need any earthly sustenance.' (iECHom I, 19 270.29)

(9)

swa mare wund, swa heo maran Icecedom so greater wound, so it(FN) greater leechdom(A) behofad needs 'The greater the wound, the more medical treatment it needs.' OECHom I, 33 496.30)

It was also possible for the Theme to be in the form of a clause, again with a nominative Experiencer:

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Cynthia L. Allen

(10)

we behofigad dcet we gemunen, hu micel he for us we need, that we remember how much he for us geprowode suffered 'We must remember how much he suffered for us.' (Horn U 8 (VercHom 2))

Examples of this sort with a sentential complement seem to have been considerably less frequent in Old English than sentences with two NPs; I have found only 9 pre-twelfth-century examples with a sentential complement 8 in the Concordance, compared with 50 examples in which two NPs are expressed (I am excluding here the numerous examples in which one NP is missing because of relativization, coordinate subject deletion, etc.). The clause is usually tensed, as in (10), but there is 1 example with an infinitival clause. Two more points should be made about these examples with a sentential complement. First, the Experiencer is expressed in each of these examples; this contrasts with the Middle English situation (see below). However, given the small number of Old English examples, it is impossible to be certain the lack of examples without an expressed Experiencer is not simply a data gap. The second point is that although most of the sentential examples could be translated into Modern English using 'need', it seems likely that there was more of a meaning of obligation than true necessity when a sentential complement was used. The verb need does not seem the most appropriate as a translation of jEHom 9 46 And pass behofad se cyning poet he clypige to his witum, which seems better translated as 'and for this reason the king ought to call to his counsellors'. The further development of the meaning of obligation or fittingness is discussed below. There are also a very few examples (I have noted 3 of them) in which the Theme is the only argument expressed. In this situation it was nominative: (11)

in eallum dingum behofad gesceadwisnesse9 in all things behooves discretion 'Discretion is necessary in all things.' (Conf. 1.1 (Spindler) 28)

All the examples of this pattern come from rather late (eleventh-century) manscripts. It is impossible to be certain whether this usage was a late

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English

7

development or simply unusual, since the majority of extant Old English manuscripts do in fact belong to this later period. But the important point here is that the Theme appears in the nominative case in the Old English period only when no Experiencer is expressed.

3. Bihoven in Early Middle English 10 3.1. The twelfth century In Early Middle English we find a very different situation. The first examples of a non-nominative Experiencer are found in manuscripts of the early twelfth century. It is of considerable interest to note that the Experiencer of bihoven was always non-nominative (or ambiguous but capable of being construed as non-nominative) in the few examples from texts of twelfth-century composition. Some examples are given below: (12)

alswa micel swa heom behofed as much as them(D) behooves 'as much as is suitable for them' (Ch 1110 (Harm 62))

(13)

Nu hem behofed Christes helpeu now them(D) behooves Christ's help 'Now they need Christ's help!' (ChronE (Plummer) 1131.41)

On the other hand, in examples which are copies (or probably copies) of Old English compositions, we find that the Experiencer is sometimes nominative, as in (14), and sometimes non-nominative, as in (15) and (16):12 (14)

for pan mancynn behofed godcundre lare for that mankind(N) behooves godly(G) learning(G) 'because mankind needs godly learning' (LS 28 (Neot) l) 13 )

(15)

and us bi-houed leche and us(D) behooves leech 'and we need a doctor' (Lamb. Horn 4, 63.153)

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Cynthia L. Allen

(16)

swa us behofede as us(D) behooved 'as we needed to do' or 'as we ought to have done' (Warner 149.16)

Example (16) is particularly interesting because we have an earlier version of it (from a manuscript of the end of the tenth century or beginning of the eleventh)14 which has the nominative Experiencer expected of Old English: (17)

swa we behofedon as we(N) needed(PL) (iECHom I, 10 156.11)

It is quite clear that scribes of the twelfth century sometimes substituted a non-nominative Experiencer for an earlier nominative. But since we also frequently find a nominative Experiencer in texts which were probably twelfth-century copies of Old English texts, it appears that scribes sometimes left an original nominative and sometimes replaced it with a dative. Since we have no examples from original compositions of the twelfth century of a clearly nominative Experiencer, it seems quite possible that the situation at this time was that the non-nominative Experiencer was most natural to the scribes, and this is what they would use when composing. The nominative Experiencer probably sounded old-fashioned by this time, but would frequently be retained by a faithful copyist. To summarize, such evidence as is available suggests that the Experiencer of behoove was normally non-nominative by the early twelfth century. It appears that the use of the non-nominative Experiencer began in the late eleventh century. I have not found any examples of a non-nominative Experiencer from a manuscript of the eleventh century; however, I know of one example from a twelfth-century manuscript which is suggestive that the shift to non-nominative Experiencers had begun by the end of the eleventh century. This is an example from the Peterborough chronicle entry for the year 1093: (18)

& into Englelonde hergende mid mare unrcede pone & into England harrying with more recklessness than him a behofode him(D) ever behooved 'and harrying into England with more recklessness than he should have' (ChronE (Plummer) 1093.20)

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of an "impersonal"

verb in Middle English

9

This example presumably falls into the category of a later copy, since the entries before 1131 in the Peterborough chronicle are all in one hand. 15 However, the retention of a nominative Experiencer of behoove in the entry for 1006 (line 15) & tilode him par cegwher pees pe hi behofden 'and provided themselves everywhere with what they needed' suggests that this scribe, generally a faithful copyist, would have retained a nominative had it been in his exemplar. So it seems likely that whoever composed the 1093 entry already used non-nominative Experiencers. It is clear from the examples given so far that bihoven was still used with a sense of necessity at this time. It was not only still used with this meaning in copies of earlier texts, but also in original compositions, as illustrated by (13). However, there is evidence that the semantic shift towards the modern meaning of 'appropriateness" had begun. Consider example (19): (19)

pan alden behouad dirjende peawas the(D) old(D) behoove(Pl) virtuous customs(N) 'Virtuous customs are appropriate to the old' or 'The old ought to have virtuous customs.' (Lamb. hom. x, p. 109.22)

Interestingly, behouad replaces Kline's original gedafeniad 'are fitting' here: (20)

pä ealden gedafeniad dirjende peawas (Morris OEH I Appendix 2, 300.2)

The fact that the scribe thought it appropriate to make this substitution indicates that bihoven no longer necessarily involved necessity, but could be used to indicate moral obligation. We saw above that this meaning already seems to have appeared with sentential complements in Old English. 3.2. The thirteenth century By the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth century, original English texts had become considerably more abundant than was true for the twelfth century, and we can draw conclusions with more certainty. In the thirteenth century texts studied here, I have found no examples at all of clearly nominative Experiencers with behove, either in the construction in which two NPs were expressed or with a sentential complement.16

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Cynthia L. Allen

It is interesting to note that the use of sentential complements with this verb seems to have been on the increase by this time, foreshadowing the complete loss of the construction with two NPs in the early Modern English period.17 In the thirteenth-century texts studied here, I have found 16 examples with an expressed sentential complement, but only 9 examples with two expressed NPs. 18 Another difference from Old English is that we now find examples in which there is a sentential complement but no Experiencer is expressed, as in (21): (21)

Bihofde nawt poet sxvuch were leafdi of castel behooved not that such were lady of castle 'It would not be fitting that a lady of a castle were like that.' (AW 58.7)

(21) is interesting also because it gives clear evidence of the semantic shift towards 'appropriateness' rather than 'necessity'. We still find examples at this time with a clear meaning of necessity, such as (22): (22)

pat him bihofde bead of blod that him behooved bath of blod 'that he needed a bath of blood' (AW 201.28)

However, there can be little doubt that examples like (21) indicate a shift away from the earlier meaning. This shift from 'necessity' to 'appropriateness' or 'fittingness' is an interesting one but seems quite natural. The word necessity covers a large semantic range. In particular, something can be necessary to a person either because of the nature of the person (people need food, etc.) or because of social conventions and the like. Thus we can make a distinction between 'internally generated necessity' and 'externally generated necessity'. In Old English, behofian seems to have focused on necessity which stemmed from the nature of the Experiencer. In Middle English, there seems to have been a shift towards necessity which is externally imposed. It is a short step from 'externally imposed necessity' to 'obligation' and another short step from 'obligation' to 'highly desirable' or 'fitting'. This semantic shift seems closely related to the syntactic shift, because it is to be expected that an NP is more likely to get nominative case marking when it is the primary focus of the sentence, and to get object case marking when it is depicted as being affected by something else

The development

of an "impersonal"

verb in Middle English

11

which is the primary focus. One might expect, therefore, that the syntactic change was caused by a semantic shift towards an emphasis on the external nature of the necessity or obligation. However, the fact is that the morpho-syntactic shift seems to have been complete at a time when the semantic shift was just in its beginnings and when the old meaning was still very much current. Another reason not to attempt to explain the morpho-syntactic change purely as a result of a semantic change is that this syntactic change took place with what must be considered nearly breathtaking rapidity, since non-nominative Experiencers were only introduced in the late eleventh century (as far as we can tell) but had already swept the field by the early thirteenth century. I have argued elsewhere (Allen 1986 and 1995) that some changes in the assignment of semantic roles to syntactic roles are best understood as having been caused primarily by semantic changes. For example, it seems plausible that the replacement of the original object Experiencer with like by a subject Experiencer was to a large extent caused by the fact that the meaning of the verb had shifted in a way which made the Experiencer more prominent than the Theme. However, changes of this sort normally take a long time to complete, with centuries of variation between the older construction and the newer one. The change with bihoven does not fit this pattern and looks more cataclysmic. We can get some insight into why the change would have been accomplished so rapidly when we realize that behofian was in fact a rather anomalous verb in Old English. Consider the frames that this verb was found in:19 (23)

Experiencer (EXP) NOM NOM

Theme (TH) GEN ACC NOM

Now behofian seems to have been unique in having this particular combination of frames. It is not particularly unusual for the Theme argument to alternate between being some sort of object if there is another argument or the subject if it is the sole argument. It is also not particularly unusual for a Theme to alternate between genitive and nominative case. Such an alternation is found with the "impersonal" verb oflireowan 'to feel pity, regret'. This verb is found in five different case-marking frames. The Theme can be genitive, with an Experiencer in the nominative or the dative case. Example (24) has a nominative Experiencer and a genitive

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Theme, and (25) has a dative Experiencer and a genitive Theme. It was also possible for the Experiencer to occur alone, either as a nominative NP or as a dative one, as in (26). Finally, it was possible for the Theme to be nominative, and the Experiencer to be dative, as in (27). (24)

hwcet pa se moessepreost pas mannes oflireow lo then the(N) mass-priest the(G) man-(G) pitied 'Then the priest felt sorry for the man' (,ELS (Oswald) 262)

(25)

for di him oflireow pees mannes for that him(D) pitied the(G) man(G) 'He felt sorry for the man for this reason.' OECHom 1, 13 192.16)

(26)

ac Gode oflireow da and hrade eweed but God-DAT pitied then and immediately said 'But God took pity then, and quickly said ...' (iELS (Pr Moses) 255)

(27)

pat him oflireow pat astepede wif that him pitied that bereaved woman 'that the bereaved woman moved him to pity' or 'that he felt sorry for the bereaved woman' (GD 1(H) 4.18.9)

So behofian was like ofhreowan in allowing its Theme to be either nominative or genitive, but it was different in an important way. The Theme never occurred as the only argument with ofhreowan·, if only one argument was expressed, it was the Experiencer. This meant that a nominative Theme always co-occurred with a dative Experiencer. And it appears to be a fact that except for behofian, no verb selected for an argument which was either nominative or genitive in case without having another argument in the dative case as a possibility. That is, the implication in (28) normally held: (28)

Nomxh and Genrh : Dat E X P

If the Theme could be either nominative or genitive, is was usually possible for the Experiencer to be dative. My suggestion is that bihoven was remodelled on the analogy of more typical verbs which were similar to bihoven in selecting for an obligatory Theme and an optional Experiencer. Verbs fitting this description normally

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English

13

did not allow the Theme to be genitive; rather it was nominative, and the Experiencer was dative. Lician 'to please' and losian 'to perish, become lost to' were verbs of this sort. As examples (29) and (32) show, both of these verbs could appear with a Theme alone, as well as with an Experiencer. (29)

gif hi gode ne liciad if they-NOM God(D) not please 'if they do not please God' OECHom II, 33 252.90)

(30)

he sceal tilian öaet he licige he shall care that he please 'He must make an effort to please.' (CP 19.147.13)

(31)

ac him losode an sceap but him lost a sheep 'But a sheep became lost to him' or 'But he lost a sheep.' OECHom I, 24 338.27)

(32)

his sawul losad his soul(N) perishes 'His soul will perish.' OECHom I, 6.90.31)

So these verbs were found in these case frames: (33)

Experiencer 1. DAT 2. -

Theme NOM NOM

This case frame, in which the Experiencer is dative and the Theme is nominative, is precisely the one that we find for bihoven in Middle English. The apparent abruptness of the remodelling of bihoven on the analogy of verbs such as this is not really surprising when we consider that behofian was anomalous in its valency in Old English. What is perhaps more surprising is that the anomalous situation ever developed in the first place. Possibly this happened becuase the verb could originally be used in either a causative sense ('to make use of') which called for a nominative Theme, or an intransitive sense ('to be useful') in which the single argument was naturally the subject. It seems likely that the object of the causative verb was originally accusative, but a genitive developed

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with the 'need' meaning because genitive case was typically used when the object was desired but not necessarily attained (girnan 'to yearn for' and wilnian 'to desire, ask for' also took the NOM GEN frame, but the Theme was never used as the single argument). The retention of the nominative for the human argument from the old causative use and the nominative non-human argument from the intransitive use would then account for the patterns. This is of course speculative. But however the different case frames arose, it seems probable that such an unusual pattern would be liable to remodelling, and that once any speakers began using a more usual pattern, this would be likely to spread rapidly. And while it does not seem likely that the semantic shift which was beginning to take place at this time was enough yet to have caused the morphosyntactic change on its own, nevertheless it does seem probable that the semantic shift made the syntactic change easier to accomplish, because the verb was now beginning to be used in a meaning highly compatible with a nominative Theme and a non-nominative Experiencer. It is of interest to note that the state of case marking in a given dialect of Early Middle English does not seem to relate in any way to how bihoven was used; whenever the case marking was clear (i.e., whenever the Experiencer was a declinable pronoun), the case was universally nonnominative. Thus we find the "impersonal" usage in texts like the Vices and Virtues, in which the case-marking system is essentially intact, as well as in the texts of the Katherine Group, in which the case-marking categories had undergone radical changes: (34)

pies ilke dradnesse us behoued this same dread us behooves 'This same dread is necessary for us.' (V&V 63.8)

Thus it does not seem to be plausible that the rise of impersonal bihoven is related to the loss of case-marking in some way.

4. Conclusion The history of behoove is interesting in several respects. For one thing, it offers an interesting case-history of a semantic change from 'to need' to 'be fitting, appropriate'. Well-documented studies of semantic changes of this magnitude are crucial to increasing our understanding of semantic change.

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English

15

The syntactic changes which this verb has undergone are of no less interest. Theoretically-oriented syntacticians interested in the loss of the "impersonal" constructions in English typically related this change to the loss of case-marking morphology in the Middle English period. Important details of the proposed analyses vary, but the basic idea is that the obsolescence of the "impersonal" constructions followed hard on the heels of the loss of major case-marking distinctions, and that ambiguously-marked preposed Experiencers were liable to be reanalyzed as subjects. Bihoven is quite interesting in this regard because it furnishes one piece of evidence that the impersonal constructions were far from obsolescent in the period right after the relevant case-marking distinctions had been lost.20 Bihoven was in fact by no means the only verb which began to be used "impersonally" in Early Middle English; in addition to impersonal verbs borrowed from Scandinavian, some other native English verbs first occur with a non-nominative Experiencer in Early Middle English. For example, purfan 'to need', 'be obliged to' is never found with a non-nominative Experiencer in Old English, except when a non-nominative Experiencer occurs because the complement verb was impersonal, e.g., Horn S 4 (Foerst VercHom9) poet us ponne ne dürfe sceamian 'that we need not be ashamed then'. However, in Early Middle English, this verb sometimes was used with a non-nominative Experiencer which cannot be attributed to the complement verb, as in Orm 12886 Ne parrfjuw nohht nu folfcenn me 'it is not necessary for you to follow me now'. For a discussion of other verbs which were first used 'impersonally' in the Early Middle English period, see Allen (1995: Section 6.2.1). I believe that the increase in the non-nominative Experiencer was semantically motivated. It seems plausible that the reason why the verbs of emotion so frequently had non-nominative Experiencers was that this was a useful way of showing that the Experiencer was not in control of the situation, i. e., not agentive. The increase in non-nominative Experiencers in Early Middle English can be explained if we assume that at this time there was a tendency to extend non-nominative case to subjects which were not agents. Thus we get nonnominative subjects with modal verbs like purfen which talk about necessity over which the human argument had no control. However, it must be noted that the shift to non-nominative Experiencers with bihoven appears to have taken place a bit before the appearance of non-nominative Experiencers with other verbs, and furthermore bihoven was the only verb with which the non-nominative Experiencer took over completely, so far as I am aware.

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I am not suggesting that formal analyses which treat the disappearance of the impersonal constructions as the result of some change of parameter setting cannot be made to incorporate such facts. However, what is quite clear is that no wholesale change of parameter settings which made the impersonal constructions impossible to generate took place immediately after the loss of the case-marking distinctions, since these impersonal constructions were productive for quite a long time after this event. Any analysis cast in terms of parameter settings must deal somehow with this fact. Furthermore, the syntactic history of individual verbs becomes less mysterious when we consider the way that syntax and semantics interact; only by looking at the meaning of the individual "impersonal" verbs can we have any hope of explaining why some ended up with a subject Experiencer (e. g., like) and some now have an object Experiencer (e. g., please). Finally, the story of behoove illustrates an important methodological point for the study of Old English and Middle English syntax. No competent scholar working on the phonology of these periods would dream of ignoring the fact that a copy of a text made 50 years after the composition of that text was unlikely to represent the phonology of the earlier text very accurately. But when it comes to syntax, highly competent scholars quite commonly ignore the distinction between date of composition and date of the manuscript, as though intervening scribes were unlikely to tamper with the syntax. For example, Visser (1963) quite regularly cites the date of his examples without making this distinction, and it turns out that the dates generally refer to the date of composition of the original text, rather than to that of the manuscript. The unwary linguist using this work as a source of examples of earlier English syntax is liable to treat examples from original texts and from copies on a par, but doing so will give a distorted picture of the history of English syntax. It behooves us to know our sources.

Appendix: Texts examined in this study The following is a list of the texts examined for examples of bihoven in Middle English. The texts are listed by the abbreviation which I normally use in citations, although citations are not given here from each of these texts. I have included some information on dates and dialects of the texts. The abbreviation EETS = Early English Text Society. In addition to examining these texts completely, I have also consulted the Middle English dictionary (MED) and the OED for possible examples from other texts of the constructions discussed here.

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English

17

The twelfth century and beginning of the thirteenth century Belfour =

Twelfth century homilies. Edited by A. O. Belfour, EETS 137, 1909. This collection consists entirely of homilies from MS Bodley 343. Cited by page and line number. M.OEH II = Old English homilies of the twelfth century: Second series. Edited by Richard Morris, EETS 53, 1873. All the homilies in this edition are from MS Trinity Β 14.52. Date: s.xiiex, but the composition of at least some of the pieces is Old English. Cited by page and line number. PC = The Peterborough chronicle 1070-1154. Edited by Cecily Clark, 2nd ed. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1970. MS Bodleian Laud Misc. 636. Cited by year and line number. I have also examined pre-1070 entries of this chronicle, using Two of the Saxon chronicles paralleled, edited by Charles Plummer, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1899, rpt. Oxford University Press, 1952. PMor(Lamb) = Poema morale. This poem is found in several MSS, but the MS referred to here is Lambeth Palace 487. The edition used here is the one found in Joseph Hall's Selections from Early Middle English 1130—1250, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1920. Ker (1957: 511) lists it as s.xii/xiii. Cited by line number. Warner = Early English homilies from the twelfth century MS Vesp. D. xiv. Edited by Rubie Warner, EETS 152, 1917. All the pieces in this edition are from MS Cotton Vespasian D. xiv. Date: MS date is a 1150, according to the MED. Cited by page and line number. In addition to these texts, I have examined the homilies found in MS Lambeth 487 (described above for PMor(Lamb)) and MS Cotton Vespasian A. xii. The Vespasian homilies are found in Richard Morris' Old English homilies and homiletic treatises of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, EETS 34, 1868 (abbreviated as M.OEH I'm citations in this paper). These homilies are pp. 217-245. One of these homilies is also edited in Hall, pp. 12-17 (for bibliographical details, see entry for PMor(Lamb)). Date of MS: Ker (1957: 511) dates is as s. xiii1. Date of composition: at least one of these homilies is a copy of one of yElfric's homilies, and the others are also probably of Old English origin.

The thirteenth century AW =

BrutC =

HM =

Orm =

The English text of the "Ancrene riwle": "Ancrene wisse". Edited by J. R. R. Tolkien, EETS 249, 1962. MS Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 402. Date: c 1230, composition somewhat earlier. Dialect: AB (West Midland). Cited by page and line number. La3amon: "Brut". Edited by G. L. Brook and R. F. Leslie, EETS 250 and 277, 1963 and 1978. MS Cotton Caligula A ix. Date: MS date is probably s. xiii2 (Ker 1963: ixff.), but composition is considerably earlier. Dialect: the poem was composed by a parish priest in Worcestshire. The MED has the MS as SW Midlands. Cited by line number. Hali meidhad. Edited by Bella Millett, EETS 284, 1982. MS Bodley 34 (part of the Katherine Group). Date and dialect: see entry for St Kat. Cited by page and line number. The Ormulum: with the notes and glossary of Dr. R. M. White, 2 vols. Edited by Robert Holt, 1878, rpt. New York, AMS Press, 1974. MS Oxford University, Junius I, Bodleian Library 5113. Date: c 1200. Dialect: Northeast Midlands. Cited by line number.

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Cynthia L. Allen

St Jul =

St Kat =

St Marg =

SW = V&V =

Wohunge =

Pe liflade and te passium of Seinte Juliene. Edited by S. R. Τ. O. d'Ardenne, EETS 248, 1961. MS Bodley 34 (part of the Katherine Group). For information on the date and dialect of the MS, see the entry for St Kat. Seinte Katerine. MD Bodley 34 (part of the Katherine Group). Edited by S. R. T. O. d'Ardenne and E. J. Dobson, EETS e. s. 7, 1981. Date of MS: about 1220-1225 (d'Ardenne—Dobson, p. xxxviiiff.). Dialect: AB (West Midland). Cited by page and line. Seinte Marherete. Edited in d'Ardenne The Katherine group edited from MS Bodley 34, Paris, Societe d'Edition 'Les Belles Lettres', 1977. For the date and dialect of this MS, see St Kat entry. Cited by folio number and line. Sawles warde. Edited by d'Ardenne (see entry for St Marg). For the date and dialect of this MS see St Kat entry. Cited by folio number and line. Vices and virtues. Edited by F. Holthausen, EETS 89 and 159, 1888 and 1920. MS Stowe 34. Date: 1200-1225. Composition possibly 1175-1225 (p. 702 of Utley article "Dialogues, Debates, and Catechisms", SeversHartung Manual vol. 7). Dialect: Earlier scholars considered it to be Kentish or Southwestern, but the MED lists it as East Midlands. For a discussion, see the Utley article. Cited by page and line number. Pe Wohunge of ure lauerd. Edited by W. Meredith Thompson, EETS 241, 1958. MS Titus D. xviii. Date: first half thirteenth century; composition post 1200, according to Thompson. The MED dates at a 1250. Dialect: AB + Northeastern.

Notes * I am grateful to my colleagues at the International Conference on the Middle English Language, held 13-16 April 1994 at Rydzyna, Poland, for comments on the version of this paper presented there. 1. However, I have excluded the contracted form bus from this study. 2. However, there is some reason to believe that the postverbal nominative NP in such sentences is not in fact the syntactic subject, but is the object, although nominative in case, and that the preposed dative in fact behaves like the syntactic subject. See Allen (in press: Chapter 4). 3. By "preposed", I do not mean necessarily preverbal, but coming before the Theme NP. Thus I would treat the Experiencer of Bede 3 4.166.8 fra licode him seo arfaste dad pees cyninges 'then the pious deed of the king pleased him' as preposed in that it is placed before the Theme. 4. However, there are several examples in interlinear word-for-word glosses of Latin. A study of how behofian was used to translate Latin verbs and the syntax which was found in these glosses would be quite interesting, and the question of just what would cause an Old English scribe to use un-English syntax to gloss some constructions but not others is an important one. However, I do not consider that examples from wordfor-word glosses should be used on a par with examples either from freer translations or from original Old English compostions. I have therefore excluded all examples from such glosses (i.e., examples from texts which Cameron (1973) treated an interlinear glosses and prefixed by C).

The development of an "impersonal" verb in Middle English

19

5. I will use the term dative in this paper for the general objective case which was used after the collapse of the dative/accusative distinction in Middle English as well as for the specifically dative case of Old English, since most of these Middle English objective forms are reflexes of the old dative. 6. These texts were included in the Concordance because they are either presumably or definitely of Old English composition. 7. In these glosses, I use the following abbreviations: (N) = nominative, (A) = accusative, (G) = genitive, (D) = dative, (PL) = plural, (F) = feminine. 8. I am not including here examples in which a proposition is understood, but not expressed, e.g., swa we behofedon 'as we needed'. 9. In earlier Old English, this form would not have been nominative, but the -e suffix was frequently extended to the nominative by the time of this manuscript (Junius 121, dated at the third quarter of the eleventh century by Ker (1957: no. 338)). The form gesceadwisnesse must be construed as nominative here. 10. For a list of the texts examined for the twelfth and early thirteenth century, see the Appendix. 11. It is impossible to be certain whether helpe is a non-nominative form or is nominative, with extension of -e to it. Probably the latter interpretation is correct, because unambiguous instances of this verb with two non-nominative arguments are not to be found. 12. The syntax is also occasionally simply unclear, as in Solil. 1 27.17 ALlces licuman eagan behofad preora pinga on him 'the eyes of every body need to have three things'. Eagan could be a dative singular form or it could be nominative plural. Dative singular is perhaps suggested by the verb form, which looks singular, but this would mean that we have a dative Experiencer and a genitive Theme, of which I have found no other examples. The plural form -iad was in fact sometimes replaced by -ad by this time, so it is possible to interpret eagan as nominative plural. This text is found in MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv, from the second quarter of the twelfth century. 13. This example is from MS Vespasian D. xiv, dated a 1150 by the MED. 14. MS Cambridge, University Library Gg.3.28, Ker no. 15, s. x/xi. 15. See Ker (1957: no. 346) and also the introduction to Clark's (1970) edition of a portion of the Peterborough chronicle (see Appendix for bibliographical details). 16. However, I have found a very few examples of nominative Experiencers of behoove used with a sentential complement in later Middle English, e. g., in the works of Wycliffe. On the other hand, I have not found any convincing examples of a nominative Experiencer in the 2NP construction after the beginning of the twelfth century. The OED proffers only examples with sentential complements in its entry for "personal" behoove 5.a.) and none of the post-Old English examples given in the "transitive" meaning (behove 1) have a clearly nominative Experiencer. Similarly, none of the examples given by the MED in bihoven lc have a clearly nominative (as opposed to ambiguously marked) Experiencer. 17. The last example which the OED gives of the 2NP construction is from 1670. The construction had become quite unusual considerably earlier, but is occasionally found in Chaucer and Caxton. 18. However, I noted ten more examples in which only the Experiencer was expressed, e. g., HM 2/28 of al pat hire biheoued 'of everything that she needs'. 19. EXP stands for Experiencer and 77/ stands for Theme. GEN = genitive, ACC = accusative, NOM = nominative, and COMP = sentential complement. 20. There is also plenty of other evidence for the healthy state of the "impersonal" constructions in the Early Middle English period; see Allen (in press: Section 6.2).

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References Allen, Cynthia L. 1986 1995

"Reconsidering the history of like", Journal of Linguistics 22: 375-409. Case-marking and reanalysis: Grammatical relations from Old to Early Modern English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bosworth, Joseph-T. Northcote Toller 1898 An Anglo-Saxon dictionary based on the manuscript collections of the late Joseph Bosworth, ed. and enlarged by T. Northcote Toller. London: Oxford University Press. Butler, Milton Chadwick 1977 "Reanalysis of object as subject in Middle English impersonal constructions", Glossa 11.2: 155-170. Cameron, Angus 1973 "A list of Old English texts", in: Roberta Frank-Angus Cameron (eds.), 2 9 267. Cole, Peter-Wayne Herbert-Gabrielle Hermon-Shikaripur N. Sridhar 1980 "The acquisition of subjecthood", Language 56: 719-743. Elmer, Willy 1981 Diachronic grammar: The history of Old and Middle English subjectless constructions. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Fischer, Olga C. Μ.-Frederike van der Leek 1983 "The demise of the Old English impersonal construction", Journal of Linguistics 19: 337-368. 1987 "A 'case' for the Old English impersonals", in: Willem Koopman et al. (eds.), 79-120. Frank, Roberta-Angus Cameron (eds.) 1973 A plan for the dictionary of Old English. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, van der Gaaf, Willem 1904 The transition from the impersonal to the personal construction in Middle English. (Anglistische Forschungen 14.) Heidelberg: Winter. [1967] [Reprinted in Amsterdam: Swets and Zeitlinger.] Healey, Antoinette-Richard Venezky 1980 A microfiche concordance to Old English. Toronto: Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto. Hornstein, Norbert-David Lightfoot (eds.) 1981 Explanation in linguistics. London: Longman. Jespersen, Otto 1927 A modern English grammar on historical principles. Part III: Syntax. London: Allen and Unwin. Ker, Neil R. 1957 Catalogue of manuscripts containing Anglo-Saxon. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1963 The owl and the nightingale. EETS 251. London: Oxford University Press. Koopman, Willem—Frederike van der Leek-Olga Fischer-Roger Eaton (eds.) 1987 Explanation and linguistic change. (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 45.) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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Kurath, Hans et al. (eds.) 1954 Middle English dictionary. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Lightfoot, David 1979 Principles of diachronic syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1981 "Explaining syntactic change", in: Norbert Hornstein-David Lightfoot (eds.), 209-240. 1988 "Syntactic change", in: Frederick Newmeyer (ed.), 303-323. 1991 How to set parameters. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. McCawley, Noriko 1976 "From OE/ME 'impersonal' to 'personal' constructions: What is a 'subjectless' S?", in: Sanford B. Steever etal. (eds.), 192-204. Mitchell, Bruce 1985 Old English syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Murray, James et al. 1884-1933 Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Oxford: Oxford University Press. [1989] [Second edition prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner.] Newmeyer, Frederick (ed.) 1988 Lingusitics: The Cambridge survey. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ogura, Michiko 1986 Old English "impersonal" verbs and expressions. (Anglistica 24.) Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger. Severs, J. Burke-Albert Härtung (eds.) 1967A manual of the writings in Middle English 1050-1500. Based upon Wells (1916 and Supplements 1 - 9 , 1919-1951). Vols. 1 and 2 edited by Severs, and the remaining vols, which have appeared to date edited by Härtung. New Haven, Connecticut: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences. Steever, Sanford B.-Carol A. Walker—Salikokο S. Mufwene (eds.) 1976 Papers from the parasession on diachronic syntax. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society. Visser, F. Th. 1963 An historical syntax of the English language. Part I. Leiden: Brill. Wahlen, Nils 1925 The Old English impersonalia. Part I. Göteborg: Elanders Boktryckeri Aktiebolag. Wells, John Edwin 1916 A manual of the writings in Middle English. Supplements 1 - 9 published in 1919-1951. New Haven: The Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Double trouble: Geminate versus simplex graphs in the Ormulum John Anderson—Derek

Britton

1. Introduction It is about 300 years since the scholarly world was first introduced to the Ormulum and the peculiar abundance of innovatory geminate graphs that constitute the most salient feature of its text.* In the centuries that have followed, more particularly in the 100 odd years since the full but imperfectly transcribed text appeared in the Holt-White edition of 1878, the paths through and around Orm's orthography have been well trodden, mainly by scholars working within the "philological" tradition. 1 But though much of this work was valuable, little was generated thereby in the way of agreement as to the basic principles of Orm's system or the phonological values of its spellings. And there continues to be no systematic study of the orthography that would satisfy the requirements of the historical linguists of today. Closest, in our view, to an accurate and adequate account, albeit a rather summary one, is what appeared in the second edition of Sweet's History of English sounds (1888). In broad outline his interpretation is not unlike our own, where phonological reconstruction is concerned, though our methodology and presentation differ radically from Sweet's, as from other accounts of Orm's system. It was Sweet, later echoed by Sisam (1933), who was the first to perceive the real reason why Orm followed the conventional spelling in his failure to denote vowel length by extending a geminate graph to what by tradition was : thus 2nd part 'taken' (line 1150 etc.) and n. 'sign' (732 etc.) are not distinguished by the sequence of graphs. Sweet and Sisam (whose paper gave currency to the view) also argued that Orm's innovatory geminates were intended to signal vowel duration alone and not noncontrastive distinctions of consonant length, as Trautmann (1884), McKnight (1899), Björkman (1913), Luick (1914-1940: § 59 Anm.) and Jordan (1934: § 19 Anm. 1) believed. In this matter of the general significance of Orm's innovations in orthographic gemination we perhaps now have, as Markus (1989: 69) has observed, at least one point of common agreement.

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John Anderson—Derek Brit ton

Sisam, however, also gave rise to the erroneous view, perpetuated in text-book anthologies by Mosse and Smithers, that an important ancillary purpose of Orm's geminate graphs was to mark syllable boundaries. The aim, according to Sisam, was to offer guidance in syllable division to preachers when reading Orm's metrical sermons to their congregations. But no speaker equipped to interpret the text, whether native or otherwise, would need instruction in syllable division. Moreover, a text that was read aloud syllable by syllable would be not only soporifically monotonous but scarcely intelligible to an audience. If we credit Orm with any common sense, this could not have been his intention. The matter of syllable division and definition of Orm's system in terms of syllables with and without codas seems to us to have vitiated much of the work of the past. The following extract from Bennett-Smithers (eds., 1968: 360) is exemplary of conventional summaries of Orm's orthographic principles: Orm writes a double consonant after a short vowel or diphthong in words like full, wollde, qjj, le^tenn, pewwess, but never in sune 'son' or the like. It is thus clear that he doubled a consonant only if it belonged to the same syllable as a preceding short vowel or diphthong, i.e., only in a closed syllable; and that in the sequence V + C + V the consonant belonged to the second syllable, and the root-syllable was therefore open.

But, if we accept the evidence for the existence of diphthongs in the phonology of the Ormulum, does not represent a closed syllable, nor (whether representing a diphthong or not) does in ewwess>. The first syllable of, say, /sunna/ 'sun' is closed because geminates are heterosyllabic: if Orm always doubled the graph after a short vowel in a closed syllable, then we should have found * with a triple sequence (which Orm does not exclude as such - see (22) and note 13 below). In the context the sequence Konstantinovjfcj, after World War II. Thus, whereas suffix deletion can contribute to language convergence, suffix substitution or expansion can be exploited consciously to achieve greater dialect or language divergence. 7. In a reference to my 1991 paper Weerman (1993: 919) misinterprets me by stating that I explain the change of OV to VO in Middle English as due to the Norman invasion. Nowhere in my paper do I make such a statement. Maybe I have not been clear enough. 8. In Cook's (1993: 82) opinion "... many aspects of the bioprogram seem to overlap with the proposals for Universal Grammar". 9. While commenting on the controversy over word order changes in the interlanguage(s) of Turkish learners of German, Weerman (1993: 926) mentions the fact that in a personal communication Muysken has informed him of evidence allowing him to maintain his 1989 position, namely that SVO order does occur in the above-mentioned interlanguage(s). 10. For example, none of the authors in one way or another involved in the ME creolization issue - Domingue, Bailey -Maroldt, Görlach — hardly ever mention interlanguage, while, as pointed out earlier in this paper (Section 1.3), Thomason-Kaufman refer to it just once. 11. The third quality nature of various changes due to intense contacts has been noted by a number of authors and has been formulated most explicitly in the interlanguage notion put forth by Selinker (1972, 1992) and others. Strangely, the third quality feature has been overlooked by numerous historical linguists who have ignored (or have not been aware of) the fact that language contact often produces a new (third) quality differing from the respective forms in the two (or more) languages involved. 12. One may note here a paper by Miseska Tomic (1992) entitled "Discreteness (italics mine) of grammaticalization as a resolution of language conflict in language contact situations" which deals with the Balkan Sprachbund languages.

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References Aitchison, Jean 1980 Review of Lightfoot 1979. Linguistics 18: 137-146. Anttila, Raimo 1989 Historical and comparative linguistics. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bahner, Werner-Joachim Schildt-Dieter Viehweger (eds.) 1990 Proceedings of the Fourteenth International Congress of Linguistics. Vol. 2. Berlin/GDR, August 10-15, 1987. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag. Bailey, Kathleen-Michael Long (eds.) 1980 Second language acquisition research. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House. Bailey, Charles-James N . - K a r l Maroldt 1977 "The French lineage of English", in: Jürgen Μ. Meisel (ed.), 21 - 5 3 . Bickerton, Derek 1981 Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Bloomfield, Leonard 1933 Language. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Bradley, Henry 1904 The Making of English. New York: Macmillan. [1968] [Revised edition by Simeon Potter. London-Basingstoke: Macmillan.] Byrne, Francis-Thom Huebner (eds.) 1991 Development and structures of creole languages. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Carlson, Rolf— Björn Granstrom—John Hunnicut 1985 "Phonetic and orthographic properties of the basic vocabulary of five European languages", Speech Transmission Laboratory, Quarterly Progress and Status Report 1: 63-94. Clahsen, Harald -Pieter Muysken 1986 "The availability of universal grammar to adult and child learners: A study of the acquisition of German word order", Second Language Research 1: 9 3 119. Corder, Pit S.-Eddy Roulet (eds.) 1977 Actes du 5eme colloque de linguistique appliquee de Neuchätel. Neuchätel: Universite de Neuchätel. Dahl, Torsten 1936 Form and function. Studies in Old and Middle English Syntax. Kabenhavn: C. A. Reitzels Forlag. Danchev, Andrei 1976 "On the phonemic and phonetic values of the short ea and eo diagraphs in Old English", Annuaire de l'universite de Sofia, Faculte des lettres, 70 (1975): 33-88. 1986 "Interlanguage simplification in Middle English vowel phonology?", in: Dieter Kastovsky—Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), 239—259. 1988 "Language contact and language change", Folia Linguistica XXII (1 -2): 3 7 53.

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"On global patterns of interlingual influence", in: [no editor] 2nd Symposium on English and Greek; Description and/or comparison of the two languages, 28-30 March 1988 at the University of Thessaloniki, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 34—46. 1990 "Some aspects of a language change typology", in: Werner Bahner etal. (eds.), 1340-1342. 1991 "Language change typology and some aspects of the SVO development in English", in: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 103-124. 1992 "The evidence for analytic and synthetic developments in English", in: Matti Rissanen etal. (eds.), 25-41. Danchev, Andrei-Merja Kytö 1994a "The construction be going to + infinitive in Early Modern English", in: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 59-78. 1994b "The Middle English for to + infinitive construction: a twofold contact phenomenon? [Paper presented at the International Conference on Language Contact in the History of English, 13-17 July, Tulln, 1994.] Forthc. "The go-futures in English and French viewed as an areal feature." Denison, David 1993 English historical syntax. London-New York: Longman. Domingue, Nicole Z. 1977 "Middle English: Another Creole?" Journal of Creole Studies 1: 89 -100. Dury, Richard 1994 The history of the English language in the context of the history of the European languages. [Papers presented at the International Conference on Language Contact in the History of English, July 13-17, Tulln, 1994.] Eaton, Roger et al. (eds.) 1985 Papers from the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, April 10-13, 1985. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Ferguson, Charles A. 1971 "Absence of copula and the notion of simplicity: a study of normal speech, baby talk, foreigner talk, and pidgins", in: Dell H. Hymes (ed.), 141-150. Fisiak, Jacek 1977 "Sociolinguistics and Middle English: Some socially motivated changes in the history of English", Kwartalnik neofilologiczny 12: 247-259. 1984 "The voicing of initial fricatives in Middle English", Studia Anglica Posnaniensia XVII: 3-16. Fisiak, Jacek (ed.) 1984 Historical syntax. Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton. Forterre, Pierre 1993 "Au racines de la vie", Plein Sud (Universite de Paris-Sud) 13: 6 - 7 . Gerritsen, Marinel 1984 "Divergent word order developments in Germanic languages: A description and a tentative explanation", in: Jacek Fisiak (ed.), 107-135. Görlach, Manfred 1986 "Middle English - a creole?", in: Dieter Kastovsky—Aleksander Szwedek (eds.), 329-344. Hock, Hans Henrich 1986 Principles of historical linguistics. Berlin—New York-Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.

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Hoenigswald, Henry M. 1971 "Language history and Creole studies", in: Dell H. Hymes (ed.), 473-480. Holm, John 1988 Pidgins and Creoles, Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hymes, Dell H. 1971 "Introduction to Section III", in: Dell H. Hymes (ed.), 65-90. Hymes, Dell H. (ed.) 1971 Pidginization and creolization of languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ioup, Georgette-Steven H. Weinberger (eds.) 1987 Interlanguage phonology. The acquisition of a second language sound system. Cambridge, Mass.: Newbury House Publishers. Kastovsky, Dieter (ed.) 1991 Historical English syntax. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 1994 Studies in Early Modern English. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Kastovsky, Dieter—Aleksander Szwedek (eds.) 1986 Linguistics across historical and geographical boundaries, Vol. 1: Linguistic theory and historical linguistics. Berlin-New York-Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter. Labov, William 1994 Principles of linguistic change. Volume 1: Internal factors. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Lass, Roger 1991-1993 "Old English fricative voicing unvisited", Studia Anglica Posnaniensia XXV-XXVII, 3-46. Lefebvre, Claire 1984 "Grammaires en contact. Definition et perspectives de recherche", Revue quebecoise de linguistique 14,1: 11—47. Lehman, Winfred P.-Yakov Malkiel (eds.) 1968 Directions for historical linguistics: A symposium. Austin-London: University of Texas Press. Lightfoot, David W. 1979 Principles of diachronic syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maddieson, Ian 1984 Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Markey, Thomas L. 1980 Diffusion, fusion and creolization: a field guide to developmental linguistics. [Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan and Technische Universität Berlin.] 1982 "Afrikaans: Creole or non-creole?", Zeitschrift für Dialektologie und Linguistik 49(2): 169-207. Meisel, Jürgen M. (ed.) 1977 Langues en contact — pidgins - Creoles - Languages in contact. Tübingen: Gunter Narr. Milroy, James 1984 "The history of English in the British Isles", in: Peter Trudgill (ed.), 5-31. MincofT, Marco 1967 English historical grammar. 2nd ed. Sofia: Naouka i Izkoustvo.

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Miseska Tomic, Olga 1992 "Discreteness of gramaticalization as a resolution of language conflict in language contact situations", Folia Linguistica XXVI(3-4): 255-273. Mühlhäusler, Peter 1986 Pidgin and Creole linguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Nida, Eugene 1969 "Science of translation", Language 45: 483 -498. Nielsen, Hans F. 1985 Old English and the continental Germanic languages. A survey of morphological and phonological interrelations. (2nd edition.) Innsbruck: Innsbrucker Beiträger zur Sprachwissenwschaft, 33. Odlin, Terence 1989 Language transfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Poläk, Vaclav 1949 "La periphrase verbale des langages de l'Europe occidentale", Lingua II 1 — 4: 6 4 - 73. Poussa, Patricia 1982 "The evolution of early standard English. The creolization hypothesis", Studio Anglica Posnaniensia XIV: 69—85. 1985 "A note on the voicing of initial fricatives in Middle English", in: Roger Eaton etal. (eds.), 235-252. Rissanen, Matti et al. (eds.) 1992 History of Englishes: New methods and interpretations in linguistics. BerlinNew York: Mouton de Gruyter. Romaine, Susanne 1988 Pidgin and Creole languages. London: Longman. 1994 Language in society. London: Oxford University Press. Rutherford, William E. (ed.) 1984 Language universals and second language acquisition. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Sebeok, Thomas A. 1973 Currrent trends in linguistics, vol. II. The Hague: Mouton. Selinker, Larry 1972 "Interlanguage", International Review of Applied Linguistics 10: 209—231. 1992 Rediscovering interlanguage. London-New York: Longman. Seuren, Pieter A. M. 1991 "The definition of serial verbs", in: Francis Byrne-Thorn Huebner (eds.), 193-205. Stockwell, Robert-Donka Minkova 1991 "Subordination and word order change in the history of English", in: Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 367-408. Tarone, Elaine E. 1987 "Some influences on the syllable structure of interlanguage phonology", in: Georgette Ioup-Steven H. Weinberger (eds.), 232-247. Thomason, Sarah Grey-Terrence Kaufman 1988 Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley-Los Angeles-London: University of California Press.

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Tinelli, Henri 1981 Creole phonology. The Hague: Mouton. Todd, Loreto 1975 Dialect or creole: the case for the "creoloid". [Unpublished paper.] Traugott, Elizabeth C. 1977a "Natural semantics: Its role in the study of second language acquisition", in: Pit S. Corder-Eddy Roulet (eds.), 132-162. 1977b "Pidginization, creolization and language change", in: Albert Valdman (ed.), 70-98. Trudgill, Peter 1983 On dialect. Social and geographical perspectives. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Trudgill, Peter (ed.) 1984 Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ureland, P. Sture 1978 "Die Bedeutung des Sprachkontakts in der Entwicklung der Nordseesprachen", in: P. Sture Ureland (ed.), 83-128. Ureland, P. Sture (ed.) 1978 Sprachkontakte im Nordseegebiet. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Valdman, Albert (ed.) 1977 Pidgin and creole linguistics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Viereck, Wolfgang 1993 "The medieval European common market and its impact on Middle English", Neuphilologische Mitteilungen XCIV,1: 69-78. Weerman, Fred 1993 "The diachronic consequences of first and second language acquisition: The change from OV to VO", Linguistics 31,5 (327): 903-932. Weinreich, Uriel-William Labov-Marvin I. Herzog 1968 "Empirical foundations for a theory of language change", in: Winfred Lehman-Yakov Malkiel (eds.), 95-195. Whinnom, Keith 1971 "Linguistic hybridization and the 'special case' of pidgins and Creoles", in: Dell H. Hymes (ed.), 91-116. Winter, Werner 1973 "Areal linguistics: Some general considerations", in: Thomas A. Sebeok (ed.), 135-147. Workman, Samuel K. 1972 Fifteenth century translation as an influence on English prose. New York: Octagon Books. Zobl, Helmut 1980 "Contact-induced language change, learner language, and the potentials of a modified contrastive analysis", in: Kathleen Bailey-Michael Long (eds.), 104-112.

Infinitive marking in Late Middle English: Transitivity and changes in the English system of case Olga Fischer

1. Introduction The questions that this paper is concerned with arose from an earlier investigation (Fischer 1995 [1992]) into the difference in usage between bare and marked infinitival complements in late Middle English. It found, in contrast to earlier studies, that the distribution of these two complements was clearly patterned. 1 Various factors that condition the choice of marker were established. These factors were found to be of a syntactic/semantic nature and comparable to the semantic factors that influence the choice of bare and to-complements in Present-day English (cf. Mittwoch 1990; Duffley 1992). In Middle English, however, the use of the contrast was more systematic than in Present-day English: it was embedded in the syntax. The choice of infinitive was not restricted lexically to a small number of verbs (as suggested, e.g., in Ohlander 1941; Warner 1982: 116-117) or metrically conditioned (as suggested, e.g., by Kaartinen-Mustanoja 1958: 179; Ohlander 1941: 66);2 on the contrary, it was quite usual for one and the same verb to select both. In this paper, it will be argued that originally there existed a relationship between the selection of bare or /o-infinitive and the use of accusative (or structural case) or dative/genitive (or inherent case) respectively. Both can be seen to play a role in the system of transitivity. The existence of such a relationship will, in turn, initiate discussion of how the loss of morphological case in Middle English (in combination with a number of other factors such as, e. g., the rise of the category AUX, the emergence of the progressive form, the development of to from a preposition into an infinitive marker) may have led to the loss of the syntactic system responsible for the selection of either to or zero, and its replacement by other syntactic and lexical rules. The paper is set up as follows. In Section 2, the findings of the earlier study will be briefly summarised. Section 3 will consider the situation with respect to case and infinitival complements in Old English. It will

110 Olga Fischer present current ideas on transitivity, which, the syntactic and semantic relation between and Middle English. Finally, in Section 4, I developments that English has undergone in

I hope, will throw light on case and infinitivals in Old will look at the diachronic this area.

2. Summary of earlier findings with respect to the distinction between to- and zero infinitives in late Middle English It is a well-known fact that the Middle English use of either to or zero is conditioned by grammatical function. Table 1, which was based on earlier studies (mentioned in note 1) makes this quite clear (the table is taken from Fischer 1995). Table 1:

The use of the bare vs. the English

Function of the infinitive

Subject Subject complement Object complement after control verbs Complement of modal auxiliaries Aci complements Noun modifier Adjective modifier Adverbial adjunct Absolute infinitive

(for) to infinitive

in Old, Middle and Present-day

Form of the infinitive: zero vs. (for) to OE

ME

PrdE

zero Ito

(zero )lto

to

to

to to

zero Ito zero zero/(fo)

zero Ito zero zero Ito

(zero) Ito zero (zero)/fo

to to

to to to to

to to to to

(zero )/to

to

The table further shows that a choice between zero and to is virtually restricted to object complement function, 3 and that the use of the bare infinitive decreases in the course of time. In my 1995 study, I set out to answer the question of the synchronic distribution of to and zero. Here, I will be looking at a second aspect, the decrease in the use of the bare infinitive, and the loss of the syntactic system that regulated the Middle English distribution. The factors which were found to be responsible for the choice between to and zero in verbal complementation are given in (1). The common

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denominator here is that zero infinitives indicate a "direct" relationship between what is expressed in the matrix verb and the infinitival complement, and /o-infinitives an "indirect" one. (1)

i. The activity expressed in the infinitival clause is or is not simultaneous with that of the matrix verb (presence/absence of identity of tense domain). ii. The activity expressed in the infinitival clause is or is not directly perceivable. iii. After causatives, the /o-infinitive is used when the causation is in some way not direct, either because (a) the subject of the matrix verb (the causer) does not concretely cause what is expressed in the infinitival clause, or (b) because the subject/ causer is inanimate and as such more of an instrument than a cause, or (c) what is caused is a process in which the causee himself takes/must take an active part. iv. In general contexts, i. e., when the infinitival clause does not express an actuality, the to-infinitive is the rule. v. The zero infinitive is the rule in "irrealis" constructions. vi. The /o-infinitive is the rule when the infinitive or the matrix verb is in the passive form.

A few examples will serve to illustrate these factors, beginning with (i) (for more examples and discussion the reader is referred to Fischer 1995).4 (i)

a. Til Custance made hire [Hermengyld] boold, and bad hire wirchef The wyl of Crist... (Man of Law 566-567) b. God bad us for to wexe and multiplye; (Wife of Bath 28)

In (ia), bad and wirche are perceived as simultaneous, bad is almost a causative on a par with made hir boold, and can best be translated by 'had (her work)'. This is not true for (b) where the infinitive clearly refers to a future event, and where bad can only mean 'ask' or 'command'. Ad (ii): This concerns mainly the complements of perception verbs. The bare infinitive (iia) describes the subject's sense impression; therefore, it always conveys a concrete activity, something that can be seen, heard or felt on the spot, without the subject being necessarily aware of it. When the perception is indirect, a finite clause is invariably used (ii b). In my corpus I only found three examples with a ίο-infinitive (ii c). They

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were all related to medieval ideas about predestination and clearly conveyed that the activity was directly perceivable on one level (i.e., that of the world of God) and not on another (the human world). To convey this paradoxical situation, to must have been a convenient marker for Chaucer since it is at once less direct than zero but more direct than a finite clause. (ii)

a. Tho saugh I in an other placet Stonden in a large space,! Of hem that maken blody soun ... (HF 1237—1239) b. " Wyf" quod this markys, "ye han herd er this/ My peple sikly berth oure mariage. (Clerk 624-625) c. "for certeynly, this wot I wel," he seyde,/ "That forsight of divine purveyaunce! Hath seyn alwey me to forgon Criseyde,... (TC IV 960-962; also in 977; Bo V pr. 6 162-163)

Ad (iii): Here I will only give examples where the causative is used with a to-infinitive, to illustrate how to indicates the idea of "indirectness" (examples (iii a,b,c) correspond to factors (iii a,b,c) above). (iii)

a. For which he [Nero] in a bath made hym [Seneca] to blede! On bo the his armes,... (Monk 2509 - 2510) b. Wyn maketh man to lesen wrecchedly/ His mynde and eek his lymes everichon. (Sommoner 2054-2055) c. Tho rowned she a pistel in his ere,/ And bad hym to be glad and have no fere. (Wife of Bath 1021 -1022)

In (iii a) Nero does not cause Seneca's bleeding, because Seneca commits suicide; in (iii b) wyn 'wine' is inanimate and cannot be held responsible for the ensuing situation; in (iiic) the subject/causer {she 'she') has no real power over the object (hym 'him'), because it is up to the object himself whether he can/will etc. be glad or not. Ad (iv): By "general" contexts is meant a context in which the activity expressed is not actual but only potential, such as when an //-clause is present (iv a), or a simile (iv b), or a subjunctive/modal verb (iv c) etc. (iv)

a. Α wyß a, Seinte Marie, benediciteH How myghte a man han any adversiteel That hath α wyß ..J If he be povre, she helpeth hym to swinke. (Merchant 1337-1342) b. But swich a nede was to preye hym thennej As for to bidde a wood man for to renne! (TC II 1553-1554) c. But now help God to quenchen al this sorwe! (TC III 1058)

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Ad (v): Although non-actuality induces the appearance of the ίο-infinitive as I argued, for factor (iv), this is not the case, strangely enough, in "irrealis" or counterfactual expressions. The reason for this is, I believe, because such expressions stress what should properly have been done or what was actually thought (even if the reality turns out to be different). Thus in (v a) the subject (He, the student Aleyn) actually thought he had crept back into his and John's bed (later it turns out to be the miller's bed), hence the bare infinitive; whereas in (v b) He did not think he was reproved, he was only afraid of the possibility that he might be, which accounts for the to-infinitive. (v)

a. He wende have cropen by his felawe John,! And by the millere in he creep anon,... (Reeve 4259—4260) b. And loved well to have hors of prys./ He wende to have reproved be! Of theft or moordre if that hel Hadde in his stable ony hakeney. (RR 1134-1137)

Ad (vi): Formally, this distinction is quite clear in Middle English, a passive (whether of the matrix verb or the infinitive) automatically calls for a ίο-infinitive. How this is related to the notion of (in)directness is a question we will return to below (at the end of Section 3.1). (vi)

a. ... the seid Jenney ded arest the seid Calle for a thef (PL 65,48-49) b. ...he dyde Dabeney to be arestydfor mayntenyng (PL 181,19-20) c. ... it is done me to understand (PL, five instances)

In the earlier study, I also showed that the above factors, which are basically semantic, can be seen to be reflected in syntactic structure. I proposed the following structures for control verbs (e. g., verbs like helpen 'help', bidden 'ask', etc.), for exceptional case marking verbs (believe, expect etc., not very common yet in Middle English), and for verbs taking a bare infinitival complement, given in (2)-(4) respectively. (I have worked on the assumption that Middle English has SVO as its basic word order, but this does not really affect the argument; I am also assuming the VP-internal subject hypothesis, but again the position of the matrix subject is not really relevant here).

Olga Fischer

0

NP PROi

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(4)

The semantic "(in)directness" found in the factors above follows syntactically from these structures because in (2) and (3) the to-infinitival complement (the non-finite V) has no direct relation with the matrix verb because of an intervening maximal projection (CP, IP). There is no such barrier in (4), so that there is a direct relation between the bare non-finite V and the matrix VP there. The absence of the I N F L (7) node in (4) also shows that the non-finite V cannot have a time-reference independent of the matrix verb, in other words, the activities expressed by matrix verb and infinitive must be simultaneous. 5 When we look at recent literature concerning the distribution of bare and to-infinitives in Present-day English, it is found that similar factors play a role. Mittwoch (1990) shows that causative and perception verb complements, which take a bare infinitive, have the following four characteristics: (5)

a. They denote an event in the narrow sense, i. e., "processes that culminate in an end-point ... and achievements" (Mittwoch 1990: 105),6 they do not denote a fact or proposition. b. There is no potential for independent temporal specification, i. e., there must be simultaneity of tense domains. c. There exists an entailment relationship, i.e., the existence of the state of affairs denoted by the bare complement is entailed by the sentence as a whole. 7 d. Negation of the complement is generally not possible. 8

With control and aci verbs, on the other hand, (i. e., verbs that select a /o-infinitive) there can be independent temporal specification (cf. (5b)), negation is freely permitted (cf. (5d)), and there is no entailment relationship (cf. (5c)) except for a few factive verbs like know and prove.

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Whereas Mittwoch concentrates on the use of zero complements and on the behaviour of causatives and perception verbs, Duffley (1992) looks especially at the meaning of to in contrast to zero, and at the few verbs that can take both to and zero in Present-day English. His characterisation of to vs. zero carries many of the elements also found in Mittwoch. He stresses that the bare infinitive always indicates that the event expressed in it is coincident with the matrix verb. He terms this "coincident potentiality" when the infinitive occurs with auxiliaries,9 and "coincident actuality" after full verbs. The to-infinitive, on the other hand, expresses a subsequent event, which may either be "subsequent actualization" (after verbs of achievement and causative verbs) or "subsequent potentiality" (after verbs of desire and command). The terms "subsequence" and "coincidence" relate quite well to Mittwoch's characterisation of the difference between to and zero respectively. Thus, Duffley writes, with bare infinitives "no room is left for the non-realization of the infinitive event"; when "compliance is not taken for granted, to is used in order to 'futurize' the infinitive event's actualization, i. e., to evoke it as something which the person receiving the request may or may not decide to do" (Duffley 1992: 82-83). However, the advantage of Dudley's system to that of Mittwoch's is that he combines these two terms (subsequence and coincidence) with "potentiality" and "actualization". In this way his system does more justice to actual usage because it stresses that a bare infinitive, although coincident, may still be potential, i. e., it does not necessarily have to be an achievement yet. The important point (not indicated by Duffley), of course, is that the speaker or subject presents the event as an achievement or end-point. In other words, the bare infinitive expresses the speaker's subjective idea of achievement (or his strong wish for it), while the actual realisation may still be part of the future.

3. The Middle English system in perspective In this section, I will argue that there is a link between the existence of object case variables in Old English (especially the variation between accusative and dative), and the use of bare and fo-infinitives. Both play a role in the expression of "transitivity". This system of transitivity still works for a while in Middle English but when the Old English case system begins to disintegrate, it is to be expected that this will have its repercussions too on the infinitival complement system (i. e., on the choice between zero and to). Before we turn to diachronic developments, however, I will first consider the Old English situation and the role of transitivity.

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3.1. The distinction between dative and accusative case, and zero and to-infinitival complements in Old English and their relation to "transitivity" In Callaway (1913: 60—71), there are some highly interesting remarks concerning the differentiation of the two infinitival complements in Old English. He notes that, with only very few exceptions, the bare infinitive occurs with verbs that normally select an accusative object, that the toinfinitive occurs with verbs that take a genitive, dative or prepositional object, and that verbs of double regimen (i. e., that take two objects of which one is accusative) may be found with both the inflected and the uninfected infinitive. Callaway's conclusions are of interest enough to quote them in full: The objective infinitive in most instances appears to the modern Englishman as a direct (accusative) object, and doubtless so appeared to the Anglo-Saxon, for it occurs usually with verbs having the direct object in the accusative,... (1913: 61) In a word, while the inflected infinitive only is found with a few verbs that govern the accusative only, this happens chiefly with compounds whose simplex govern a dative or a genitive; in the main, the inflected infinitive is found with verbs that govern an object in the genitive or in the dative (occasionally in the instrumental), or in both; or with verbs that are followed by a preposition plus an oblique case; (1913: 63) To sum up the matter for the verbs taking both the uninfected and the inflected infinitive, the double construction is found, in far the larger number of instances, with verbs having a double or triple regimen, that is, with verbs governing two cases at once or any one of two or three cases, or with verbs followed by a preposition plus an oblique case; and the distinction between the uninflected and the inflected infinitive is in the large such as we find with the different cases (genitive, dative, instrumental, and accusative) with these verbs, though with not a few exceptions, duly pointed out in the several groups [i.e., in 1913: 63—68]. But with some verbs that govern only the accusative, or that are not found with a case, we also find both infinitives; and the double construction here seems to be due at times to the double regimen of another verb of the same root; at times to the analogical influence of verbs of different roots both of kindred signification; and at times to the fact that some of the infinitives fluctuate in sense between the adverbial and the objective uses. (1913: 68—69) Although there are some exceptions (which usually can be explained as the above quotes make clear) and although a more systematic study of the Old English infinitives is clearly necessary before we can draw any definite conclusions, it is evident that Callaway has found a pattern here. The correlation between case and infinitive presumably goes back to the time in which infinitives were still nominals (cf. Callaway 1913: 1 - 2 , and

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also Jack 1991: 334). It is not easy to see when infinitives became verbal categories in English, but what is clear is that this process took a long time, and that Middle English had already developed further in this respect than some present-day Germanic languages (such as Dutch or German). 10 Callaway (1913: 2) divides the Old English infinitive into two classes, a substantival and a verbal class, thereby indicating that already in Old English the infinitive was no longer purely nominal. In an earlier paper (Fischer-van der Leek 1987), we argued that in Old English there was a structural difference between nominative and accusative case on the one hand, and dative and genitive on the other (for this view see also van Kemenade 1987). This was in connection with an attempt to explain the semantic differences between constructions with impersonal verbs (which show up with different case forms for the same semantic arguments), and the loss of some of these constructions in a later period. We came to this distinction on the basis of some very interesting observations made by Plank (1981, 1983) concerning the use of genitive,11 dative and accusative case in Old English, and of the theories of case put forward by Kurytowicz (1949, 1964). Plank noted that there are many verbs in Old English that can alternate between dative/genitive and accusative in the case they assign to their object. Semantically, there is a clear distinction between the different case-frames, as can often be seen from the different lexical verbs that are needed to translate these examples into Present-day English (but see also note 13). Here follow some of Plank's examples (with some corrections and more context where necessary),12 (6)

a. him folgiap fuglas, him [DAT] follow birds [NOM] 'birds follow him' (Phoen 591, Plank 1981: 20) b. ... ond da folgode feorhgenidlan ...and then pursued [SING] deadly-foes [ACC PL] '...and then he pursued his mortal enemies' (Beo 2928, Plank idem)13

(7)

a. Gif he geeuenlacd gode on godum weorcum if he [NOM] resembles God [DAT] in good works OECHom II, 13 129.71, Plank 1983: 247) b. ... and [pcet] pa unandgytfullan ... hine ...and that the unintelligent [NOM] him [ACC] geefenlcecen. imitate (BenR 2.24, Plank idem)

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(8)

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a. God... mceg hcelpan allum G o d . . . can help all (Plank 1981: 18) b. Godes mildheortnes helpd celcne pare pe on God's mercy helps each [ACC] of those who in pisse life wyle dcedbote don. this life will penitence do. (HomS 15(Belf 6)52, Plank 1981: 18) Heo preat She threatens dreap pam threatens the 'She threatens

pa unscildigan & nauht ne the innocent [ACC] and nothing not scildigum. guilty [DAT] the innocent people but not the guilty ones' (Bo 4.10.18, Plank 1981: 18)

Plank concludes on the basis of this and a lot of other material that the choice of (a nominative in combination with) an accusative or dative represents a relation in which the participants are respectively more or less opposed to one another. 14 Thus, in a nominative—accusative frame the participants are, diametrically opposed to one another: one referent is most actively involved, the other least actively; the latter is most thoroughly effected/affected by what is happening to him/it, and is thus seen as being completely under the control and influence of the former; and the two antagonists are thus represented as maximally unlike (but nevertheless as dependent upon) each other with regard to their involvement in the situation identified by the predicate (Plank 1981: 31).

In a nominative-dative frame, the opposition is only weakly present with the result that the object is hardly, or not at all, affected by the process expressed in the clause. From Kurylowicz we took the distinction between grammatical Case and concrete Case. Grammatical cases are cases that have no semantic contribution of their own but are defined purely on syntactic grounds. The accusative case of the direct object 15 is an example of this. Concrete cases have autonomous semantic value and are independent of the verb, e. g., genitive and dative. We concluded in the light of our findings concerning impersonal verb constructions that the nominative and the accusative case of the direct object are structural cases in Old English, i. e., direct arguments of the verb; while dative and genitive have no argument status with respect to the verb. 16

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The semantic and structural distinctions made by Plank and Kurylowicz concerning genitive/dative and accusative seem particularly pertinent to the to-infinitive and the bare infinitive respectively. Not only do infinitives and cases commute, as I noted above with reference to Callaway, the semantic rules played by both the cases and the infinitives seem to match as well. Plank's remark that the accusative object is completely under the control or influence of the subject and is thoroughly affected by subject and predicate, also applies to the use of the bare infinitival complements in "events" (cf. the description of Mittwoch 1990, see (5)): it reflects the direct relation between the complement and the matrix predicate and subject NP. After, e.g., causatives and perception verbs, the bare infinitival complement is indeed fully effected (for an example see note 7). What is stated is a fact, a reality (which may be an objective as well as a subjective reality as discussed at the end of Section 2), there is no way out for the infinitival subject. When a to-infinitive is used, there are still possibilities for the complement not to be (fully) effected or for the infinitival subject not to be totally affected, either because the nonfinite complement refers to an event in the future, or the situation is negative or hypothetical. In this connection, it is interesting to note (with Plank) that the verb helpan indeed takes a dative in (8a), where the situation is completely open (note the modal verb), and an accusative when it is presented as a fact (8b).17 Similarly in (9), the dative is used in the negative clause, while the positive clause has accusative (cf. also Mittwoch's point (5iv)). Mittwoch (1990) does not refer to Hopper and Thompson's 1980 paper on transitivity, but there are clear links between Mittwoch's characterisation of causative and perception verb complements, and the high end of the scale of transitivity parameters described by Hopper and Thompson (1980: 252). Thus, highly transitive structures in their scheme are characterised by [+ action] (cf. Mittwoch (5i)); [+ telic] (cf. (5i, iii)); [+ punctual] (cf. (5ii,iii)); [+ affirmative] (cf. (5iv)); the presence of at least two participants, a Subject and an Object; and an Object that is totally affected (cf. (5iii)). Similarly, Plank's proposal about case alternation and its relation to the degree of affectedness/effectedness, comes very close to Hopper and Thompson's idea that transitivity is not a property of verbs alone but of a combination of elements present in the clause. The factors that I described in (1) in Section 2 are also reflected in Hopper and Thompson's scheme, strengthening the idea that there is a relationship between transitivity and the use of bare vs. to-infinitive, at the same time making the connection between case and the form of the

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infinitive made above more plausible. Next to the parameters already mentioned in connection with Mittwoch above, Hopper and Thompson's parameters of "mode", "volitionality", and "agency" show clear links with these factors. With respect to "mode", Hopper and Thompson (1980: 252) state that "an action which either did not occur, or which is presented as occurring in a non-real (contingent) world, is obviously less effective than one whose occurrence is actually asserted as corresponding directly with a real event." This relates to factor (liv), with the ro-infinitive being low in "mode", and the bare infinitive high. The effect of the parameters of "volitionality" and "agency" is quite clear in passives (factor (lvi)). There the subject is never the Agent, therefore scoring very low on this parameter, and consequently requiring a toinfinitive without exception. This could also be described as follows: what the matrix and the infinitival passives have in common is that the direct link between the events expressed by the matrix verb and the infinitive is broken by the fact that the agent of either the matrix verb or the infinitive is missing. Since the "agent" is a direct participant in the process or event described (in the terms of Plank), the event is not an event (a completed event) without it: the direct link between subject, verb and object is no longer there.18 More remarks about the passive in Old English will follow at the end of this section. In a similar way the absence of a direct link between subject, verb and object may explain the observation made by Jack (1991: 336) (and cf. also Ukaji 1976). He writes that infinitives with (for)to are far more frequent in "V + inf [same subject]" (i. e., the infinitival subject is PRO, not lexicalised) than in "V + inf [different subject]" constructions. Now, it is only in the latter that we have an extra lexical NP that can be "diametrically opposed" (in Plank's words, 1981: 31) to the matrix subject NP. When the infinitive has no subject of its own, this "subject" (which, if present, is also object of the matrix predicate) cannot be affected by matrix verb + subject, i.e., there can be no 'diametric opposition'. Ukaji (1976: 72) writes with respect to early Modern English that "when the matrix object NP is suppressed in the surface structure, to of the infinitival complement is not deleted" (i. e., to is present). Presumably again, it is the lack of this object that precludes the use of a zero infinitive. There is a link, too, with the use of to in passive constructions because in passives and in Ukaji's examples the (thematic) subject of the infinitive is missing. Notice, too, that in Ukaji's (1976: 71) example (52), repeated here, which presents such a "suppressed matrix object NP",

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the other again! Is my kinsman, whom the king hath wrong'dt Whom conscience and my kindred bids to right (Richart II, II, ii, 113-115)

the infinitive has passive sense.19 In Hopper and Thompson, the parameters of "volitionality" and "agency" only involve the volitionality and the agency of the subject. Since in the constructions under discussion there are often two subjects rather than one (e.g., '/j