Information Structure and Language Change: New Approaches to Word Order Variation in Germanic (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs)

Information Structure and Language Change

≥

Trends in Linguistics Studies and Monographs 203

Editors

Walter Bisang (main editor for this volume)

Hans Henrich Hock Werner Winter

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

Information Structure and Language Change New Approaches to Word Order Variation in Germanic

Edited by

Roland Hinterhölzl Svetlana Petrova

Mouton de Gruyter Berlin · New York

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

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Information structure and language change : new approaches to word order variation in Germanic / edited by Roland Hinterhölzl, Svetlana Petrova. p. cm. ⫺ (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs ; 203) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-3-11-020591-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Germanic languages ⫺ Word order. 2. Germanic languages ⫺ Syntax. I. Hinterhölzl, Roland. II. Petrova, Svetlana. PD380.I54 2009 4301.45⫺dc22 2009011896

ISBN 978-3-11-020591-6 ISSN 1861-4302 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. ” Copyright 2009 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, 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. Cover design: Christopher Schneider, Laufen. Printed in Germany.

Table of Contents

Introduction Roland Hinterhölzl and Svetlana Petrova ................................................. 1

The role of information structure in the grammar The verb-second property in Old High German: Different ways of filling the prefield Katrin Axel ............................................................................................... 17 The role of information structure in word order variation and word order change Roland Hinterhölzl ................................................................................... 45 OV languages: Expressions of Cues Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir .............................................................................. 67 Discourse relations and word order change Ans van Kemenade ................................................................................... 91

Methodological problems of the information-structural analysis of data from historical text corpora On the methods of information-structural analysis in historical texts: A case study on Old High German Svetlana Petrova and Michael Solf ........................................................ 121 Paleographic clues to prosody? – Accents, word separation, and related phenomena in Old High German manuscripts Jürg Fleischer ........................................................................................ 161 On the “syntax of silence” in Proto-Indo-European Thomas Krisch ....................................................................................... 191

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Table of Contents

Information-structural categories in the main texts of the early German inheritance Word order variation and information structure in Old High German: An analysis of subordinate dhazs-clauses in Isidor Eva Schlachter ........................................................................................ 223 Information structure and word order variation in the Old High German Tatian Svetlana Petrova .................................................................................... 251 Verb placement and information structure in the OHG Gospel Harmony by Otfrid von Weissenburg Andreas Lötscher .................................................................................... 281 Translating information structure: A study of Notker’s translation of Boethius’s Latin De Consolatione Philosophiae into Old High German Rosemarie Lühr ...................................................................................... 323 Aspects of word order and information structure in Old Saxon Sonja Linde ............................................................................................. 367 Subject index .......................................................................................... 391

Introduction Roland Hinterhölzl and Svetlana Petrova

1. Motivation The present volume contains papers dedicated to the explanation of word order variation and change in the history of the Germanic languages. It relates to one of the most prominent and widely discussed topics in the syntax of the Germanic languages. In this volume, these classical topics are approached from the perspective of a novel account to grammar change (cf. Lightfoot 1999, Hróarsdóttir 2003, Hinterhölzl 2004) in which slow gradual language change paves the way for abrupt changes in grammar. In particular, Hinterhölzl (2004) proposes that one important link between language use and grammar is constituted by the grammatical means of information packaging or shortly information structure. Since information packaging represents a core means of the speaker to create novel patterns and expressions for rhetoric expressivity and particular communicative needs, it serves as one of the major sources of variation. This approach is further developed in the Research Project B4 which is anchored in the collaborative research center (SFB 632) on Information Structure at Potsdam University and the Humboldt University in Berlin. In a large-scale investigation on the interaction between information-structural and grammatical conditions in the development of word order regularities in the Germanic languages, new explanations for the diverse developments of these languages are sought. The novelty of this approach consists in three main points. First of all, it aims at describing variation in word order not as a result of language contact, as in previous research (cf. Kroch 1989, Pintzuk 1999), but rather as a language-internal phenomenon which is due to stylistic effects related to information packaging and discourse structure. Secondly, bearing in mind that information structure is a completely new field of study in historical linguistics, it develops methods for the analysis of information-structural phenomena in texts from historical corpora that are available only in written form and bear no or little cues to prosody and intonation. Thirdly, the project carries out research on a much larger scale than previous research

2 Roland Hinterhölzl and Svetlana Petrova on the development of Germanic word order, including empirical studies on large corpora of Old High German (OHG), Old Saxon (OS) and Old Icelandic (OI). The present volume features important results of this enterprise as well as a number of selected papers from the international conference on Word order variation and change, organized by Project B4 in October 2005 in Berlin.

2. Word order Variation and Word order Change in Germanic The modern Germanic languages display a great variety of different word orders. In German the object precedes the verb (OV), in English it obligatorily follows the verb, while Icelandic allows for both word orders (OV/VO). In German main clauses, the finite verb appears in second position (V2), Icelandic also shows V2-patterns in embedded clauses, while English did not develop a generalized V2-rule at all. The issue of how it came about that so closely related languages developed such diverse word order patterns was one of the main research questions in Germanic linguistics in the past hundred years. Research in this tradition has focussed on the following issues.

2.1. What is the basic word order in Germanic? One of the central issues was the question of what counts as the base position of the verb in Germanic. In the oldest Germanic texts, the verb appears in a great number of different positions: besides V2 and verb final orders, V1 and medial positions of the verb are quite common as well. Moreover, all these different orders can be found in main as well as in embedded clauses. While Braune (1894) held that verb placement is free in Germanic, Erdmann (1886) and Tomanetz (1879) assumed that due to its high frequency, V2 order must display the base position of the verb. At the end, Delbrück (1911), building on Wackernagel’s (1892) work, succeeded in arguing that the verb-final pattern should be treated as the basic pattern in Germanic. Newer investigations, however, indicate a high proportion of VO orders in the older stages of all Germanic languages (cf. Kavanagh (1970), who claims that 50% of embedded clauses in OHG display VO order). Given hat OV order is to be considered as the basic word order, word orders with

Introduction

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postposed objects or preposed verbs were treated as marked word orders whose functions were described with the unanalysed notion of emphasis (cf. Näf 1979, Dittmer and Dittmer 1998). According to Fleischmann (1973) preposing of the verb (V1 or V2) in OHG served the purpose of putting the situation described by the verb into the foreground, while postposing of the verb signalled that the situation described by the verb is to be interpreted as part of the background. In this scenario, the differentiation of verb placement in main and embedded clauses in German can be analyzed as the grammaticalisation of different word order patterns that were originally motivated by information structure.

2.2. The development of V2 Following Delbrück, the question arises how V2 orders have developed from original verb final orders in Germanic. The traditional answer is that according to Wackernagel’s law (which has clitics move into second position in Indo-European languages), light finite verbs start to be placed after the accented first constituent in main clauses in Germanic; a movement operation that was later extended to all finite verbs. A very influential proposal about the development of V2 was put forward by Vennemann (1974). He assumes that Germanic had inherited the basic verb final order (SXV) from Indo-European and that the V2 pattern first initiated with the preposing of thematic stressed constituents. In this scenario, TVX (initial V2) constitutes an intermediate stage in the development of OV languages to VO languages. Fourquet (1974) proposes a completely different account of the development of V2. In his treatment, V2 results from a gradual process that places the verb in a sentence-medial position due to postposing of nonpronominal constituents. In his scenario, an intermediate pattern arises in which pronominal elements precede the verb in main clauses that is well documented in Old English (OE) texts of the earlier period. Until recently it was assumed that all Germanic languages, including English, had developed a generalized V2-rule. Newer studies of the development of verb placement in English have shown that OE only displayed a residual V2 pattern: V2 only appears if an operator (wh-word or negation) is preposed, while the preposing of constituents without operator status yields V3 word order. In order to account for residual V2, Kiparsky (1995, 1996) introduced structural positions for Focus and Topic in the C-domain. In his account,

4 Roland Hinterhölzl and Svetlana Petrova only movement of an operator into the Focus position is accompanied by movement of the verb, while with preposed topics, analyzed as occupying adjoined positions to the CP, the verb may stay in a lower position. This account raises the question of why OHG was rather different from Old English in this respect, since already in this stage of German, preposing of a non-operator constituent regularly triggered V2 as well.

2.3. The change from OV to VO in English Most studies about the development of English into a pure VO language assume that OE was an OV language of the modern German type and that VO structures are innovations that came about and spread in the Middle English (ME) period. It is important to note that at the same time in which OV structures disappear, English lost most of its nominal and verbal morphology. Therefore this development was characterized as a process in which due to the loss of morphological distinctions, verb placement serves to distinguish the grammatical functions of subject and objects (cf., among others, Vennemann 1974). Along these lines, Roberts (1997) tries to explain the change in word order with the loss of Case morphology in Early Middle English (EME). Note, however, that this account must remain unsatisfactory under a wider Germanic perspective, since it raises the question why Dutch had not also developed into a VO language. There is a growing number of works that take into account the great variety of word orders in early English. Most prominent among these are the accounts of Kroch (1989) and Pintzuk (1999) which relate the presence of OV and VO word orders to the availability of an OV grammar and a VO grammar (double base hypothesis). According to them the availability of two grammars is due to language contact between Anglo-Saxons (basic OV grammar) and Scandinavian settlers (basic VO grammar) in the 10th century. Also this account remains unsatisfactory since a) one of its presuppositions, namely that the Scandinavian settlers spoke a VO language, cannot be proven and b) it does not take into account that already OE displayed VO word orders. Since VO orders can also be found in OHG and in OI (cf. Hróarsdóttir 2000), it is reasonable to assume that VO orders in English are not due to language contact but are part of the common inheritance of the Germanic languages. So far it has not been investigated whether the availability of OV and VO orders in OE could not be due to information-structural factors and

Introduction

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there are no comparative investigations of OV and VO orders in the oldest stages of Germanic, that is, in OE, OHG and OI.

2.4. The development of the sentence bracket in German As discussed above, the positioning of arguments and adjuncts after the verb constitutes a common word order pattern in the early stages of the Germanic languages. Given that the basic word order in these languages was verb final, these word orders were analysed as involving exbraciation or extraposition (cf. Behaghel 1932). In the German tradition, the problem of extraposition was discussed under the perspective of the development of the German sentence bracket and constituted the subject of a large number of empirical studies. Considering only the later stage of OHG, there are three studies that note a significant reduction of extraposed direct objects in this period (cf. Bolli 1975, Näf 1979 and Borter 1982). Unfortunately, these studies are purely descriptive and do not take into consideration the information-structural role of extraposed constituents. In general, most of these studies treat the development of the German sentence bracket as a purely stylistic phenomenon that is brought about by socio-cultural factors: the influence of Latin classical writers (Behaghel 1892) or the spreading of the written style of formal bureaucratic language (Ebert 1999). In all these studies, the role of grammar in yielding (different) stylistic preferences is not taken into account. It is remarkable that the development of English has been described as a change in grammar while the development of German has been described as a purely stylistic change in most formal studies, including the approach of Lenerz (1984), which only relates the development of V2 to a change in grammar, namely the introduction of an obligatory C-projection. Formal treatments of the development of word order regularities in Germanic have mostly ignored the role of information structure so far. Traditional and functional accounts of these developments have often pointed out the influence of information-structural parameters on these processes, but failed to show how stylistic change can be related to grammar change. Recent works in generative theory on restrictions on movement as well as on restrictions on word order in the left periphery have proposed to integrate pragmatic notions like topic and focus into the syntax by defining pragmatically determined syntactic nodes in the split C-domain (Müller & Sternefeld 1993, Rizzi 1997). These proposals about the information-struc-

6 Roland Hinterhölzl and Svetlana Petrova tural organisation of the C-domain, as discussed above, has been adopted by Kiparsky (1995, 1996) and applied to the analysis of the left periphery in Indo-European languages. Furthermore, several studies on the representation of focus have shown that focussing of a constituent involves changes in word order in many languages. In the following, Zubizarreta (1998) developed a general theory about the interaction between word order, prosody and information structure. The application of these theories and of insights on the interaction between core grammar and information-structure in the analysis of older stages of Germanic is still wanting. Finally, as already pointed out above, in the new model of change in which variation in language use is crucial in processes of grammar change, information structure acquires a central role in explaining word order variation and change: the expression of IS-categories in terms of different grammatical means and their more pronounced or reduced use by speakers in specific contexts and communicative situations can be taken as a major source of synchronic variation as well as a crucial link between grammatical form and stylistic form. This volume collects a number of papers that – by taking into account information-structural factors – try to relate formal and functional explanations in order to yield a more complete and unified account of the development of word order regularities in Germanic.

3. The structure of the book The volume consists of three sections, each dedicated to different aspects of the complex task of investigating the role of information structure in historic texts. First, there is the question of which information structural notions are relevant for explaining word order variation. Then, the question arises of how to analyse the interaction between core grammar and information-structural conditions. These questions are addressed in the theoretical contributions in Section 2. The authors discuss pertinent theoretical issues concerning word order variation and word order change and review current research on the role of information structure in the grammar. They agree that information structure is a factor responsible for the emergence of new word order patterns and constructions in the early stages of the Germanic languages, which provided the basis for the further development of word order regularities in the individual Germanic languages and their dialects.

Introduction

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Second, there is the question of how to retrieve IS-categories in texts of historical corpus languages, i.e. in texts available in written form only, with no or very restricted access to prosodic information. It is well-known that the Germanic languages are languages in which information structure is reflected prominently in the intonation of constituents. These issues are addressed in detail in Section 3, where different philological and linguistic methods of finding secure cues to unmarked word order and information structure are presented. Section 4, finally, turns to the information-structural analysis of historical texts proper. The papers present individual analyses of the main texts of the Old German corpus and show to which degree an approach is successful which tries to make sense of word order variation in terms of IScategories and to which degree such an approach allows to make generalisations across different texts and genres.

3.1. Information structure and word order variation The contributions in Section 2 feature individual studies on word order variation in OHG, OE and OI, arguing that the consideration of information structure offers new and interesting ways of explaining the pertinent variation. The contribution by Katrin Axel focuses on word order variation in the left periphery in OHG and investigates the status of V2 in OHG texts from Isidor to Notker. Axel argues that the modern V2-system was already in place in OHG leading to the regular fronting of wh-operators and topics, while CP-expletives were still missing in OHG. According to Axel, this system existed parallel to an older system in which clause type was not signalled via word order but by a limited class of particles. Axel surmises that the older system disappeared when the innovative rule of stylistic fronting was extended, giving rise to a further consolidation of the dominant V2-pattern. The contribution by Roland Hinterhölzl focuses on word order variation in the right periphery in OHG and discusses the factors that led to the establishment of the famous sentence bracket in modern German. Hinterhölzl argues that word order variation within one grammar is due to the expression of different IS-categories and word order change involves a change in the mapping between syntactic structure and prosodic structure in which information structure plays a crucial role. The contribution by Thorbjorg Hróarsdóttir discusses aspects of word order variation in the right periphery in OI showing that this variation is

8 Roland Hinterhölzl and Svetlana Petrova due to a complex interaction between prosodic and information-structural factors. Hróarsdóttir also discusses the change to basic VO order in Icelandic, showing that traditional treatments fail to account for the slow gradual loss of OV orders, and instead argues for a change in language use, namely in the expression of IS-categories, which paved the way to the eventual change in grammar. The contribution by Ans van Kemenade addresses aspects of word order variation in the middle field in OE showing that a certain class of short adverbs separates the domain of discourse-given and discourse-new constituents in the clause, pointing out the similarities of these patterns with scrambling in German. Van Kemenade argues that the syntax, though constituting a tightly circumscribed system, offers a limited amount of options which defines the space in which language users can manipulate word order according to information-structural needs. According to van Kemenade, this system of IS-based ordering of constituents disappeared, when a specific type of referring expressions, namely simple demonstratives, were lost in ME.

3.2. How to identify unmarked word order and IS-categories in a corpus language The contributions in Section 3 address various methodological issues concerning a) the identification of the unmarked word order in a corpus language displaying mixed word orders and b) the identification of IScategories in historic texts that provide no or very little clues to prosody. The contribution by Thomas Krisch uses various cross-linguistic generalisations concerning deletions in coordination and in ellipsis to probe the unmarked word order in ancient Indo-European languages like Latin, Greek, Sanskrit and Hittite. Krisch concludes from evidence for backward gapping that these languages were underlyingly SOV languages, while forward gapping is interpreted as a reflex of V-to-C movement. Furthermore, Krisch argues that deletions in coordination provide insights into the information-structural value of the constituents in the clause. The contribution by Jürg Fleischer constitutes a careful philological study of different palaeographic phenomena, foremost accent diacritics and word separation, as potential clues to prosodic information in different manuscripts of the OHG period. Fleischer addresses the important issue of whether diacritics signal prosodic prominence on a single word in the text. His analysis shows, however, that each of the OHG manuscripts displays

Introduction

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its own system of accentuation in which diacritics may serve more than one single function. While in Notker’s texts, accents are used to mark vowel quantity, the same diacritics are devices for different types of graphical and phonetic disambiguation in other texts. Nevertheless, Fleischer provides examples in which the use of an accent is related to prosodic prominence in the text. But any conclusion on the role of accentuation as a strategy of marking information structure has to take into account the remaining functions of diacritics in the particular record. This result leaves the historical linguist with a careful and stepwise procedure of text interpretation as the only reliable method of identifying IS-categories in historic texts. The contribution by Svetlana Petrova and Michael Solf addresses the different issues one is confronted with in investigating the role of information structure in word order variation in historic texts. The first issue is how to identify the structures that represent instances of authentic OHG word order, given the fact that the large texts of this period are either poetic or constitute translations from Latin. The second issue concerns the determination of the information-structural role of a constituent in a text and presupposes an analysis that breaks up the rather controversial informationstructural notions, like topic, focus and background, into their constitutive features that can be used to make the assignment of IS-categories in a given text sequence on the basis of contextual interpretation as objective and tractable as possible. The exposition of this methological procedure is embedded in a thorough discussion of the analysis of the basic IS-notions in the literature and concludes with some illustrative examples of how IScategories are to be assigned to a given constituent in the text of the OHG Tatian translation.

3.3. Information structure in texts: five case studies The contributions in Section 4 constitute detailed empirical studies addressing the question of whether the consideration of information-structural aspects can provide us with a deeper and coherent explanation of the great amount of word order variation in the main texts of the German inheritance. Thus, we selected contributions from researchers which combine the theoretical linguistic knowledge with the necessary philological expertise on the individual text. If not indicated by the author itself, the contributions of Section 4 use the same IS-notions as defined by Petrova and Solf in Section 3, in order to guarantee that the individual results in this section can be evaluated and compared with each other.

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Roland Hinterhölzl and Svetlana Petrova

The contribution by Eva Schlachter discusses word order variation in the OHG Isidor translation which is among the earliest texts of the OHG corpus. She examines the position of the finite verb in subordinated clauses introduced by dhazs. She observes that an extraordinarily high percentage of ‘light’ verbs, i.e. copula and auxiliary verbs, end up in a higher clause position yielding structural variation in the right periphery. Schlachter also demonstrates that variation in the positional realisation of main vs. light verbs in the Isidor text is associated with different strategies to highlight new and contrastive information in the clause. The contribution by Svetlana Petrova addresses the role of information structure in word order variation in the right periphery in the largest and oldest prosa text of the German inheritance, namely the Tatian translation. Based on a thorough investigation of word order in embedded clauses, she shows that constituents are mapped according to their informationstructural contribution into three different fields of the clause: a) discourse given nominal constituents are realized adjacent to C, b) constituents that are narrowly (contrastively) focussed are realized left-adjacent to the finite verb, while c) constituents that represent new information focus are realized after the finite verb. While the placement of discourse given material is identical to that in modern German, OHG seems to distinguish two types of focus positions. Petrova proposes that the OHG-system in this way allows to avoid focus ambiguities that pervade the NHG-system: if the most deeply embedded argument is stressed in NHG, this pattern can express either narrow focus (on the argument) or wide focus. Word order and information structure in the Gospel Harmony by Otfrid von Weissenburg are addressed in the contribution by Andreas Lötscher. Lötscher argues that word order in this text is largely determined by the same rules and principles that govern modern German clause structure, rejecting the standard view that word order variation is entirely due to the poetic nature of this text. In particular, Lötscher investigates the placement of constituents within or outside of the sentence bracket formed by the finite and non-finite verb in the clause. Lötscher argues that this major characteristic of German word order is well-established in the syntax of Otfrid, with the distinction that arguments can optionally be placed in the Mittelfeld or in the Nachfeld. Lötscher argues that their distribution is not random but is governed by information-structural factors. The contribution by Rosemarie Lühr examines a late-OHG text, namely the translation of Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae from Latin to OHG by Notker of St. Gall. The main issue is to investigate the way in which the OHG translation reflects information-structural phenom-

Introduction

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ena of the Latin original. Lühr’s careful study shows that Notker was aware of the language-specific means to express IS-categories in the original and investigates the means by which these categories are expressed in the OHG text. The most interesting cases are those in which Notker considerably transformed the word order determined by the original, in order to provide a clear identification of the IS-categories in his translation. Lühr also argues that these changes arguably respect the rules of a genuine grammatical system and therefore provide an insight into the effects of information structure on OHG word order, by pointing out that constructions like the Latin hyperbaton, which serve to mark focus but are ungrammatical in Germanic, are translated without splitting up constituents, as it is typical for Latin. The contribution by Sonja Linde addresses word order and information structure in OS, a language that is almost unexplored from a syntactic viewpoint. She argues that the syntactic variation in the left periphery in the poetic text of Heliand, which constitutes the major part of the OS corpus, is best understood if it is regarded as the result of two competing systems, one involving verb fronting to C and optional movement to SpecC, and one representing an archaic stage in which, in line with Kiparsky (1995), the functional category C has not developed yet. Linde shows that in the latter system, the syntactic realisation of sentence constituents with respect to the finite verb was determined by pragmatic, i.e. informationstructural and discourse-related factors.

References Behaghel, Otto 1892 Zur deutschen Wortstellung. Zeitschrift für den deutschen Unterricht 6: 262–267. 1932 Deutsche Syntax. Eine geschichtliche Darstellung. Band IV. Periodenbau. Heidelberg: Carl Winter. Bolli, Ernst 1975 Die verbale Klammer bei Notker. Untersuchungen zur Wortstellung in der Boethius-Übersetzung. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Borter, Alfred 1982 Syntaktische Klammerbildung in Notkers Psalter. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter.

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Braune, Wilhelm 1894 Zur Lehre von der deutschen Wortstellung. In Forschungen zur deutschen Philologie. Festgabe für Rudolf Hildebrand zum 13. März 1894, ed. Rudolf Kögel, 34–51. Leipzig: Veit & Co. Delbrück, Berthold 1911 Germanische Syntax II. Zur Stellung des Verbums. Leipzig: Teubner. Dittmer, Arne and Dittmer, Ernst 1998 Studien zur Wortstellung – Satzgliedstellung in der althochdeutschen Tatianübersetzung. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Ebert, Robert Peter 1999 Historische Syntax des Deutschen II: 1300–1750. 2d ed. Bern: Lang. Erdmann, Oskar 1886 Grundzüge der deutschen Syntax. Erste Abteilung. Gebrauch der Wortklassen. Die Formationen des Verbums in einfachen Sätzen und in Satzverbindungen. Stuttgart: Cotta. Fleischmann, Klaus 1973 Verbstellung und Relieftheorie. Ein Versuch zur Geschichte des deutschen Nebensatzes. München: Wilhelm Fink. Fourquet, Jean 1974 Genetische Betrachtungen über den deutschen Satzbau. In Studien zur deutschen Literatur und Sprache des Mittelalters. Festschrift für Hugo Moser zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Werner Besch, Günther Jungbluth, Gerhard Meissburger and Eberhard Nellmann, 314–323. Berlin: Erich Schmidt. Hinterhölzl, Roland 2004 Language Change versus Grammar Change: What diachronic data reveal about the distinction between core grammar and periphery. In Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar, eds. Carola Trips and Eric Fuß, 131–160. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hróarsdóttir, Þorbjörg 2000 Word Order Change in Icelandic: From OV to VO. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins. 2003 Language Change and Language Acquisition. Nordlyd 31 (1): 116–131. Kavanagh, Joseph Hayes 1970 The Verb-Final Rule in Old High German: A Diachronic Analysis of Surface Structure Constraints. Dissertation, University of Michigan. Kiparsky, Paul 1995 Indo-European Origins of Germanic Syntax. In Clause Structure and Language Change, eds. Adrian Battye and Ian Roberts, 140–169. New York/Oxford.

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The Shift to Head-Initial VP in Germanic. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, eds. Höskuldur Thráinsson, Samuel David Epstein and Steve Peter, 140–179. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Kroch, Anthony 1989 Reflexes of Grammar in Patterns of Language Change. Journal of Language Variation and Change 1 (3): 199–244. Lenerz, Jürgen 1984 Syntaktischer Wandel und Grammatiktheorie. Eine Untersuchung an Beispielen aus der Sprachgeschichte des Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Lightfood, David 1999 The Development of Language. Oxford: Blackwell. Müller, Gereon and Wolfgang Sternefeld 1993 Improper Movement and Unambiguous Binding. Linguistic Inquiry 24: 461–507. Näf, Anton 1979 Die Wortstellung in Notkers Consolatio. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Pintzuk, Susan 1999 Phrase Structures in Competition: Variation and Change in Old English Word Order. New York and London: Garland. Rizzi, Luigi 1997 The Fine Structure of the Left Periphery. In Elements of Grammar. Handbook in Generative Syntax, ed. Liliane Haegeman, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Roberts, Ian 1997 Directionality and word order change in the history of English. In Parameters of morphosyntactic change, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent, 398–426. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tomanetz, Karl 1879 Die Relativsätze bei den ahd. Uebersetzern des 8. u. 9. Jahrh. Wien: Carl Gerold's Sohn. Vennemann, Theo 1974 Topics, Subjects, and Word Order: From SXV to SVX via TVX. In Historical Linguistics, eds. John M. Anderson and Charles Johns, 339–376. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publ. Co. Wackernagel, Wilhelm 1892 Über ein Gesetz der indogermanischen Wortstellung. Indogermanische Forschungen. Zeitschrift für indogermanische Sprach- und Altertumskunde 1: 333–436. Zubizaretta, Maria Luisa 1998 Prosody, Focus and Word Order. Cambridge: MIT Press.

The role of information structure in the grammar

The verb-second property in Old High German: Different ways of filling the prefield Katrin Axel

1. Introduction* This paper deals with the question of how the prefield was filled in Old High German (OHG). This is an important issue if we want to find out how well the verb-second (= V2) property was already established at this earliest attested stage of the German language (ca. 750–1050 A.D.). Descriptively speaking, the V2 property involves the three components in (1): (1)

a. obligatory placement of some XP in front of the finite verb b. the XP-movement in (a) is restricted to one XP c. obligatory preposing of the finite verb

In this paper, I will only consider the V2 component in (1a). According to standard assumptions in generative syntax, the landing site of obligatory XP-fronting is the specifier position of CP (SpecCP). Regarding V-to-Cmovement (cf. 1c), it may suffice to say that it was already very much generalized in OHG (see Axel 2007: Chapter 2 for details). As for (1b), it should be mentioned that we still find a certain amount of V3 order in the 8th and 9th century prose texts, most notably with personal pronouns and with certain adverbials (Lippert 1974; Tomaselli 1995; Axel 2007: Chapter 4). For the purposes of this paper, we will neglect this issue and simply assume that there was only one specifier position (= SpecC) in front of the preposed finite verb. The present study is based on an investigation of the following texts:1 First, the major prose texts from the 8th and 9th centuries, i.e. the Isidor translation (ca. 790), the so-called Monsee Fragments (ca. 790–800) and the OHG version of Tatian’s Gospel Harmony (ca. 830). Second, the translation of Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiæ by the late OHG writer Notker Labeo (first half 11th century). Unfortunately, all these texts are translations of theological or philosophical works. This means that we have to take into account the word order in the Latin source sentences in order to decide which word order patterns were real reflexes of the native OHG grammar.

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2. The prefield in Old High German: A short overview A typical property of V2 languages is that an XP can be moved to the SpecC position regardless of its syntactic category or syntactic function. This can already be shown to hold for 8th and 9th century OHG. As can be seen in the examples in (2), the clause-initial XP-position is not always occupied by the subject noun phrase as in (2a), but may also host a pronominal, (2b), or full object, a temporal adverb, (2c), an adjectival predicate, (2d), or the infinite part of the verb, such as the past participle in (2e). Note that in (2), as in the following examples, the fronted XP is given in square brackets and the finite verb is underlined. (2)

a. [Druhtin] suuor dauite in uuaarnissu (I 610) in truth Lord swore Daviddat ‘the Lord swore to David in truth’ Iurauit dominus dauid in ueritate thó thie scribara/ 2 (T 227,10) b. / [ín] bihieltun PARTICLE the scribes him watched ‘and the scribes watched him’ /obseruabant autem scribe‫ ݸ‬/ ein kneht …/ (T 251,7) c. /[hier] ist here is one boy ‘there is one little boy here …’ /est puer unus hic … / her./ (T 313,14) d. /[toot] ist dead is he ‘he is dead’ /quia mortuus est/ e. [Araugit] ist in dhes aldin uuizssodes boohhum dhazs … revealed is in the old testament’s books that ‘it is revealed in the books of the Old Testament that …’ Pateat ueteris testamenti apicibus (I 252)

In the Isidor and Tatian examples (2a) to (2c) the fillings of the first position clearly differ from those in the corresponding Latin sentences, which suggests that these word orders were licensed by the native OHG grammar. In (2d) the relative order of the adjectival phrase and the finite verb is maintained in the OHG translation, but the clause has been converted from a subordinate clause into a main clause and the subject pronoun her has been inserted in postfinite position. In (2e) it can be argued that the word orders are parallel in both languages since the participle araugit is

The verb-second property in Old High German

19

the translation of the sentence-initial finite verb in the Latin source. Note, however, that the example is from the OHG Isidor translation, which is generally considered to be of outstanding quality (e.g. Lippert 1974: 188). So already in the earlier prose texts practically any maximal category is attested in the OHG prefield. The same could, of course, easily be demonstrated with material from late OHG texts (see Näf 1979: 302–313). However, some fillings of the prefield occur much more frequently than others. A subject noun phrase or an adverbial (in the form of an AdvP or PP) is found there more often in SpecC than, for example, a direct-object noun phrase or an infinite verb in sentences which deviate from the Latin.3 For modern German it can easily be shown that even though virtually any constituent can move to the prefield, these different fillings of the prefield have an effect on the information structure of the sentence. Recently, Fanselow (2002, 2003, 2004) and Frey (2004) have put forward syntactic accounts couched in the minimalist framework which distinguish between three ways to fill the prefield: (i) operator movement, (ii) Stylistic Fronting (or Formal Movement), and (iii) Merge of expletive es. In the following, I will discuss which of these different ways of filling the prefield had already developed in OHG. Accordingly this paper is organized as follows: In the next section, I will consider different types of operator movement. Sections 4 and 5 deal with the questions of whether ‘Stylistic Fronting’ and the precursor of our expletive es had already developed in OHG. In these two sections I will also discuss the different types of V1 declaratives that are attested in the OHG prose texts. Finally, in section 6 I will sketch a hypothesis concerning the relation between XPfronting and sentence particles in OHG.

3. Operator movement Operator movement is the type of XP-fronting which arguably has the longest history: It has been shown to even have Proto-Indo-European roots (e.g. Delbrück 1888: 24; Kiparsky 1995). Note also that certain types of operator-initial sentences have been proposed to have played a central role in the development of V-to-C-movement in the early Germanic languages (see Kiparsky 1995 on Old English; and Eythórsson 1995; Ferraresi 1997, 2005 and Roberts 1996 on Gothic). Not surprisingly, already in the 8th and 9th century OHG prose texts, whphrases are positioned at the left sentence periphery in front of the pre-

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posed finite verb, cf. (3a). We even find evidence for long wh-extraction from subordinate thaz-clauses in these early texts, cf. (3b).4 (3)

thú ti héra/ (T 257,12) a. /… [uuanne]i quami when came you here ‘when did you come here?’ /… quando huc uenisti./ ti garauuemes] …/ b. /[uuár]i uuili [CP t'i thaz uuir that we prepare ...? where will2.sg ‘where do you want us to prepare ...?’ /ubi uis paremus … / (T 555,8)

Furthermore, there is evidence that focused constituents could be moved to SpecC in OHG. Behaghel (1932: 51, 255ff.) already observed marked word orders in declarative clauses where the initial position was occupied by constituents that usually occurred postfinitely. If we investigate written corpus data, in particular historical corpus data, it is, of course, difficult to analyse the information-structural or semanto-pragmatic status of the preposed XPs. We do not have direct access to prosodic information and we cannot ask informants which interpretation a particular construction has. The so-called question test is, however, one relatively straightforward way to identify a focused element that can also be applied to corpus data. It is illustrated in (4) with a modern German example from Fanselow (2004: 4–5). According to Fanselow, the fronting of the direct object ein Buch is triggered by a focus feature in C, cf. (4). (4)

a. (– –

Was hat er gelesen? ‘what has he read’?) modern German gelesen [Ein BUCH] hat er a book has he read ‘he has read a book’ Ein BUCH [[C hat] [IP er gelesen ]]] b. [CP [+foc]-feature in C (cf. Fanselow 2004: 5)

In the OHG prose texts we can also find examples with such questionanswer sequences. The Tatian sentences in (5a), for example, constitute a question-answer sequence and we may therefore assume that the pronoun ein in SpecC is focused. Note that ein here is a cataphoric pronoun which denotes the propositional content of the following complex sentence (= /obathu uuolles thuruhthigan uuésan./ fár forcoufi thiu thu habes./ ‘if you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have’ [T 357,16f.]).

The verb-second property in Old High German

(5)

21

a. (/uuaz ist mir nohnu uuan./ ‘What do I still lack?’ [T 357,12]) thir uuan./ (T 357,15) /[ein] ist youdat missing onenom is ‘one thing you lack’ /unum tibi deest./ [ thir uuan ]]] b. [CP ein [[C ist ]

We also find cases where the context suggests a contrastive interpretation. So in the second sentence in example (6a) from Tatian, the dative object (i.e. the pronoun anderemo) has been fronted to SpecC and is contrasted with the dative object (thesemo) in the first sentence.5 Similarly, in the late OHG example in (6b) from the Consolatio, the fronted dative object (i.e. the DP herbeste) is contrasted with temo lenzen ‘the spring’ in the following sentence, thus we can suspect that it was contrastively focused. (6)

a. /Inti ih quidu zi thesemo far/… and I say to this.one go (T 181,22) /... [anderemo] quidu quim/ say come otherdat ‘and I say to this one, ‘Go’, … and to another, ‘Come’’ /& dico huic uade . /... & alio ueni./ êrâ . náls temo lénzen b. [Hérbeste]gáb kót tîe not thedat springdat autumndat gave God the honour ‘God has given this award to the autumn, but not to the spring’ (N Boethius I 36,3)

Furthermore, the prefield/SpecC position in V2 languages can, of course, host topicalized XPs. This is illustrated in (7), again with a modern German example adapted from Fanselow (2004: 5). (7)

a. ( – Soll ich was über Ede erzählen?/ ‘do you want me to say something about Ede?’) – Diesen Verbrecher hat man endlich verhaftet criminal has one finally arrested thisacc ‘that criminal has finally been arrested’ b. [CP Diesen Verbrecher [[C hat] [ man endlich verhaftet ]]] [+top]-feature in C (cf. Fanselow 2004: 5)

Many linguists subscribe to the so-called ‘aboutness concept’ of topics, which was proposed by Reinhart (1981). A controversial issue is whether an aboutness topic has to already be given in the preceding context as in example (7) or whether it can denote a new referent (see Frey 2004 for an

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overview of the relevant literature). Here, it may suffice to say that in the OHG texts we find many examples for the uncontroversial case where the fronted XPs denote a given referent. So in the Tatian example in (8) the object pronoun ín, which has an anaphoric antecedent (the noun phrase man) in the preceding sentence, has been fronted to SpecC. In the Isidor example in (9) the preposition phrase umbi dhiz refers back to the content of the dhazs-clause in the preceding sentence. (8)

(/… Inti uuas thár man/ thes zesua hant thurri uuas/ ‘and there was a man whose right hand was withered’ [T 227,8]) thie scribara/ (T 227,10) /[ín] bihieltun thó watched PARTICLE the scribes himacc ‘and the scribes watched him’ /obseruabant autem scribe/‫ݸ‬

(9)

(… dhazs dher aerloso man … christ, got endi druhtin uurdi chinemnit ‘that the impious man … was named Christ, God and Lord’ [I 168]) auh so chiscriban (I 171) [Umbi dhiz] nist NEG-is also so written about this in dhero sibunzo tradungum in the Septuagint ‘about this is not written thus in the Septuagint’ Unde et in translatione LXX non habet

Fanselow claims that the fronting of a topic in Present-Day German is an instance of operator/A-bar movement just as the fronting of a focused constituent. Frey (2004) argues that operator movement, i.e. real A-bar movement, always results in a contrastive interpretation. In his approach (noncontrastive) topics as in the modern German example in (7) move to the prefield via A-movement, more precisely via ‘Formal Movement’, which always affects the highest constituent in the middle field just as ‘Stylistic Fronting’ in Fanselow’s account (see section 4.1). This is possible because Frey assumes that there is a topic position at the left edge of the middle field into which topics can be scrambled via A-movement.6 Since it is very difficult, if not impossible, to find out which analysis is more convincing for OHG solely on the basis of written corpus data, I will not try to answer this question. I shall merely draw the descriptive conclusion that constituents functioning as topics are frequently attested in the OHG prefield. To sum up, already in the earlier OHG prose texts we find different types of operators in the SpecC position: wh-phrases and focused XPs. Furthermore, the SpecC position could host topicalized constituents.

The verb-second property in Old High German

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4. Stylistic Fronting 4.1. Stylistic Fronting in Present-Day German In most modern German clauses the element fronted to SpecC is simply the subject. It is clear that subject-initial sentences follow conditions of use other than the sentences discussed above. They can be thetic, uttered in out-of-the-blue contexts or as answers to a question such as ‘what happened?’. However, it has been known for quite some time that there are other elements that can show up in clause-initial position without special pragmatic force. For example, temporal adverbs and sentence level adverbs are like subjects (see Fanselow 2002, 2003, 2004). They can be clauseinitial without being a topic or focus. So the sentences in (10) and (11) would also be perfect answers to the question ‘what happened?’. (10) a. [CP [ Gestern]i [[hat]k [IP ti ein Bär yesterday has anom bear ‘yesterday, a bear attacked a man’ b. dass gestern ein Bär einen that yesterday anom bear aacc ‘that yesterday a bear attacked a man’

einen Mann attackiert tk ]]] aacc man attacked Mann attackiert man attacked

hat has

(11) a. [CP [ Glücklicherweise]i [[ hat]k [ ti Peter angerufen tk ]]] fortunately has Peter called ‘fortunately, Peter has called’ b. dass glücklicherweise Peter angerufen hat that fortunately Peter called has ‘that fortunately Peter has called’ Note that sentence adverbials such as glücklicherweise in (11) cannot by their very nature be topics. The same is true for quantified XPs such as niemand ‘nobody’ in (12). (12) [Niemand] hilft ihnen umzuziehen nobody helps them to.move ‘nobody is helping them move house’ What temporal adverbs and sentential adverbs have in common is that they can be the structurally highest phrases in the middle field of an unmarked subordinate clause. This is illustrated in the b-examples in (10) and (11). When there are no high adverbials present, the highest category in the middle field is usually just the highest argument, which is normally the

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nominative argument (i.e. the subject). It has been pointed out, however, by Lenerz (1977) that there are predicate classes (e.g. unaccusative predicates, psychological predicates, and passives of ditransitive verbs) with which the oblique argument (most often a dative) precedes the nominative one in the middle field of pragmatically unmarked subordinate clauses (DAT > NOM). Accordingly, in the corresponding main clauses these oblique arguments are fronted in the unmarked case: Fahrrad gestohlen (13) a. [Einem Kind] wurde das child became thenom bike stolen adat ‘the bike was stolen from a child’ (cf. Fanselow 2002: 231) der Text entfallen b. [Einem Schauspieler]ist actor is thenom text forgotten adat ‘an actor has forgotten the text’ (cf. Fanselow 2002: 231) Fanselow (2002, 2003, 2004) argues that the phrases in (10), (11), (12) and (13) have been fronted by a German version of Stylistic Fronting at the CPlevel which is reminiscent of Stylistic Fronting in modern Icelandic. In a pragmatically unmarked clause the highest category in the middle field (= IP in Fanselow’s account) is fronted to SpecC. The exact definition is as follows: (14) When C has no semantic or pragmatic feature, its EPP [= Extended Projection Principle, K.A.] feature attracts the closest (= highest) category in IP. (Fanselow 2004: 7) This type of Stylistic Fronting at the CP-level is, of course, an essential ingredient of the V2 property: the SpecC position has to be filled even when there is no semantic or pragmatic trigger.7

4.2.

Stylistic Fronting in Old High German

We have ample evidence that there was already XP-movement which was semanto-pragmatically vacuous in OHG. Already in the prose texts from the 8th and 9th centuries it is easy to find elements in SpecC which are neither focused nor topics. The sentences in (15), for example, arguably have neutral word order, i.e. a broad focus reading. The fronted elements in these sentences can also not be topics: Negative indefinite subjects as in (15a), indefinites with a non-specific interpretation as in (15b), and correlatives of infinitival or gerundival clauses as in (15c) cannot by their very

The verb-second property in Old High German

25

nature be topics. The same is true for sentence adverbials as in (15d). Note that in all these examples – except (15a) – the relevant XPs have been fronted contrary to the Latin. guot nibi ein got./ (T 355,30) (15) a. /[neoman] nist NEG-is good except the.one God no one ‘no one is good except God alone’ /nemo bonus nisi unus deus/ inan …/ b. /uuanta8 [manage diuuala] giengun/ in since many demons went in him ‘since many demons had gone into him …’ /quia intrauerunt demonia multa/ in eum …/ (T 189,31) sus zi uuesanne/ (T 513,5) c. /[iz] gilimpfit it behoves so to be ‘it behoves to be so’ /oport& enim haec fieri/ d. endi [chiuuisso] ist christus in dheru selbun salbidhu and certainly is Christ in this same salve chimeinit meant ‘and certainly Christ is meant in this same salve’ et utique christus ipsa unctione monstratur (I 144) So just like in modern German, the OHG SpecC position had to be filled even when there was no semantic or pragmatic trigger.

4.3.

Stylistic Fronting with non-canonical predicates

As was already mentioned above, in Present-Day German sentences with non-canonical predicates the filling of the SpecC position is somewhat special. With impersonal psych-predicates, for example, it is either the quasiargument es which is fronted to SpecC, (16b), or the (highest ranked) oblique argument, (16a). In the latter case the non-obligatory es may or may not be be present in the middle field. In the former case, however, it is not possible to drop the es, (16b). (16) a. [Dem Jungen] graut boydat terrifies thedat ‘the boy is dreading the exam’

(es) it

vor by

der the

Prüfung exam

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b. *(Es) graut dem Jungen it terrifies thedat boydat ‘the boy is dreading the exam’

vor by

der the

Prüfung exam

The quasi-argument es also occurs with intransitive impersonal verbs (meteorological verbs and the like), cf. (17), but in contrast to the impersonal psych-verbs it cannot be dropped in such cases, cf. (17a).9 (17) a. dass *(es) regnet that it rains ‘that it is raining’ b. *(Es) regnet it rains ‘it is raining’ Similarly, impersonal predicates with sentential complements are often realized with the correlative es, (18a). Again it is only possible to drop the correlative es in the middle field and not in SpecC, (18b). (18) a. weil (es) mich wundert, dass Peter raucht because it meacc astonishes that Peter smokes ‘because I am astonished that Peter smokes’ mich, dass Peter raucht b. *(Es) wundert it astonishes meacc that Peter smokes ‘I am astonished that Peter smokes’ One could argue that in transitive and intransitive impersonal constructions as in (16) and (17) a nominative argument is always present and that there is variation whether it is realized overtly (as es) or whether it is realized as an empty pro (Safir 1985; Cardinaletti 1990; Sternefeld 2006, II: 560). Similarly in the special case of impersonals with sentential complements one could argue that the correlative es, which is coindexed with the extraposed complement clause, can be left out due to pro-drop (Hentschel 2003). The ungrammaticality of V1 declaratives as in (16b), (17b) and in (18b) shows that in contrast to the overt subject pronoun es, pro cannot move to SpecC to fulfil the V2 requirement. The SpecC position has to be filled by overt material. In OHG, neither the quasi-argument iٕ nor the correlative iٕ10 were very common. These elements only began to spread during Middle High German times (Held 1903; Abraham 1993). The only exceptions are intransitive predicates denoting meteorological phenomena. These fall into two groups: Non-complex, i.e. verbal predi-

The verb-second property in Old High German

27

cates such as âbandên ‘to become evening’ or nahtên ‘to become night’, already often occur with iٕ, whereas constructions with nominal, adjectival or adverbial predicates and copula verbs are mostly attested without iٕ (see Held 1903: 28; Haiman 1974: 103; Lenerz 1985a). The latter type of predicates could show surface V1 order in OHG: zit / nah sehsta. .../ (19) a. /... uuas tho time near sixth was PARTICLE ‘it was about the sixth hour’ /... hora erat / quasi sexta; .../ (N Boethius IV 205,10) b. Íst álso chád si. is so said she ‘“so it is,” she said’ Ita est inquit illa.

(T 275,29)

Sentences with transitive impersonal predicates predominantly exhibited V2 order in OHG. It was usually the (highest ranked) oblique argument that was fronted. This argument normally referred to the logical subject (= experiencer). Already Behaghel (1932: 70) observed that the oblique argument (most often a personal pronoun) was generally fronted in order to fulfil the V2 requirement in those cases where the quasi-argument iٕ was not present. The same is true for modern German. Here as well, the oblique arguments of impersonal verbs occur in SpecC in unmarked clauses: (20) /[mih] hungrita …/ meacc hungered ‘I was hungry …’ /esuriui enim …/

(T 543,26)

By contrast, in sentences with impersonal predicates that subcategorize for a propositional argument in the form of a ‘subject’ clause we find V1 order both in the 8th and 9th century texts, cf. the Tatian example in (21), and in the late OHG texts by Notker, cf. (22). thaz arfuoron fon In/ thie engila …/ (21) /uuard thô became PARTICLE that departed from them the angels ‘it came to pass that the angels departed from them’ /& factum ut discesserunt ab eis/ angeli …/ (T 87,17) (22) a. Íst áleuuâr [dáz man chît …] is very.true that one says ‘it is a true sentence that one says …’ Nam uera sententia est .

(N Boethius V 234,4)

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b. Keskíhet óuh ófto . (N Boethius IV 220,10) happens also often [dáz kûotên geuuált ze_hánden chóme] . to hands comes that the.goodpl power ‘it also often happens that the chief command is given to good men’ Fit autem sepe . uti bonis summa rervm regenda deferatur . The V1 pattern is also attested with transitive impersonal predicates that subcategorize both for an accusative or dative experiencer argument and an infinitival/gerundival or finite clause, cf. (23). We also find examples with V2 order where the dative argument has been fronted contrary to the Latin source, cf. (24). As was mentioned above, fronting of the oblique argument was also possible in the case of impersonals without sentential complements, cf. (20). [christinheidi chilaupnissa chihoran] (23) a. lustida sie hear desired themacc Christianity’s belief ‘they wanted to hear the belief of Christianity’ christi fidem delectantur audire (I 693) [uuáz iz méine] b. Íst sie vuúnder what it means is sheacc wonder ‘she wonders what it means’ (N Boethius IV 210,29) [abur (24) /[íu] gilimphit behoves again youdat.pl ‘you must be born again’ /oport& uos nasci denuo/

giboran born

uuerdan]/ become

(T 405,26)

Note that ‘subject’ clauses, in particular finite ‘subject’ clauses, are generally extraposed in OHG as in modern German. This can be seen in (23b), where the clause occurs after the predicate vuúnder. Again, one could argue that all the OHG impersonal constructions without the expletive iٕ involve instead a pro-element which is either an empty quasi-argument or a correlative coindexed with the extraposed clause. For OHG this hypothesis seems to be even better motivated than for modern German since in the earlier OHG texts there is also referential prodrop attested in postfinite environments (Axel 2005, 2007: Chapter 6). This is illustrated in (25).

The verb-second property in Old High German

29

pro in cruci (25) a. [Sume] hahet pro in cross someacc hang2.pl ‘some of them you will crucify’ et ex illis occidetis et crucifigetis (MF XVIII,17 [St. Matthew 23:34]) b. [In dhemu druhtines nemin] archennemes ... pro fater in the Lord’s name recognize1.pl ... pro father ‘in the name of the Lord we recognize ... the Father’ In persona enim domini patrem accipimus (I 279) Given the assumption that there is an expletive pro in OHG impersonal constructions, it could be possible that in sentences as in (19) to (23), pro has been moved to SpecC as indicated in (26) for the sentences (19a) and (22a). The V1 order would then only be a surface phenomenon; the underlying order would be the regular V2 structure. (26) a. [CP proi [[C uuas] [tho ti zit nah sehsta. ...]]] áleuuâr]]] [ dáz man chît]i ] b. [CP proi [[C Íst ] [[ti This analysis, however, faces one serious problem: Also in Present-Day German there are impersonal predicates with which the quasi-argument es or correlative es are not obligatory and it can be argued that in the cases whithout es pro is present. In contrast to OHG, however, sentences with impersonal predicates cannot be realized as V1 sentences in Present-Day German. In other words, we would have to argue that a putative pro-element cannot move to SpecC in modern German to fulfil the V2 requirement (see also Cardinaletti 1990; Sternefeld 2006 I, 170). Viewed from a diachronic perspective it is then very unlikely that pro should have been licensed in SpecC in OHG times. If so, what would account for the diachronic change which resulted in a ban on fronting pro to SpecC? This is why I will stick to the idea that there is a general ban on empty expletives in SpecC in V2 languages. In other words, it may well be that we should analyse impersonal predicates as subcategorizing for pro, but this pro presumably stayed in the middle field and did not move to SpecC via Stylistic Fronting. So we may conclude that in the context of impersonal predicates, Stylistic Fronting had already developed in OHG times: However, there are still some residues where it sometimes failed to take place.11 A further type of non-canonical predicate is the passives of ditransitive verbs. In the last section it was shown that in modern German in the unmarked order the oblique argument precedes the nominative in such cases and consequently it is the oblique argument which is moved to SpecC via

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Stylistic Fronting in main declarative clauses. In the OHG prose texts we find some examples with passivized ditransitives. In contrast to the impersonal psych-predicates, the oblique argument is usually not fronted and we get V1 order: furlazano (27) /sint thir forgiven are youdat.sg ‘your sins are forgiven’ /dimittuntur tibi peccata/

sunta/ sins

(T 193,24)

However, we have to be careful in drawing this conclusion since in all the relevant examples the oblique argument also occurs postverbally in the corresponding Latin sentences. To sum up: Sentences with impersonal predicates fall into two groups: In sentences with transitive impersonals the oblique experiencer was generally fronted to SpecC. Sentences with intransitive impersonals or intransitive sentences with subject clauses, on the other hand, were often realized as V1 sentences. This is presumably due to the fact that there was no overt argument present which could be fronted since the use of the overt quasiargument iٕ or the correlative iٕ was not yet obligatory. So the V1 orders with impersonals constituted exceptions to the Stylistic Fronting Rule in OHG, but they were exceptions that proved the rule. One factor that led to the consolidation of the V2 property in the history of German was the spread of overt quasi-arguments and correlatives.

5. An expletive in SpecC? In Present-Day German there are also constructions where Stylistic Fronting fails to apply and where there are also no fronted focused XPs or topics in SpecC either. In this case, the expletive es is merged in this position. One example would be existential or presentational constructions as in (28). As can be seen in (28b), the expletive es can also occur with definite subjects. This shows that it is different from the subject expletive in languages such as English (there) or Icelandic (það). German es is not a subject expletive, but a placeholder which satisfies the requirement that the SpecC position be filled. (28) a. [Es] braut sich ein Gewitter thunderstorm it brews REFL a ‘a thunderstorm is brewing’

zusammen together

The verb-second property in Old High German

31

Philharmoniker b. [Es] spielen die Wiener the Vienna Philharmonic.Orchestrapl it playpl ‘the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra is playing’ In OHG this kind of prefield (or SpecC) expletive had not yet developed. In our corpus there are no such examples. This fits in with observations in the secondary literature (Brugmann 1917; Behaghel 1923: 319–320, 1928: 470–471; Lenerz 1985a; Abraham 1993) that the development of es as a prefield expletive took place in the Middle High German period. Now the question arises of how existential/presentational constructions looked in OHG. The answer is that they were simply realized with V1 order. Like in the modern language, the subject was not fronted but remained in the postfinite domain even in those cases where the corresponding Latin sentence had a preverbal subject, (29). Instead of merging an expletive, the SpecC position remained empty:12 (29) a. See13

quimit der bruti gomo ·(MF XX,8 [St. Matthew 25:6]) comes the bridegroom ‘behold, the bridegroom is coming’ Ecce sponsus uenit, hirta In thero lantskeffi.‘/ b. /uuarun thô PARTICLE shepherds in that country were ‘there were shepherds in the same country’ /Et pastores erant In regione eadem.‘/ (T 85,29) thar ouh sum uuitua/ In thero burgi .../ c. /uuas was there also some widow in that city ‘there was a certain widow in the same city...’ (T 415,2) /vidua autem quædam erat/ In ciuitate illa .../ in/ moises …/ (T 305,21) d. /arougta sih tho appeared REFL PARTICLE them Moses ‘Moses appeared unto them …’ /et ecce apparuit illis/ moises …/ INTERJ

In some examples with presentational constructions and V1 order we have evidence that the subject is not in its base position, but is extraposed. In (30), for example, the subject noun phrase gotes engila is found after the verb particle zuo. In the examples in (29) the so-called right-sentence bracket is not occupied by overt material (i.e. a non-finite verb or verbal particle). This is why the examples are in fact ambiguous with respect to the position of the subjects.

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(30) /giengun thô t i zuo PARTICLE VERB.PART. went ‘there came God’s angels’ /Et ecce angeli accesserunt/

[gotes God’s

engila]i / angels

(T 115,30)

Most examples with existential/presentational constructions contain unaccusative predicates (most notably verbs of existence or appearance). In OHG texts, subject extraposition occurs quite frequently with such predicates not only in main clauses, but also in subordinate clauses.14 The frequent occurrence of ‘subject’ extraposition in unaccusative environments could be related to the fact that the subject is the underlying object in such cases. Again one could speculate that such constructions involve an expletive pro in the canonical subject position which is coindexed with the nominative noun phrase. Like the empty quasi-argument pro in truly subjectless constructions, this expletive pro has a nominative case feature, but in contrast to quasi-argument pro it is not restricted to the third person singular, but must also be able to bear a plural feature (e.g. in (29b) and (30) the associate noun phrase is in the plural). The question as to which position was the subject position in OHG is not really relevant for the issue at hand. We may simply assume that it was SpecVP as argued by e.g. Haider (1997) and Sternefeld (2006, II: 537), who propose a minimal model for modern German sentence structure with no I-projection. Again one could now argue that the V1 orders in (29) and (30) only pertain at the surface and that there are structurally V2 orders where the expletive pro-element has been fronted to SpecC. However, this analysis would face the same diachronic problem as was discussed above: If expletive pro could be moved to SpecC in OHG, why is this no longer possible today? For modern German Sternefeld argues that in sentences where nominative DPs are merged in direct object position there must be a silent category in SpecVP c-commanding the finite verb so that the required checking configuration for subject-verb agreement and the nominative case feature can be established, cf. (31a). This silent category differs from the pro that occurs in truly subjectless sentences in that it is not restricted to the third person singular, but may also bear a plural feature. ereignet] haben]] (31) a. dass sichj [VP Ø [V’ [VP Wunder tj miracles happened have that REFL ‘that miracles have happened’ ereignet b. [Es] haben sich Wunder REFL miracles happened it have ‘miracles have happened’

The verb-second property in Old High German

33

ereignet c. *Haben sich Wunder REFL miracles happened have ‘have miracles happened?’ In contrast to OHG, however, the corresponding main clauses cannot be realized with V1 order as is illustrated in (31b,c). Sternefeld (2006, II: 592) therefore concludes that there must be a general ban on moving invisible material to SpecC. So we may conclude that one factor that led to the consolidation of the V2 property was the development of an expletive element, a placeholder that was merged in the SpecC position when no XP was moved there. This development took place in the Middle High German period. Interestingly, in modern Bavarian the use of es as a prefield expletive is not very common either, at least it is more restricted than in the Standard language. As Weiß (1998: 102–103) shows, the adverb do is often used where es would occur in the Standard: Ungligg (32) [Do] is a there is an accident ‘an accident has happened’

bassierd happened

(Weiß 1998: 102)

One could now hypothesize that the modern and historical dialects in which the pronoun es is not common resort to an adverbial expletive instead. In the OHG Tatian we do indeed find examples where the adverb thô occurs in presentational constructions (see also Brugmann 1917 on Otfrid): uuas man In INTERJ PARTICLE was man in ‘behold, there was a man in Jerusalem’ /& ecce homo erat In hierusalem‘/

(33) /senonu

[tho]

hierusalem.‘/ Jerusalem’ (T 89,23)

We also have some evidence that thô only had a weak semantics in OHG: It is often used as a translation of Latin et ‘and’ or it is simply inserted into the OHG where the Latin does not even have a corresponding element (cf. Ruhfus 1897: 12 et passim; Betten 1987). If thô was really the OHG counterpart of our modern prefield expletive es, it could be speculated that in the presentational/existential constructions with V1 order that we discussed above thô was dropped as the result of topic drop: (34) [CP thô/ø [[C Vi]

[VP ... ti ]]]

The hypothesis of an elliptical thô is, however, not really convincing since this element was overtly present in many examples, albeit in postfinite

34

Katrin Axel

position, cf. (29a, d) and (30). In the following section its role will be discussed in more detail. To sum up: In OHG, the prefield expletive es had not yet developed. Existential/presentational constructions were realized as V1 structures. The hypothesis that there was topic drop of the adverb thô in SpecC in these cases is not convincing.

6. XP-movement to SpecC and the role of particles In the previous sections we discussed V1 order in the context of impersonal predicates and existential/presentational constructions. These are, however, not the only classes of examples with this word order. As (35) shows, we also find V1 order in declaratives with pronominal subjects.15 As was observed already by Erdmann (1886: 167) such examples are clearly not the precursors of our modern German es-V2 sentences since the latter are incompatible with pronoun subjects (see also Brugmann 1917: 35). úf/ (T 183,14) (35) a. /... árstuont siu tho up arose she PARTICLE ‘she rose’ /... & surrexit/ inti gifultun/ beidu thiu skef …/ b. /quamun sie thó both the boats came they PARTICLE and filled ‘they came and filled both of the boats’ /& uenerunt & impleuerunt/ ambas nauiculas .../ (T 125,27) Lenerz (1984: 131–132, 152–153; 1985b) proposes that the OHG V1 declaratives are the precursors of our modern narrative V1 declaratives that occur at the beginning of certain types of narrations, such as jokes (see also Maurer 1924 and Önnerfors 1997: 53ff. for many more examples): (36) Kommt da ein Kerl herein und fragt mich, … comes then a guy in and asks me ‘a guy comes in and asks me …’ (Lenerz 1985b: 104) According to Lenerz, V1 order in declaratives indicates that the sentence does not contain a thematic element, i.e. the whole proposition is rhematic. This also explains, he argues, why this word order often occurs at the beginning of texts or passages, in emphatic narration or where a change of the discourse topic occurs.

The verb-second property in Old High German

35

While it is true that there are many V1 declaratives which only contain rhematic material attested in the OHG prose texts, notably in Tatian, we also find a considerable number of examples where this is not the case: ûz sine scalca/ In uuega .../ (37) a. /giengun thô PARTICLE out his servants in streets went ‘his servants went out into the streets’ /& egressi sunt serui eius/ In uias .../ (T 425,16) thie hirta heimuuartes.‘/ b. /uuvrbun thô turned PARTICLE the shepherds homeward ‘the shepherds returned’ /& reuersi sunt pastores.‘/ (T 89,2) giheilit ther kneht in thero ziti./ c. /uuard tho in that time became PARTICLE healed the servant ‘his servant was healed in that hour’ /& sanatus est puer in illa hora;/ (T 183,7) The V1 declarative in (37a) from Tatian’s Gospel Harmony, for example, occurs in the middle of a bible story (the Parable of the Wedding Banquet [Matthew 22: 1–14]) and its subject sine scalca ‘his servants’ clearly refers to thematic material as the servants have been mentioned several times in the preceding discourse. The same is true for the examples in (35), which have pronoun subjects that are anaphorically linked to a preceding discourse referent. The V1 declaratives in (37b,c) even occur at the absolute end of bible stories (The Shepherds and the Angels [Luke 2: 8–20] from the Christmas Story and The Faith of the Centurion [Matthew 8: 5–13]). Here as well, the respective subjects thie hirta ‘the shepherds’ and ther kneht ‘the servant’ refer to thematic material.16 Note also that we cannot render OHG V1 declaratives as in (37) by our so-called narrative V1 declaratives in modern German.17 For example, it would be impossible to close the Christmas Story by the sentence Kehrten die Hirten um (lit. ‘turned the shepherds back’). This fits in well with claims in the older philological literature (e.g. Maurer 1924; Behaghel 1932: 37) that there is no diachronic connection between the OHG V1 declaratives and the type that arose in the late Middle High German period, which are still common in Present-Day German. If there are V1 declaratives attested which are neither the precursors of the later narrative type nor the historical counterparts of our modern es-V2 construction, what else could account for the fact that there is no XPmovement to SpecC (i.e. no Stylistic Fronting) in these cases? Interestingly, the vast majority of examples contain a characteristic feature: the par-

36

Katrin Axel

ticle thô/tho in postfinite position. As I have shown elsewhere in Axel (2007: Chapter 2), there are residues of a system of sentence particles in the early OHG texts (the interrogative particle inu/eno, the affirmative particle jâ/ja and the imperative particle nû/nu). It may have been the case that thô – besides its use as a normal temporal adverbial – belonged to this system as well and served as a kind of narrative-emphatic marker. Sentence particles encoding sentence-type, mood or aspects of information structure, however, are not really a typical feature of V2 languages. In V2 languages sentence types are primarily signalled by word order (V1 vs. V2). Viewed from this perspective, it would not be surprising that there was no Stylistic Fronting in sentences with postfinite thô. If thô was a narrative-declarative marker, it was not necessary to front an XP via Stylistic Fronting. We may thus hypothesize that it was the loss of sentence particles that contributed to the generalization of XP-fronting, i.e. the development of Stylistic Fronting. The OHG V1 declaratives with thô are probably vestiges of this older system.18

7. Summary In OHG, the SpecC position was already targeted by different types of XPmovement. For example, there are uncontroversial cases of operator movement attested, i.e. fronted wh-phrases and fronted focused XPs. Furthermore, the SpecC position often hosted topicalized constituents. Moreover, we have ample evidence that the phenomenon of Stylistic Fronting had developed as we can easily find XPs in SpecC which cannot be operators. However, there were certain environments where Stylistic Fronting did not yet apply in OHG. For example, in sentences with impersonal constructions, there was often no overt quasi-argument (or correlative) present that could be fronted. Furthermore, there was often no XP-fronting in sentences that contained the particle thô. I suggested that these are residues of an older system where Stylistic Fronting had not developed and sentence type was not signalled by word order but by the use of lexical elements in the form of sentence particles. Finally, the third strategy to fill SpecC – merge of expletive es – was totally absent from OHG. Consequently, existential or presentational constructions usually exhibited V1 order. We may thus conclude that it was a conspiracy of factors that shaped the prefield as we know it today. The rise of overt quasi-arguments and the development of a SpecC expletive were factors that contributed to the further consolidation of V2. One older and much more decisive step towards the development of

The verb-second property in Old High German

37

V2, however, was the innovation of Stylistic Fronting. I hypothesize that the lexical loss of certain particles may eventually be responsible for this innovation. Even though this hypothesis could not be investigated more thoroughly within the scope of this paper, it offers a new perspective for future research.

Notes *

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the SFB 441 ‘Linguistische Datenstrukturen’. Some parts of this paper have been published in Axel (2007: Chapter 4). I would like to thank the audience at the ‘Workshop on Information Structure and Language Change’, an anonymous reviewer and the editors for their helpful comments. The Monsee Fragments are cited by section and line numbers, the Isidor by line numbers and the Tatian by page and line numbers (of the whole edition, not of the manuscript) according to the editions given in the reference section. The line numbers only indicate where the OHG sentence begins. If present, the corresponding Latin sentence is given (without line numbers) in a separate line. In many examples, underlining of the finite verb, boldface and/or bracketing have been added. The Present-Day English translations of the Isidor examples have largely been adopted from Robinson (1997). The slashes in the Tatian examples indicate where the line breaks are. In the Tatian manuscript (Cod. Sang. 56) the bilingual text is presented in two separate columns, Latin on the left and OHG on the right, a feature which has been reproduced in the edition by Masser (1994). The translators tried to achieve a translation which was as loyal as possible to the line breaks in the Latin parts, a technique which could result in non-German word orders (Dittmer & Dittmer 1998: 23). Bernhardt and Davis (1997: 55) observe that in the OHG Tatian, the prefield is most often occupied by the subject or an initial adverbial. Näf (1979: 323) mentions that in Notker’s Consolatio the subject occurs in the prefield in ca. 58% of V2 clauses. Note that also Latin wh-phrases are usually found at the left periphery. This is why there are hardly any OHG examples attested where the wh-phrase is fronted contrary to the Latin in the earlier texts. Näf (1979: 164) mentions, however, that in the late OHG Consolatio almost one-third of the examples with fronted wh-phrases do not have a direct counterpart. It could be objected that the placement of the dative object is parallel to the Latin as here the object alio also appears sentence-initially. Note, however, that the translator has inserted the finite verb (quidu) contrary to the Latin in this case. Instead of putting the verb in front of the dative object (i.e. quidu

38

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

Katrin Axel anderemo) parallel to the first sentence, the translator has decided to place anderemo in front of the verb. Frey’s account for modern German differs from Fanselow’s not only with respect to the question of how topicalization is analysed. He also assumes that there are different C-projections (FinP, KontrP and CP from right to left) which bear specific types of EPP-features: the EPP-feature in Fin is a ‘bare’ EPP-feature, and the one in Kontr is associated with the feature [KONTRAST]. In C there may be a feature which encodes reference to the discourse structure and is checked by base-generated ‘discourse adverbials’ such as kein Wunder ‘no wonder’. The V2 effect results from the constraint that there can only be one EPP-feature present in the C-domain. Such theoretical details, however, are not essential for the following argumentation, which primarily aims at giving a more descriptive overview of the grammar of the OHG prefield. For the purposes of this paper I have chosen to use Fanselow’s proposal as a theoretical background since it is somewhat simpler. Not surprisingly, this phenomenon is of younger origin than operator movement. It seems to be absent from Gothic, for instance. As Eythórsson (1995: 79–83) and Ferraresi (1997: 132) demonstrate for the Gothic bible translation, all subjects that have been moved to the C-domain are either definite or indefinite with a specific interpretation. The absence of non-specific indefinites comes as no surprise if we assume that in Gothic all XP-movement to the Cdomain had a semanto-pragmatic effect, i.e. all fronted XPs were either topics or focused. This would also explain why there was a fair amount of V1 order in Gothic, as has been observed by Eythórsson (1995: 58). Note that the causal conjunction uuanta is attested both with V2 order (as in the present example) and with verb-final order in OHG. So it could function both as a coordinating and as a subordinating conjunction just as Present-Day German weil ‘because’. The only exceptions are complex time/season expressions consisting of a copular verb and a nominal predicate. In such cases es is not obligatory (Haiman 1974: 103), but again it is only possible to drop the es in the middle field and not in SpecC. But see (15c) for an example with correlative iٕ. This fits in well with observations by Diels (1906: 98), who claimed that originally V1 was the dominant pattern in the context of impersonal constructions in Germanic. A further context where es occurs in modern German is the passives of intransitive verbs (e.g. es wird getanzt, ‘there was dancing (lit.: it was danced)’. In OHG, passives of truly transitive predicates are attested only very rarely (see Bishop 1977). The letters given in roman in the OHG and Latin examples (first and fourth line) indicate material that is unreadible in the manuscript and has been reconstructed by Hench (1890).

The verb-second property in Old High German

39

14. This word order pattern is also realized contrary to the Latin (see Axel 2007: Chapter 2). 15. In the examples in (35a,b) there is an et (&) in the Latin sentence followed by a verb form. Regardless of the question of whether et is a conjunction or an adverb, it cannot simply be argued that the V1 order in OHG is due to the Latin since there are many different translations attested for such et-sentences in Tatian. For example, et is also rendered by thô in prefinite position (Betten 1987). 16. Petrova (2006) also observes that there are V1 declaratives attested in Tatian that contain thematic material. She studies the relationship between word order and discourse relations and points out that V1 order generally occurs in sentences belonging to the main story line of the narrative, which means that they are coordinated in text structure. V2 clauses, on the other hand, can be argued to be subordinated in text structure as they appear in contexts providing additional, for example explanatory or descriptive information on a contextually given entity. 17. Önnerfors (1997: 71–76) argues against the view that V1 declaratives in modern German only contain rhematic material. In his approach the lack of a preverbal position results in a clause which is unpartitioned at the level of topiccomment structure. However, the problem remains that there are many V1 declaratives in OHG which could not be rendered by a narrative V1 declarative in modern German. 18. Note also that the particle thô is also often present in the V1 sentences with different types of impersonal constructions and in the existential/presentational constructions. In these cases the development of V2 was delayed simply because there often was no XP present which could be fronted to or merged in SpecC: The quasi-argument/correlative iٕ was not yet very widespread and the prefield expletive had yet to be ‘innovated’. We could thus hypothesize that thô was retained in these environments where the preconditions for the alternative strategy (i.e. XP-fronting) were not yet fulfilled.

References Primary Sources [I] [MF]

[N]

Der althochdeutsche Isidor. Nach der Pariser Handschrift und den Monseer Fragmenten. Neu hrsg. von H. Eggers. Tübingen, 1964. The Monsee Fragments. Newly collocated text. Introduction, notes, grammatical treatise and exhaustive glossary and a photolithographic fac-simile. Edited by G. A. Hench. Straßburg 1890. Notker der Deutsche. Boethius, »De consolatione Philosophiæ«. Buch I–V. Hrsg. von Petrus W. Tax. Tübingen, 1986, 1988, 1990.

40 [T]

Katrin Axel Die lateinisch-althochdeutsche Tatianbilingue Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen Cod. 56. Unter Mitarbeit von Elisabeth De Felip-Jaud hrsg. von Achim Masser. Göttingen, 1994.

Secondary Sources Abraham, Werner 1993 Null subjects in the history of German: From IP to CP. Lingua 89: 117–142. Axel, Katrin 2005 Null subjects and verb placement in Old High German. In Linguistic Evidence: Empirical, Theoretical and Computational Perspectives, eds. Marga Reis and Stephan Kepser, 27–48. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 2007 Studies on Old High German Syntax: Left Sentence Periphery, Verb Placement and Verb-Second. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Behaghel, Otto 1923 Deutsche Syntax. Eine geschichtliche Darstellung. Volume 1: Die Wortklassen und Wortformen. Heidelberg: Winter. 1928 Deutsche Syntax. Eine geschichtliche Darstellung. Volume 3: Die Satzgebilde. Heidelberg: Winter. 1932 Deutsche Syntax. Eine geschichtliche Darstellung. Volume IV: Wortstellung, Periodenbau. Heidelberg: Winter. Bernhardt, Karl A. and Graeme Davis 1997 The Word Order of Old High German. Lewiston/Queenston/Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press. Betten, Anne 1987 Zur Satzverknüpfung im althochdeutschen Tatian. Textsyntaktische Betrachtungen zum Konnektor ‘thô’ und seinen lateinischen Entsprechungen. In Althochdeutsch, Volume I, eds. Rolf Bergmann, Heinrich Tiefenbach and Lothar Voetz, 395–407. Heidelberg: Winter. Bishop, Harry M. 1977 The ‘subjectless’ sentence of Old High German. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Brugmann, Karl 1917 Der Ursprung des Scheinsubjekts ‘es’ in den germanischen und den romanischen Sprachen. (Berichte über die Verhandlungen der Königl. Sächsischen Gesellschaft für Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 69: 5.) Leipzig: B. G. Treubner. Cardinaletti, Anna 1990 Impersonal Constructions and Sentential Arguments in German. Padova: Padova Unipress.

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Delbrück, Berthold 1968 Reprint. Altindische Syntax. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. Original edition, Halle/S.: Verlag der Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1888. Diels, Paul 1906 Die Stellung des Verbums in der älteren althochdeutschen Prosa. Berlin: Mayer & Müller. Dittmer, Arne and Ernst Dittmer 1998 Studien zur Wortstellung – Satzgliedstellung in der althochdeutschen Tatianübersetzung. Für den Druck bearbeitet von M. Flör und J. Klempt. Göttingen: Vanderhoeck und Ruprecht. Erdmann, Oskar 1985 Reprint. Grundzüge der deutschen Syntax nach ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung, Volume I. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. Original edition, Stuttgart: Verlag der J.G. Cotta’schen Buchhandlung, 1886. Eythórsson, Thórhallur 1995 Verbal syntax in the early Germanic languages. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cornell. Fanselow, Gisbert 2002 Quirky ‘subjects’ and other specifiers. In More than Words, eds. Barbara Stiebels and Ingrid Kaufmann, 227–250. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. 2003 Münchhausen-style head movement and the analysis of verb-second. In Syntax at Sunset: Head Movement and Syntactic Theory. UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics 10, ed. Anoop Mahajan, 40–76. 2004 Cyclic phonology-syntax-interaction: Movement to first position in German. In Working Papers of the SFB 632, Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) 1, eds. Shinichiro Ishihara, Michaela Schmitz and Anne Schwarz, 1–42. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag. Ferraresi, Gisella 1997 Word order and phrase structure in Gothic: A comparative study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Stuttgart. 2005 Word and Phrase Structure in Gothic. Leuven: Peeters. Frey, Werner 2004 The grammar-pragmatics interface and the German prefield. Sprache und Pragmatik 52: 1–39. Haider, Hubert 1997 Projective economy: On the minimal functional structure of the German clause. In German: Syntactic Problems – Problematic Syntax, eds. Werner Abraham and Elly van Gelderen, 83–103. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Haiman, John 1974 Targets and Syntactic Change. The Hague/Paris: Mouton.

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Held, Karl 1903

Das Verbum ohne pronominales Subjekt in der älteren deutschen Sprache. Berlin: Mayer & Müller. Hentschel, Elke 2003 Es war einmal ein Subjekt. Linguistik online 13(1). http://www.linguistik-online.de/13_01/hentschel.html Kiparsky, Paul 1995 Indo-European origins of Germanic syntax. In Clause Structure and Language Change, eds. Adrian Battye and Ian Roberts, 140–169. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lenerz, Jürgen 1977 Zur Abfolge nominaler Satzglieder im Deutschen. Tübingen: Narr. 1984 Syntaktischer Wandel und Grammatiktheorie. Eine Untersuchung an Beispielen aus der Sprachgeschichte des Deutschen. Tübingen: Niemeyer. 1985a Zur Theorie des syntaktischen Wandels: Das expletive ‘es’ in der Geschichte des Deutschen. In Erklärende Syntax des Deutschen, ed. Werner Abraham, 99–136. Tübingen: Narr. 1985b Diachronic syntax: Verb position and COMP in German. In Studies in German Grammar, ed. JindӚich Toman, 103–132. Dordrecht: Foris. Lippert, Jörg 1974 Beiträge zur Technik und Syntax althochdeutscher Übersetzungen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Isidorgruppe und des althochdeutschen Tatian. München: Fink. Maurer, Friedrich 1924 Zur Anfangsstellung des Verbs im Deutschen. In Beiträge zur germanischen Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift für O. Behaghel, ed. Wilhelm Horn, 141–184. Heidelberg: Winter. Näf, Anton 1979 Die Wortstellung in Notkers Consolatio. Untersuchungen zur Syntax und Übersetzungstechnik. Berlin/New York: de Gruyter. Önnerfors, Olaf 1997 Verb-erst-Deklarativsätze. Grammatik und Pragmatik. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International. Petrova, Svetlana 2006 A discourse-based approach to verb placement in Early WestGermanic. In Interdisciplinary Studies on Information Structure (ISIS) 5, eds. Shinichiro Ishihara, Michaela Schmitz and Anne Schwarz, 153–185. Potsdam: Universitätsverlag. Reinhart, Tanya 1981 Pragmatics and linguistics: An analysis of sentence topics. Philosophica 27: 53–94.

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Roberts, Ian 1996 Remarks on the Old English C-system and the diachrony of V2. In Language Change and Generative Grammar. Special Issue 7 (1995– 96) of Linguistische Berichte, eds. Ellen Brandner and Gisella Ferraresi, 154–167. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag. Robinson, Orrin W. 1997 Clause Subordination and Verb Placement in the Old High German Isidor Translation. Heidelberg: Winter. Ruhfus, Wilhelm 1897 Die Stellung des Verbums im ahd. Tatian. Doctoral dissertation, University of Heidelberg. Safir, Kenneth 1985 Missing subjects in German. In Studies in German Grammar, ed. JindӚich Toman, 231–287. Dordrecht: Foris. Schrodt, Richard 2004 Althochdeutsche Grammatik II: Syntax. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Sternefeld, Wolfgang 2006 Syntax: Eine merkmalbasierte generative Analyse des Deutschen. Vol. 1–2. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. Tomaselli, Alessandra 1995 Cases of verb third in Old High German. In Clause Structure and Language Change, eds. Allan Battye and Ian Roberts, 345–369. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Weiß, Helmut 1998 Syntax des Bairischen. Studien zur Grammatik einer natürlichen Sprache. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

The role of information structure in word order variation and word order change Roland Hinterhölzl

1. Introduction In this paper, I propose a novel account of word order variation and word order change in terms of competition between prosodically more or less marked forms within one grammar (contrary to the double base hypothesis). It is argued that variation within one grammar is due to the expression of different information-structural categories and word order change involves a change in the mapping between syntactic structure and prosodic structure in which Information Structure (IS) plays a crucial role. 1.1. Word order change in German One of the most intriguing developments in the history of the Germanic languages, next to the grammaticalization of Verb Second (V2), is the change in basic word order in English and Scandinavian. This development involved a change from the presumed Indo-European basic OV order to the basic VO order in these languages. In this scenario, German (and Dutch) retained (modulo some changes in the application of extraposition) the inherited base order. The traditional explanation of this phenomenon is to assume that the loss of Case led to a positional marking of grammatical functions. However, this account faces serious difficulties if we consider the development of Dutch and Icelandic, since Dutch has also lost its Case distinctions but retained OV order, while Icelandic has preserved its rich Case morphology, but nevertheless changed to basic VO order (cf. Hróarsdóttir 1998 for additional discussion of this issue). Recently an alternative approach for the change in word order in English was proposed that assumes that the change from OV to VO is due to language contact and grammar competition in Early Middle English (EME) (cf. Pintzuk 1999, Kroch and Taylor 2000). This approach is based on the so-called double base hypothesis (Pintzuk 1999) according to which word

46

Roland Hinterhölzl

order variation follows from the co-existence of competing grammars that differ with respect to the head parameter of VP and IP. One of the central assumptions of the double hypothesis is that VO orders are an EMEinnovation that was brought about by language contact between AngloSaxons and the Scandinavian settlers in the 10th century. 1.2. Word order variation in Older Germanic If we look at word order regularities in the older stages of the Germanic languages, then we find that both OV- and VO-properties already existed in Old English (OE), rendering the contact scenario from above less plausible. Furthermore, if we look at Old High German (OHG) and Old Icelandic (OI) (cf. Hróarsdóttir 1998), we find a similar kind of variation in word order suggesting that these mixed word order properties should not be treated in terms of language contact but may simply be part of the common Germanic inheritance. In the following I will restrict myself to a discussion of word order variation in OE and OHG. The examples in (1) illustrate typical OV-properties in OE. For example, in (1a) the direct object and the verb particle precede the finite verb in final position within an embedded clause and in (1b) the non-finite verb precedes the finite auxiliary in sentence final position, as is typical in OVlanguages. The same state of affairs, maybe less surprisingly, also holds in OHG, as is illustrated in (2). (1)

a. þæt he his stefne up ahof (Pintzuk 1991:71) that he his voice up raised ‘that he raised up his voice’ b. forþon of Breotone nædran on because from Britain adders on scippe lædde wæron (Pintzuk 1991:117) ships brought were ‘because adders were brought on the ships from Britain’

(2)

a. soso zi In gisprochan uuas how to them spoken was ‘how it was spoken to them’ b. thaz then alton giqu&an what to-the old ones said ‘what was said to the old ones’

(T 37, 5) uúas was

(T 64, 13a)

Information structure, word order and word order change 47

However, in both languages, we also find ample evidence of properties that one would associate with VO-languages, as is illustrated in (3) for OE and in (4) for OHG. For instance in (3a), the direct object follows the selecting verb in an embedded clause and in (3d) the manner adverb follows the verb it modifies. Both properties are typical of VO-languages. (3)

a. þæt ænig mon atellan mæge ealne one demm that any man relate can all the misery (Pintzuk 1991:36) ‘that any man can relate to all the misery’ b. forðam ðe he licettað hi because that they pretended themselves unscyldige (van Kemenade 1987:35) innocent ‘because they themselves pretended to be innocent’ c. he ahof þæt cild up geedcucod and he raised the child up quickened and ansund (van Kemenade 1987:36) healthy ‘he raised the quickened and healthy child up’ d. þæt he þæt unaliefede dod aliefedlice that he the unlawful did lawfully (van Kemenade 1987:36) that he did the unlawful lawfully’

Similar examples can be found in OHG. For example in (4a), the subject follows the selecting verb in an embedded clause and in (4b), the participle follows the selecting auxiliary, an order that is ungrammatical in modern standard German (though there are dialects that allow for right-branching verb clusters), but typical for a VO-language. (4)

a. thaz gibrieuit uuvrdi al these that listed was-SUB all this ‘that all this mankind was listed’ b. thaz sie uuvrdin gitoufit that they were baptized ‘that they were baptized’

umbiuuerft (T 35, 9) mankind (T 46, 25)

While it has been argued for English that the variation illustrated in (3) should not be accounted for in terms of assuming a basic OV-grammar plus extraposition of heavy material and really calls for the assumption of an

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additional VO-grammar (cf. Pintzuk 1999), the case has never been made for OHG. The standard treatment of OHG is that of an OV-language that allowed for a greater amount of extraposition than modern German (cf. Lenerz 1984). In this connection, it is interesting to note that there is convincing evidence that OHG had a right-peripheral focus position, providing an explanation for why and when constituents follow the selecting verb in embedded clauses in OHG. Some examples of this are given in (5)–(7) from the Tatian translation. These examples are of particular interest, since they deviate in word order from the Latin original. Let us have a closer look at (5), which illustrates very well how OHG typically differs from Latin. In (5), the discourse-given DP thin ouga is preposed, while the constituent that carries the new important or relevant information, namely luttar, is put in post-finite position, to occupy the default position for a focussed constituent. (6) illustrates a case of a postverbal nominal predicate that constitutes the new information in the given context, while (7) shows the same property for a direct object. (5)

liohtfaz thes lihhamen ist ouga / oba thin ouga uuirdit luttar / the light of the body is the eye. if your eye becomes light, thanne ist al thin lihhamo liohter (T 69, 21ff.) then is all your body brighter ‘The light of the body is the eye. If your eye becomes light, then all your body is brighter.’ Lucerna corporis. est oculus. / si fuerit oculus tuus simplex. / totum corpus tuum lucidum erit.

(6)

ther giheizan who named ‘who is named Petrus’ qui vocatur p&rus

ist is

p&rus (T 54, 15) Petrus

(7)

Inti bráhtun imo/ alle ubil habante / […]]/ Inti thie thár hab&un and brought him all sick ones and those there had diuual (T 59,1) devil ‘and they brought him all the sick ones and those that had the devil’ &obtulerunt ei/ omnes male habentes/ […]/ &qui demonia habebant

Information structure, word order and word order change 49

Another important aspect of the data in (3) and (4) is that we do find not only sentences with pure OV-properties and sentences with pure VOproperties in these languages, but very often we find sentences with mixed word orders. For instance, in (3a) it can be seen that, while the direct object follows the selecting verb (and the modal), a typical VO-property, the infinitive precedes the selecting modal which is rather typical of an OVlanguage. In (4d), the direct object precedes the selecting verb, a typical property of an OV-language, while the manner adverb follows the verb that it modifies, which is typical of VO-languages and ungrammatical in OVlanguages. Likewise in (4), while the subject follows the selecting verb (and the auxiliary), the participle precedes the auxiliary, as is typical in OV-languages. Given this state of affairs, at least two questions arise at this point. First, we must address the issue of how to account for mixed word orders in the older stages in these languages. This question will be dealt with in the following section. Second, we would like to know which factors led German and English to develop from a common OV/VO basis into pure OV and pure VO languages, respectively. This question will be addressed in section 3.

2. Word order variation and IS Our approach is to assume that OV/VO orders do not signal the presence of two grammars, contrary to the double base hypothesis (cf. Pintzuk 1991), but that the variation illustrated in (1)–(7) is due to the expression of different IS-categories within one grammar. The advantage of this approach is clear when it comes to the characterization of mixed word orders. Proponents of the double base hypothesis not only have to assume that a speaker possesses two grammars or two settings of the head complement parameter, but also that he can switch between the settings of the head complement parameter within one sentence. To give a concrete example, in order to derive the sequence relate can all the misery in (3a) proponents of the double base hypothesis have to assume that the speaker can switch from an OV grammar – in order to derive the verbal complex Infinitive > finite Modal – to a VO grammar, to account for the object in postverbal position. Note specifically, that the assumption of an OV grammar plus extraposition in this case will not be sufficient, since well-behaved OV languages like German and Dutch do not allow for extraposition of DP-arguments.

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I have argued in Hinterhölzl (2004a) that word order change should not be explained as a change in the head complement parameter, since OV and VO languages differ in properties that cannot be subsumed under the head complement parameter. These properties involve the availability of heavy adjuncts in the middle field and the order and the preverbal versus postverbal positioning of event-related adverbs. Instead I have argued that word order properties are defined by prosodic properties, namely the headedness of phonological phrases. Therefore, I will dispense with the head complement parameter and adopt the Universal Base Hypothesis (UBH) (cf. Kayne 1994), according to which all syntactic structure is head-initial. In such an approach, it is necessary to distinguish between the base order, which is universally defined as Specifier – Head – Complement, and the unmarked word order of a language. For instance, the unmarked word order in German (OV) cannot be taken to be basic property (to be identified with the base order) anymore, but has to be derived from other properties in the language. Nespor, Guasti and Christophe (1996) propose that the head complement parameter is determined by the predominant, that is, unmarked prosodic patterns in an early phase during language acquisition (the rhythmic activation principle). More specifically, they argue that the decisive information for the child is the placement of main prominence within the phonological phrase. In Hinterhölzl (2004a), I have adopted this approach and proposed that the unmarked word order in the phrases of a language are determined by the predominant, that is, unmarked prosodic patterns in that language. That a language can have several unmarked prosodic patterns is shown by German. While with DPs and PPs the unmarked prosodic pattern is (weak strong) ((w s)), the unmarked prosodic pattern with VPs is (s w). It is interesting to note that APs show both types of prosodic patterns with a strong preference for the verbal pattern (s w), as is illustrated in (8). (8a) is the neutral order, while (8b) is rather marked and can only be used for specific communicative purposes. (8)

a. weil Hans [[auf die Maria] stolz] ist (unmarked) b. weil Hans [[stolz [auf die Maria]] ist (marked) since Hans (of the Maria) proud (of the Maria) is ‘since Hans is proud of Maria’

In conclusion, I would like to propose that syntactic structures are not marked per se (say, in terms of complexity), but count as marked or un-

Information structure, word order and word order change 51

marked if they realize marked or unmarked prosodic patterns. Since the unmarked word order in a language is defined by the predominant, that is to say, the most frequent prosodic pattern in a language, a change in frequency of use of a prosodic pattern can lead to a change in unmarked word order. This is the approach to word order change that I would like to pursue in the following section. Since the expression of IS-categories influences the default mapping between syntactic structure and prosodic structures, as I will show below, IS plays an important role in processes of word order change. But before we take a look at issues of word order change, let me first discuss which factors determine the word order regularities in OE and OHG. There is the observation by Behaghel (1932) that pronouns and unmodified nouns tend to precede the verb, while modified nouns, PPs and other heavy material tend to follow the verb that gave rise to the generalization in (9). The question arises from which principle of grammar this tendency derives from. (9)

Light elements precede heavy elements in OE, OI and OHG. (Behaghel 1932: Das Gesetz der wachsenden Glieder)

There is another generalization that emerged from our IS-analysis of the Tatian translation (to be revised below) that derives (9) as a mere corollary. Given that discourse-given elements are typically realized as light elements, while foccussed constituents may count as prosodically heavy elements, since they receive stress, (10) derives the tendency expressed in (9). (10) C

background

V

focus

The generalisation in (10) allows us to account for word order variation within one grammar by taking into account the information-structural contribution of a constituent in the discourse: for instance, a direct object will precede the verb (in embedded clauses) if it is discourse-given but will follow it, if it is discourse-new. According to the generalisation in (9) a direct object will be placed preverbally if it is realized as a pronoun or single noun, but postverbally if it is made heavy by modification. As I have indicated above, the two conditions are not independent of each other, but it would be interesting to see which one of them is more basic (see also Hroarsdottir this volume for similar observations in OI).

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2.1. Prosodic constraints and word order In this section, I will argue that Behaghel’s law can be derived from a (violable) interface condition that applies in the mapping between syntactic structure and prosodic structure. First, however, let us take note of the fact that Behaghel’s law can be overwritten by syntactic requirements. The generalisation in (10) needs to be refined for OHG in as much as contrastive foci are concerned. While new information focus is typically realized in postverbal position, contrastive focus is realized in preverbal position and seems to involve leftward movement of the finite verb, as is illustrated in (11). (11) C

background

contrastive focus

V

presentational focus

In this respect, OHG seems to pattern with Yiddish, which is a West Germanic language that has preserved mixed word orders. According to the description of Diesing (1997), constrastive foci pattern with background elements in occupying a preverbal position. As I have argued in Hinterhölzl (2004a), the pattern in (11) can be derived from the following assumptions about the syntax of focus. Assuming the UBH, arguments move out of the VP to be licensed in (Case-) Agreement positions. A structural focus position is located above these licensing positions. The word order facts in (11) then follow from the following assumptions: A) The verb moves into the Focus head. B) A contrastively focused phrase moves into [Spec,FocP]. C) A constituent that represents new information focus just stays in scope of the Focus head, while D) background elements move out of the scope domain of the Focus head. This is illustrated in (12). (12) Assumptions about the syntax of focus (Hinterhölzl 2004a) [C background [FocP ContrastF V [AgrP PresentationF [VP]]]] Coming back to the placement of constrastive foci, an illustrative example is given in (13). Note that in example (13) – which needs to receive a contrastive interpretation, since the contrast is made explicit in the context – the contrastive element is placed preverbally against the order in the Latin origin, signifying that we are dealing with an independent requirement of OHG.

Information structure, word order and word order change 53

(13) thane thu fastes/ salbo thin houbit/ Inti thin annuzi thuah/ zithiu thaz when you fast, anoint your head, and your face wash, so that thu mannon nisís gisehan/ fastenti. úzouh thimeno fater you men not appear fasting. but to your Father (T 68, 28–32) ‘[When you fast, do not be like the hypocrites…] When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that you do not appear to men to be fasting but to your Father’ tu autem cum ieiunas/ unge caput tuum/ & faciem tuam laua/ ne uideatis hominibus/ ieiunans. Sed patri tuo In this context, it is interesting to note that PPs that are placed predominantly postverbally in accordance to Behaghel’s law (due to their heaviness) appear preverbally when contrastively focussed, as is illustrated in (14). (14) b&onte nicur& filu sprehan/ sósó thie heidanon mán/ sie uuanen Praying be careful not to much speak, as the heathen men. they think thaz sie in iro filusprahhi / sín gihórte (T 67, 23–26) that they in their many words are heard ‘And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathens do. For they think that they will be heard for their many words’ orantes autem. nolite multum loqui/ sicut &hnici.’/ putant enim quia in multiloquio/ exaudiantur. The PP in (14) comprising three words is rather heavy but nevertheless appears preverbally to express that the constituent is contrastively focussed. Despite of cases like (14), we can nevertheless assume that the restriction behind Behaghel’s rule is real and we will see that it is still operative in Modern English and Modern German, albeit in different domains, as is shown in the following section. 2.2. Prosodic constraints and phases The first question that arises with Behaghel’s law is the issue of when a constituent counts as heavy. In this paper, I propose that heaviness should be identified with a branching prosodic constituent and that Behaghel’s law should be properly understood as flowing out of a condition that defines the best match between syntactic structure and prosodic structure.

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But first, let us look at some other instances in which heaviness has been argued to play a role in cases of word order differences between languages. I think it was Haider (2000), who first observed that adverbs in the English middle field are subject to conditions which are absent in a typical OV-language like German, as is illustrated in (15) and (16) (cf. also Hinterhölzl 2001). (15) a. John (more) often (* than Peter) read the book b. Hans hat öfter (als der Peter) das Buch gelesen (16) a. John read the book more often than Peter b.* Hans hat das Buch gelesen öfter (als Peter) (15a) shows that the English middle field does not tolerate heavy constituents, while no problem arises in the German middle field (15b). More specifically, we can make the following empirical generalization: the head of the adjunct may not contain material on its right. Such adjuncts must be postponed as in (16a), while heaviness alone does not constitute a license for postposition in German (16b). A prosodic restriction can also be used to account for the difference in the placement of event-related adverbs in German and English in general. While Time, Place and Manner adverbs appear in the order T>P>M preverbally in OV-languages, they appear in the exact mirror order postverbally in VOlanguages (cf. Haider 2000, Hinterhölzl 2002), as is illustrated in (17). (17) a. b.

C C

T P M-V V- M P T

OV-languages VO-languages

In Hinterhölzl (2002; 2004a), I have argued that the order found in German is basic and that the English order is to be derived from the German word order in terms of successive cyclic VP-intrapositon that pied-pipes the adjunct at each step1. Furthermore, I have argued that VP-intraposition came about due to a stylistic rule of light predicate raising that was operative in OE and affected typically event-related adjuncts, since they were primarily realized as rather heavy NPs and PPs. In this respect, it is interesting to note that a similar restriction also applies in German verb clusters. German verb clusters are predominantly leftbranching, but right-branching verb clusters are possible as long as the most deeply embedded cluster is left-branching (cf. Hinterhölzl 1999). A case in question is given in (18a). However, once a right-branching verb cluster is

Information structure, word order and word order change 55

introduced, the verb cluster must be also right-branching at the next level up, as is illustrated by the contrast in (18b) and (18c). (18) a. b.?? c.

weil er den Text muß lesen können since he the text must read can ‘since he must be able to read the text’ weil er den Text [[müssen [lesen können]] wird] since he the text must read can will ‘since he will have to be able to read the text’ weil er den Text [wird [müssen [lesen können]]] since he the text will must read can ‘since he will have to be able to read the text’

The formation of verb clusters is motivated by the following two licensing requirements (cf. Hinterhölzl 2006): dependent verbs move into dedicated positions in the V-domain to be temporally linked and to check the subcategorisation of the selecting verb. F20 is responsible for temporal linking and Asp0, the highest head in the V-domain, is responsible for checking the subcategorisation of the matrix verb. In this approach, left-branching verb clusters are derived if the dependent verbs are spelled out in the highest Specifier, as is illustrated in (19a), while right-branching verb clusters are derived if the dependent verbs are spelled out in the lower Specifier (19b). The only exception to this rule are verb clusters comprising an IPP-infinitive (an infinitive that replaces a part participle). These verb clusters are obligatorily right-branching, since in this case, there is a null morpheme that moves to the highest head in the Vdomain, stranding the dependent verbs in the lower Specifier, as is illustrated in (19c). (19) a. [AspP [lesen können] muss [F2P [lesen können] [VP]]] b. [AspP [lesen können] muss [F2P [lesen können] [VP]]] c. [AspP 0-hat [F2P [lesen können ] [VP ]]] The interesting question now is what the generalisation illustrated in (18bc) results from. In any event, the generalisation cannot be derived from a hard syntactic condition in West Germanic, since we can find many instances that violate it, as is the case with IPP-infinitives in West Flemish. (20) illustrates a right-branching verb cluster headed by willen which itself sits on a left-branch with respect to the selecting auxiliary een.

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(20) dan ze toch kosten [[willen [dienen then they but could want-IPP that boek kuopen]] een] book buy have ‘if they only could have wanted to buy that book’ A possible solution is to relegate the contrast in (18bc) to a violable interface condition that determines the best match between a given syntactic structure and a prosodic output structure. Given that left- and rightbranching verb clusters are mapped onto left- and right-headed phonological phrases, a possible candidate for such an interface condition is (21). (21) Mapping Condition between syntactic structure and prosodic structure: A right-headed phonological phrase (in a verb cluster) must sit on a right branch with respect to the syntactic head that is to become its prosodic sister (21) can probably be formulated in a more elegant way. But it is meant to account for the patterns in (22). The patterns in (22) indicate the deeper reason that probably lies behind the condition in (21): once fixed, stress tends to stay in a peripheral position within a certain domain. (22b) is okay, since stress remains left-peripheral and (22c) is okay, since stress remains right-peripheral, while stress in (22a) is neither leftnor right-peripheral, unless H itself is stressed. (18b) violates the condition in (21). The violation can be circumvented, if the (already) right-branching verb cluster is spelled out in the lower Specifier, as is the case in (18c). (22) a.* 3 b. ok 3 c. ok 3 2 2 2 2 2 ((A B) H) ((A B) H) (H (A B )) Note, however, that condition (21) is a condition that can be taken to apply in the V-domain and in the I-domain (excluding the subject) in VOlanguages. In fact, (21) can be used to rule out (15a), since more often than Peter is a right-headed prosodic constituent that sits on left branch with respect to the verb phrase that is to become its prosodic sister. Since German tolerates heavy adjuncts and arguments in the middle field, this condition cannot be taken to apply in the German middle field, but – as we have seen above – is still active in the German V-domain. Why should that be so?

Information structure, word order and word order change 57

In this respect, it is interesting to note that prosodic constraints can apply phasewise and can thus hold in one phase while not being operative in another phase. The crucial evidence comes from restrictions on VPtopicalization in German. As is illustrated in (23), topicalized rightbranching verb clusters exhibit an interesting contrast. In general, the topicalization of a right-branching verb cluster leads to ungrammaticality, unless it comprises an IPP-infinitive, in which case the topicalization is rather marked but grammatical. (23) a.?* b.?

[müssen [lesen können]] wird er den Text (ok lesen können müssen wird) must read can will he the text [haben [lesen wollen]] wird er den Text (* lesen wollen haben wird) have read want-IPP will he the text ‘he will have wanted to read the text’

The violation in (23a) cannot be accrued in the C-domain, since the Cdomain in German does tolerate right-branching prosodic constituents. Thus the violation must have been induced in the V-domain. A violation of (21) can then be taken to be induced in a phase-based derivation, if we make the assumption that the Aspect phrase (and not the vP as in Chomsky 2001) constitutes the edge of the strong VP-phase. Since we can assume that topicalization involves movement from one strong phase (the VP) into the next strong phase (the CP), it must be taken to be subject to the Phase Impenetrability Condition, given in (24b). Phase Condition (Chomsky 2001) (24) a. Evaluation for a phase is done at the level of the next highest strong phase b. Phase Impenetrability Condition (PIC) The complement of a strong phase a is not accessible to operations at the level of the next highest strong phase b, but only the head and the edge of a are Given the PIC, extraction of the right-branching verb cluster must take place via the highest Specifier in the V-domain, namely [Spec,AspP]. In this position, however, the verb cluster will induce a violation of the mapping condition in (21), which will result in ungrammaticality if there is an alternative that does not violate it. Since the verb cluster could have been spelled-out as a left-branching verb cluster, (23a) is ungrammatical. Since

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IPP-infinitives only allow for right-branching verb clusters, there is no derivational alternative in the case of (23b), thus the resulting topicalization is prosodically marked but grammatical. This solution, however, is only feasible in a framework in which Spellout applies cyclically, including the cyclic, that is, phasewise application of conditions that map syntactic structure onto prosodic structure. More specifically, we have seen above that interface conditions can apply phasewise in the sense that they may hold in one phase (the V-domain in German) without holding in another phase (the I-domain, or middle field, in German). In conclusion, word order variation can be accounted for by the differential expression of IS-categories within one grammar and word order preferences (Behaghel’s law) are due to violable interface conditions that define the ideal mapping between syntactic structure and prosodic structure in the course of the derivation. As we have seen above in the case of contrastive foci, information-structural restrictions play a crucial role in this mapping.

3. Word order change and IS Given the discussion of the previous section, the development of German is to be described as one in which certain factors led to the non-application of the prosodic constraint in the German middle field allowing for the Spellout of branching constituents in the preverbal domain, while the development of English is to be described as one in which certain (other) factors not only led to the retention of the prosodic constraint in the middle field but also caused light (non-branching) constituents like pronouns to be spelled out in the postverbal domain. I will concentrate here on discussing the potential factors that can help us understand the development of German. As far as the development of English is concerned, I will only discuss it in so far as to make plausible why the pertinent factors working in German did not have the same effect in the history of English. Given the presence of both a preverbal and a postverbal focus position, we can assume that OHG had two unmarked word order patters: due to focus restructuring (cf. Hinterhölzl 2004a) preverbal focus will give rise to prosodic phrases of the type (s w) and postverbal focus will give rise to prosodic phrases of the type (w s). Hence, if we can identify a factor that led to the occurrence of more and more focussed (stressed) preverbal constituents, then we can envisage a slow development in which certain word

Information structure, word order and word order change 59

order patterns become more and more marginalized to a point where postverbal stressed constituents are prosodically highly marked such that they can only be used for specific communicative purposes. In the following, I would like to argue that this factor was the grammaticalization of the definite determiner. Following this line, we have to consider a development from the system in (12) above, in which noun phrase interpretation was signalled by syntactic position to a determiner system which signals noun phrase interpretation with morphological means. First, note, that the morphological system that became grammaticalized is not congruent with the distinction between given and new discourse referents (that was embodied in the syntactic system in (12)), since the definite determiner came to signal that the discourse referent – whether given in the discourse or discourse-new – is uniquely identifiable in the context. Thus, the development of this morphological determiner system has blurred the original information-structural distinction of (nominal) arguments. The orginal distinction between definites, however, is still visible in the scrambling rule of modern German. Haider and Rosengren (1998) note that neither definiteness nor specificity can be taken to be triggers of scrambling, citing examples like (25), where a specific indefinite NP in (25a) and a definite NP in (25b) seemingly occur in their base position. (25) a. wenn wer eine rothaarige Frau sucht if someone a red-haired woman seeks dann ist das Maria then is it Maria ‘if someone seeks a red-haired woman, then it is Maria’ b. dass er wem ihr Kleid gezeigt hat, that he someone her dress shown has, Maria nicht gefallen Maria not pleased ‘that he has shown someone her dress, hasn’t pleased Maria’

hat has

Note, however, that their examples only involve NPs that must be characterized as discourse-new. While they are right about definiteness not being a trigger for scrambling, they are wrong about specificity. If specificity is understood as memberhood in a set that is given in the discourse (cf. Enç 1991) it can be taken as a valid trigger of scrambling. In conclusion, only discourse-given DPs may scramble; DPs that are discourse-new, even when

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they are uniquely identifiable (by binding or bridging, for instance) stay in the focus-domain and receive stress (cf. Hinterhölzl 2004b). But why should the grammaticalization of a definite determiner have an influence on the unmarked word order? There are three observations that fit nicely into an explanatory pattern of this kind. First, recent studies of the grammaticialization of the definite determiner (cf. Oubouzar 1992, Leiss 2000, Demske 2001) agree that the definite determiner – derived from the demonstrative pronoun – first appears in contexts with pragmatic definite interpretations in OHG. The pertinent distinction between pragmatic and semantic definites stems from Löbner (1985). While semantic definites are uniquely identifiable on the basis of their lexical meaning (functional concepts), pragmatic definites are uniquely identifiable in the context by being discourse given. The grammaticalization of the definite determiner starts in the earliest OHG-texts and is concluded in Notker (early 11th century), in which text all semantic groups of nouns (including abstract nouns and uniquely referring expressions) appear with the definite determiner. The slow stepwise process of grammaticalization can be examplified by the occurrences of the definite determiner in Otfrid. In this text, the definite determiner regularly appears with pragmatic definites, that is, in discourse-anaphoric uses, as is illustrated in (26), while with semantic definites, the determiner is still missing, as is illustrated in (27). Examples are taken from Demske (2001). (26) a. ein burg ist thar in lante… (O.I.11.23) a town is there in country ‘there is a town in the country’ b. zi theru steti fuart er thia druhtines to this city leads he the Lord’s muater (O.I.11.26) mother ‘he leads the Lord’s mother to this city’ (27) a. tho ward himil offan (O.I.25.15) there became sky open ‘there the sky opened’ b. inti iz hera in worolt sante (O.I.13.5) and it here into world sent ‘and sent it here into the world’ c. in ira barm si sazta [barno bezista] (O.I.13.10) in her lap she placed child most-beloved ‘she placed the most-beloved child in her lap’

Information structure, word order and word order change 61

The second observation concerns another statement by Behaghel (1932), given in (28), who notes that noun phrases with a determiner are introduced preverbally. (28) Behaghel (p. 79): ‘Substantiva mit Pronomen stehen auf der Seite der einfachen Wörter; zum Teil mag das daher rühren, dass ihnen der Artikel früher fehlte.’ Behaghel’s observation is in line with the stepwise grammaticalization from pragmatic definites to semantic definites, since discourse anaphoric NPs are typically realized preverbally in OHG. We now can envisage a development in two phases, as sketched in (29). (29) phase 1: the determiner is introduced preverbally for discourse-given referents phase 2: the use of the determiner is extended to all uniquely identfiable NPs, which are placed according to the pattern in phase 1 preverbally There are two consequences of interest in such a scenario. A) more DPs appear preverbally, which due to focus restructuring strengthen the prosodic pattern (s w) and B) preverbal DPs have a profound effect on the prosodic make-up of the language, since they introduce right-branching constituents on a left branch. We can assume that when the determiner is first introduced in discourse anaphoric contexts, it will carry stress (with the discourse anaphoric noun being destressed), such that the initial introduction of determiners in the preverbal domain does not violate the prosodic condition in (21). However, as the determiner is grammaticalized it becomes deaccented and stress will be placed on the noun per default (on the basis that lexical heads are stronger than functional heads) giving rise to more and more rightbranching constituents in the preverbal domain. The scenario sketched in (29) makes the following prediction: there should be a stage where an increased number of focused DPs appear preverbally but focused predicates (predicative adjective, nouns and participles) still appear predominantly in postverbal position. This prediction is borne out since the verbal cluster including predicative elements predominantly remained right-branching till the Early New High German period (cf. Ebert 1986). The third observation that supports this scenario concerns the time frame of these two developments. Bolli (1975), Borter (1982) and Näf

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(1979), investigating the development of the German sentence bracket, note that in the late OHG Notker text a larger number of Accusative objects start to be placed in preverbal position. This is exactly the same period in which the definite determiner has become fully grammaticalized. If this scenario for German is correct, then the question arises why the grammaticalization of the definite determiner did not have the same effect in the history of English and in the development of the Scandinavian languages. As far as Scandinavian is concerned, Leiss (2000) in her interesting study on the relation between (verbal) aspect and (nominal) definitness notes that in OI the definite determiner first appears with discourse-new NPs that are not to be read as indefinites, hence in postverbal position. Thus we can conclude that – while the introduction of the definite determiner lead to the strengthening of the prosodic pattern (s w) in OHG – the very same process lead to the strengthening of the prosodic pattern (w s) in OI, explaining why the two languages have developed in opposite directions. The case of the development in English is more difficult to deal with. Philippi (1997) notes that the literature on OE suggests that the language did not have a definite or indefinite article, making use of demonstratives and numerals instead. Also van Kemenade (p.c.) reports that the definite determiner was grammaticalized in English at least 100 years later than in German. So, while the grammaticalization of the definite determiner in German was completed at the end of the OHG-period, the grammaticalization of the determiner in English must have started in the beginning of the ME-period. OE had two demonstrative pronouns se (‘that’) and þes (‘this’). Hroarsdottir (2006) reports that the demonstrative se which had different Case forms in OE was split into two invariant forms, the (article) and that (demonstrative) at the turn of the OE to the EME-period. Thus, it is possible that the English definite determiner took a different path of grammaticalization than the German one. We can assume that the was unaccented and therefore was placed with its containing noun phrase postverbally in accordance with the condition in (21). More research on the development of the definite determiner in English is necessary to evaluate the validity of this scenario, but I think it has enough initial plausibility to provide an interesting alternative to the improbable standard scenario that tries to relate word order change with the loss of Case morphology in the history of English. Above, I have provided a plausible scenario for why the prosodic condition in (21) was not restricted to the V-domain in the history of English (as

Information structure, word order and word order change 63

it was in the history of German), but what is still missing at this point is an explanation for why English has also started to postpone light elements, like pronouns. At this point I can only speculate about the origin of this development. But it stands to reason that language contact was at issue in this case, since at the end of the OE-period the Anglo-Saxon pronoun system was partially replaced with Scandinavian pronouns. Weak Scandinavian pronouns (nowadays), as is evidenced by the phenomenon of object shift, are enclitic elements that are spelled out in the smallest domain that contains a suitable host, with a suitable host being the head of the phase that the pronoun belongs to, that is, the verb in the VP and the preposition in the PP (cf. Hinterhölzl (to appear)). This explanation is supported by the fact that V2-second (before its loss) is generalized in the northern contact area in the EME-period in that the pattern Topic pronoun finite verb, in which the Old Saxon pronoun can be analyzed as proclitic element on the verb, is replaced with the pattern Topic finite verb pronoun, in which the EME-pronoun can be analyzsed as enclitic element on the verb (see Kroch and Taylor 2000 for more details on this development).

4. Conclusions The paper presents a number of novel ideas about the relation between grammar and prosody and the role that information-structure plays in language change. First it is argued that unmarked word order is determined by prosodic properties. Since information-structural constraints play a crucial role in the mapping between syntactic structure and prosodic structure, IS can help us to gain new insights into processes of word order change. For instance, we have seen that what counts as unmarked word order in a language may be influenced by focus articulation, since the order focus > verb can strengthen the prosodic pattern (s w) in the middle field. Furthermore, I have argued that interface conditions, like the condition in (21) are violable or best match conditions, leading to marked and unmarked syntactic structures. Since speakers, on the one hand, generally prefer unmarked structures and, on the other hand, tend to use marked structures to achieve particular communicative goals in specific communicative situations, we derive that in most stages there will be some sort of competition of marked and unmarked forms within one grammar.

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While the strive towards prosodic unmarkedness might be the source for word order tendencies, the strive towards prosodic markedness might be one explanation for why we find variation in the domain of syntax, particularly in terms of word order and prosodic phrasing. In general, a marked form a will be weeded out by an unmarked form b if it does not give rise to a different interpretation from b. It follows that a marked syntactic form will only be grammaticalized if it can be identified with a distinct pragmatic interpretation. Possibly, this is the reason for why IS-categories are imported into the syntax in grammaticalization processes. In conclusion, if these general observations are on the right track, then the conception of narrow syntax as a computational system that only (or predominantly) operates on formal features (Case and phi-features) seems misguided to me und must be rejected on the basis of the above observations on word order change.

Note 1. In this approach a modern English sentence, like (ia), is derived as is illustrated in (ib-e). (i) a. John visited them in Vienna on Friday b. […[on Friday [in Vienna [John visited them]]]] c. […[on Friday [[John visited them] in Vienna tVP]]] d. […[[John visited them] in Vienna ] on Friday ] e. [IP Johni [[[[VP ti visited them] k in Vienna t k]j on Friday tj]]

References Behaghel, Otto 1932 Deutsche Syntax. Band 4. Heidelberg: Carl Winters Universitätsbuchhandlung. Bolli, Ernst 1975 Die verbale Klammer bei Notker. Untersuchungen zur Wortstellung in der Boethius-Übersetzung. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Borter, Alfred 1982 Syntaktische Klammerbildung in Notkers Psalter. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Chomsky, Noam 2001 Derivation by Phase. In Ken Hale: A life in language, ed. Micheal J. Kenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge, M.A.: The MIT Press.

Information structure, word order and word order change 65 Demske, Ulrike 2001 Merkmale und Relationen: Diachrone Studien zur Nominalphrase des Deutschen. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. Diesing, Molly 1997 Yiddish VP order and the Typology of Object Movement in Germanic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 15: 369–427. Ebert, Rober Peter 1986 Historische Syntax des Deutschen II. 1300–1750. Bern: Peter Lang. Enç, Mürvet 1991 The semantics of specificity. Linguistic Inquiry 22 (1): 1–25. Haider, Hubert 2000 Adverb Placement-Convergence of Structure and Licensing. Theoretical Linguistics 26: 95–134. Haider, Hubert and Inger Rosengren 1998 Scrambling. Sprache & Pragmatik 49. Hinterhölzl, Roland 1999 Restructuring Infinitives and the Theory of Complementation. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Linguistics, University of Southern California. 2001 Event-related Adjuncts and the OV/VO Distinction. In WCCFL 20 Proceedings, eds. Karine Megerdoomian and Leora Bar-el, 276–289. Somerville: Cascadilla Press. 2002 Parametric Variation and Scrambling in English. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax (Proceedings of CGSW 15 in Groningen, May 2000), eds. Werner Abraham and Jan-Wouter Zwart, 131–150. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 2004a Language Change versus Grammar Change: What diachronic data reveal about the distinction between core grammar and periphery. In Diachronic Clues to Synchronic Grammar, eds. Eric Fuss and Carola Trips, 131–160. (Linguistik Aktuell 72.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2004b Scrambling, Optionality and Non-lexical Triggers. In Triggers, eds. Anne Breitbarth and Henk van Riemsdijk, 173–203. (Studies in Generative Grammar 75.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2006 Scrambling, Remnant Movement and Restructuring. Oxford: Oxford University Press. to appear A phase-based comparative approach to modification and word order in Germanic. To appear in: Syntax. Hroarsdottir, Þorbjörg 1998 Verb Phrase Syntax in the History of Icelandic. Doctoral dissertation, Universitetet i Tromsö. 2006 Loss of OV and the role of morphology. Ms., Universitetet i Tromsö.

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Kayne, Richard 1994 The Antisymmetry of Syntax. (Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 25.) Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press. Kemenade, Ans van 1987 Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Dordrecht: Foris. Kroch, Anthony and Ann Taylor 2000 Verb-Object Order in Early Middle English. In Diachronic Syntax. Models and Mechanisms, eds. Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas and Anthony Warner, 132–163. Oxford: University Press. Leiss, Elisabeth 2000 Artikel und Aspekt: die grammatischen Muster von Definitheit. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Lenerz, Jürgen 1984 Syntaktischer Wandel und Grammatiktheorie. Tübingen: Niemeyer. Löbner, Sebastian 1985 Definites. Journal of Semantics 4: 279–326. Näf, Anton 1979 Die Wortstellung in Notkers Consolation. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Nespor, Marina, Maria Teresa Guasti and Anne Christophe 1996 Selecting Word Order: The Rhythmic Activation Principle. In Interfaces in Phonology, ed. Ursula Kleinhenz, 1–26. Berlin: Akademie Verlag. Oubouzar, Erika 1992 Zur Ausbildung des bestimmten Artikels im Althochdeutschen. In Althochdeutsch: Syntax und Semantik, ed. Yvon Desportes, 71–87. Lyon: Universite Lyon III Jean Molin. Philippi, Julia 1997 The rise of the article in the Germanic languages. In Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent, 62–93. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pintzuk, Susan 1991 Phrase structures in competition: variation and change in Old English word order. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. 1999 Phrase Structures in Competition: variation and change in Old English word order. New York: Garland.

OV languages: Expressions of cues Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir

1. Introduction The aim of this chapter is to argue that the cue for the OV/VO parameter was expressed through information structure in Older Icelandic (OI). I will show how a change in encoding of information structure may lead to a change in the basic order of verb and its complements. The claim is that a gradual change in language use, namely the increased postverbal positioning of focused material led to a sudden change in the grammar, where the option of VP-extraction disappeared. Roberts (1997) argues that English lost overt object-movement due to the loss of morphological case in Middle English (ME). As seen from the English viewpoint, low-level facts of inflectional morphology may express the relevant cue for parameters and so the loss of inflection may (but does not have to) lead to a grammar change. This analysis does not carry over to Icelandic as the loss of OV in Icelandic took place despite rich case morphology. I assume that learners must watch out for a universal cue for the positive value of the OV/VO parameter. However, this cue may be expressed differently among the languages: while it may have been expressed through morphology in Old English (OE), it was expressed through information structure in OI. In both cases, external effects led to fewer expressions of the relevant cue and a grammar change took place. I will illustrate how the grammar change in OI was due to a change in information structure. The loss of OV in the grammar was caused by a prior language change that involved objects that express new information: These objects gradually gained a higher frequency in postverbal position. The OV/VO word order patterns are more or less stable until the seventeenth century where there is a gradual loss of the OV word order patterns, or, a gradual increase in language use, placing focused elements in postverbal (VO) position (a shift in discourse property). Morphological triggers, or the absence thereof, have been related to clustering of syntactic properties in both diachronic change and acquisition. The correlation between overt verb movement and ‘rich’ agreement paradigm has, for instance, been proposed by several researchers in recent

68 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir years (see Kosmeijer 1986; Roberts 1993; Rohrbacher 1999; Holmberg and Platzack 1995; Vikner 1997; Koeneman 2000).1 If I am correct, then the relationship between strong morphology and OV order has been overestimated. I claim that this relation is only onedirectional, in the way that languages that lose strong morphology also tend to lose overt OV order (English), because of structure sandwiching, but not vice versa. Therefore, languages may have overt OV orders despite weak morphology, and languages may lose overt OV structure regardless of whether there have been any changes in the morphology or not (Icelandic). Moreover, many modern languages have rigid word order despite their case morphology, and vice versa (cf. Siewierska 1998).

2. Loss of OV in Icelandic grammar 2.1. Introduction Let us now look at the loss of OV word order in the history of Icelandic. Modern Icelandic has pure VO-order within the VP, as shown in (1). The word order in (1) with auxiliary verb – main verb – object is the only possible order of these elements in Modern Icelandic (abstracting away from topicalization and stylistic fronting). (1)

Þeir munu aldrei hafa lesið bókina they will never have read book.the ‘They will never have read the book’

Unlike in Modern Icelandic, several orders of the VP-internal arguments were possible at earlier stages in the history of Icelandic, including both OV and VO word order patterns (cf. Sigurðsson 1988; Rögnvaldsson 1996; Indriðason 1987; Hróarsdóttir 1996, 2000). The attested OV word order patterns were lost at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Two examples of OV word order in OI are shown in (2) below. (2)

Pure OV word order a. að hann hafi hana drepið (Álf) that he had her killed ‘that he had killed her’ b. að þú ... hafir það bréf fengið (letters) that you ... have that letter received ‘that you have received that letter’

OV languages 69

Icelandic has had a rich subject-verb agreement morphology and case morphology throughout its history. It is also generally assumed that both Old and Modern Icelandic have an obligatory overt movement of the finite verb out of the VP (to IP/CP), in both main and subordinate clauses.

2.2. The diachronic aspect Although it has been shown that it is possible to derive all the attested word order patterns in OI by assuming SVO word order base with overt versus covert object movements (cf. Hróarsdóttir 1996; 2000: Ch.5), this hypothesis does not easily handle the diachronic aspect. With regard to the order of objects and non-finite verbs, OI differs from Modern Icelandic in three major aspects, as shown in (3). (3)

a. b. c.

Vfin … object – Vaux – Vmain Vfin … Vaux – object – Vmain Vfin … (object) – Vmain – (*object) – Vaux – (object)

Some OI examples are shown below. (4)

Vfin … object – Vaux – Vmain a. að hon mundi eigi barn mega eiga (Finn) that she would not child may own ‘that she would not be allowed to have a child.’ b. ef hann hefði það viljað fága (Guðm) if he had it wanted clean ‘if he had wanted to clean it.’

(5)

Vfin … Vaux – object – Vmain a. að hann skyldi aldrei mega sól sjá (Árm) that he should never be-allowed sun to.see ‘that he should never be allowed to see the sun’ b. og ekki skal faðir minn geta þér hjálpað (Álf) and not shall father mine can you helped ‘And my father will not be able to help you.’

70 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir (6)

Vfin … Vmain – Vaux – object a. at hann mun raða vilia ferðum sínum (Finn) that he will decide want journeys his ‘that he wants to decide his own journeys’ b. þu munt haft hafa harða landtoku (Finn) you will had have hard landing ‘You have had a rough landing.’

(7)

Vfin … object – Vmain – Vaux a. og enginn þóttist þvílíkan veikleika séð hafa (Álf) and no-one pretended such weakness seen have ‘And no one pretended to have seen such weakness.’ b. að eg mundi hann sigrað geta (Árm) that I would him defeat could ‘that I would be able to defeat him’

All these word order patterns are ungrammatical in Modern Icelandic (abstracting away from negative and quantified phrase constructions), that is, the short object movement (within the VP), the long object movement (scrambling out of the VP, to the left of non-finite auxiliary verbs and sentential adverbs), and the possibility of placing the non-finite main verb to the left of the non-finite auxiliary (V-raising). The striking fact is that all these three leftward movement processes disappeared from the language at the same time in the history of Icelandic. Furthermore, the possibility of placing DPs, on the one hand, and PPs and small clause predicates, on the other hand, to the left of the main verb also seems to have disappeared from the language at the same time.

3. Theoretical implications A central question in the comparison of OV- and VO-languages is whether the difference in word order results from having more object movements in OV-languages, or more verb movements in VO-languages. Here we will argue, following Hróarsdóttir (2000), that although a uniform VO-base hypothesis with overt versus covert leftward movement of objects yields positive results in the synchronic analysis of the Older Icelandic VP, it cannot easily handle the diachronic aspect. Hence, we will agree with the original proposal of Haider (1992) that there are good reasons to assume that the verb moves more in VO-languages. Haider thinks of this verb

OV languages 71

movement as head movement. However, this could also be a VPmovement, provided that the complements have first moved out of this VP. This is the path that Hinterhölzl (2006), Kayne (1998) and Hróarsdóttir (2000) take. They suggest that VO-order might in some cases result from shifting a remnant VP containing the verb across complements extracted from the VP. Hence, the displacement of the verb could be a consequence of either (i) head movement of the verb, or (ii) movement of a larger constituent containing the verb, e.g. VP. We will assume the latter option here. Hróarsdóttir (2000) argues that the morphological features relevant for the triggering of leftward object movements in OI were indeed not weakened. Therefore, the objects still have to move to the left of the main verb (to [Spec, AgrOP]) in overt syntax in Modern Icelandic. Hróarsdóttir (2000) makes use of remnant-movement of various kinds of predicative phrases, and the long movement associated with ‘restructuring’ phenomena, to provide an analysis of OV orders, and correspondingly, a proposal as to which aspect of Icelandic syntax must have changed when VO word order became the norm: the essential change is loss of VP-extraction from VP. The claim is that the crucial difference between OV and VO languages is simply that OV-languages lack the VP-preposing Modern English and other VO languages have. The picture is slightly more complicated for mixed OV/VO languages such as OE, OI, Afrikaans, and Dutch. However, it is possible to construct a theory with a universal base that derives all the attested OV and VO word order patterns, by means of three transformations: – – –

optional extraction of the embedded VP from the matrix VP in Older Icelandic. obligatory and universal movement of the direct object out of the VP (to [SpecAgrOP] in the functional domain). obligatory preposing of the remnant VP, containing the finite auxiliary verb in all VO-languages, including all stages of Icelandic.

The preposing of the remnant VP will always mask the object movement, deriving VO word order only, as long as the option of extracting the embedded VP from the matrix VP has not been chosen. This hypothesis is able to account for all the various attested pure and mixed word order patterns in Icelandic, besides providing an account for the diachronic development; explaining the grammar change in question in terms of a single

72 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir parameter change. Given the remnant VP-hypothesis, all the various OV word order would disappear as soon as the possibility of extracting VPs out of VPs (PredPs into Spec of PredPs) was lost. In other words, the remnant finite VP will always necessarily contain all the non-finite verbs in addition to the finite verb, and the preposing of this remnant VP will always mask the object movement, deriving VO word order only. However, this proposal does not provide an explanation for why the third leftward movement process, the extraction of VPs out of VPs, was lost. The remaining question is what the trigger for VP-extraction was and why it was lost, or became inoperative, in the language. I argue that the strong feature that must have led to the additional (overt) movement of VP-extraction in OI entails a more complex representation for the child-learner, and hence, that it is marked. These conclusions are in accordance with Roberts’ (2001) claim that simplicity is a function of movement relations, since the old language here has an additional movement over the modern language. Hence, the old grammar is more complex for the child-learner than the new grammar not involving this additional movement. At a certain point in the history of Icelandic, the marked value of this parameter, that is, the strong feature leading to the VP-extraction, was no longer expressed (highly enough) in the PLD and the unmarked value became to be triggered by default.

4. Information structure and OV order in Older Icelandic It has been claimed that in various mixed word order languages such as Hungarian, Finnish, Northern Sámi, Russian and Yiddish, the existing OVand VO-orders correlate with properties such as specificity, or ‘familiarity’ of the object, or in other languages, topic-focus structure (see e.g. Holmberg 1998; Kiss 1998; Corver and Delfitto 1995). It has further been proposed that old information tends to precede new information and that light elements precede heavy elements. Hróarsdóttir (2000) studied the various OV and VO word order patterns in OI and argued that there is a parallelism between the factors that have been proposed to derive scrambling, and the factors that induce OV rather than VO word order in OI. The three most important factors are heaviness, definiteness, and information structure. The different behavior of pronouns and full nominal objects within the Germanic languages in particular has also led to a fruitful discussion in recent years, where pronouns in the West Germanic languages (including OE, Early Yiddish, and Early New High German) are assumed not to be

OV languages 73

able to move rightward; “they do not postpone beyond an otherwise final verb in the way that NPs can” (Kroch and Taylor 1994: 8). This is consistent with the prediction of ‘heaviness’; that is, pronouns, especially personal pronouns, possessive pronouns and demonstrative pronouns, have a tendency to occur higher (further to the left) in the sentence than phrases containing longer or heavier words (full DPs). Pintzuk (1996) argues that the position of complements in the history of English (except in the earliest stage) was determined by weight; the heavier the complement, the more likely it was to appear postverbally. Light constituents, particles, pronominal objects, and monosyllabic adverb could appear either before or after the non-finite main verb in OE sentences with the auxiliary verb before the main verb. In sentences with the auxiliary verb after the main verb, however, these light elements, unlike heavier constituents, appeared before the main verb (cf. Pintzuk 1996: 6). Another well-known tendency across languages is that indefinite nominal objects usually do not move to the left (scramble), they are not fronted; thus, they usually do not occur in a high position (cf. e.g. de Hoop 1992; Diesing 1992). It is generally assumed that only definite objects undergo scrambling (movement out of the VP). The division between definite and indefinite objects is consistent with the prediction that old information (definite objects) precede newer information. Indefinite NPs are strongly associated with new information; the occurrence of an indefinite NP indicates that it is introduced into the discourse for the first time. While old (given) information is recoverable from the preceding discourse, new information is unrecoverable or unpredictable from the preceding discourse. However, old information in a broader sense may also include information that has not been mentioned in the preceding discourse, but is inferable from the context or from shared knowledge. Related to the division between new and old information is focus, more exactly, focused (non-presupposed) categories can be fronted in many languages. It has, for instance, been suggested that the VP-internal position of preverbal objects (OV word order to the right of sentential adverbs) is a ‘focus position’ in various languages, such as Hungarian (cf. Horváth 1986; Farkas 1986; Kiss 1987), the Chadic languages (cf. Tuller 1992), and Basque (cf. Laka and Uriagereka 1987; Urbina 1989). Finnish and Russian are among the languages that exhibit very free word order. However, Holmberg (1998, 2000a) has shown that the permitted sequences of the subject, object and the verb in these languages are not in totally free variation, but that each variant is associated with a particular interpretation, such as topic, focus, contrast, specificity, and so forth. Thus, the object in

74 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir SOV constructions is (optionally) focused in Russian and Hungarian. In Finnish and Northern Sámi, on the other hand, the SOV construction has a non-focused object. As Holmberg (1998) notes, Northern Sámi appears to be ‘semi-SOV language’, with short object movement in non-finite VPs, where the movement is sensitive to focus. Let us now turn to the role of information structure as a cue for the OV/VO parameter in Older Icelandic. My basic claim is that the loss of OV word order in the grammar was caused by a prior language change that involved objects expressing new information: These objects gained in frequency in postverbal position. As mentioned, previous studies on the loss of OV word order in the history of Icelandic have focused on the abrupt disappearance of the OV orders in the beginning of the nineteenth century, that is, the grammar change. However, the cause of the grammar change must lie in some alteration to the PLD. Here, I will try to address the variation in the PLD, which led to the parameter change. I will illustrate the gradual loss of the OV word order patterns that took place in the centuries prior to the grammar change, focusing on the changes in the PLD that must have paved the way for the parameter change when OV word order was lost. I propose that the word order patterns in OI were derived by a peripheral rule that applied optionally according to prosodic output conditions at PF, thus accounting for the relatively free word order at that stage of the language. If we now focus only on the nominal objects in pre- and postverbal positions in the attested OI texts, then we see a gradual increase of VO word orders with nominal objects from the 17th century. Examples (8) through (11) show some simple cases of pre- and postverbal nominal objects in OI. (8)

Full DPs: OV word order a. efftir þad þeir høffdu eplid eted (Dín) after that they had apple.the eaten ‘after they had eaten the apple’ b. þä skilldu þeir lijffed missa (Dín) then should they live.the lose ‘Then they should die’

(9)

Full DPs: VO word order a. að hann hefði etið kjötið (Munn) that he had eaten meat.the ‘that he had eaten the meat’

OV languages 75

b.

hvört hann vilji ei kaupa þræla (Árm) whether he wanted not buy slaves ‘whether he didn’t want to buy slaves’

(10) Pronouns: OV word order a. að eg hafi hana beðið (letters) that I have her asked ‘that I have asked her’ b. at hann mundi þat eigi gera (Finn) that he would it not do ‘that he would not do that’ (11) Pronouns: VO word order a. að ég hafi aldrei borgað þér (letters) that I have never paid you ‘that I have never paid you’ b. að guð vilji brúka þig lengi (letters) that God wants use you long ‘that God wants to use you for a long time’ Consider Table 1, illustrating the total frequency for the texts from each century. Pronouns are preferred in preverbal position more often than full DPs in OI. The overall difference is not great, but it is clearest in the earliest texts. Table 1. Full DPs versus pronouns Texts 14th century 15th century 16th century 17th century 18th century 19th century

OV 75 66 69 94 25 99

VO 186 110 112 245 125 1603

Full DPs % OV 28.7% 37.5% 38.1% 27.7% 16.7% 5.8%

OV 92 54 34 162 27 258

VO 33 28 7 120 58 1050

Pronouns % OV 73.6% 75.0% 82.9% 57.4% 31.7% 19.7%

There is also a grammatical ordering with respect to old information preceding new information in the OI texts, as shown in Table 2. This means that objects previously mentioned within the five preceding sentences have a tendency to occur in preverbal position, more than objects introduced for the first time in the context.2

76 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir Table 2. Old versus new information Texts 14th century 15th century 16th century 17th century 18th century 19th century

OV 75 48 50 79 20 84

New information VO % OV 204 26.9% 136 26.1% 132 27.5% 314 20.1% 98 16.9% 1312 6.0%

OV 156 110 77 215 39 261

Old information VO % OV 36 81.3% 24 82.1% 17 82.0% 104 67.4% 43 47.6% 1072 20.0%

The reason for why we do not see a clear rule here, with OV structures always involving old information and VO structures always involving new information, is that the word order is also subject to a stylistic rule in terms of weight. This means that light DPs (including pronouns) are preferred in preverbal position and heavy DPs are preferred in postverbal position. Hence, a relatively heavy DP with old information would normally occur in postverbal position. The heaviness factor is illustrated in Table 3. Table 3. Number of words within full DPs

14th century 15th century 16th century 17th century 18th century 19th century

1 word % OV 72.5% 66.3% 60.0% 46.0% 43.8% 13.7%

2 words % OV 36.8% 32.7% 31.8% 23.5% 20.6% 4.6%

3+ words % OV 10.9% 10.3% 8.0% 2.8% 1.7% 1.6%

Some examples of the division of full DPs according to their heaviness are shown below. Only sentences with OV word order are exemplified. (12) DPs with one word a. Þar er kaleikur sem álfafólk hefur kirkjunni gefið (Álf) there is chalice that elves have church.the given ‘There is a chalice there, that some elves have given to the church’ b. at ek mun sæmd af þier hliota (Vikt) that I will honor of you get ‘that I will get honor from you’

OV languages 77

(13) DPs with two words a. hafer þu þinu lidi jatat þeim (Vikt) have you your assistance promised them ‘if you have promised them your assistance’ b. at hann muni eitthvert ráð til leggja (Guðm) that he would some advice to put ‘that he would offer some advice’ (14) DPs with three words a. að prestur þessi hefði sína fyrri konu misst (Álf) that priest this had his first wife lost ‘that this priest had lost his first wife’ b. því hann vildi þann saklausa mann til dauða dæma (Morð) because he wanted this innocent man to death sentence ‘because he wanted to sentence this innocent man to death’ No preverbal DPs in the corpus contained more than three words. On the other hand, postverbal DPs containing more than three words were common (163 examples found). Some of these examples are shown below. (15) DPs with more than three words: VO word order a. Ungbarna veiki hefur sópað burt miklum þorra þessa ungviðis (letters) baby sickness have swept away big majority these children ‘Diphtheria has taken most of these children’ b. eg heffe feinged eina fräbæra edur faheyrda sött (Dín) I have got one distinguished or outrageous sickness ‘I have got a distinguished or outrageous sickness’ c. Vil eg nú upphéðan heita yður minni fullri og fastri vináttu (Munn) want I now from-now-on promise you my complete and solid friendship ‘From now on I will promise you my complete and con stant friendship’ Single DPs (DPs containing only one word) occurred as frequently in preverbal position as in postverbal position in the earliest texts (dating from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries). In texts dating from the next two centuries (the seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries), single DPs started to occur in postverbal position more often, as illustrated in

78 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir Table 3 above. I take this to reflect a language change; that is, change in usage during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Finally, in the nineteenth century texts and letters, preverbal single DPs have become very rare, as a consequence of an abrupt grammar change in the beginning of the nineteenth century. Single DPs thus lost their tendency to occur to the left of the main verb. DPs containing two words clearly are preferred in postverbal position, throughout the period studied. However, these DPs could also occur preverbally. DPs consisting of three or more words were very rare in preverbal position in all the texts and letters studied. It is therefore clear that light DPs more often occurred in preverbal position than heavy DPs in OI. The heaviness factor seems to have been stronger than the information factor: Light objects with old information are always preverbal and heavy objects with new information are always postverbal. Light objects with new information are also usually preverbal, while heavy objects with old information are usually postverbal. DPs with two words seem to have been more or less neutral with regard to the heaviness factor; hence, unfocused (old information) DPs with two words are usually preverbal, while focused (new information) DPs with two words are usually postverbal. Hence, pronouns and other light categories are preferred in preverbal position, while (heavy) full DPs and objects with new information are preferred in postverbal position. In other words, there is a prosodic ordering associated with syntactic positions with respect to: – – – –

full DPs are more likely to occur in VO structures than pronouns new information is more likely to occur in VO structures than old information heavy DPs are more likely to occur in VO structures than light DPs quantified and negated objects occur preverbally (OV) 3

When we take all these prosodic orderings into consideration, we can account for the OV/VO word order pattern in the OI corpus. In other words, it is more or less predictable which objects occur preverbally and which occur postverbally.

OV languages 79

5. Language change leading to grammar change As indicated in the tables in the preceding section, the OV/VO word order patterns are stable until the seventeenth century, where there is a gradual loss of the OV word order patterns for two centuries, or, in other words, a gradual increase in language use to have focused elements in postverbal (VO) position (the signaling of discourse properties). During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a gradual change took place in the history of Icelandic, paving the way for the parameter change in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when we have a change from a grammar allowing the variation of both OV and VO word order patterns, to a grammar allowing only (pure) VO word order. Hence, DPs expressing new information were more often put in postverbal position, with the consequences that there was a gradual drop in the frequency of OV word order patterns until OV had dropped below a certain threshold to be useful as cues (Lightfoot 1999). In other words, this increased frequency of focused DPs in postverbal position gradually led to fewer expressions of the relevant cue. Hence, there is a(n abrupt) parameter change within the next generation acquiring the language (in the beginning of the nineteenth century), where this new generation has a new parameter setting that does not allow the variation of both OV and VO word order patterns, and instead only has the pure VO word order setting. In sum, this means that a shift in discourse property, or simply a change in language use, can lead to a grammar change; a change in the basic word order in the I-language. It is often claimed that this is connected with the placement of heavy (old information is light, new information is heavier) and stressed material (an element that is stressed is part of the focus of the clause) (cf. e.g. Hinterhölzl 2006). Of course, it is still unclear what brought about this change in language use. Maybe there is no explanation in structural terms, but only in sociolinguistic terms: a certain type of word order became unfashionable. The eighteenth century marked the most tragic age in Iceland’s history. In 1703, when the first complete census was taken, the population was approximately 50,000. From 1707–1709 the population sank to about 35,000 because of a devastating smallpox epidemic. Twice again the population declined catastropically, both during the years 1752–1757 and 1783–1785, owing to a series of famines and natural disasters. The summer of 1782 marked the beginning of the presumably most tragic period ever, the so-called Móðuharðindi, where a tremendous natural catastrophe took place with a great volcanic eruption that led to increased cold weather and hard times, including starvation and different diseases. It is usually assumed that 1/5 of the

80 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir population, or 10,000 people, died because of the Móðuharðindi. When the population was severely decimated by these epidemics, this placed the surviving population in a new situation. First, the age distribution changed, and the average life expectancy decreased. Second, the language would be more sensitive to other sources of noise, for instance, language contact. Historical/social changes in the form of increased intervention, administration, and the power of the Danish led to an increase in foreign influence in Iceland at a time when the stability of the language was less secure, due to the fact that quite a lot of the older bearers of the language had perished. Note that we expect the child-learner to be sensitive to changes in the surrounding language environment, since that language environment is what she uses as a model. The language environment providing the PLD had changed so that there was more insecurity about the correct word order patterns, due to an increased influence from Danish and a loss of older individuals, followed by an increase in the proportion of children. It is obvious that we can expect the language to change when the transmission of the tradition is disturbed. When a severe plague hits a population causing a sudden death of older speakers, much of the conservatism of the language (use) may be lost. If we take VO word order to be the more innovative structure, it is not surprising that the frequency of the use of the old OV structure drops when the language environment is affected in this way. We can assume that the devastating smallpox epidemics in 1707–1709 and other natural disasters in Iceland throughout the eighteenth century are a plausible example of the kind of population changes that can cause a language change, which may then lead to a parameter change; the loss of OV word order patterns. Hence, the case we are studying here is a language that had a variation (OV and VO word order) before the epidemic, and lost it after the epidemical years during the eighteenth century. As can be seen in the tables in section 4, the proportion of OV word order had remained surprisingly stable from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century. The first notable drop in frequency takes place during the eighteenth century, during the epidemical period. This reflects a language change, where constructions with OV word order came to be used less and less, until the frequency of OV had dropped below a certain threshold to be useful as cues (Lightfoot 1999). This in turn lead to a parameter change in the beginning of the nineteenth century where OV orders suddenly disappeared. To summarize, after the smallpox epidemics in the very beginning of the eighteenth century and the natural catastrophe Móðuharðindin in the middle of the century, the age distribution became different due to a loss of older individuals, followed by an increase in the proportion of children.

OV languages 81

Hence, the language environment had changed and we assume this to have led to more insecurity about the correct word order patterns. At the same time, there was an increase of foreign influence from Danish, a language that already had pure VO word order at the time. Finally, another social/historical change in Icelandic at the time of the language change supports our findings. Note that the frequency of OV/VO word order patterns showed a remarkable stability from the earliest texts until the eighteenth century. More interestingly, so did the Icelandic society: From the time of the settlement until the eighteenth century, it was a rather stable (old-fashioned) country of farmers, without any important formation of cities or towns. It was a society of big families living together. The elderly were not sent away to old people’s homes and the children were not sent away to nursery schools or kindergartens. The big family stayed together, and worked together, on the farm. Older children took care of their younger siblings, and most noticeable perhaps, the children grew up with their parents and their grandparents and their language (including language use and tradition). It was not until the eighteenth century that we have the formation of big towns. During 1760–1770, a great disease hit the Icelandic livestock and as much as half of the sheep were killed. As a consequence, people had to flee the countryside and move to the seaside to survive. The fishing industry increased and fishing towns thrived. Reykjavík gradually became the capital of Iceland. This also meant that the big families were split up and children went to school with other children and hence their language acquisition was now, to a much greater extent than before, affected by the language of other children. This is another example of a change in language environment that has had consequences for language use, leading to a parameter change. Together these historical/social changes during the eighteenth century in Iceland explain why the language change took place – there was a change in the language environment, affecting the use of the language – paving the way for the grammar change. There is also some direct evidence that OV and VO word order might have correlated with style; the frequency of OV word order can sometimes be associated with a more elevated or formal style (and formal style is typically more conservative). For instance, not only personal letters were studied dating from the nineteenth century, but also letters of a more formal style, written by Icelandic priests at a request from a special committee for archaeology in Copenhagen. When the proportions of OV orders in these two types of letters are compared, it appears that on average, the rate of OV word order is somewhat higher in the more formal letters than in the personal letters.

82 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir 6. Object shift I will conclude by illustrating the difference between OV word order and Modern Icelandic Object Shift. Note that although Modern Icelandic is generally assumed to have SVO surface word order, as already mentioned, there still exist three constructions in Modern Icelandic exhibiting some sort of SOV word order: Negative (and quantified) phrase construction, Object Shift, and Stylistic Fronting. We will leave Stylistic Fronting aside here, and take a look at a correlation between OV word order patterns in OI and Object Shift in the modern language. 4 Consider example (16). (16) Object Shift a. María las ekki bókina Mary read not book.the ‘Mary did not read the book’ b. María las bókina ekki Mary read book.the not ‘Mary did not read the book’ c. *María las ekki hana Mary read not it ‘Mary did not read it’ d. María las hana ekki Mary read it not ‘Mary did not read it’ Object Shift in Icelandic is generally assumed to involve a leftward movement of definite objects and pronouns across a sentence adverb, in clauses containing no non-finite verbs, that is, in sentences where verb movement has occurred (cf. Holmberg’s Generalization 1986). Thus, the employment of Object Shift does not lead to an OV word order, in a strict sense, but a word order where the object has moved out of the VP, since it shows up to the left of the sentence adverb, marking the left periphery of the VP. An important element in connection to OV orders in OI is the analysis of these possible OV orders still found in Modern Icelandic. This has been the subject of much recent work, and it would indeed be interesting to see what the empirical and analytical differences between the earlier stages and the present-day stage are. In particular, it is interesting to compare obligatory Object Shift of pronouns and optional Object Shift of definite DPs in Modern Icelandic. For instance, how did whatever changes that have taken place give rise to the differences between pronouns and non-pronouns that

OV languages 83

we observe today? It is very likely that English has undergone a parallel development; Late Middle English probably had optional Object Shift for non-pronouns and obligatory Object Shift for pronouns, whereas 16th century English was like the Modern Mainland Scandinavian languages; pronouns moved whenever the verb moved but no other complements moved (see Roberts 1995). Bobaljik and Tráinsson (1998) discuss the connection between Object Shift in Modern Icelandic, the remains of OV orders still existing, and information structure, giving independent support to our claim that the cue for OV order in OI indeed was expressed through information structure. They give the following example: (17) a. b.

Ég las þrjár bækur ekki I read three books not Ég las ekki þrjár bækur I read not three books ‘I didn’t read three books’

They claim that the alternation between (a) and (b) here depends on information structure, with a contrast between specific and non-specific, or given versus new information. Hence, in order to be able to shift, the DP object must represent old information, while a DP object representing new information cannot shift and must remain internal to the VP. They conclude that AgrOP has thus nothing to do with case theory, but instead with information structure, the mapping from syntax to semantics. Although the various attested OV orders in OI might at first sight seem to apply to all kinds of nominal objects (both pronouns and full DPs, definite objects as well as indefinite) there was a division or restriction, similar to the one of Object Shift in Modern Icelandic, which only applies to pronominal objects and definite DPs. It is interesting to note that in the OI data, where a sentential adverb intervenes between the preverbal complement and the non-finite main verb, there are no instances of indefinite objects. That is, the pattern [DPindefinite - sentence adverb - Vmain] seems to have been absent. Pronouns also had a much stronger tendency to occur to the left of an adverb than full DPs or other types of arguments, as illustrated in Table 4.

84 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir Table 4. Objects occurring higher than sentence adverbs

All centuries

Pronouns 27

DPs 5

PPs 3

The distinction is very striking: 27 pronouns occurred to the left of the sentence adverb, only 5 full DPs, all definite, and three arguments of another type (PP or a small clause predicate). Some of the OI sentences are shown below. (18) Pronoun to the left of a sentence adverb a. og vér fáum það ei þekkt (Álf) and we get it not recognized ‘And we cannot recognize it’ b. at hann mundi þat eigi gera (Finn) that he would it not do ‘that he wouldn’t do it’ c. að þeir hefðu þau aldrei út gefið (Morð) that they had them never out given ‘that they had never published them’ (19) Full DP to the left of a sentence adverb a. þui ath hann willdi leoninum giarna ekki grand giora (Sig) because that he wanted lion.the readily not damage do ‘because he didn’t want to harm the lion’ b. Enn hier med a ofan hef eg greind Kugillde alldrei teked (Afs) but here with in addition have I mentioned cow-values never taken ‘But, in addition, I have never taken these cows’ c. hefi eg þessa kapla aldri aptur fengið (Skál) have I these cables never back got ‘I haven’t got these cables back’ (20) Complemental adverbial/PP to the left of a sentence adverb a. þegar hann hefur þar ei lengi verið (Álf) when he has there not long been ‘when he hasn’t stayed there for a long time’

OV languages 85

b.

c.

því þeir hafa hér aldrei fyrri komið (Árm) because they have here never before come ‘because they have never been here before’ hefr síðan um þann Haug ekki grenslast verid (letters) has since about that grave-mound not inquired been ‘Since then, no one has inquired about that grave mound’

Furthermore, at most one argument could precede the sentence adverb at a time. In VO word order, on the other hand, two or three arguments frequently followed the sentence adverb. The existence of complements to the left of a sentence adverb, thus, gives strong support to leftward movements of the objects. In the patterns [object – Vaux – Vmain] and [object – Vmain – Vaux], the preverbal argument could either be a DP, a PP or a small clause predicate. However, only the DP occurred with any significant frequency. In almost all the examples found, the DP here is a pronoun. Two examples are shown in (21) and (21). (21) [DP – Vaux – Vmain] ef hann hefði þat viljað fága (Guðm) if he had it wanted clean ‘if he had wanted to clean it’ (22) [DP – Vmain – Vaux] að eg mundi hann sigrað geta (Guðm) that I would him defeat could ‘that I would be able to defeat him’ The pattern [Vmain – Vaux – object], on the other hand, occurred with full DPs only, but never pronouns. The sentences in (23) show some examples of this pattern. (23) [Vmain – Vaux – DP] a. at hann mun raða vilia ferðum sínum (Finn) that he will determine want journeys his ‘that he will want to determine his own journeys’ b. þu munt haft hafa harða landtoku (Finn) you will had have hard landing ‘You have had a rough landing’

86 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir Note also that the construction [Vmain – Vaux – object] is comparable to Object Shift in the modern language; when the main verb moves, the object moves as well, obligatorily if it is an unstressed pronoun. Consequently, we do indeed not expect to find a pronoun in the postverbal position after the main verb has moved in OI. Definite DPs and pronouns do not exit the VP, so that they move along within the preposed VP (containing the finite verb). Indefinite DPs (and CPs), on the other hand, would always have to move out of the VP, to a separate Focus-position, and therefore are stranded by the remnant VP-preposing. This correctly predicts the distinction between [Vmain – Vaux – DP] and *[Vmain – Vaux – pronoun], together with the fact that the object in the word order patterns [object – Vmain – Vaux] and [object – Vaux – Vmain] is usually a personal pronoun or a definite noun. Moreover, heavy XP-shift in general could be seen as an independent dimension, in line with Kayne’s (1998) proposal for Modern English. Here, we arrive at the analytical difference between OV word order and Modern Icelandic Object Shift: Object Shift can now be regarded as a movement of the object along with the VP, in front of the negative adverbial. While full DPs must move out of the VP (to get their case checked in [Spec, AgrOP] in the functional domain), unstressed pronouns do not have to exit the VP (because they do not have strong enough features).5 In terms of focus/heaviness, we claim that focused/heavy objects must move out of the VP, prior to the remnant VP-movement, and hence end up postverbally, while light objects do not have to exit the VP, and therefore they may move along within the preposed VP (containing the finite verb) and thereby end up preverbally.

7. Conclusions In this chapter, we have studied the change from object-verb order to verbobject order. A number of European languages have undergone such a change and we have focused here on the change in Icelandic, arguing that while the structural change was very similar in English and Icelandic, it took place at different times and different ways in the two languages, triggered by different E-language changes. Morphological triggers, or the absence thereof, have often been related to clustering of syntactic properties in both diachronic change and acquisition. As seen from the English viewpoint, low-level facts of inflectional morphology may express the relevant cue for parameters, and hence the loss of inflection may lead to a grammar change. I have shown that this analysis does not carry over to Icelandic, as

OV languages 87

the loss of OV in Icelandic took place despite rich case morphology. Instead, I have argued that the relevant cue may be expressed differently among languages: While it may have been expressed through morphology in English, it was expressed through information structure in Icelandic. In both cases, external effects led to fewer expressions of the relevant (universal) cue and a grammar change took place. I have claimed that the language change in OI reflects an increased frequency of focused elements in postverbal position – in the form of increased number of objects moving out of the VP (to an external Focusposition) prior to the remnant VP-movement – which again increases the overall number of VO word order – with the consequences that there was a gradual drop in the frequency of OV word order during the eighteenth century until the frequency of OV had dropped below a certain threshold to be useful as cues, causing a parameter change in the beginning of the nineteenth century, where the VP-out-of-VP option disappeared. Finally, I have shown how Object Shift in Modern Icelandic supports the claim that the cue for OV in OI was expressed through information structure.

Notes 1.

2. 3.

4.

5.

Hróarsdóttir (2000) studied the frequency of OV and VO patterns in various texts dating from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries, in addition to personal letters dating from throughout the nineteenth century. Here, I have built on this database, making it approximately double in size from that used earlier, based on a wider extraction of the same texts. Objects with old information here mean personal pronouns, and full DPs already mentioned in the preceding sentences. Quantified and negated objects always occurred preverbally in OI, and they still do in the modern language. These are the remaining OV orders in Modern Icelandic. Stylistic Fronting rarely leads to OV orders, but often to an order where a complement, or part of a complement, precedes the finite verb (see Maling 1990 for the first explicit discussion of Stylistic Fronting in Icelandic, together with the discussion in Jónsson 1991, 1996; Holmberg 1997, 2000b, and Hrafnbjargarson 2004). This proposal goes against Cardinaletti and Starke (1999).

88 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir References Bobaljik, Jonathan D. and Höskuldur Thráinsson 1998 Two heads aren’t always better than one. Syntax 1: 37–71. Cardinaletti, Anna and Michal Starke 1999 The typology of structural deficiency: A case study of the three classes of pronouns. In Clitics in the Languages of Europe, ed. Henk van Riemsdijk, 145–233. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Corver, Norbert and Denis Delfitto 1995 Feature primitives and the syntax of specificity. GLOW Newsletter 34, spring 1995. Diesing, Molly 1992 Indefinites. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press. Farkas, Donka 1986 On the syntactic position of focus in Hungarian. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 4 (1): 77–96. Haider, Hubert 1992 Branching and discharge. Arbeitspapiere des Sonderforschungsbereichs 340. Vol. 23. University Stuttgart. Hinterhölzl, Roland 2006 Scrambling, Remnant Movement, and Restructuring in West Germanic. New York: Oxford University Press. Holmberg, Anders 1986 Word Order and Syntactic Feature in the Scandinavian Languages and English. Doctoral dissertation, University of Stockholm. 1997 Scandinavian Stylistic Fronting: Movement of phonological features in the syntax. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 60: 81–124. 1998 Word order variation in some European SVO languages: A parametric approach. In Constituent Order in the Languages of Europe, ed. Anna Siewierska, 553–598. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2000a OV in Finnish. In The Derivation of VO and OV, ed. Peter Svenonius, 123–152. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 2000b Scandinavian Stylistic Fronting: How any category can become an expletive. Linguistic Inquiry 31 (3): 445–483. Holmberg, Anders and Christer Platzack. 1995 The Role of Inflection in Scandinavian Syntax. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hoop, Helen de 1992 Case Configuration and Noun Phrase Interpretation. Doctoral dissertation, University of Groningen. Horváth, Julia 1986 Focus in the Theory of Grammar and the Syntax of Hungarian. Dordrecht: Foris.

OV languages 89 Hrafnbjargarson, Gunnar Hrafn 2004 Stylistic fronting. Studia Linguistica 58 (2): 88–134. Hróarsdóttir, Þorbjörg 1996 The decline of OV word order in the Icelandic VP: A diachronic study. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 57: 92–141 2000 Word Order Change in Icelandic. From OV to VO. (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 35). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Indriðason, Þorsteinn 1987 Skýrsla um orðaröð í sagnlið. Ms., University of Iceland, Reykjavík. Jónsson, Jóhannes Gísli 1991 Stylistic Fronting in Icelandic. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 48: 1–43. 1996 Clausal Architecture and Case in Icelandic. Doctoral dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Kayne, Richard S. 1998 Overt vs. covert movement. Syntax 1: 128–191. Kiss, Katalin É. 1987 Configurationality in Hungarian. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 1998 Discourse-configurationality in the languages of Europe. In Constituent Order in the Languages of Europe, ed. Anna Siewierska, 681– 727. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Koeneman, Olaf 2000 The Flexible Nature of Verb Movement. Doctoral dissertation, University of Utrecht. Kosmeijer, Wim 1986 The status of the finite inflection in Icelandic and Swedish. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 26. Kroch, Anthony S. and Ann Taylor 1994 Remarks on the XV/VX alternation in Early Middle English. Ms., University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Laka, Itziar and Juan Uriagereka 1987 Barriers for Basque and vice-versa. NELS 17. Amherst: University of Massachusetts. Lightfoot, David W. 1999 The Development of Language: Acquisition, Change, and Evolution. Oxford and Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers. Maling, Joan 1990 Inversion in embedded clauses in Modern Icelandic. In Modern Icelandic Syntax, eds. Joan Maling and Annie Zaenen, 71–91. [Syntax and Semantics 24]. San Diego: Academic Press.

90 Þorbjörg Hróarsdóttir Pintzuk, Susan 1996 From OV to VO in the history of English. Ms., University of York. [Paper presented at the 4th Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference, October 31-November 2, 1995. Université du Québec à Montréal] Roberts, Ian G. 1993 Verbs and Diachronic Syntax. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 1995 Object movement and verb movement in Early Modern English. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax, eds. Hubert Haider, Susan Olsen and Sten Vikner, 269–284. Dordrecht: Kluwer. 1997 Directionality and word order change in the history of English. In Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent, 396–426. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 2001 Language change and learnability. In Language Acquisition and Learnability, ed. Stefano Bertolo, 81–125. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rohrbacher, Bernhard W. 1999 Morphology-Driven Syntax: A theory of V to I raising and pro-drop. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Rögnvaldsson, Eiríkur 1996 Word order variation in the VP in Old Icelandic. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 58: 55–86. Siewierska, Anna 1998 Variation in major constituent order: A global and a European perspective. In Constituent Order in the Languages of Europe, ed. Anna Siewierska, 475–551. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Sigurðsson, Halldór Á. 1988 From OV to VO: Evidence from Old Icelandic. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 34: 1–41. Tuller, Laurice 1992 The syntax of postverbal focus constructions in Chadic. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 10 (2): 303–334. Urbina, Jon Ortiz de 1989 Parameters in the Grammar of Basque. Dordrecht: Foris. Vikner, Sten 1997 V-to-I movement and inflection for person in all tenses. In The New Comparative Syntax, ed. Liliane Hageman, 189–213. London: Longman.

Discourse relations and word order change Ans van Kemenade

1.

Introduction

I explore, for Old English, against the broader backdrop of Old (West) Germanic, the relation between discourse, clause structure, and inflectional morphology.1 I will address a word order feature that has proved a knotty problem in the syntactic literature on older English, and propose an alternative approach that attempts to integrate the insights from syntactic approaches with those emerging from the literature on discourse. In section 2, I will first position the Old English dataset that prompted the approach developed in this article, and outline the issues it raises for syntactic analyses that have been proposed so far. Then, in section 3, I will present the basic tenets of an approach that attempts to unify insights from discourse analysis and information packaging with a syntactic approach. I start from the assumption that there is such a thing as a tightly circumscribed syntax, which makes available a limited set of options which define the limits to the space that language users have to manipulate word order according to information-structural needs. Specific claims will be: 1. Old English has a class of short adverbs which I will call discourse partitioners as they serve to partition the clause into domains for given information (referring back to a prominent discourse referent) and non-given information. Their use as discourse partitioners was later lost; 2. Old English has a type of referring expression lost in Middle English, the paradigm of simple demonstratives, which allow specific anaphoric reference to a discourse antecedent; this ensures that, in addition to the well-known range of pronouns, DP subjects with a demonstrative pronoun allow reference to a discourse antecedent and can be marked and positioned as given information. 3. the interplay of the first two strategies serves to allow a number of word order options in the higher part of the clause that were later lost. In section 4, I will discuss a number of issues concerning the modelling of these findings.

92

Ans van Kemenade

2.

An analytical problem in Old English

Before going on to discuss an analysis of Old English word order in discourse terms, let’s briefly position the dataset as it has been analysed in the literature so far. Its core consists of arguments that occur in a relatively high position in the clause, and includes personal pronouns (subject or object), but, rather problematically for a purely syntactic account, various other types of NP as well. A well-known feature of Old English word order is that personal pronouns may occur in positions higher than their DP counterparts. This is true almost categorically for subject pronouns, and optionally for object pronouns, as exemplified (1) for main clauses and by (2) for sub-clauses2: (1)

a. Be ðæm we magon suiðe swutule oncnawan ðæt ... By that, we may very clearly perceive that ... CP 26.181.16 ‘By that, we may perceive very clearly that ...’ b. þa axodon hine Pharisei & þa boceras hwi ne gað and then asked him Pharisees and the learned men, why not go þine leorningcnihtas æfter ure yldrena gesetnysse. ac your disciples after our forefathers' law, but besmitenum handum hyra hlaf þicgað with defiled hands their bread eat?

Mk (WSCp) 7.5

‘Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, why walk not thy disciples according to the tradition of their elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands?’ c. Hwæt tacnað us ðonne Saul buton yfle hlafurdas? What betokens us then Saul except evil lords? CP 28.197.22 ‘What is signified to us by Saul but bad masters?’ (2)

a. Gif hire ðonne se wiðsace, ðonne is cynn ðæt him spiwe if it then he refuse, then is proper that him spits ðæt wif on ðæt nebb the woman in the face

CP 5.45.2

‘But if he refuse it, it is proper for the woman to spit in his face’

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b. gif hine ðonne ðæt fleah mid ealle ofergæð, ðonne ne mæg he if him then the albugo with all covers, then not-can he noht geseon. naught see

CP 11.69.18

‘if it [the pupil of the eye] is entirely covered with albugo, he cannot see anything.’ This fact has been taken to indicate that personal pronouns are syntactically special and exhibit a form of syntactic cliticization (van Kemenade 1987; Pintzuk 1991). Alternative analyses are those in terms of Germanic style weak pronouns in the sense of Cardinaletti and Starke (1996). Cardinaletti and Roberts (2002). The positional evidence was made more precise in Haeberli (1999); van Kemenade (1999; 2000), which is illustrated by the examples (3), reflecting a word order template as in (4): (3)

a. Ne het he us na leornian heofonas to wyrcenne not ordered he us not learn heavens to make ‘He did not bid us learn to make the heavens’

ÆLS.XVI.127

b. Ne sæde na ure Drihten þæt he mid cynehelme oððe mid not said not our Lord that he with diadem or with purple purpuran gescryd, cumin wolde to us clothed, come wanted to us

ÆLS.XXXI.762

‘Our Lord said not that He would come to us with a diadem or clothed with purple’ (4)

personal pronoun – secondary negator – nominal subject

Very similar syntactic analyses of this word order template are Haeberli (1999) and van Kemenade (1999; 2000), following up Bobaljik and Jonas (1996); Bobaljik and Thrainsson (1998) whose structures I adapt for the time being as (5)3: (5)

[CP [XP] C [AgrP PronounSubj/Obj Agr [NegP Neg Adv Neg [TP DPSubj T ... ]]]

Personal pronouns occur in a designated pronoun position on the left of a NegP in Spec,AgrP position, while the position for DP subjects is lower than NegP, in SpecTP. It turns out then, that the secondary negator has

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considerable diagnostic value in pinpointing the position of elements in the higher part of the clause. This is (as) true for a number of other adverbs as well, and is illustrated here for ðonne: (6)

a. Hu mæg he ðonne ðæt lof & ðone gilp fleon how may he then praise and vainglory avoid ‘How can he avoid praise and vainglory...?’

CP. 9.57.18

b. Hu gerades mæg ðonne se biscep brucan ðære hirdelican are. how properly may then the bishop enjoy the pastoral dignity CP. 18.133.3 ‘How, then, can the bishop properly enjoy the pastoral dignity?’ By way of example, findings for root clause questions in Cura Pastoralis, based on a lexical search of the whole text, are as follows: Table 1. Relative position of adverb ðonne and various types of subject in Cura Pastoralis

Nominal subject subject left of ðonne subject right of ðonne

0 17

Personal pronoun subject or object 10 0

This yields a clear picture for main clauses. However, the position is considerably more complicated when we consider sub-clauses. (see also Haeberli and Ingham 2007 for early Middle English4). Examination of all the subclauses containing þa/þonne shows the distribution for subjects in table 2. Throughout the article, the data are based on extensive searches in the York Corpus of Old English (Taylor et al. 2003) and the Penn Helsinki parsed Corpus of Middle English 2 (Taylor 2000). Table 2. Relative position of adverb ðonne and various types of subject in YCOE

Old English subclauses Left of þa/þonne Right of þa/þonne

Pronominal subjects 1250 5

DP subjects 293 419

Table 2 shows that subject pronouns almost categorically occur on the left of the adverb. An example of this, also including object pronouns, is (7).

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on Salomonnes bocum, hit is awrieten ðæt mon ne scyle in Solomon’s books, it is written that that one not shall cweðan to his frind: Ga, cum to morgen, ðonne selle ic ðe say to one’s friend: “Go, come tomorrow, then give I you hwæthwugu, gif he hit him ðonne sellan mæge something, if he it him then give may.”

CP.44.323.24

‘in the books of Solomon, it is written that we are not to say to our friend: “Go, and come tomorrow, then I will give you something,” if we can give it him then.’ However, the figures for DP subjects in table 2 show that we are not dealing merely with a designated position for personal pronouns. The relatively high frequency of DP subjects left of the adverb renders this particularly problematic, and there is no readily discernible generalization with respect to the choice of DP subject on the left or right of the adverb; higher and lower DP subjects, for instance, include definite DP’s, as the following representative examples show: (8)

Forðæm bið se sige micle mara ðe man mid geðylde gewinð, therefore is the victory much greater which one with patience wins, forðæm sio gesceadwisnes ðonne hæfð ofercumen ðæt mod & because this wisdom then has overcome the mind and gewielð, swelce he self hæbbe hiene selfne gewildne, & sio geðyld subdued, as if he self have himself conquered, and the patience hæbbe ðæt mod geðreatod & gecafstrod. have the mind intimidated and curbed.

CP[Cotton]:218.19.42

‘Therefore the victory which is won with patience is much greater, because this wisdom (patience) has overcome and subdued the mind, as if he himself had conquered himself, and patience had intimidated and curbed the mind.’ (9)

Gif ðonne se sacerd bið ungerad ðæs lareowdomes, hwæt forstent If then the teacher is unskilled in instruction, what avails ðonne his gehlyd? then his cry?

CP.15.91.25

‘then if the teacher is unskilled in instruction, what avails his cry?’

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In the next section, I will pursue a different perspective on this problem, incorporating insights from both discourse and syntax.

3.

Information packaging strategies

In this section, I will consider issues pertaining to the relation between discourse and syntax in Old and Middle English. The claim is that, to varying degrees, Old and Middle English syntax allowed the language user greater flexibility to incorporate information structural considerations by allowing a wider range of possibilities for positioning given information before new information. In contrast to present-day English, in which the subject typically marks given information (e.g. Birner and Ward 1998), earlier English differentiates between two positions which may both host various types of subject, or personal pronoun objects, the differentiation being keyed to the distinction ‘given’ vs. ‘new’. Here, I follow up previous work, in particular van Kemenade and Los (2006); van Kemenade and Miliüev (2005). When looking at the literature on information packaging, we usually come across at least five major types of strategies to mark information structure: (10) a. b. c. d. e.

Intonation Ellipsis Particles Types of referring expressions Word order

I will defer from discussing the first two strategies: intonation is a phenomenon which is particularly hard to track in any detail in historical text material; the state of our knowledge of ellipsis in the history of English is as yet limited, and instructive exploration is beyond the scope of this article. In this section, I discuss the interplay of strategies in Old English that mark its more prominent discourse character relative to Middle English and especially Modern English. More particularly, I claim that the Old Germanic languages show evidence for a clausal organization that is defined more clearly in terms of discourse domains. In particular, I claim that there is an area relatively high in the clause whose right edge is marked by a a short adverb that functions as a discourse partitioner. The evidence discussed here is from two such adverbs, þa and þonne, as representatives of a larger set. This area hosts specific types of referring expressions, viz.

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various types of pronouns and definite DP’s containing a demonstrative pronoun. The function of these referring expressions in this area is to refer back to a prominent discourse antecedent. Thus, the conclusion will be that Old English possesses the minimal morphology necessary to partition the clause in terms of an area for given/presupposed information (referring back to a (prominent) discourse antecedent) and non-given information. In the transition to Middle English, this morphology is lost: the paradigm for demonstrative pronouns is levelled to one definite determiner the; discourse partitioners (or perhaps rather the discourse partitioner use of a set of adverbs) are lost, and this leads to a clausal organization that is more rigidly syntactically defined.

3.1. Particles It is well-known that languages whose syntactic organization is more tailored to discourse needs, make use, in varying degrees, of particles that mark discourse-relevant domains in word order. Thus, for instance, Aboh (2004, 2006) shows that the word order of Gungbe, a Kwa language, is determined by Topic and Focus. Topics occur on the immediate left of a topic particle yà as in (11a), focussed NPs on the immediate left of a focus particle wȑ, as in (11b): (11) a. Ùn sè ǚƥ dàn lƥ yà Kòfí hù ì 1sg hear that snake Det Top Kofi kill 3sg ‘I heard that, as for the snake, Kofi killed it’ b. Ùn sè ǚƥ dàn lƥ wȑ Kòfí hù 1sg hear that snake Det Foc Kofi kill ‘I heard that Kofi killed THE SNAKE’ Such particles serve as discourse partitioners then, and require that the relevant NP is on their immediate left. Particles do not need to be designated elements; they can also be adverbs, for instance. Adverbs are routinely used in syntactic work as word order diagnostics, even more particularly in the literature on the Germanic languages. We saw in the previous section that secondary negators (negative adverbs) have strong diagnostic value, and the same goes for adverbs like þa and þonne ‘then’. A similar diagnostic value is ascribed to the interjection la ‘lo’ in Kato (1995). In a very different vein, Brinton (2006) claims that the temporal adverb þa ‘then’ is

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a discourse partitioner. The claim made here follows up van Kemenade and Los (2006) and van Kemenade and Miliüev (2005) and goes a step further: Old English þa and þonne, both literally meaning ‘then’, are prominent members of a set of adverbs and particles that take discourse-linked material on their left. The term ‘discourse-linked’ here corresponds with what is known in the literature as given information. This set of adverbs and particles forms no obvious natural class, as it includes þa and þonne both literally meaning ‘then’; and nu (literally ‘now’); Furthermore, it includes na, whose primary use is that of negator; la ‘lo’, which is an exclamative element; and eac ’also’, which is rather hard to classify. What unites these elements, beside their fixed position, is that they are often used as rhetorical devices, serving to admonish or exhort, and, as claimed, to separate given from non-given material in the clause.5 This is particularly clearly the case when they are used in clause-internal position, as discussed in van Kemenade and Los (2006). I illustrate briefly here with the following examples: (12) a. Hwæt ða la ongunnon þa godes cempan hnexian and what then lo began then God’s champions yield and heora mod awendon to hyre maga sarnysse their mood turn to their kinsmen’s anguish.

ÆLS(Sebastian) 48

‘Well, then, behold! God’s champions began to yield, and to turn their thought on their kinsmen’s anguish.’ b. Hwæt þa se biscop hine bliþelice gefullode, and ealle his What then the bishop him blithely baptized, and all his hiwan on þæs Hælendes naman. household in the Saviour’s name

ÆLS(Basil) 167

‘and indeed the bishop blithely baptized him and all his household in the Saviour’s name.’ In (12), the exclamatory part of the clause in each case primarily serves to draw particular attention to the event following. The temporal effect of þa is minimal at best. This particular use of þa illustrates very well the function of adverbs/particles as viewed here: the focus part of the clause is “introduced” by the particle in the sense that it immediately precedes the focus part. The discussion here is restricted to þa and þonne, as they are the most consistent members of this set.

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3.2. Types of referring expressions A crucial ingredient of the account of Old and Middle English morphology in relation to discourse and syntax here is that Old English had a specific class of discourse-linking expressions that was lost in the later history of English: the weak demonstrative pronouns. This class of pronouns seems to have been one of the properties of Old English that sustained its discourse-configurational character. Before I go on to discuss their properties, let me list the paradigm, found in any grammar of Old English. Table 3. Old English demonstrative pronouns

Nom Acc Gen Dat

singular masculine se þone þæs þĺm

plural feminine sƝo þƗ þĺre þĺre

neuter þæt þæt þæs þĺm

þƗ þƗ þƗra þĺm

The demonstrative pronouns are often called definite determiners, as one of their primary known uses in Old English is to mark definiteness in a DP, thus se monn ‘the man’; þĺre fæmnan fæder; ‘the woman’s father’ and so on, see recently Denison (2006). However, the term ‘determiner’ is, I claim, a singular misnomer, in particular because it is often used when comparing the Old English demonstratives to the present-day English definite determiners, which are clearly morphologically invariant and cannot be used independently. In comparison, Old English demonstratives are a rather versatile class. While they mark definiteness like the present-day English determiners do, they can also be used as independent pronouns: (13) a. Swa fela swa hine underfengon, þam he forgeaf anweald So many so him received, them he gave authority Godes bearn to beonne God’s child to be ÆHom 1.42.26 ‘To all those who received him, he gave authority to be God’s children’ b. Be þam awrat Moyses se mæra heretoga, In principio fecit By them wrote Moses the great general, In principio fecit

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Deus celum et terram Deus celum et terram

ÆHom I, 70, 46

‘About those, Moyses the great general wrote: In principio fecit Deus celum et terram’ This in itself shows that this set of pronouns has independent pronominal function, and serves to mark a type of pronominal reference. This is reinforced by the fact that they are also used as relative pronouns, which are anaphoric elements par excellence, as they must refer back to the antecedent of the relative clause they introduce, under identity of features for number and gender, and, optionally, of case as in (14b). (14) a. Ure Drihten arærde anes ealdormonnes dohtor, seo ðe læg dead Our Lord raised an alderman’s daughter (A), who (N) that lay dead ÆHom, VI, 176 ‘Our Lord brought to life an alderman’s daughter who lay dead’ b. Ic wat witodlice ðæt ge secað ðone hælend ðone ðe on I know truly that you eek the Lord (A) whom (A) that on rode ahangen wæs cross hung was

Mt. 1766

‘I know truly that you seek the Lord, who was hung on the cross’ My claim here is that demonstrative pronouns mark a type of (pronominal) reference that is both definite and specific. I would argue that the paradigm of weak demonstrative pronouns, which carried inflection for case, number and gender and were used as independent demonstratives, relative pronouns and definite “determiners”, provided a versatile extra class of referential expressions that played an important role in discourse reference. The fact that a demonstrative can also be used as definiteness marker on NP, yields a more versatile form of discourse linking, as it allows a definite NP to have specific discourse reference, and to be positioned accordingly: on the left of a discourse partitioner. I will elaborate this in section 4. 3.3. Word order Present-day English is characterized by a rigid SVO syntax. In the unmarked case, the subject corresponds with given information, the object with new information (Birner and Ward 1998). It is well-known that earlier

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English had a larger number of syntactic options available beside SVO word orders. Consider in this respect the vast literature on OV word order and its loss, and on the Old English version of the Verb Second constraint. For summaries of the issues playing a role in the syntactic debate on these word orders, the reader is referred to Fischer et. al (2000) and references cited there, and to Kroch and Taylor (2000), Pintzuk and Taylor (2006), and to the articles in Taylor and van der Wurff (2005). Likewise, there is a considerable literature on Old English word order in discourse terms, including Brinton (2006), Bech (2001), to name but a few. A general point about the literature is that purely syntactic treatments have some difficulty coming to grips with such essentially relational notions as given/new information, discourse reference, closeness of the antecedent and so on, which are all relevant to a proper treatment of Old English word order. The literature so far in terms of discourse, on the other hand, does scant justice to insights emerging from the syntactic literature. As yet, there is little or no literature on the interplay between syntax and discourse. In this article, I start from the assumption that there is such a thing as a tightly circumscribed syntax, which makes available a limited set of options which define the limits to the space that language users have to manipulate word order according to information-structural needs. Viewed from this perspective, Old English syntax allows the language user more leeway than present-day English does. This relative freedom has often been ascribed (exclusively and rather impressionistically) to the presence of inflectional morphology, in particular with respect to the relative positional freedom of NPs. No doubt, the presence of case morphology is important for syntactic purposes in identifying the argument status and grammatical role of NPs; I would argue, however, that it is not only case marking per se that yields word order flexibility, but rather the fact that an inherent part of this case system was the paradigm of weak demonstrative pronouns, which carried inflection for case, number and gender and were used as independent demonstratives, relative pronouns and definite “determiners”.

4.

Discourse and syntax in Old English

4.1. The position of pronouns The focus in this treatment is then the position/area that in more purely syntactic analyses has been associated with high personal pronouns or the Spec,AgrP position in the structure (5) above. We have now seen that it hosts

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a subset of subject DP’s as well. From a syntactic viewpoint, this yields a problem primarily for subclauses as we saw in discussion in section 2. We will therefore first consider sub-clauses, and look at the discourse conditions and syntactic conditions that various types of high elements are subject to. The hypothesis, following van Kemenade and Los (2006) and van Kemenade and Miliüev (2005), is that material appearing on the left of þa/þonne is discourse-linked, i.e. any material occurring there refers specifically to a discourse antecedent. Material in the discourse-linked area in effect comprises continued topics in the discourse sense: subjects and a range of pronouns, essentially given information. At this point, it may be useful to emphasize that this is a notion crucially different from ‘topicalization’ as it is known in the syntactic literature, which involves movement to Spec,CP in root clauses, and whose discourse effect is more typically associated with contrast, comparison and scene-setting. Returning to our discourse-linked area, it should come as no surprise that a range of pronoun types occur here. First and foremost, this applies to personal pronouns. Subject pronouns near-categorically appear in this area, and if they occur in conjunction with object pronoun(s), they always precede the object pronoun(s). (15) illustrates a double object example where all three arguments are pronouns; the order of the pronouns is fixed as in (15): nominative – accusative – dative. This is a crosslinguistically widely attested order. (15) on Salomonnes bocum, hit is awrieten ðæt mon ne scyle cweðan in Solomon’s books, it is written that one not shall say to his frind: Ga,cum to morgen, ðonne selle ic ðe hwæthwugu, to his friend: “Go,come tomorrow, then give I you something, gif he hit him ðonne sellan mæge. if he it him then give may.”

CP.44.323.24

‘in the books of Solomon, it is written that we are not to say to our friend: “Go, and come tomorrow, then I will give you something,” if we can give it him then.’ An object pronoun may appear alone in the high position, as in (16): (16) gif hine ðonne ðæt fleah mid ealle ofergæð, ðonne ne mæg he if him then the albugo with all covers, then not-can he noht geseon. naught see.

CP 11.69.17

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‘if it [the pupil of the eye] is entirely covered with albugo, he can not see anything.’ Object pronouns can occur in lower positions as well. Miliüev (in prep, chapter 2) shows that object pronouns in the high position have a prominent discourse antecedent. DP objects are not attested in the discourse-linked area. There is one substantial set of apparent counterexamples to this: preposed dative experiencers, as illustrated in (17)6. (17) þa þæm hearpere ða ðuhte ðæt hine þa nanes then the harp-player then seemed that him then no þinges ne lyste on ðisse worulde thing not pleased in this world

Bo 35.102.9.1978

‘Then it seemed to the harp-player that nothing in this world pleased him anymore’ We can account for this in terms of Allen (1995), who shows that preposed dative experiencers behave as subjects with respect to coordinate subject deletion. The least we can say is that these constructions involve unaccusative verbs, i.e. verbs without an external argument; the subject position in such clauses can host one of the internal arguments (van Kemenade 1997). The high position optionally hosts a range of indefinite pronoun subjects as well.7 This may well raise a problem for the idea that material in the high position is discourse-linked. However, Miliüev (in prep) shows that, while indefinites in the lower subject position are genuinely indefinite, high indefinites in fact do have a presuppositional reading: choice of referent from a discourse-given set. To illustrate, consider (18) (from Miliüev (in prep)): (18) a. ða gebroþra, þe for hwylcere neode utfarað and þy ilcum the brothers, who for which need go-out and the same daege to mynstre cuman maegen, ne dyrstlaecen hi þaet hy day to monastery come may, not dare they that they ahwaer ut of mynstre etan, þeah hy hwa bidde, anywhere out of monastery eat even-if them anyone invites,

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butan hit him from heora abbode geboden sy unless it them from their abbot allowed be BenR:51.79.15.927 ‘the brothers, who for some reason need to go out and are able to come back to the monastery the same day, they are not allowed to eat anywhere outside the monastery, even if someone invites them, unless it has been allowed by the abbot’ b. Gif hwa hit þonne butan his leafe gedyrstlaece, beo he on if anyone it then out his permission dares, be he in amansumunge excommunication BenR:51.79.18.928 ‘if anyone then dares to ignore his permission, he should be excommunicated’ The relevant hwa is in (18b). (18a) provides the context, which makes it clear that hwa ‘whoever’ in (18b) picks a referent from the set of brothers mentioned in a): those brothers who for some reason need to go out and are able to come back the same day. Miliüev notes that hwa can occur in the lower subject position as well. Interestingly, it occurs there typically when there is no set of possible referents as in (18a), as illustrated in (19): (19) and næfre se læweda man ne healed ealdorscipe ofer gehadodum. and never the lay man not hold eldership over clergy. Gif hit ðonne hwa deð, wite he þæt he deð ongean Cristes gesetnysse If it then anyone does, know he that he does against Christ’s ordinance ÆCHom_II_45:345.308.7714 ‘and a layman should never hold supremacy over clergy. If anyone then does, he should know that he acts against Christ’s ordi nance…’ The potential set of referents in the context is that of laymen, but this is cancelled by the negation. Let’s now turn to non-pronominal subjects in the high position. DP’s in the high position comprise possessive DP’s and DP’s with a definite demonstrative pronoun. In the lower position on the right of þa/þonne, we find proper names, DP’s with a definite demonstrative pronoun, and a range of indefinite and generic expressions. The focus here will be on what determines the choice between higher position and lower subject position.

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Let’s consider here again the examples (8) and (9) above, which are repeated here for convenience as (20) and (21), with some more context for (21): (20) Forðæm bið se sige micle mara ðe man mid geðylde gewinð, therefore is the victory much greater which one with patience wins, forðæm sio gesceadwisnes ðonne hæfð ofercumen ðæt mod & because this wisdom then has overcome the mind and gewielð, swelce he self hæbbe hiene selfne gewildne, & sio geðyld subdued, as if he self have himself conquered, and the patience hæbbe ðæt mod geðreatod & gecafstrod. have the mind intimidated and curbed.

CP[Cotton]:218.19.42

‘Therefore the victory which is won with patience is much greater, because this wisdom (patience) has overcome and subdued the mind, as if he himself had conquered himself, and patience had intimidated and curbed the mind.’ In (20), the DP sio gesceadwisnes lit. ‘the wisdom’, refers back to the PP mid geðylde in the previous clause and should therefore more properly read as ‘this wisdom’. This is a good illustration of the referential properties of the demonstrative pronoun sio: it is this that renders the reference to the antecedent specific.With this in mind let us now look at (21): There are three discourse particles in this text fragment. In the first case, the DP ða sacerdas precedes the particle nu, and has a specific reading, signalling a specific group of priests, those who have undertaken the priesthood and proclaim it loudly. In the next sentence, the subject se sacerd occurs on the right of the particle, and has a generic reading, referring to ‘priest’ in his office of priest. ‘The priest’ here does not refer to a specific person. (21) Forðæm se se ðe ðonne sacerdhad onfehð, he onfehð Because he who that then priesthood undertakes, he undertakes friccan scire & foreryneles ða her iernað beforan kyningum, & herald’s office footmen who here run before kings, & bodigeað hira færelt & hiera willan hlydende. Sua sculun proclaim their journey and their will loudly. So shall ða sacerdas nu faran hlydende & bodiende beforan ðæm the priests now run proclaiming and preaching before the

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egeslican deman ðe him suiðe andrysnlic æfter gæð. Gif awful judge who them very majestically after goes. If ðonne se sacerd bið ðæs ungerad lareowdomes, hwæt forstent then the teacher is unskilled in instruction, what avails ðonne his gehlyd? then his cry?

CP, 15,91,25

‘For he who undertakes the priesthood undertakes the office of herald and footmen who run before kings, loudly proclaiming their journey and will. Thus priests ought to run and proclaim loudly be fore the awful judge, who follows them in great majesty. But if the priest is unskilled in instruction, what avails his cry?’ These examples give us a perspective on the choice between the higher and lower subject position: the higher position is for those definite DP-subjects that refer back specifically to a discourse antecedent. This is possible because the demonstrative pronoun allows specific reference. The lower subject position is for those DP-subjects which are definite but have a generic or otherwise non-specific reading. Van Kemenade, Miliüev and Baayen (2008) offer sophisticated statistical support for the analysis here, in an approach much inspired by Bresnan et.al. (2007). A database was created including all the clauses containing þa/þonne. For the present analysis, it is primarily subclauses that are relevant, as the articulation of the ‘high’ area in main clauses is further complicated by various types of movement to CP. To each NP, numerical values were assigned for discourse-relevant properties, including: NP function (subject, various types of object); NP Type (personal pronoun, weak demonstrative, strong demonstrative, definite NP, indefinite NP etc.); NP position (left periphery, high (left of particle), mid (immediate right of particle), low); specificity (non/specific); distance of antecedent (counted in clauses). The interaction between these factors was calculated in the R open statistical environment (R Development Core team 2004). Summarizing for DP subjects, it is shown that the combination of the four values ‘definite NP’, ‘specific NP’, ‘high position’ and ‘antecedent is present in the discourse’ (less than 3 clauses away) is of the statistically highly significant. Moreover, each of these four values contributes highly significantly to this combination. I take this as strong evidence for the approach outlined here. This allows a number of conclusions. The first and foremost conclusion is that the ‘high’ area, as marked off by the adverb, is reserved for

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discourse-linked material: personal pronouns (subject and object), presuppositional indefinite pronouns, specific definite DP’s. The second conclusion is that this additional layer in the clause is licensed by the presence of the adverb. The third conclusion is that definite DP can establish a discourse link in this high position by virtue of the anaphoric character of the demonstrative pronoun. The final conclusion is that, even in subclauses, the adverb has strong diagnostic value. The general point emerging from this discussion then is that the variety of elements occurring in the high position has been unified under one principled non-syntactically defined term: discourse-linked material. Let us now try to define with some more precision the syntactic properties and structure of this ‘high area’: in particular, let’s consider where we stand now with respect to the partial clausal architecture in (5) above, repeated here for convenience as (22): (22) [CP [XP] C [AgrP PronounSubj/Obj Agr [NegP Neg Adv Neg [TP DPSubj T ... ]]] The discourse-linked domain we have identified here is positionally comparable with AgrP in this structure; the position of the particle þa/þonne corresponds with NegP; the lower subject position corresponds with spec,TP, leaving aside further lower subject positions. I will dub the discourse-linking area ȈP, following Nilsen (2003); van Kemenade and Miliüev (to appear). Ȉ stands for ‘scrambling’, which seems an appropriate characterization of this phenomenon. ȈP then is a high scrambling position, distinct from and higher than the position usually associated with object scrambling in the Germanic languages. Given the generalizations that have been made above concerning discourse linking, the conclusion seems inevitable that the position of þa/þonne is higher than TP: only discourselinked material appears on its left; transitive DP subjects may appear on its right. Next, let’s consider the internal structure of ȈP. It was observed above that up to three personal pronouns may appear here, in a fixed order. A DP subject may also combine with an object pronoun in ȈP, but here, too, the order is: subject DP - object pronoun, as illustrated by (23), showing that within ȈP, the order of subjects and objects is fixed. (23) Gif he wif self hæbbe, gange hio ut mid him. Gif se if he woman self have, go she out with him. If the

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hlaford him þonne wif sealde sie hio & hire bearn þæs hlafordes lord him then woman gave, be she and her children the lord’s. LAW2,28.11.2-3 ‘If he will have the woman himself, she will go with him. Now if the lord gave him the woman, she and her children will belong to the lord.’ If an approach in terms of ‘high’ scrambling is correct, the facts clearly show that it is discourse reference that triggers scrambling. This view is controversial: scrambling is treated by many as syntactic optionality (e.g. Haider 2005). While it is no doubt correct that scrambling is optional in the sense that the syntax allows two positions that can both be chosen, the generalizations about discourse reference here, considered for each example in its broader context, show that scrambling is strongly discoursesensitive. This is in line with Hinterhoelzl (2004) on present-day German. He argues that there are two triggers for scrambling in present-day German: scope and specificity, where specificity is taken to mean that the scrambled constituent is part of a set of referents given in the context. The only circumstance in which an object may appear on the left of a subject then is when an object pronoun is in ȈP, and the (DP)-subject is in a lower position. We have seen several examples of this above, and I repeat (16) here for convenience: (24) gif hine ðonne ðæt fleah mid ealle ofergæð, ðonne ne mæg he noht if him then the albugo with all covers, then not-can he naught geseon. see CP:11.69.17 ‘if it [the pupil of the eye] is entirely covered with albugo, he can not see anything.’ The ordering restrictions summarized here suggest that there are tight syntactic restrictions on movement to ȈP. The fact that a DP-object cannot move to ȈP suggests a minimality effect: movement is blocked by an intervening subject in spec,TP, cf. Miliüev (in prep). This also explains why dative experiencers (as exemplified in (17) above) can prepose to the discourse-linked area: the constructions in which they feature involve unaccusative verbs, so that there is no nominative subject in Spec,TP. This raises the question why an object pronoun can cross a subject in Spec,TP. I assume, following Miliüev (in prep) that object pronouns undergo syntactic

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cliticization (adjunction) to the head of ȈP. This enables us to revise (22) as (25): (25) [ȈP d-linked subject [Ȉ (obj pro) [Ȉ (obj pro) [TP]]] The structure (25) does not specify what the status of the adverb is with respect to ȈP. One possibility here, in line with Aboh’s (2004; 2006) treatment of Gungbe, is to say that the adverb is the head of ȈP, and thus licenses an extra position available for scrambling. Another possibility is that the adverb is itself a scrambled element, moving to ȈP in order to anchor the clause by referring back to a point in time pre-established in the discourse. I would for the moment like to remain neutral on these possibilities, leaving the answer for further research into the discourse context in Old English, and the role of discourse-markers cross-linguistically. 4.2. The position of the finite verb A question left unaddressed so far is how the various positions under discussion here relate to the position of the finite verb in sub-clauses. We can safely say that appearance of the finite verb in ȈP is rare. Starting from table 2 above, repeated here as table 4, occurrence of the finite verb on the left of þa/þonne is given in table 5 (only subject-initial patterns have been included, as the finite verb never appears on the left of the particle when the subject is lower). For the sake of comparison, I provide Table 6 with the same patterns in root clauses (restricting the search to subject-initial root clauses, although the position of the subject in subject-initial root clauses is almost certainly higher than ȈP in at least a number of cases). Table 4. Subject - þa/þonne order in Old English sub-clauses

Old English subclauses Left of þa/þonne Right of þa/þonne

Pronominal subjects 1250 5

DP subjects 293 419

Table 5. Subject - finite verb - þa/þonne order in Old English sub-clauses

Old English subclauses Left of þa/þonne Subject-Vf- þa/þonne

Pronominal subjects 1250 53 (4.2%)

DP subjects 293 46 (15.7%)

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Table 6. Subject - finite verb - þa/þonne order in Old English main clauses

Old English root clauses Left of þa/þonne Subject-Vf- þa/þonne

Pronominal subjects

DP subjects

2533 629 (34.6%)

1817 392 (21.6%)

It should be noted that the numbers for incidence of the finite verb in Ȉ in table 5, low as they are, are still flattered. Many of the examples included in these numbers occur in embedded root environments (complements of bridge verbs, non-restrictive relatives, clauses introduced by ‘because’ as exemplified in (26))8: (26) Ĉæt is swelce he hæbbe befæsð his hond oðrum menn, ðonne that is as if he have committed his hand other men, when he gebint hine selfne to him mid his wordum ðæt he sceal he binds himself to him with his words that he shall niede ða giemenne & ða geornfulnesse ymb ðone habban ðe necessarily the care and the zeal about him have whom he ær ne ðorfte forðæm he hine hæfð ðonne gehæftne he before not needed, because he him has then held mid his agnum wordum with his own words

CP:28.193.7.1283

‘It is like committing his hand to another, when he binds himself to him with his words that he will necessarily be careful and zealous about him for whom it was not necessary before, because he holds him with his own words, … When embedded root environments are left out of account, the figures are very low indeed. Another piece of evidence that the finite verb does not feature in ȈP is that the presence of a high object pronoun is apparently incompatible with finite verb placement. In the 51 cases in which an object pronoun appears on the left of the particle, either alone or in combination with a subject, the finite verb does not occur on the left of the particle. The evidence suggests then that our scrambling area is reserved for arguments. If our scrambling area is for discourse-linked material as demon-

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strated, an interesting way of putting it may be that verbs are not discourselinked. It will be intriguing to pursue this perspective, especially because it potentially provides a novel perspective on the discussion of verb placement, but I will resist that temptation, which would take me far beyond the scope of this article, and will have to be left for further research, including cross-linguistic research. The numbers in tables 5 and 6 also raise interesting questions about finite verb movement in root clauses. Although the incidence of finite verb movement as evident from table 6 is higher than in non-root clauses, the number is not nearly a high as we might expect on the basis of the overall picture we have of finite verb movement in root clauses, suggesting that here, too, it will be highly relevant to consider discourse-linking in more detail. However, our findings for ȈP in sub-clauses cannot be straightforwardly extended to root clauses, as the left periphery of root clauses is obscured by a range of clause typing strategies as in e.g. questions and non-subject-initial clauses, to name but a few. The picture is fraught with evidential problems and this, too, must be left for further research.

5.

Diachronic developments

In this section, I will attempt to put the findings so far in a diachronic perspective. I will first outline this perspective as a hypothesis, and then fill in the evidence as far as it will take us at this stage. The starting point is, on the one hand, the analysis of Old English as presented here, and, on the other hand, a consensus view of present-day English syntax. The latter consists simply of the observation that present-day English is SVO, has a designated functional position for auxiliaries, and shows only some relic features in main clauses of a stage where it had more than one subject position. In discourse terms, the rigid SVO structure of present-day English encodes the subject as the unmarked topic. The evidence presented below shows the following surface changes: (27)

a. b. c. d.

the loss of the discourse partitioning function of þa/þonne the loss of high object pronouns the loss of the demonstrative pronoun paradigm increase of Vf-adverb order

The changes in (27) evidence a loss of the elements that determined the discourse flexibility of Old English. Let’s consider them briefly in turn.

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The loss of the discourse particle function of þa/þonne and the loss of high object pronouns: the transition to Middle English shows a very marked decrease in the use of þa/þonne in absolute numbers. Discounting clauseinitial and conjunction uses of the adverbs, the Old English search file contains some 2.500 instances of þa/þonne in sub-clauses. The Middle English search file has about 180. Given this sharp drop in frequency, it is questionable whether the discourse marker function of the adverb would have been represented in the language environment robustly enough to remain learnable as a discourse marker. Apart from this, as discussed in van Kemenade and Los (2006), the evidence for the empirical generalizations established above for Old English has dwindled in Middle English. There are only two examples of object pronouns on the left of þa/þonne, both in combination with a subject, and both in one of the earliest Middle English texts. These facts seem to warrant the conclusion that, at least in sub-clauses, the subject has become the unmarked topic. Going back from Middle English to Old English, and assuming that object pronouns on the left of the particle are a feature of the discourse organization discussed here for Old English, it is interesting to note that there appears to be some change in the Old English period already. When comparing the corpus of Alfredian texts (9th century) with that of the texts by Ælfric and Wulfstan (10th century), it turns out that of the total number, about 75% of the high object pronouns is in the earlier texts. The loss of the demonstrative pronoun paradigm: as discussed above, Old English demonstrative pronouns were an interclausal tracking device par excellence. They functioned as relative pronouns, had independent pronominal reference, and in their use as definiteness markers also allowed specific reference to a discourse antecedent. Demonstrative pronouns were a relatively early victim of case loss, earliest in the East and North. Smith (1996) discusses the collapse of the paradigm in the first and final continuations of the Peterborough Chronicle (North-east Midlands, 1130– 1154), and notes speakers’ attempts to restructure the system, a certain sign of its demise. The increase of Vf-adverb order: it was noted above that the finite verb is not a welcome guest in ȈP: the numbers of Vf-adverb order in the subclause are quite low. Here again, there is already some development within the Old English period. About two thirds of the Vf/þa/þonne word orders are from 10th century, which means that between the late 9th and late 10th centuries, the incidence of Vf-adverb order has been doubled. This devel-

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opment is continued in the transition to Middle English. In table 7, the figures are presented for Vf-Adverb order with nominal and pronominal subjects, for the first two sub-periods of Middle English, M1 (AD 11501250) and M2 (AD 1250-1350). Given the low numbers for the Middle English variants of þa/þonne, I expanded the search to all temporal adverbs. Table 7. Subject-finite verb-temporal adverb order in early Middle English

ME subclauses M1 M2

S pro-Vf-Adv 121/484 25.5% 42/75 56 %

S DP-Vf-Adv 54/140 38,5 % 14/24 58,3 %

Table 7 shows a very striking fact: by the M2 period, there are no patterns to suggest that nominal and pronominal subjects are different in subclauses (though there still are major asymmetries in main clauses). Put differently: while the evidence for the discourse particle status of þa/þonne had already dwindled in the M1 period, by the M2 period, all evidence for ȈP in sub-clauses had disappeared. On the evidence from sub-clauses, there would be no reason to assume an analysis other than one in which the subject is licensed in Spec, TP, the finite verb in T, with the adverb merged below T. In this respect, the left periphery of sub-clauses is simplified earlier than that of main clauses. I interpret this development as the loss of high scambling, which took place earlier in sub-clauses than in main clauses. The result of this loss is that the adverb comes to be merged below T. Note that this does not require a very drastic reanalysis: the patterns in the Old English discourse-flexible grammar with ȈP on the left of an adverb functioning as a discourse partitioner, are not incompatible with the more rigid syntax of M2, in which the position of subject and verb is well on the way to becoming regulated in TP. The positions for subjects do not change drastically either: in the Old English ȈP, subjects could readily occur as continued topics. What is lost in the transition to Middle English is the ingredients necessary for a discourse-flexible grammar: the discourse partitioning function of a number of adverbs, and the articulate paradigm of demonstrative pronouns which yields an inter-clausal tracking device for a wider range of subjects. Discourse takes what is made available by the syntax.

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Notes 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

I thank Tanja Miliüev and Elizabeth Traugott for helpful discussion of the issues in this paper. Thanks also to the editors of this volume for their patience, constructive comments, and help. The references follow the system of short titles as employed in Healey and Venezky (1985 [1980]) (in turn based on the system of Mitchell, Ball and Cameron (1975, 1979)) Haeberli (1999) dubs SpecAgrP a subject1 position and Spec,TP a Subject2 position. But the “PronounSubj/Obj” position hosts object pronouns as well. Haeberli and Ingham (2007) rightly draw attention to the problem for subclauses. But most of their analysis is devoted to showing that in early Middle English, the position of the adverb is lower than T, drawing on evidence from the relative positioning of adverb and finite verb. I will refrain from taking their detailed argument into account, first, because their account has nothing to say on the motivation for the choice of subject position, except to stipulate that pronouns are high; second, they ignore the fact that nominal subjects readily appear on the right of the adverb; third, their word order evidence is based broadly on adverbs generally, which renders a comparison with two specific adverbs in Old English problematic; fourth, their word order evidence on finite verb position cannot be replicated for Old English in relation to þa/þonne. Finally, their evidence for early Middle English implies a discontinuity between Old and Middle English that is of a magnitude hard to imagine. Note that the set of elements identified here suggest a considerable overlap with their present-day German cousins, which in the literature are called modal particles. The meanings described in the literature for German (e.g. Thurmair 1991) are in some respects akin. A detailed semantic study of Old English particles is beyond our scope here and is left for further research; note that the claim made here goes no further than to say that these adverbs separate discourse domains. As far as I have been able to trace in the literature, this makes their behaviour different from that of modal particles in present-day German. There is a further and rather intriguing set of counterexamples, all involving the impersonal subject pronoun man. This is discussed in detail in Miliüev (in prep). I refrain here from discussion of the properties of the impersonal pronoun man. The reader is referred to van Kemenade and Miliüev (2005) and Miliüev (in prep). I leave it for further research to work out the precise numbers, which requires hand-correction of the search files from YCOE.

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References Aboh, Enoch Oladé 2004 The Morphosyntax of Complement-head Sequences. Clause structure and word order pattern in Kwa. New York: Oxford University Press. 2006 Complementation in Saramaccan and Gungbe: The case of c-type modal particles. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 24 (1): 1– 55. Allen, Cynthia 1995 Case Marking and Reanalysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Bech, Kristin 2001 Word order patterns in Old and Middle English: A syntactic and pragmatic study. Doctoral dissertation, University of Bergen. Birner, Betty J. and Gregory Ward 1998 Information Status and Canonical Word Order in English. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Bobaljik, Jonathan and Dianne Jonas 1996 Subject positions and the roles of TP. Linguistic Inquiry 27 (2): 195– 236. Bobaljik, Jonathan, and Höskuldur Thráinsson 1998 Two heads aren’t always better than one. Syntax 1 (1): 37–71. Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina and Harald Baayen 2007 Predicting the dative alternation. In Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation, eds. Gerlof Bouma, Irene Kraemer and Joost Zwarts, 69– 94. Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. Brinton, Laurel 2006 Pathways in the development of pragmatic markers in English. In The Handbook of the History of English, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, 307–334. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. Cardinaletti, Anna and Ian Roberts 2002 Reprint. Clause structure and X-second. In Functional Structure in DP and IP: The Cartography of Syntactic Structures. Vol. I, ed. Guglielmo Cinque, 123–166. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Original Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Cardinaletti, Anna and Michal Starke 1996 Deficient pronouns: A view from Germanic. A study in the unified description of Germanic and Romance. In Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. Vol. II, eds. Höskuldur Thráinsson, Samuel David Epstein and Steve Peter, 21–65. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Denison, David 2006 Category change and gradience in the determiner system. In The Handbook of the History of English, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, 279–304. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell.

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Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman and Wim van der Wurff 2000 The Syntax of Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haeberli, Eric 1999 Features, categories and the syntax of A-positions. Synchronic and diachronic variation in the Germanic languages. Doctoral dissertation, University of Geneva. Haeberli, Eric and Richard Ingham 2007 The position of negation and adverbs in Early Middle English. Lingua 117: 1–25. Haider, Hubert 2005 How to turn German into Icelandic – and derive the OV-VO contrasts. The Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 8 (1-2): 1–53. Healey, Antoinette Dipaolo and Richard Venezky 1985 A Microfiche Concordance to Old English. Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. [1980] Hinterhölzl, Roland 2004 Scrambling, optionality and non-lexical triggers. In Triggers, eds. Anne Breitbarth and Henk van Riemsdijk, 173–204. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kato, Kozo 1995 The interjection la and subject pronouns in Old English. Linguistics and Philology 15: 23–40. Kemenade, Ans van 1987 Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. Dordrecht: Foris. 1997 V2 and Embedded Topicalization in Old and Middle English. In Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Nigel Vincent, 326–352. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1999 Sentential negation and clause structure in Old English. In Negation in the History of English, eds. Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel Tottie and Wim van der Wurff, 147–165. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 2000 Jespersen’s cycle revisited: Formal properties of grammaticalization. In Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms, eds. Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas and Anthony Warner, 51–74. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Kemenade, Ans van and Tanja Miliüev 2005 Syntax and discourse in Old English and Middle English word order. In Articles from the 8th Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference, eds. Steven Anderson and Dianne Jonas. To appear with Oxford University Press.

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Kemenade, Ans van and Bettelou Los 2006 Discourse Adverbs and Clausal Syntax in Old and Middle English. In The Handbook of the History of English, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, 224–248. Oxford: Blackwell. Kemenade, Ans van, Tanja Miliüev and R. Harald Baayen 2008 The balance between discourse and syntax in Old and Middle English. In English Historical Linguistics 2006. Vol. I: Syntax and Morphology, eds. Marina Dossena and Maurizio Gotti. 3–22. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Kroch, Anthony and Ann Taylor 2000 Verb-object order in Early Middle English. In Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms, eds. Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas and Anthony Warner, 132–163. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Miliüev, Tanja in prep. Discourse linking in Old English. Doctoral dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen. Mitchell, Bruce, Catherine Ball and Angus Cameron (eds.) 1975 Short titles of Old English texts. Anglo-Saxon England 4: 207–221. 1979 Addenda and corrigenda. Anglo-Saxon England 8: 331–333. Nilsen, Øystein 2003 Eliminating Positions: Syntax and Semantics of Sentential Modification. LOT dissertations 73. Pintzuk, Susan 1991 Phrase structures in competition: variation and change in Old English word order. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania. Pintzuk, Susan and Ann Taylor 2006 The loss of OV order in the history of English. In The Handbook of the History of English, eds. Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, 249–279. Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell. R Development Core Team 2004 R: a language and environment for statistical computing. http://R-project.org. Rizzi, Luigi 1997 The fine structure of the left periphery. In Elements of Grammar: Handbook in Generative Syntax, ed. Liliane Haegeman, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Taylor, Ann 2000 The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English 2. University of Pennsylvania, Dept. of Linguistics.

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Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk and Frank Beths 2003 The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. York: Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York. Available through the Oxford Text Archive. Taylor, Ann and Wim van der Wurff (eds.) 2005 Aspects of OV and VO word order in the history of English. English Language and Linguistics 9 (1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thurmair, Maria 1991 Kombinieren Sie doch nur ruhig auch mal Modalpartikeln. Combinatorial regularities for modal particles and their use as an instrument of analysis. Multilingua 10: 19–42.

Methodological problems of the information-structural analysis of data from historical text corpora

On the methods of information-structural analysis in historical texts: A case study on Old High German Svetlana Petrova and Michael Solf

1. Introduction It is an undisputable fact that information-structural research made considerable advance in the past few decades by exploring a wide range of phenomena in the systems of present-day languages spoken worldwide. Historical linguistics has also been interested in the matter of how old languages attempt to achieve the needs of communicative explicitness and stylistic expressivity. Leaving aside a huge variety of accounts within the ancient and medieval grammar tradition, even more recent descriptive works on the grammar of the ancient languages give direct or at least implicit accounts of grammatical phenomena which correlate with properties of contextual reference and pragmatics in these languages. It is most revealing that one of the earliest works that influenced the emergency of what we call ‘Functional Sentence Perspective’ or ‘Information Structure’ today, the seminal work of Henri Weil ([1844] 31879), was dedicated to the sentence structure of ancient Greek and Latin which he regarded as a reflection of the natural flow of thoughts both in conditions of neutral as well as emphatic speech. In more recent times, information-structural features are still a key to the proper understanding of historical text sources. Taking as an example the role of information structure for the interpretation of Biblical Hebrew texts and Old Hebrew narratives, only within a short period of time a series of monographs like those by Disse (1998), Heimerdinger (1999) and Floor (2004) appeared. As for the early Germanic languages, properties of the information-structural organization of the utterance have regularly been addressed in earlier studies aiming at explaining word order variation and verb placement. Accounts like those of Bean (1983) and Stockwell (1984) on Old English syntax have drawn a connection between the pragmatic features of sentence constituents and their placement in the structure of the clause, while in Hopper’s (1979a and b) typological account, different word order patterns in Old English are directly associated with properties of discourse organization, namely with the function of distinguishing parts

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of foregrounding vs. backgrounding in narratives. Similar attempts are found in the syntactic exploration of the remaining early Germanic languages as well. As early as in the accounts on the syntax of Old Saxon by Ries (1880: 1–11) or Old High German (OHG) by Behaghel (1932, IV: 3– 9), among many others, the distribution of different word order patterns involves terms and concepts which from the perspective of modern linguistics clearly pertain to the field of information structure and discourse analysis. Meanwhile, information structure has started to be taken into account as a factor responsible for the emergency of novel word order patterns and constructions and thus introducing variation as a precondition of language change in the course of language development, cf. Hinterhölzl (2004, in this volume). This view opens new perspectives on the explanation of word order variation and syntactic change in language history. Given the considerable advance in recent studies on information structure, there is a demand for a more systematic, large-scale description of the information-structural properties of sentence constituents and their syntactic realization in early Germanic. As promising as it seems, such an enterprise is concerned with a series of methodological problems and questions which have to be addressed prior to any information-structural analysis of a historical text. The present paper aims at providing a method of dealing with information-structural questions on the basis of evidence from OHG and reflects the experience of a research project investigating the role of information structure for the development of the word order regularities in the Germanic languages.1 Problems arising in dealing with information structure in a text from a historic corpus can broadly be classified into two major groups. The first one concerns the quality of the written data available to us, i.e. the reliability of the written text sources as well as the authenticity of the constructions and patterns provided in them. The second problem concerns the information-structural analysis proper, i.e. how to handle the huge variety of theoretical notions and terminological items used in present day’s research and how to apply them to data from historic corpora.

2. The philological issue Any research on syntax and information structure in a historical text has to address the reliability of its data base, i.e. the question whether the word order patterns and syntactic constructions provided in the written texts

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sources are representative for the system of the language under investigation. In this respect, OHG displays an especially difficult ground for any conclusions on syntax, as was also recently shown by Fleischer (2006). The major part of the Old High German corpus is made up by two types of texts: i) vernacular translations of Latin biblical or other religious sources (Isidor (late 8th century), Tatian (9th century), Notker (11th century)) as well as ii) metrical poetry (the poetic Gospel Harmony of Otfrid von Weißenburg, 9th century). In both types of texts, it cannot be excluded that the ordering of sentence constituents is subject to influences imposed either by the syntax of the Latin original or by the properties of the poetic form like rhyme and metre. Therefore, we have to conclude that none of the Old High German sources of a considerable size may be viewed as a good example of authentic prose representative for the system of the dialects spoken at the period of time. For this reason, prior to the syntactic investigation of OHG, some methodological solutions are required. Let us analyse in more detail the specific problems that the individual sources of the Old High German corpus display and consider texts that can be assumed to be more appropriate for the purpose of the intended study than others. E.g., Otfrid’s Gospel harmony, the only poetic record among the more extensive ones, has been viewed to display structures and other grammatical phenomena explainable only with respect to the purposes of end rhyme and metre (cf. Ingenbleek 1880, Fleischer 2006: 35–37). Looking at the translations, there are above all two records of a considerable size: the so called Old High German Tatian and Notker’s extensive work. Both expose the problem of Latin influence, and in addition to that, Notker’s work is simply too young to draw conclusions from it on the earliest stages of the syntax of OHG. The remaining text, the Old High German Tatian translation, is a record of a most disputed quality with respect to syntactic analysis, while in the fields of phonology and morphology, it has helped tremendously to shape our view on OHG. This Gospel harmony, which only survived as one single manuscript (St. Gallen Cod. 56), represents the largest Old High German text written before 850, a translation from the Latin, a bilingual source which provides the original and its translation in two juxtaposed columns. Due to the fact that a comparison of the Old High German text with the Latin source is immediately possible, an overwhelming syntactic similarity between the Latin source and its Old High German translation is visible at once. Consider the example in (1) in which the Old High German sentence follows the structure of its Latin original without any exception:

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Svetlana Petrova and Michael Solf

inti quamun fugala inti frazun thiu (T 108, 2) and came birds and ate them ‘and birds came and ate them’ & uenerunt uolucres & comederunt ea

Given this, many philologists including Sievers (1895:LXX) classified Tatian as a “slavish imitation of the original” which is worthless for any account on syntax. This general skepticism is furthermore fed by the fact that we discover a number of syntactic loan constructions all over the text of Tatian. This becomes particularly clear when it comes to the translation of participial constructions typical for the Latin like the ablativus absolutus. The scribes quite often imitate it by an Old High German dativus absolutus, a construction which is viewed to be a syntactic loan occurring in Old High German translations only, rather than in native writings (cf. Lühr 2005): (2)

fon erdu skeffun / forlazenen Inti árleitten to earthdat shipsdat forsaken and broughtpart allen folg&un imo (T 56, 11–12) all followed him & subductis a terra nauibus / relictis omnibus.’ secuti sunt eum; ‘And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him.’

This might sound discouraging for any further work on the syntax of Tatian. However, investigations on other aspects of the language of Tatian, as the use of subject pronouns (cf. Eggenberger 1961) or the rendering of AcI-construction of the Latin original (Dentschewa 1987), show that the Old High German text does not in each case imitate the original but systematically implements different means of expression, therefore displaying some genuine features constitutive for OHG. Accordingly, Eggenberger (1961: 87) classifies the Tatian as a kind of ‘mixed form’ placing it between the type of interlinear translations like the Old High German Benedictine Rule and free translations like Isidor. As far as word order is concerned, as early as in the investigation by Ruhfus (1897) it has been noted, that there are numerous instances in which the Old High German text deviates from the structure of the underlying original. Ruhfus explicitly bases his analysis on such cases pointing out that these are appropriate for research on syntax:

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“dass eine untersuchung der wortstellung des ahd. Tatian […] bei all seiner sklavischen abhängigkeit von der lateinischen vorlage ebenso beachtenswerte ergebnisse liefern muss, wie gleiche untersuchungen an der freien und gewandten übersetzung des Isidor oder an der dichtung Otfrids, wenn man sich nur auf eine zusammenstellung der abweichungen des ahd. vom lat. beschränkt und daraus schlüsse zieht.” ‘that an investigation of the word order of the OHG Tatian [...] despite all his slavish dependency on the Latin original ought to give remarkable results as much as similar investigations of the more free and elegant translation of Isidor or of the poetic work of Otfrid, if one only considers the collection of deviations of the OHG from the Lat. and draws conclusions from it.’ (Ruhfus 1897: 1)

In more recent times, Dittmer and Dittmer (1998) also provide a syntactic analysis of the Old High German Tatian based on instances of word order differences to the original. As a methodological pre-condition, they assume that such instances are to be taken as evidence for authentic Old High German syntax: “In the first place, only those instances which differ from the original can be taken as evidence for genuine Old High German word order.”(“Beweiskräftig für genuin althochdeutsche Wortstellung sind in erster Linie nur die von der Vorlage abweichenden Belege.”) (Dittmer and Dittmer 1998: 36). The idea that research on word order in OHG is possible on the basis of examples showing a word order which differs with respect to the original is supported by new insights into the translation technique of this text provided by Masser (1994). He discovers that each line in the Old High German text translates exactly the same material found in the corresponding Latin line. Among thousands of lines we only find relatively few cases neglecting this principle, and the majority of them are found on the few pages contributed by scribe İ2. Astonishingly, this point seems to have passed unnoticed until recently: the former authoritative edition of Sievers (1892) at least and others did not pay the necessary attention to this. Studies on word order ignoring the role of this translation principle threaten to base their conclusions on false premises. The translation technique implemented in Tatian certainly imposes restrictions on the possibility of rendering a genuine word order pattern to the structures found in the original, cf. Masser (1997a and b). But at the same time, deviations from the word order of the Latin text within a line can be valued as evidence of genuine syntax and thus be made an object of separate investigation. Under these conditions, the text of the Old High German Tatian may be considered as one of the most abundant data collections for research on

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Old High German syntax, as recently shown by Fleischer, Hinterhölzl and Solf (2008). The fact that we can make direct comparison with the Latin part is an especially helpful device to take control over the influence of the Latin structure. These considerations motivate our decision to base our data collection and initial investigations on syntactically deviating structures of Tatian. This should not imply that we simply assume that the remaining texts are unsuitable for an account on syntax. We are aware that data from other sources is needed for comparison, and we strongly appreciate the efforts of other specialists to provide methods of dealing with these texts as well, cf. the contributions by Lühr, Lötscher and Schlachter in this volume. In the following, we want to provide a classification of the different types of deviations encountered in Tatian according to the edition of Masser (1994).3Altogether we find several thousands of relevant instances, an amazingly high number of significant divergences from the word order of the Latin original. We first consider the frequent changes within the boundaries of syntactic constituents and then turn to changes which surpass the constituent boundary.

2.1. Changes within the constituents An outstandingly great number of divergences take place within the boundaries of syntactic constituents. This is the case when different types of modifiers, e.g. adjectives, possessive pronouns or genitive attributes, which are post-nominal in Latin are realized pre-nominally in OHG, cf. (3): (3)

uuard gifullit heilages geistes (T 31, 9–10) was filled holygen spiritgen ‘was filled by the Holy Spirit’ Impl&us est spiritu sancto

Concerning issues of information structure and discourse organization, the regular use of the demonstrative pronoun as an article appears to be a notable feature, cf. (4): (4)

kneht uuvohs (T 32, 6) ther the boy grew ‘the boy grew’ puer autem crescebat

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2.2. Changes involving the order of constituents in the sentence Changes affecting the relative order of sentence constituents are especially important for issues of word order and information structure. Here we can roughly distinguish the following cases: i) a constituent missing in the original is inserted in the translation; ii) the relative order of constituents is changed with respect to the original; iii) the translation differs from the original in providing an idiomatic, more precise expression, or it even provides supplementary information. An important subgroup is constituted by instances of Latin synthetic forms which lack a synthetic counterpart in OHG. Although the process is confined to the verb phrase, and strictly speaking not surpassing the constituent boundary, too, the translator(s) had to dissolve the form into an analytic construction and had to decide on the placement of the finite auxiliary with respect to the non-finite verb. As examples (5) and (6) show, both orders, i.e. Aux – Participle and Participle – Aux, occur in Tatian: (5)

thaz uuari gifullit (T 34, 27) that became fulfilled ‘that it might be fulfilled’ ut adimpler&ur

(6)

thiu dar giquetan ist which there called is ‘which is called Ephrem quæ dicitur ephrem

ephrem (T 234, 27) Ephrem

2.2.1. Insertion Different types of constituents lacking a lexical equivalent in the original are inserted in the vernacular texts, e.g. subject pronouns (7)4, object pronouns (8), adverbials (9), and finite verb forms (10): (7)

hab& giloubon (T 200, 12) oba ir if you have faith ‘if you were true believers’ si habueritis fidem

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(8)

thó antlingota imo then answered him ‘then the Saviour answered’ Respondit ihesus

ther the

heilant (T 52, 30) Saviour

(9)

Inti só sie thó ubar and when they there over ‘and when they crossed there’ Et cum transfr&assent

feritun (T 20, 17) went

(10)

Inti Ira namo uuas elisab&h (T 26, 2) and her name was Elisabeth ‘and her name was Elisabeth’ & nomen eius elisab&h

In addition, we also find instances where Latin constituents, especially particles, are not given an equivalent in the translation, cf. lat. ergo in (11): (11)

thane thú tuos elimosinam (T 66, 29) when you do charity ‘when you do charity’ cum facies elimosinam ergo

2.2.2. Transposition For investigations of the conditions on word order the regular transposition of constituents are of the greatest importance. Foremost, the placement of the finite verb is of special interest in this connection. The finite verb may be shifted to the first (12), second (13) or a later position (14) within the sentence: (12)

hant In then heilant anan (T 297, 20) Inti legitum iro and laid their hands in the Saviour on ‘and laid their hands on the Saviour’ & manus iniecerunt In ihesum

(13)

elisab&h uuas unberenti (T 26, 7) Elisabeth was barren ‘Elisabeth was barren’ ess& elisab&h sterilis

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quamun / zi themo heilante came to the Saviour ‘and when the apostles came to the Saviour’ Et cum uenissent apostoli / ad ihesum (T 102, 29–30)

mitthiu

thie postoli

when

these messengers

Good evidence for authentic structures is especially given in the following two cases. First, multiple changes may indicate that the translator paid more attention to the stylistic quality of his translation. The more is changed, the more we ought to assume, that an authentic structure is expressed. Cf. (15) where the transposition of the copula sint is being accompanied by the insertion of the subject pronoun sie: (15)

sie sint blinte inti blintero they are blind and blind-GenPl ‘They are blind and leaders of the blind’ caeci sunt duces cecorum

leitidon (T 128,14) leaders

The second group contains the cases of transpositions violating the line boundary: (16)

ih ni / haben diuual (T 219, 8–9) I Neg-have devil ‘I don’t have the devil’ ego demonium / non habeo

The authenticity of the transposition in this example is being confirmed by the fact that the scribe neglects the line boundary, which strongly violates the main translational principle of this text. Otherwise, whereas this example prima facie indeed points at a certain freedom in translating the Latin, there are other cases where the violation of the line boundary is not an intended means: it might have been for reasons of space or simple carelessness5 as well. The mere consistency of the translation with respect to the line-for-line principle might lead to the conclusion that every single case of its violation has to be of particular value. However, this is not always the case, for instance, when the Latin word is divided by the line boundary and the scribe was forced to decide where to chain up the translation: (17)

Intj / uûizagon sint ouh and prophets are also ‘and the prophets are dead as well’ & pro / ph&tæ mortui sunt

tote (T 219, 23–24) dead

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A higher degree of certainty is only possible by comparing similar instances.

2.2.3. Free translations Considering the limited freedom of the translation some regularly occurring instances are especially remarkable which show constructions with a sense more or less diverging from the original. We may assume, that the Old High German expression grants a better understanding and is therefore preferred to a word for word translation. As evidence for authentic OHG they are of a particular high value. Example (18) shows, that the range of changes may go as far as to forming of a relative clause without a Latin counterpart: (18)

hiez fon theru burg thiu of the city which is-named ‘out of the city, which was called Nazareth’ de ciuitate nazar&h

nazar&h (T 35, 15) Nazareth

In (19), the subject gotes engil is related to a new finite verb quam, which the translator preferred to the possible literal equivalent inti senonu engil gotes gistuont nah in: (19)

Inti gistuont nâh in quam thara gotes engil came there gods angel and stood near him ‘there the angel of god came and stood near them’ & ecce angelus domini st&it Iuxta illos (T 35, 32)

Finally, example (20) demonstrates a Latin participle construction formed into a temporal subordin