The development of English word order

The changes in the position of the particle, then, ought to be seen in con-nection to other positional changes in the clause, which will be sketched in the following as far as they are relevant to the development of the English verb-particle construction.

3.2.1. Word order in earlier Germanic

Despite significant disagreement in detail, there is a broad consensus in the literature that the word order in the earliest attestations of Germanic is a mixed OV/VO type. This observation applies not only to the order of finite verbs and objects, but also to that of other kinds of head-dependent rela-tions (such as the relative order of nouns and adposirela-tions touched upon in the preceding section). As in the preceding chapter, I am not going to engage here in the discussion of ‘basic word order’ in the generative sense, where one order is assumed to be derived from another in the synchronic

analysis; consequently it should be clear that terms like ‘V-2 shift’ will be understood here as historical processes rather than as synchronic operations on another, underlying order. For an overview of the relevant issues in generative grammar (as far as the history of English is concerned) and for further literature, see Denison (1993), Fischer et al. (2000) and Roberts (2007). For arguments against explaining all results of historical change by way of generative synchronic rules or constraints and in favour of consi-dering typological parallels and historical and functional explanations, see e.g. Fischer (2008).

The most common positions of the finite verb in Old English are V-2 and V-F, depending to a significant extent – although by no means exclu-sively – on clause type, cf. the discussion of V-2/V-F orders in the present-day Germanic languages in Chapter 2 and the general references given there. The explanation of the change from the order of clause elements found in Old English to the rather strict SVO order in present-day English may well be the most hotly contested area of English historical syntax, and the mere description of the situation in Old English provides formidable problems. The discussion in the present section will therefore be restricted to a brief sketch of some main lines of development and to a review of the literature, as far as this appears relevant to the history of the phrasal verbs.

Consequently the general changes in word order will be treated here as background information (as far as this is here possible; Denison’s remark,

“[i]t is indeed a difficult subject, both from the point of view of the data and of assessing all the different and often incompatible studies which have been published” [1987: 139], still holds true). Neither their full description nor their explanation is the object of the present study; for an overview of the discussion and for further literature, see Traugott (1992), Fischer (1992), Denison (1993), Fischer et al. (2000) and Fischer & van der Wurff (2006). The issue whether the establishment of VO order is connected to the history of V-2 will be left aside here. A number of fairly influential (mainly generative) studies of the development of English word order, however, concentrate on the loss of OV and what they regard as the rise and fall of V-2 as essentially separate phenomena (cf. e.g. the division of the topic in Fischer et al. 2000 and the discussion of competing accounts in Denison 1993). This appears to be justified by the occurrence of VO orders which are not strictly V-2 and vice versa, but in my view it neglects the overwhelming frequency of orders which are both VO and V-2 (as long as they are not V-F) and the chronological parallelism of both developments.

The arguments put forward in Fischer et al. (2000: 83) are, to my mind, not entirely persuasive, since they take the simultaneous synchronic occurrence of V-2 and what may be regarded as OV in the ‘mixed type’ present-day

Germanic languages as evidence against the historical connection between V-2 and VO. It may be more appropriate to view both the establishment of V-2 and the loss of OV as subject to the complex interplay of discourse factors such as topicalization, verb-fronting and extraposition of heavy objects, and to look into the subsequent grammaticalization of frequent orders as central to the development. For a general account of Old English word order along these lines, cf. Traugott (1992: 273–281) and e.g. the more specific proposals in Strang (1970) and Stockwell (1977), or the more comprehensive studies by Fourquet (1938), Reszkiewicz (1966) and Kohonen (1978); see also Hinterhölzl & Petrova (2009). Note also that all attempts to describe (let alone explain) Old English word order on the assumption that there is a ‘base order’ OV and an additional V-2 constraint fail to account in a satisfactory way for very many details, cf. the comments by Denison (1987: 153). But since this hardly makes a difference to the discussion of the verb-particle construction, the issue will for now not be pursued any further.

Between the earliest attestations of (Northwest) Germanic and Old Eng-lish, there are some significant changes in the relative frequencies of the word order patterns. In the Northwest Germanic runic corpus (3rd to 7th centuries AD), there are both V-F and VO orders, as in the following examples (12)–(14) from the early 5th century (the present syntactic discussion of the earliest evidence is based on Lass 1994: 217–224; for the sake of convenience I have followed the regularized presentation of these examples in Antonsen’s study of the runic inscriptions 1975: 24–25, for a closer transliteration, see Antonsen’s discussion of the corpus of inscrip-tions 1975: 29–89).

(12) [me]z Woduride staina þrijoz dohtriz dalidun me:DAT W:DAT stone:ACC three daughters:NOM made:PL

‘For me, Woduridaz, three daughters made the stone.’

(13) ek Hlewagastiz Holtijaz horna tawido

I H:NOM horn:ACC made:SG

‘I, Hlewagastiz Holtijaz, made the horn.’

(14) ek Hagustaldaz hlaiwido mago minino I H:NOM buried:SG son:ACC my:ACC

‘I, Hagustaldaz, buried my son.’

On the basis of the runic evidence it can thus be concluded that VO is already in existence in the earliest Germanic texts, as shown by example (14). Due to the peculiarities of the runic evidence, the identification of the

position of the verb with regard to subject and object is possible in 34 instances only (Antonsen 1975: 24–25). The material in the corpus is entirely prepositional but otherwise largely postmodifying; cf. Antonsen (2002: Ch. 13), where the usefulness of the runic evidence for the study of early Northwest (rather than just ‘North’) Germanic is evaluated. V-F as in examples (12) and (13) appears to be the clearly dominant order: V-F order occurs in about 70 per cent and VO is found in about 20 per cent of all clauses, while the remaining ten per cent are VSO (excluding verb-initial imperatives); there is no evidence for subordinate clauses in the corpus. But two out of three possible instances of VSO are without a subject, as in example (15) – which somehow begs the question as to their interpretation.

(15) tawo laþodu prepare:1SG invitation:ACC

‘I prepare an invitation.’

On the whole, these observations tie in nicely with OV as the reconstructed order for Proto-Germanic (and also for Indo-European), and with the long term-developments in the histories of the individual Germanic daughter languages. The positional changes can be observed to be fully on their way already in the somewhat later North Germanic runic inscriptions, where V-2 has become the frequent type (cf. Antonsen 1975: 25). But it would be misleading to claim that the messiness of the situation in Old English con-trasts with clear-cut word order rules in the other early Germanic languages. Rather, in all of them the regularities of V-2 and (where retained) V-F increase in the course of their histories, which lends some support to the notion that here in general more rigid orders represent more advanced stages in the grammaticalization of pragmatically regulated dis-course orders; cf. the discussion below. The loss of OV occurs in the various Germanic languages to different degrees. While some, like Dutch and German, have residual OV orders in subordinate clauses, others, like Yiddish and Icelandic, are V-2 throughout (cf. the discussion of ‘asym-metric’ and ‘sym‘asym-metric’ V-2 languages in Harbert 2007: 400–404). For a brief overview of the history of analysing V-2 orders in Old English and other Germanic languages (which goes back to the 19th century), see e.g.

Stockwell (1990: 92, fn. 6).

3.2.2. Word order in Old English

Despite the plethora of studies dealing with the development of Old English word order, only little attention has been given to the word order of the earliest English texts (which is to some extent surely to do with the fact that many of the earliest texts do not really lend themselves easily to the study of word order). In the earliest Old English texts there appears to be still a considerable amount of V-F clauses (both main and subordinate), but there is also a general increase in VO structures and also in V-2, as in the other Germanic languages. And as in the other Germanic languages, that increase is more marked in main clauses, while V-F tends to remain in subordinate clauses. In the earliest Old English texts, Lass (1994: 221) observes a “syntax not far removed from NWGmc [viz. Northwest Germanic], though with a somewhat different distribution of certain order types”, and towards the early 9th century he observes a more distinct “drift away from dominant OV order” (Lass 1994: 224); cf. e.g. the discussions of the syntax of ‘Cædmon’s Hymn’ from the early 8th century by Lass (1994) and by Nielsen (1998), where the language is shown to be very much of a transitional type from OV to VO.

The following example from Alfred’s preface to the Cura Pastoralis shows some of the typical word orders in early West Saxon (late 9th-century): ³

Ða gemunde ic hu sio æ wæs ærest on Ebriscgeðiode funden & eft, ða hie Creacas geliornodon, ða wendon hie hie on heora agen geðiode ealle, & eac ealle oðre bec. & eft Lædenware swæ same, siððan hie hie geliornodon, hie hie wendon ealla ðurh wise wealhstodas on hiora agen geðiode. & eac ealla oðra Cristna ðioda sumne dæl hiora on hiora agen geðiode wendon.

[‘I also remembered then that the law was first composed in Hebrew and that later, when the Greeks learnt it, they translated it completely into their own lan-guage, and also all other books. And afterwards the Romans, too, when they had learnt them, had them all turned into their own language through wise translators. And likewise all other Christian peoples translated some part of them into their own languages.’]

3 Quoted after the normalized version in Mitchell & Robinson (2001), except for the Tironian sign (‘&’ in the example), which I have used to replace the editorial ond (since it is possible that this sign is not always used as an abbreviation for a conjunction at all, but rather simply marks the beginning of a new sentence in the manuscript; cf. Mitchell 1985: § 1724).

This passage is quite instructive since it contains three times the phrase (hie) wendon on hiora agen geðiode ‘(they) translated [a text] into their own language’, but each time with different positions of verb and object marked by underlines in the following examples (in (16) the underlined pronoun hie is acc.sg.fem., anaphoric to æ, in (17) it is acc.pl., anaphoric to bec):

(16) ða wendon hie hie on heora agen geðiode ealle then turned they it on their own language all

‘Then they translated it completely into their own language.’

(17) hie hie wendon ealla ðurh wise wealhstodas they them turned all through wise translators

on hiora agen geðiode on their own language

‘They had them all turned into their own language through wise translators.’

(18) & eac ealla oðra Cristna ðioda sumne dæl and also all other Christian peoples some:ACC part[ACC] hiora on hiora agen geðiode wendon

DEM.GEN.PL on their own language turned

‘And likewise all other Christian peoples translated some part of them into their own languages.’

Bean (1983), in her study of the development of Old English word order, takes such examples as evidence that the picture of the overall development from OV to VO is considerably blurred by stylistic factors, and she takes the three different orderings to be a “means to avoid monotony” (Bean 1983: 123). But, as Denison observes in his discussion of Bean’s material, the orderings are “far from random” (Denison 1987: 141; for a fuller appraisal of Bean’s study and its methodological and factual shortcomings see Denison 1987 and 1993: 47–48). Rather, they represent what may be expected as being entirely normal in Old English – and not for stylistic, but for syntactic reasons. Thus (18) is V-F, which at that time is the normal order in subordinate clauses, but which is also quite common in clauses introduced by and, ac or ne, as in the example (see Mitchell 1964 for a full discussion of the special status of such clauses with regard to word order in Old English and for a thorough criticism of earlier studies which fail to take this into account). This is an instance where the word order in Old English deviates noticeably from the word order in the present-day Germanic V-2/V-F languages (cf. the more extensive overview in Mitchell 1985: §§

1719–1732 et passim and Denison 1987: 144–146 for the possible implica-tions of this peculiarity). Conversely, a typical V-2 context is provided by (16), where the verb follows the sentence-initial adverb þa (for a discussion of word order, clause type and the role of sentence-initial elements, see Andrew 1940; for a discussion of þa with respect to clausal syntax, see in particular Blockley 2001 and van Kemenade & Los 2006 and the references given there). In principle V-2 is independent of the length of the sentence-initial element, e.g. (cf. Traugott 1992: 274):

(19) On þæs caseres dagum þe wæs gehaten

on DEM.GEN.SG emperor:GEN.SG day:DAT.PL REL was called Licinius | wearð astyred mycel ehtnys ofer þa Cristenan Licinius was stirred great persecution over the Christians

‘In the days of the emperor who was called Licinius | [there] was stirred a great persecution over the Christians.’

(ÆLS, Forty Soldiers [000300 (4)]) More typically, though, there is a very strong tendency for ‘light’ (short, given) elements to come early and for ‘heavy’ (long, new) elements to come late (cf. Reszkiewicz 1966 and Kohonen 1978). This view seems to be accepted in principle by anyone working on the topic. But although this is in line with Behaghel’s Laws (cf. Behaghel 1909 and 1924) and although this appears to be intuitively plausible, the exact nature of ‘lightness’ vs.

‘heaviness’ has to date rarely been pinned down (cf. the discussion in Denison 1993: 39–41 and Pintzuk & Taylor 2006). With regard to clause-initial positions, this is most noticeable with pronouns, which will precede the verb even in cases where a corresponding full noun phrase would be found after the verb. Thus (18) provides another typical order, in which a light pronominal object precedes the verb in what is arguably still a mar-ginal instance of a V-2 clause. Full nominal objects, on the other hand, are normally postverbal in main clauses, while in subordinate (and coordinate) clauses they may both precede and follow the verb. This had already been commented on by Mitchell (1964: 119); for a full analysis of pronouns as

‘syntactic clitics’, see van Kemenade (1987), but cf. also Stockwell (1990).

But there are quite a few cases which resist neat interpretation along the line sketched here, e.g.:

(20) Ðillice word Maria heold aræfniende on hyre heortan.

such words Mary held pondering on her heart

‘Mary kept and pondered such words in her heart.’

(ÆHom I, 2 [009300 (197.214)])

It thus seems clear that the word order in Old English is neither entirely free nor as restricted as e.g. the word order in present-day Dutch and Ger-man, despite the general similarities. Maybe neither V-2 (or VO) nor V-F are rules of Old English grammar – to date there is no account of Old Eng-lish syntax which would succeed in accommodating these tendencies with the countless possible (and indeed attested) exceptions; a look into any of the desperate attempts (especially those in which V-2 and OV are taken to be ‘real’) to formulate satisfactory rules is instructive. It is indeed much more likely that Old English word order had better be explained as the interplay of a variety of factors and that consequently a multi-factorial analysis of the attested corpus would yield better results than the search for tidy little trees. In principle this suggestion was made already by Denison (1987: 155), but so far little has been done in this direction; for a discussion of the role of pragmatic discourse factors in the development of English word order and for more recent literature, see Seoane (2006).

In a short representative sample of early West Saxon of the late 9th century (Denison 1987), the most common word orders in main and subor-dinate clauses respectively were as shown in Table 3-1.⁴ In this sample, V-F is highly typical of subordinate clauses and V-2 is highly typical of main clauses, but V-2 also occurs in subordinate clauses where the first element is not the object (note how the figures would be distorted if main clauses introduced by and, ac or ne were not counted separately). V-F in main clauses only occurs if they are introduced by a conjunction.

Moreover, main clauses without an overt subject always have the verb in first position in the sample (as e.g. Foron þa up be Temese [ChronA 894]

‘[They] travelled then up along the Thames’), while in the other clauses with the verb in initial position it is immediately followed by the subject (as e.g. Wæs Hæsten þa þær cumen mid his herge [ChronA 894] ‘Then Hæsten had come there with his army’). On the basis of such evidence, it is justified to conclude that in main clauses the verb rather consistently precedes the object (consonant with both V-2 and VO orders) as the unmarked order, just as V-F is the unmarked order for subordinate clauses.

4 Denison’s sample consists of the entries for 892–898 in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, MS A (Bately 1986). The table disregards a number of rarer orders in the sample; for a more detailed description of the sample and the principles on which the analysis was carried out, see Denison 1987: 142–144, fnn. 6–7);

‘X’ stands for any element except subject and verb, ‘X_≠O’ further excludes objects.

Table 3-1. Word order in early West Saxon (according to Denison 1987: 143) main clauses and/ac/ne … subordinate clauses

VSX 7 2 –

X≠OVS 47 3 4

SV_finiteXV_non-finite 1 5 8

SVX 13 11 17

SXV – 10 53

SXVX – – 11

(others) 5 9 3

Further evidence for this claim is provided by potentially ambiguous sentences like & þa burgware hie gefliemdon [Chron A 894] ‘and the citizens put them to flight’, where subject and object are morphologically indistinct and the order SOV (rather than OSV) is used, despite the otherwise observable tendency for pronouns to be placed early in the clause (cf. Denison 1987: 147). As a result of the emergence of V-2 in earlier Germanic, Old English shares with the other West Germanic daughter languages the clausal brace, whereby finite and non-finite verbs become separated, e.g.:

(21) Forðon we sceolan mid ealle mod & mægene to Gode therefore we must:PL with all mind and power to God gecyrran

turn:INF

‘Therefore we must turn to God with all our mind and power.’

(BlHom 97. 26) There is a decided lack of studies of the clausal brace in Old English;

Mitchell (1985) does not have a lot to say about it (“Intervention by other elements produces patterns which are certainly not acceptable in MnE [Modern English] but which certainly do not fall with OE examples of S

…V, which requires S (…) Vv”; Mitchell § 3910), and the few pertinent titles tend to have been written by scholars with a background in Germanic philology. Implicitly, the topic is of course dealt with in many discussions of V-2 vs. OV orders. Yet a description on the basis of the clausal brace

…V, which requires S (…) Vv”; Mitchell § 3910), and the few pertinent titles tend to have been written by scholars with a background in Germanic philology. Implicitly, the topic is of course dealt with in many discussions of V-2 vs. OV orders. Yet a description on the basis of the clausal brace