Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang

English historical linguistics 2006 

volumE i

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND 

HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE 

general Editor 

E.F.K. KoErnEr 

(Zentrum für allgemeine sprachwissenschaft, typologie 

und universalienforschung, Berlin) 

series iv – currEnt issuEs in linguistic thEorY 

Advisory Editorial Board 

lyle campbell (salt lake city) 

sheila Embleton (toronto) 

Elly van gelderen (tempe, ariz.) 

Brian D. Joseph (columbus, ohio) 

John E. Joseph (Edinburgh) 

manfred Krifka (Berlin) 

martin maiden (oxford) 

E. Wyn roberts (vancouver, B.c.) 

Joseph c. salmons (madison, Wis.) 

volume 295 

maurizio gotti, marina Dossena and richard Dury (eds.) 

English Historical Linguistics 2006. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology 

Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on 

English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14), Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006

English historical 

linguistics 2006 

sElEctED PaPErs From 

thE FourtEEnth intErnational conFErEncE 

on English historical linguistics (icEhl 14), 

BErgamo, 21–25 august 2006 

volumE i: sYntax anD morPhologY 

Edited by 

mauriZio gotti 

marina DossEna 

richarD DurY 

University of Bergamo 

John BEnJamins PuBlishing comPanY 

amstErDam/PhilaDElPhia

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of american national 

standard for information sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed library materials, 

ansi Z39.48-1984. 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 

international conference on English historical linguistics (14th : 2006 : Bergamo university) 

English historical linguistics 2006 : selected papers from the fourteenth international conference on 

English historical linguistics (icEhl 14), Bergamo, 21-25 august 2006. 

p. cm. -- (amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. series iv, current issues 

in linguistic theory, issn 0304-0763 ; v. 295) 

includes bibliographical references and index. 

1. English language--grammar, historical--congresses. 2. English language--history--congresses. i. 

gotti, maurizio. ii. Dossena, marina, 1961- iii. Dury, richard. iv. title. v. series. 

PE1075.i57 2008 

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© 2008 – John Benjamins B.v. 

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Table of contents 

Foreword vii 

Introduction ix 

Maurizio Gotti, Marina Dossena & Richard Dury 

Part I. Old and Middle English 1 

The balance between syntax and discourse in Old English 3 

Ans van Kemenade, Tanja Milicev & R. Harald Baayen 

The Old English copula weorðan and its replacement 

in Middle English 23 

Peter Petré & Hubert Cuyckens 

Verb types and word order in Old and Middle English 

non-coordinate and coordinate clauses 49 

Kristin Bech 

From locative to durative to focalized? The English progressive 

and ‘PROG imperfective drift’ 69 

Kristin Killie 

Gender assignment in Old English 89 

Letizia Vezzosi 

On the position of the OE quantifier eall and PDE all 109 

Tomohiro Yanagi 

On the post-finite misagreement phenomenon 

in Late Middle English 125 

Richard Ingham & Kleanthes K. Grohmann 

Syntactic dialectal variation in Middle English 141 

Cristina Suárez-Gómez 

Particles as grammaticalized complex predicates 157 

Bettelou Los

vi Table of contents 

Part II. Early and Late Modern English 181 

Adverb-marking patterns in Earlier Modern English 

coordinate constructions 183 

Amanda Pounder 

’Tis he, ’tis she, ’tis me, ’tis – I don’t know who …: Cleft and 

identificational constructions in 16th to 18th century English plays 203 

Claudia Lange & Ursula Schaefer 

Emotion verbs with to-infinitive complements: From specific 

to general predication 223 

Thomas Egan 

Subjective progressives in seventeenth and eighteenth century English: 

Secondary grammaticalization as a process of objectification 241 

Svenja Kranich 

Index of subjects, terms & languages 257

Foreword 

The conference at which the papers in this volume were first presented took place 

on 21–25 August 2006 at the University of Bergamo (Faculty of Foreign Languages 

and Literatures). This was the 14th biennial meeting of the International Conference 

on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL), which has been held each time in 

a different European country and, until then, had never been hosted by an Italian 

institution. The choice of Bergamo was found to be appropriate, as this University 

has a strong tradition in English historical linguistics, international scholarly exchanges 

and has held three important conferences dedicated to English Diachronic 

Syntax (1992) and English Historical Dialectology (2003 and 2007). 

The ICEHL conference proved to be very successful, as over 220 well established 

as well as younger scholars, from Europe and from as far away as the United 

States, Canada, New Zealand and Japan, took an active part in both presenting a 

wide range of stimulating papers and participating in the ensuing discussions. 

The various conference events – which included plenary lectures, papers, panels 

and workshops – provided an excellent opportunity for the assessment of how 

research in this field had progressed and what results had been obtained, giving 

evidence of the many ways in which linguistic, textual and cultural aspects have 

characterized the development of the English language. We would like to thank all 

those who presented a paper, and especially the plenary speakers for offering main 

theoretical guidelines to the various sections of the conference. 

We are particularly indebted to colleagues and staff in Bergamo who made 

this conference possible: in particular, Professor Alberto Castoldi, Rector of our 

University, Professor Giuliano Bernini, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages 

and Literatures, and Professor Angela Locatelli, then Head of the Department of 

Comparative Languages, Literatures and Cultures. We are also very grateful to our 

colleagues in the English Language branch of our Department, for their great help 

and support in the organisation and management of this conference. 

From the academic point of view, this conference proved to be a very rewarding 

experience. Indeed, the generally high quality of the presentations led to our 

decision of offering more than one volume of selected, peer-reviewed and revised 

papers for publication in an internationally renowned series, in order to secure 

the widest distribution possible and thus contribute to the advancement of our 

understanding of the structure and development of the English language. All the 

numerous papers that were submitted underwent a thorough referee ing process,

viii Foreword 

and we are very grateful to senior members of the scholarly community, including 

of course the anonymous readers consulted by the Series Editor, for devoting so 

much of their time to this task. Their comments and suggestions proved to be 

extremely useful already in the selection process, which led us to the identification 

of three well-structured and cohesive volumes, the first of which (the present 

volume) is devoted to syntax and morphology, the second to lexis and semantics, 

and the third to geo-historical variation. We are extremely grateful to Professor 

Dr. E.F.K. Koerner, General Editor of “Current Issues in Linguistic Theory” (CILT), 

for having agreed to include these three volumes of selected papers in his prestigious 

series, as well as for his advice and constant support. Our special thanks are 

also due to Ms. Anke de Looper at John Benjamins for her patience, great care, 

and assistance. 

Bergamo, November 2007 The Editors

Introduction 

Maurizio Gotti, Marina Dossena & Richard Dury 

Università degli Studi di Bergamo 

This volume contains selected papers concerning syntax and morphology originally 

presented at the 14th meeting of the International Conference on English Historical 

Linguistics (ICEHL) held in Bergamo on 21–25 August 2006. The area covered 

by this volume — morphology and syntax — is traditionally a central one for many 

scholars working in the field of diachronic linguistics. Its continued importance is 

shown by the continued production of numerous important monographs and studies, 

as the bibliographical references in the papers of this volume attest. Studies in the 

field of syntax and morphology have also become wider and richer with the contribution 

of many recent methodological innovations – from grammaticalisation studies 

to textual perspectives, from pragmatics to a sociolinguistic approach – which have 

influenced both synchronic and diachronic studies. 

The order in which contributions appear in this volume reflects closely the 

basically-diachronic order of the conference programme. It is divided into two 

main sections; the first one deals with Old and Middle English, while the second 

with the Early and Late Modern English periods. 

The first section opens with a paper by Ans van Kemenade, Tanja Milicev 

and R. Harald Baayen, who present an innovative approach to Old English word 

order aiming to reconcile the insights that derive from formal syntactic work with 

the data problems that these approaches have raised. In particular, their perspective 

highlights the discourse features of Old English texts in order to explain their 

typically high degree of word order flexibility. Significant determining features 

that they have identified are adverbs that function as discourse partitioners, and 

pronominal elements used in strategies of discourse reference. The use of these 

elements allows an extension of the range of possible subject and object positions 

and facilitates greater discourse flexibility. 

In their paper on the Old English copula weorðan, Peter Petré and Hubert 

Cuyckens make use of a specially compiled corpus to account for its rapid decline 

in use in Middle English and its replacement, mainly by become. Drawing 

on Goldberg’s (1995, 2006) Construction Grammar, the paper posits the existence 

of a lexeme-independent conceptual space with which a network of copular uses 

of weorðan are associated. These uses already in Old English served as a model

x Maurizio Gotti, Marina Dossena & Richard Dury 

for the analogical extension of becuman as a copula. In early Middle English, the 

emergence of a ‘true’ passive construction made weorðan seem archaic in this 

function and blocked the spread to it of becuman. At the same time, becuman 

became associated with a new type of time-stable predicates. Having no collocational 

preferences, becuman then extended its use to other types of predicates and 

eventually took over from weorðan completely. 

Kristin Bech’s paper focuses on the relation between word order, verb types 

and clause types in Old and Middle English, with reference to the change from a 

language with a verb-second constraint to a verb-medial language. The word order 

patterns discussed are the XVS, SVX and XSV patterns, and the verb categories 

operated with are verbs with a complement, verbs without a complement, copulas 

and existential verbs. A distinction is made between coordinate clauses, i.e., 

clauses introduced by a coordinating conjunction, and non-coordinate clauses. 

The results of Bech’s analysis show that there is a difference between the two clause 

types and between the word order patterns in the distribution of verbs. Furthermore, 

there is a clear development from Old to Middle English as regards verb 

distribution in the clause types and word order patterns, and this development 

is especially noticeable in the XVS pattern. The findings suggest that word order 

is not only determined by syntactic rules, but is also related to the information 

content of the sentence. 

In her paper, Kristin Killie investigates whether the English progressive has 

undergone the ‘prog imperfective drift’ hypothesised by Bertinetto et al. (2000). 

According to their theory, an originally locative construction develops into a durative 

progressive, and subsequently into a focalized progressive, to end up in some 

cases as a pure marker of imperfectivity. To test this hypothesis, Killie examines 

data taken from the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. Her results indicate that the 

English progressive has clearly become more focalized through time. However, 

durative uses are only a minority use in the earliest texts (though it is not impossible 

that a dominantly durative progressive existed before then in speech). 

Rather than supporting the ‘locative hypothesis’, the data therefore suggest that 

the English progressive most probably originated in the (presumably) emphatic 

beon/wesan/weor∂an + Vende construction, or alternatively, from more than one 

source. On the basis of her analysis, the author concludes that if the English progressive 

has gone through the PROG imperfective drift, the formulation of this 

process must be such as to allow for different types of source constructions, not 

only a locative source. 

Gender assignment in Old English is the topic investigated by Letizia 

Vezzosi. Her analysis shows that although Old English has a three-gender formal 

assignment system, there are several instances in which the same noun shows more

Introduction xi 

than one gender. The author classifies Old English data (selected through the 

analysis of electronically available corpora and literary works), making comparisons 

with relevant data from typological investigations and historical linguistic 

studies. She is thus able to show that Old English gender variance depends on 

semantic and pragmatic factors that interfere with grammatical gender assignment. 

In particular, beside cross-linguistically frequent semantic traits such as 

[±animate] [±human], gender assignment in Old English seems to be sensitive to 

semantic roles. The author demonstrates that this parameter does not conflict with 

the previous semantic ones, since all of them can be derived from the more general 

feature [± individuated]. 

Through a study of a corpus of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, Tomohiro Yanagi 

shows that the quantifier eall in Old English exhibited the same distributional 

properties as the quantifier all in Present-day English. Indeed, eall can modify 

a nominative noun phrase, or an accusative noun phrase when this is followed 

by a predicative complement; moreover, the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order is more 

frequent than the ‘quantifier-pronoun’ order. The paper also argues that the quantifier 

eall is base-generated as the head of the quantifier phrase, and generally selects 

a noun phrase as its complement. The data examined show that although the 

‘full-NP-quantifier’ order can be derived by adjoining the noun phrase to the 

quantifier phrase, this operation is not applied to a noun phrase in the argument 

position, due to the ban on adjunction to arguments. Yanagi’s analysis suggests 

that, unlike noun phrases, pronouns can be adjoined to the head of a quantifier 

phrase, thus yielding greater flexibility to the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order. 

Richard Ingham and Kleanthes K. Grohmann focus on misagreement between 

a singular verb and a plural subject, and examine a corpus of 15th-century 

London chronicles in order to investigate the origins of this phenomenon, and to 

assess whether it should be handled in structural terms. Their analysis shows that 

misagreement almost always arose with a postfinite (not prefinite) subject, and 

co-occurred in texts allowing null impersonal subjects. This phenomenon is analysed 

as agreement with a singular expletive subject, overt or null, existing as an 

option alongside the option of regular number agreement. As a preverbal subject 

contained no expletive element, number agreement was regular. Their study also 

shows that the structural position of the postverbal subject is irrelevant: three 

post-finite subject configurations have been identified, in all of which agreement 

is optional. The authors further note that an increase in the phenomenon occurred 

during the 15th century, and propose a dialect contact explanation: the influx of 

Northern speakers using the Northern Subject Rule in late medieval London may 

have activated a structural re-analysis of singular verb forms with plural subjects 

by London speakers in terms of agreement with a singular null subject.

xii Maurizio Gotti, Marina Dossena & Richard Dury 

As Middle English is widely known as the dialectal phase of English, it is 

unsurprising that so many scholars have studied the linguistic differences among 

Middle English dialects for such a long time. It is generally assumed that northern 

dialects innovate mainly due to Scandinavian influence, while southern dialects 

appear to be more resistant to change. The aim of Cristina Suárez-Gómez’ study 

is to test whether this tendency is also reflected in relativisation, both in the system 

of relativisers and in the position adopted by the relative clause in relation 

to the main clause. Based on data from The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts, her 

investigation shows that the system of relativisers inherited from Old English and 

the tendency towards extraposition typical of Middle English are associated with 

southern dialects, while the North shows a simplified system of relativisers as well 

as a marked tendency for relative clauses to be intraposed. 

Bettelou Los’ paper discusses the origins of English phrasal verbs and, in 

particular, the arguments advanced against identifying particles as grammaticalized 

predicates (such as the failure of many particles to function as independent 

predicates, the lack of telicity in many cases, and the failure of constituency tests 

and topicalisation). She argues that these same “quirks” are exhibited by predicates; 

indeed, resultative complex predicates show various degrees of productivity, 

transparency and idiosyncrasy which mirror those of particle verbs, and easily acquire 

idiomatic meanings that only work in combination with specific verbs. Her 

analysis shows that the semantic and syntactic similarities of complex predicates 

and particles point to a common origin, with particles having become grammaticalized 

from phrase to head. Moreover, the most striking quirks of the complex 

predicate construction, i.e., unselected objects and idiomaticity (fixed combinations 

of verb and predicate), are also shared by particle verbs. She concludes that 

although the similarity in behaviour of predicates and particles can be traced into 

Old English, it is only in Early Modern English that a significant point is marked 

in the development of the particle verb system. At that time the verbs participating 

in the combination are no longer restricted to ‘light’ verbs, but include deadjectival 

and denominal verbs, unergatives, and ‘manner-of-motion’ verbs. 

The second part of the volume is devoted to contributions investigating syntactic 

and morphological issues in the Early and Late Modern English periods. In 

the first paper in this section Amanda Pounder examines adverb-marking patterns 

(zero or -ly) in coordinate constructions. She suggests that while both a paradigmatic 

selection analysis (Pounder 2004) and a suspended affixation analysis 

(Kabak 2007) could be applied, the systemic availability of the zero-derived adverb 

makes the former theoretically preferable. However, the available data show that 

there are some cases in which a suspended affixation or morphological ellipsis 

analysis must be invoked. The paper then focuses on the available patterns of morphological 

marking of derived adverbs in coordinate constructions in all periods

Introduction xiii 

of Modern English. The analysis shows that in the coordination of adverbs one 

strongly dominant pattern remains constant, i.e., X-ly and Y-ly, while the minority 

patterns X and Y-ly and X-ly and Y are rare in the written texts examined. This 

can be explained by the fact that considerations of symmetry overcome the desire 

to avoid repetition of the -ly suffix, which has often been suggested for sequences 

of adverbs or adverbial modifiers in which the zero form appears. 

It is generally assumed that the construction It is me emerged in the 16th century 

as a more colloquial alternative to It is I. In their paper, Claudia Lange and 

Ursula Schaefer focus on the structure and distribution of two constructions featuring 

It is I / me, namely, cleft constructions and identificational copular clauses 

in plays from 1600 to 1800. The analysis shows that it is I constitutes the generally 

preferred form; the very limited number of occurrences of me in the relevant 

constructions are either licensed by the syntactic context in cleft constructions or 

by referential conditions in identificational copular clauses. Lange and Schaefer 

further provide evidence for the assumption that identificational copular clauses 

are historically prior to cleft constructions, which in turn are not fully grammaticalised 

in the period under discussion, since they do not unambiguously display 

the biclausal structure which is a defining property of clefts. 

Thomas Egan’s paper traces the evolution of to-infinitive complement constructions 

with emotion matrix verbs like, love, hate and prefer over the past two 

hundred years. His analysis proposes that when the matrix verb is not preceded by 

a modal auxiliary, these constructions should be analysed in Present-day English 

as encoding general rather than specific predications. In Late Modern English, 

on the other hand, these same constructions were widely used to encode specific 

predications. Using data from The British National Corpus and The Corpus of Late 

Modern English Texts, the author demonstrates how these constructions have become 

increasingly restricted to encoding general predications over the past two 

centuries. This development is related to the parallel expansion of –ing-complement 

constructions and of to-infinitive complement constructions with modalised 

matrix verbs. 

The aim of Svenja Kranich’s study is to analyse the progressive form in 17th- 

and 18th-century English, identifying its uses as expressions of speaker attitude. 

After an overview of the Old and Middle English meanings of the progressive, 

the paper discusses the three different types of subjective progressives found in 

data from ARCHER-2. In this context, the author discusses some methodological 

issues, as formal criteria have proved insufficiently reliable for the distinction of 

subjective uses. Kranich then looks at the relation between subjective and other 

meanings of the progressive. In the 17th- and 18th centuries, the aspectual function 

of the progressive grammaticalises, which leads to changing relative frequencies 

between subjective and objective uses. The paper ends with the identification

xiv Maurizio Gotti, Marina Dossena & Richard Dury 

of general tendencies in the relation between grammaticalisation and subjectification/objectification. 

As illustrated in this brief overview, the studies presented here are an expression 

of ongoing theoretical developments as well as new analytical approaches to 

the study of English diachronic syntax and morphology. Together, they reflect the 

challenges and opportunities that confront a linguist working with complex developments 

in a language, and their far-reaching implications. It is to be hoped that 

the volume will encourage further discussion and reflection, strengthening our 

understanding of the evolution of these phenomena. 

References 

Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Karen H. Ebert & Casper de Groot. 2000. The Progressive in Europe. 

Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe ed. by Östen Dahl, 517–558. Berlin: Mouton 

de Gruyter. 

Goldberg, Adele. 1995. Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. 

Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Goldberg, Adele. 2006. Constructions at Work: The nature of generalization in language. Oxford: 

Oxford University Press. 

Kabak, Barış. 2007. Turkish Suspended Affixation. Linguistics 45: 311–348. 

Pounder, Amanda. 2004. Haplology in English Adverb Formation. New Perspectives on English 

Historical Linguistics: Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002 ed. by 

Christian Kay. Carole Hough & Irené Wotherspoon, Volume II: Lexis and Transmission, 

193–211. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

part i 

Old and Middle English

The balance between syntax and discourse 

in Old English 

Ans van Kemenade 

Radboud University Nijmegen 

Tanja Milicev 

University of Novi Sad 

R. Harald Baayen 

University of Alberta 

Old English morpho-syntax allows a degree of word order flexibility that is 

exploited by discourse strategies. Key elements here are: adverbs functioning as 

discourse partitioners, and a wider range of pronominal elements, extending the 

number of strategies for anaphoric reference. The syntactic effect is an extended 

range of subject and object positions, which are exploited for discourse flexibility. 

In particular, a class of high adverbs, including primarily þa “then” and þonne 

“then”, define on their left an area in which discourse-(linked) elements occur, 

including a range of pronouns, but also definite nominal subjects. The latter occur 

here because the Old English weak demonstrative pronouns that serve to mark 

definiteness also allow specific anaphoric reference to a discourse antecedent. 

We also develop a model of quantitative analysis that brings out the relationship 

between the narrowly circumscribed syntactic system and the relative diffuseness 

of the discourse referential facts. 

In this chapter, we present a novel approach to Old English word order that attempts 

to reconcile the insights into Old English word order achieved so far within formal 

syntactic work with the data problems that these same approaches have raised. In 

order to achieve this, we present a perspective in which the discourse properties 

of Old English word order are unified with the formal syntax of Old English. Old 

English grammar possesses a number of morpho-syntactic properties which allow 

a degree of word order flexibility that is exploited by discourse strategies. Beside the 

case system, to which an incredible amount of word order flexibility is commonly 

and often rather impressionistically attributed, these properties concretely include: 

adverbs that function as discourse partitioners, and a wider range of pronominal 

elements, which extends the number of strategies for anaphoric reference to a discourse 

antecedent. The concrete syntactic effect of this is that, by virtue of these 

discourse partitioners, Old English grammar extends the range of possible subject 

and object positions. These extra positions are exploited for the purposes of


discourse flexibility. In this article, we concentrate on one of these extended 

‘positions’. We claim that a particular class of high adverbs and particles, including 

elements such as þa “then”; þonne “then”, nu “now”, eac “also”, la “lo” define on their 

left an area in which discourse-(linked) elements occur: These include a range of 

pronouns, but also definite nominal subjects. We will show that definite nominal 

subjects may occur here because the Old English weak demonstrative pronouns 

that serve to mark definiteness also allow specific anaphoric reference 

to a discourse antecedent. 

In the second part of the paper, we develop a model of quantitative analysis 

which is capable of bringing out the relationship between the narrowly circumscribed 

syntactic system and the relative diffuseness of the discourse referential 

facts. The interesting thing then is that what in formal syntactic treatments often 

counts as a class of ‘problems’ or ‘counterexamples’, falls into place in a principled 

manner without having to include further syntactic claims, at the same time 

broadening the approach to include discourse strategies. 

1. A problem in Old English 

Let us first outline the descriptive problem that we wish to analyse. At the heart 

of the dataset are subjects and pronominal objects that occur in a relatively high 

position in the clause. 

A well-known feature of Old English word order is that personal pronouns may 

occur in positions higher than their nominal counterparts, and this is true almost 

categorically for subject pronouns, and optionally for object pronouns, as exemplified 

by the following examples, (1) for main clauses, (2) for subclauses: 

(1) a. Be ðæm we magon suiðe swutule oncnawan ðæt … 

By that, we may very clearly perceive that … 

“By that, we may perceive very clearly that …” (cocura,CP: 26.181.16.1202) 

b. þa axodon hine Pharisei & þa boceras 

and then asked him Pharisees and the learned men, 

hwi ne gað þine leorningcnihtas æfter ure yldrena 

why not go your disciples after our forefathers’ 

gesetnysse. ac besmitenum handum hyra half þicgað? 

law, but with.defiled.hands their bread eat? 

“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?” (cowsgosp,Mk_[WSCp]: 7.5.2678) 

c. Hwæt tacnað us ðonne Saul buton yfle hlafurdas? 

What betokens us then Saul except evil lords? 

“What is signified to us by Saul but bad masters?” 

(cocura,CP: 28.197.22.1328)

The balance between syntax and discourse in Old English 

(2) a. Gif hire ðonne se wiðsace, ðonne is cynn ðæt him 

if it then he refuse, then is proper that him 

spiwe ðæt wif on ðæt nebb 

spits the woman in the face 

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

(cocura,CP: 5.45.2.249) 

b. gif hine ðonne ðæt fleah mid ealle ofergæð, ðonne ne 

if him then the albugo with all covers, then not 

mæg he noht geseon. 

can he naught see 

“if it [the pupil of the eye] is entirely covered with albugo, he cannot see 

anything.” (cocura,CP: 11.69.17.448) 

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). 

The positional evidence was made more precise in van Kemenade (1999, 2000); 

Haeberli (1999), which is illustrated by the examples in (3), reflecting a word order 

template as in (4) (see also Rissanen 1999): 

(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” 

(coaelive,ÆLS_[Memory_of_Saints]: 127.3394) 

b. Ne sæde na ure Drihten þæt he mid cynehelme oððe 

not said not our Lord that he with diadem or 

mid purpuran gescryd, cumanwolde to us 

with purple clothed, come wanted to us 

“Our Lord said not that He would come to us with a diadem or clothed 

with purple..” (coaelive,ÆLS_[Martin]: 762.6453) 

(4) personal pronoun – secondary negator – nominal subject 

Very similar syntactic analyses of this state of affairs are Haeberli (1999) and van 

Kemenade (1999, 2000), whose structures we adapt for the time being as (5): 1 

(5) [ CP [XP] C [ AgrP PronounSubj/Obj Agr [ NegP Neg Adv Neg [ TP NPSubj T … ]]]] 

Personal pronouns occur in a designated pronoun position on the left of a NegP 

(signalled by the secondary negative) in the higher position, while the position 

for nominal subjects is lower than NegP, in SpecTP. It turns out then, that the secondary 

negator has considerable diagnostic value in pinpointing the position of 

1. Haeberli (1999) dubs SpecAgrP a Subject1 position and Spec,TP a Subject2 position. But 

this ‘Subject1’ position hosts object pronouns as well.


elements in the higher part of the clause. This is 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 the praise and the vainglory avoid 

“How can he avoid praise and vainglory…?” (cocura,CP: 9.57.18.364) 

b. Hu gerades mæg ðonne se biscep brucan ðære 

how properly may then the bishop enjoy the 

hirdelican are 

pastoral dignity 

“How, then, can the bishop properly enjoy the pastoral dignity?” 

(cocura,CP: 18.133.3.898) 

By way of example, findings for root clause questions in one text, Cura Pastoralis, 

are presented in Table 1. 

Table 1. Relative position of adverb ðonne and various types of subject in Cura Pastoralis 

Personal pronoun 

Nominal subject subject or object 

subject precedes ðonne 0 10 

subject follows ðonne 17 0 

This yields a clear picture for main clauses. However, the picture is considerably 

more complex in subclauses (see also Haeberli & Ingham 2007 for early Middle 

English). Examination of all the subclauses containing þa/þonne shows the distribution 

for subjects in Table 2 (based on an exhaustive search of the York Corpus of 

Old English (YCOE), Taylor et al. 2003): 

Table 2. Relative position of adverb ðonne and various types of subject in YCOE 

Old English subclauses Pronominal subjects Nominal subjects 

subject precedes þa/þonne 1250 221 

subject follows þa/þonne 5 129 

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). 

(7) on Salomonnes bocum, hit is awrieten ðæt mon ne 

in Solomon’s books, it is written that that.one not 

scyle cweðan to his frind: Ga, cum to morgen, ðonne 

shall say to one’s friend: Go, come tomorrow, then


selle ic ðe hwæthwugu, gif he hit him ðonne sellan mæge. 

give I you something, if he it him then give may. 

“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.” 

(cocura, CP.44.323.24) 

However, the figures for nominal subjects in Table 2 show that we are not dealing 

merely with a position reserved for personal pronouns. The relatively high 

frequency of nominal subjects preceding the adverb renders this particularly problematic, 

and there is no ready generalization with respect to the choice of nominal 

subject on the left or right of the adverb; higher and lower nominal subjects, for 

instance, include definite NPs, as the representative examples (8) and (9) show. 

(8) Forðæm bið se sige micle mara ðe man mid 

therefore is the victory much greater which one with 

geðylde gewinð, forðæm sio gesceadwisnes ðonne hæfð 

patience wins, because this wisdom then has 

ofercumen ðæt mod & gewielð, swelce he self 

overcome the.mind and subdued, as.if he self 

hæbbe hiene selfne gewildne, & sio geðyld hæbbe ðæt 

have himself conquered, and the patience have the 

mod geðreatod & gecafstrod. 

mind intimidated and curbed. 

“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.” 

(cocuraC,CP_[Cotton]: 33.218.19.42) 

(9) Gif ðonne se sacred bið ungerad ðæs lareowdomes, hwæt 

If then the teacher is unskilled the.instruction, what 

forstent ðonne his gehlyd? 

avails then his cry? 

“then if the teacher is unskilled in instruction, what avails his cry?” 

(cocura, CP, 15,91,25) 

Thus, we cannot say that the position preceding the adverb is reserved exclusively 

for pronouns. And because the diagnostic value of the position of the adverb is so 

strong (as shown by Rissanen 1999; van Kemenade 2000 for a diachronic picture 

spanning the entire history of English), we should hesitate to give up on the generalization 

concerning the nature of the position preceding the adverb. Since pronouns 

are well-known to have discourse-referential properties, we have therefore 

pursued an approach in which we take into account the discourse properties of the 

elements preceding the adverb.


2. Discourse domains and discourse reference 

In this section, we outline an approach, following up van Kemenade & Milicev 

(to appear), van Kemenade & Los (2006), in which clause structure incorporates 

and encodes information structural considerations in such a way that, subject to 

certain syntactic restrictions, presupposed, old material is separated from focused, 

new material by an adverb functioning as a discourse particle. This is what we take 

to be the function of high adverbs like þa and þonne. This is further discussed 

in 2.1. A further claim, discussed in 2.2, is that Old English has a wider range of 

discourse-referential expressions: simple demonstratives, used as definiteness 

markers in a NP, allow a specific presuppositional reading for that NP. In section 2.3, 

we will flesh out our analysis of Old English from this perspective. 

2.1 Adverbs/particles as discourse partitioners 

Adverbs are often used as word order diagnostics. This is well-known from the 

word order literature cross-linguistically, and more particularly from the literature 

on (West)-Germanic syntax. Our hypothesis is that Old English has a set of high 

adverbs, or perhaps more properly particles, that act as discourse partitioners, and 

that their function is to separate anaphoric/presupposed and discourse-linked elements, 

occurring on the left of the adverb, from discourse-new elements on the 

right of the particle. From this perspective, let us look at two prime candidates for 

such particle status. 

The adverbs þa and þonne may occur as clause introducers of various kinds, or 

they may occur in clause-internal position. As clause introducers, they subsume a 

variety of subtly different functions. Although these uses are not the main focus of 

this article, we discuss them briefly, in order to clarify the distinction with clauseinternal 

uses. 

(10) illustrates an extremely frequent use of the adverbs þa and þonne. The 

first þonne seems to act as a subordinating conjunction and this subordinate clause 

sets out the condition from which the next clause, a main clause with a finite verb 

of movement, may follow. The second þonne introduces this main clause as an 

adverb. This construction also occurs in (11): the preceding conditional clause sets 

the condition for the second clause introduced by þonne. 

(10) þonne se unclæna gast gæþ ut of ðam men, þonne færð 

when the uncleaned ghost goes out of the man, then travels 

he worigende on unwæterigum stowum secende him reste 

he wandering on desert places seeking him rest 

“When the unclean ghost goes out of the man, he travels then wandering 

in desert places, seeking rest” (coaelhom,ÆHom_4: 41.540)


(11) and gif heo hyre wer oferbit, þonne byð heo frig 

and if she her man outlives, then be she free 

“and if she outlives her husband, then she should be free” 

(coaelhom,ÆHom_20: 84.2972) 

Þa and þonne are also used more loosely as clause introducers, where there is, 

somewhat vaguely, a sense of temporal or even causal sequence as in (12). (13) is a 

slightly more emphatic frame-setting variant of this. 

(12) & þonne se þe ungelyfende byþ in þon þe he tweoþ 

and then that who unbelieving is in that that he doubts 

he ne seceð na þone geleafan … 

he not seeks not the belief… 

“and then the one who doesn’t believe in what he doubts, he does not seek the 

belief…” (cogregdC,GDPref_and_4_[C]: 1.262.10.3797) 

(13) þa æfter þære lare, he het alætan ut þone halgan 

then after the teaching, he ordered take out the saint 

Petrum his scip on ðære dypan 

Peter his ship on the sea 

“Then, after the teaching, he ordered Saint Peter to take out his ship to the sea” 

(coaelhom,ÆHom_15: 16.2142) 

Let us now turn to clause internal þa/þonne, the main focus of this paper. Both adverbs 

can be used as pure rhetorical devices, often with the purpose “to underline 

the admonishing and exhorting effect in context” (van Kemenade & Los 2006), 

especially in exclamatory combinations like hwæt þa “what lo”: 

(14) a. Hwæt ða la ongunnon þa godes cempan hnexian 

what then lo began then God’s champions yield 

and heora mod awendon to hyre maga sarnysse. 

and their mood turn to their kinsmen’s anguish 

“Well, then, behold! God’s champions began to yield, and to turn their 

thought on their kinsmen’s anguish.” (coaelive,ÆLS_[Sebastian]: 48.1238) 

b. Ono hwæt he þa se ilca cyning Osweo æfter Pendan 

lo what he then the same king Oswio after Penda’s 

slege þreo winter ful Mercna þeode & swylce eac 

death three winters whole Mercia’s people and also 

tham oðrum folcum þara suðmægða in aldordome 

the other nations of.the southern.provinces authority 

ofer wæs. 

over was. 

“Now this king Oswio after Penda’s death for three whole years had 

authority over the Mercians and the other nations also of the southern 

provinces.” (cobede,Bede_3: 18.238.27.2439)

10 Ans van Kemenade, Tanja Milicev & R. Harald Baayen 

It should be noted that they are not topic/focus markers, in the sense that they 

cliticize morpho-syntactically to elements in order to mark them as presuppositional 

or focal, rather they seem to indicate that what follows is the focus part 

of the clause. The same kind of presupposition-focus inferences can very likely 

be obtained by specific structural re-organizations without these adverbs. However, 

the overwhelming presence of these two particular adverbs strongly suggests 

that overt marking of presupposition-focus domains is of primary concern for OE 

writers. 

Our hypothesis is that the adverbs structure parts of the utterance/proposition 

itself with respect to the preceding discourse. 

(15) [previous discourse] [ utterance presupposition þa/þonne focus] 

This will be elaborated further in Section 2.3. 

2.2 More referring expressions 

Old English had a wider range of discourse-referential expressions than Presentday 

English does. In particular, Old English morpho-syntax includes the weak 

demonstrative pronouns. Let us first list the paradigms which can be picked from 

any grammar of Old English (Table 3). 

Table 3. Old English demonstrative pronouns 

singular plural 

masculine feminine neuter 

Nom se sēo þæt þā 

Acc þone þā þæt þā 

Gen þæs þæ¯ re þæs þāra 

Dat þæ¯ m þæ¯ re þæ¯ m þæ¯ m 

Demonstrative pronouns are often called ‘definite determiners’, as one of their primary 

known uses in Old English is to mark definiteness in a NP, thus se monn “the 

man”; þæ¯ re fæmnan fæder; “the woman’s father” and so on (see recently Denison 

2006). However, the term ‘determiner’ is, we claim, a singular misnomer, in particular 

because it is often used when comparing the Old English weak demonstratives 

to the Present-day English definite determiners. Determiners (we refer 

here to the, not to deictic demonstratives such as this, that, these, those) 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.


(16) Se casere hi sealde his gerefan, þæs nama wæs Dulcitius, 

the caesar them gave his prefect, whose name was Dulcitius, 

þæt se hi genedde þæt hi Criste wiðsocan. 

that DEM them urge that they Christ reject 

“The Caesar gave them his prefect, whose name was Dulcitius, that HE urge 

them that they reject Christ” (comart3,Mart_5_[Kotzor]: Ap3,A.7.506) 

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: relative pronouns are anaphoric 

elements par excellence, as they must refer back to the antecedent of the relative 

clause they introduce, sharing features for number and gender, and, optionally, for 

case as in (17b). 

(17) a. Ure Drihten arærde anes ealdormonnes dohtor, 

Our Lord raised an alderman’s daughter (A), 

seo ðe læg dead 

who (N) that lay dead 

“Our Lord brought to life an alderman’s daughter who lay dead” 

(ÆHom VI, 176) 

b. Ic wat witodlice ðæt ge secað ðone hælend 

I know truly that you seek the Lord (A) 

ðone ðe on rode ahangen wæs 

whom (A) that on cross hung was 

“I know truly that you seek the Lord, who was hung on the cross” 

(Mt. 1766) 

The claim here is that demonstrative pronouns mark a type of (pronominal) reference 

that is both definite and specific, and when used as ‘definite determiners’ 

in a NP, serve to render that NP definite and to give it a specific reference to a 

discourse antecedent. This fact allowed a more versatile form of discourse linking, 

as it allows a definite NP to have a specific anaphoric reference as well, and to be 

positioned accordingly: on the left of a discourse particle. 

2.3 Discourse and syntactic structure in OE 

In this section, we present a hypothesis about the relation between discourse and 

syntax in Old English. We will show that there are clear overall generalizations to 

be made about the clause structure of Old English, and the discourse properties 

of the elements that occur in specific positions in that structure, in particular the 

‘high’ position under discussion here. We will see as well that for each syntactic 

generalization, there are cases that one might call exceptional, so that the facts on 

the surface seem to be rather more diffuse than is warranted by our hypothesized 

system. We will show, however, that these ‘exceptions’ fall into place if we consider


the discourse context. This account, we claim, does justice to both the diffuseness 

and the systematicity of Old English word order, without giving up on the insights 

achieved so far in the syntactic literature on Old English word order. 

The proposal then is that the area to the left of þa/þonne is indeed presuppositional. 

This is supported by the fact that it is the default position for pronominal 

subjects and the preferred position for pronominal objects. 

With a few exceptions, subject pronouns are always to the left of the adverbs. 

Even though the exceptions are sometimes presented so as to question the fixed 

position for subject pronouns (van Bergen 2000), a careful study of the exceptional 

cases shows that they are also subject to certain regularities. Pronominal subjects 

following þa/þonne are either instances of the so-called Proposition-in-Focus, 

when the entire clause is given as new information focus (cf. van Kemenade & 

Milićev to appear) or involve internal (object-like) nominative arguments, and 

essentially behave like object pronouns taking a lower object pronoun position 

(cf. Milićev in preparation). 

Object pronouns also regularly appear there, following the subject pronoun. 

(18) forþæm he wenð þæt he hi þonne ealle hæbbe 

because he knows that he them then all have 

“because he knows that he then had them all” (coboeth,Bo: 24.56.16.1031) 

It is often taken for granted that object pronouns appear in the high position 

optionally, since they can also be separated from the subject pronoun and occur 

to the right of þa/þonne. This notion of optionality holds only if object pronouns 

in different positions are assumed to be of the same type. Upon a closer look, 

however, it becomes clear that the distribution of pronouns is conditioned by 

both structural and pragmatic factors. In order to be found in the high position, 

adjacent to the subject pronoun to the left of þa/þonne, an object pronoun needs 

to be a clitic (i.e., have reduced syntactic form) and needs to have a discourse 

prominent antecedent. The prominence of an antecedent can be reduced in various 

ways, most of them involving narrow/contrastive focus, and when these conditions 

interfere, an object pronoun occurs in a lower position (see Milićev, in 

preparation). 

(19) a. Þa he þa ne mihte hi mid his 

when he then [not could]-narrow focus her with his 

wordum oncerran, þa het he hi ahon be hire locum 

words turn, then ordered he her hang by her locks 

ond hi þreagean mid missenlicum witum 

and her punish with various tortures 

“When he could not avert her with his words, he ordered that she be hung 

by her hair and tortured in various ways” 

(comart3,Mart_5_[Kotzor]: Ap27,A.9.641)


b. Ða he þa ne mihte mid þæm 

when he then [not could with these]-narrow focus 

hi oferswiðan, þa het he hi lædan to beheafdianne. 

her overpower, then ordered he her lead to beheading 

“When he could not overpower her with these, then he ordered that she be 

led to beheading” (comart3,Mart_5_[Kotzor]: Ap27,A.12.642) 

As far as nominal expressions are concerned, the situation is the following: indefinite 

NPs, introducing new discourse entities in the lower subject position, follow 

þa/þonne (20), whereas definite NPs can be found both preceding and following 

the adverbs. 

(20) Gif ðonne hwelc mon forbireð his synna … 

if then any man forebears his sins … 

“If anyone then refrains from his sins” (cocura,CP: 37.265.1.1719) 

The general lack of indefinite nominal expressions to the left of the adverbs is 

straightforward: as the area is reserved for d-linked, presupposed material, new 

discourse entities will not be able to occur there. 

The distribution of definite nominal subjects, on the other hand, is more 

puzzling. Since all definite NPs have the same morphological make-up (the presence 

of the demonstrative pronoun), the category of definiteness alone cannot 

be held responsible for the positional variation. However, certain semantic differences 

can be observed. The definite NP se sacerd “the priest” in (21) is used 

attributively rather than referentially, and is interpreted as “whoever has the 

property of being a priest”. 

(21) Gif ðonne se sacred bið ðæs ungerad lareowdomes, hwæt 

If then the priest is unskilled in instruction, what 

forstent ðonne his gehlyd? 

avails then his cry? 

“if the priest is unskilled in instruction, what avails his cry?” 

(cocura, CP, 15,91,25) 

In the high position, definite nominal expressions receive a specific reading. 

(22) Þa se biscop þæt þa geseah, þe him big sæt, þa 

when the bishop that then saw, who him by sat, then 

licode him seo arfæste dæd þæs cyninges; 

liked him the virtuous deed of.the king 

“When the bishop, who sat next to him, saw that, the king’s virtuous deed 

appealed to him” (cobede,Bede_3: 4.166.8.1593) 

Generic NPs are possible in the high position, but only if they have a discourse 

antecedent, as in (23). Even though not referring to a uniquely identifiable entity,


se þeowa “the servant” in (23b) has an antecedent in the preceding line (23a) (the 

dative pronoun him). This seems to suggest that discourse-givenness overrides 

specificity 

(23) a. Gif se hlaford him þonne wif sealde, sie hio & hire 

if the lord him then wife gave, be she and her 

bearn þæs hlafordes 

child of.the lord 

“If the lord gave him a wife, she and her child will belong to the lord” 

(colawafint,LawAfEl: 11.24) 

b. Gif se þeowa þonne cweðe: Nelle ic from minum 

if the servant then said: not.will I from my 

hlaforde ne from minum wife, ne from minum 

lord nor from my wife nor from my 

bearne ne from minum ierfe, brenge hine þonne 

child nor from my property, bring him then 

his hlaford to ðære dura þæs temples 

his lord to the door the temple 

“If the servant then says: I will not leave my lord, or my wife, or my child or 

my property, let his lord then bring him to the door of the temple” 

(colawafint,LawAfEl: 11.25) 

So far, we have established that there seems to be a strong correlation between the 

high position of an NP and the fact that it is discourse-given. But there are also 

some more problematic cases. 

Even though specificity strongly correlates with anaphoricity, the relation is 

not absolute. Definite expressions without an antecedent can appear in the high 

position when they are associated with a strong sense of presupposition. Discourse 

entities such as God need not be ‘formally’ introduced in the discourse. 

(24) Hu God þa þa mæstan ofermetto gewræc on þæm folce 

how God then the greatest pride advanced on the people 

“How God then advanced the greatest pride on the people” 

(coorosiu,Or_6: 2.134.24.2833) 

The truly exceptional cases are definite/specific nominal expressions after þa/ 

þonne, and with an antecedent. In (25), the definite NP se his gefera has an antecedent 

six lines above the relevant line. 

(25) þa þæt þa se his gefera geseah & ongeat, þa 

when that then the his companion saw and perceived, then 

frægn he hine 

asked he him 

“When his companion saw that, then he asked him” 

(cobede,Bede_4: 26.352.22.3553)


Even though of low frequency, the existence of such examples points to the fact 

that specificity and anaphoricity do not entirely cover the domain to the left of 

the adverbs þa/þonne. The link with the previous discourse, however, is again 

highly relevant. Comparing instances of high and low definite, specific, anaphoric 

subjects in subordinate clauses involving a demonstrative object þæt, Milićev (in 

preparation) shows that the antecedent of the high definite expression needs to 

be sufficiently prominent/accessible in the preceding discourse. This is especially 

the case when another anaphoric expression is found to the left of the adverb, i.e., 

pronominal and demonstrative objects. This may make it necessary to refine the 

account so far, since different levels of discourse givenness clearly play a role in 

the positioning of a discourse old entity (recall that a similar situation holds for 

pronominal objects). We leave it for further research to provide an explanation of 

the interrelations of these more intricate discourse-internal conditions. 

On the basis of the discussion so far, the following generalization seems warranted: 

those cases in which the definite NP is high (on the left of þa/þonne), the 

demonstrative is definite + anaphoric. But we have also seen that there are some less 

clear cases. In the following section, we will develop a statistical approach which 

shows that the generalizations so far established do achieve a very significant level 

of statistical probability. This shows that, counterexamples notwithstanding, the 

analysis presented here appears to be on the right track. 

On the basis of the discussion so far, we come to the following conclusions: 

morpho-syntactically, Old English is tailored to allow a certain amount of discourse 

flexibility. The morpho-syntax allows this by virtue of the extra position created by 

the discourse particle, and the availability of an extra class of referential expression 

extending the range of discourse-anaphoric strategies. In terms of discourse, the 

strongest trigger for an NP to occur in the high position seems to be the presence of 

a discourse antecedent. To further strengthen the conclusions reached so far, we will 

develop a quantitative approach to the relation between the key syntactic properties 

and discourse relations. This is the topic for the next section. 

3. A quantitative approach 

In this section, we develop a methodology which serves to provide statistical 

evidence for the approach presented in this article. The focus of the quantitative 

evidence is on subject-initial subclauses, as it is here that we find the full range 

of subject types (personal pronoun, definite NP, indefinite NP, impersonal man, 

and so on, and thus we need to show that the generalizations we have established 

bear further scrutiny. The methodology developed here is much inspired 

by Bresnan et al. (2007). A database was created with all the relevant subclauses


from YCOE. To help manage the data, the query results from CorpusSearch were 

imported into a simple Microsoft Access database. This was accomplished with 

a specially-written script in the computer language perl, which transformed the 

CorpusSearch output into several tables in ‘comma-separated value’ (CSV) format. 

These tables were then imported into Access (using its interactive ‘Import’ 

command). 

The Access database includes one table for the subclauses found by the queries 

in YCOE, a second table for the complete sentence containing the clause in context, 

and a third table for the manually-entered subject properties. A fourth table was 

added later listing the source documents and the chronological period they belong 

to. These tables are related to each other with appropriate keys and relationships, 

and are edited from a form that arranges the information conveniently. 2 

3.1 Parameters and values 

The discourse-relevant properties of each subject were entered in numerical values. 

We here discuss only those properties primarily relevant for the quantitative analysis 

in this article. 

The first relevant parameter is NP type, the numerical values are as in (26): 

(26) Numerical values for NP type 

1 personal pronoun 

2 weak demonstrative (the se paradigm) 

3 strong demonstrative (this, that, these, those) 

4 definite NP 

5 indefinite NP 

6 reflexive pronoun 

7 Man 

8 proper name 

The second relevant parameter is NP position, the values are in (27): 

(27) Numerical values for NP position 

1 left periphery (e.g., wh-words in questions) 

2 high (preceding þa/þonne) 

3 mid (immediately following þa/þonne) 

4 low (preceding the non-finite verb) 

5 low (following the non-finite verb) 

2. The database and the import script were built by Alexis Dimitriadis. They made it possible 

to analyze a large number of sentences with a considerably increased level of efficiency and 

accuracy.


The third relevant parameter is the specificity of NP. This parameter is especially 

important, as it should allow us to measure the correctness of our hypothesis 

that a NP in the high position refers back specifically to an antecedent in the 

discourse, while a NP in the mid position is more likely to have a generic reading. 

Specificity is here used rather informally, in the sense of ‘uniquely identifiable by 

the speaker’; the values are as in (28). 

(28) Numerical values for Specificity of NP 

1 Specific 

2 non-specific 

The fourth relevant parameter is the presence and NP-type of the antecedent in the 

discourse; the values are as in (29). 

(29) Numerical values for Antecedent type 

0 None 

1 personal pronoun 

2 weak demonstrative 

3 strong demonstrative 

4 definite NP 

5 indefinite NP 

6 Reflexive 

7 Man 

8 proper name 

Every individual example in the database was coded manually for these parameters. 

The numerical values for the parameters were then extracted from the database 

in the form of a comma-separated file. The following gives a good idea of the 

format (bearing in mind that more parameters were coded than explicated here 

for our present purposes) 

(30) “coaelhom,ÆHom_19:253”,2810,0,1,5,2,1,1,2,-1,-1,,,,,,,2,2,“subnps-tmp.q”, 

“coaelhom”,3 

“coaelhom,ÆHom_19:253”,2810,0,1,5,2,1,1,2,-1,-1,,,,,,,3,3,“subnps-tmp.q”, 






“coboeth,Bo:38.117.31”,2344,0,1,4,3,3,1,1,-1,-1,-1,-1,,,-1,-1,3,3,“subtmp-sn.q”, 

“coboeth”,2 

“coboeth,Bo:38.124.1”,2471,0,1,4,2,3,1,1,1,1,2,1,26,4,1,1,3,3,“subnps-tmp.q”, 

“coboeth”,2


The format gives: first the text reference, then a number of parameter values, 

then the source file named after the query files with which YCOE was searched, 

then the source text, and, finally, the subperiod of the text as defined in the Helsinki 

Corpus. 

The results coded in the comma-separated file were then inputted in R (R 

Development Core team 2004). We analysed the data with a generalized linear 

mixed model (Baayen 2007 & Faraway 2006) with the NP Specificity as binary 

dependent variable to model the probability of a specific realization of the high 

NP. The text in which an example was attested was included as a random effect 

factor in the model. Two fixed-effect predictors emerged as significant. As shown 

in Figure 1, the likelihood of a specific realization of the high NP decreased when 

the position of the NP was mid rather than high (log odds contrast coefficient 

–1.46, p < 0.0002). Figure 1 also visualizes that this likelihood increased for 

NPs realizing proper names (log odds contrast coefficient 2.76, p = 0.0186) and 

decreased for indefinite NPs (log odds contrast coefficient –4.24, p < 0.0001). 

The standard deviation of the text random variable was estimated at 1.055. The 

estimated scale was 0.993, indicating that the use of a binomial link function for 

this data set is fully justified. 

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 

probability of specific NP 

o 

high 

position of NP 

o 

0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 


o 

mid definite indefinite proper name 

definiteness 

Figure 1. Relation between NP-type, NP position and specificity of NP. 

Furthermore, we have measured the relevance of a discourse antecedent. A 

generalized linear mixed effect model with a binomial link revealed that the likelihood 

of specific realization of the high NP decreased when it appeared in the mid 

position rather than in the high position (estimated log odds contrast coefficient 

−1.18, p < 0.0001) and that it increased when an antecedent was present (estimated 

log odds contrast coefficient 1.67, p < 0.0001), see Figure 2. The estimated 

o 

o


standard deviation for the text source random effect was 0.80. The estimated scale 

was 0.93, indicating that the choice of the link function is reasonable. 


0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 

high 

mid absent present 

position of NP 

presence of antecedent 

Figure 2. Relation between NP specificity, NP position and the presence of an antecedent. 

. Discussion and conclusion 

o 

o 


0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 

The methodology developed in Section 3 provides substantial corroboration for 

the analysis presented in Section 2. In Section 2, we hypothesized that Old English 

syntax allows a higher degree of discourse flexibility by virtue of an extra syntactic 

position on the left of a discourse particle, and a larger range of referring expressions 

provided by the presence of an articulate paradigm of weak demonstrative 

pronouns serving as definiteness and potentially also specificity markers. We hypothesized 

that the most important trigger for an NP to occur in the position 

left of the discourse particle is the presence of an antecedent in the discourse, 

correlating strongly but not absolutely with specific reference to that antecedent. 

In the statistical model developed in Section 3, these hypotheses were fully confirmed, 

with a very convincing degree of statistical likelihood. Significant correlations 

were established between high position for the NP, definiteness of NP and 

specificity of NP. Furthermore, there is a highly significant correlation between the 

specificity of NP and the presence of a discourse antecedent. All in all, this shows 

that in Old English, syntax and discourse interact in interesting ways, in a fashion 

that was lost in the subsequent history of English, as discussed in van Kemenade & 

Los (2006) and van Kemenade & Milićev (to appear). 

o 

o


This leaves many avenues open for further research, which we will pursue 

in future. This includes further refinement of the discourse reference properties 

as discussed for Old English here, extension of the empirical basis to include more 

discourse particles, such as nu, la, na, eac and so on, consideration of the factors 

discussed here in the positioning of objects. Not least, we will need to consider 

in detail what happened to these properties in the further history of English. The 

analytical model presented here, in conjunction with the statistical model developed 

in Section 3, provide a sound and promising basis for these further questions. 

References 

Baayen, R. Harald. 2007. Analyzing Linguistic Data: A practical introduction to statistics. To 

appear 2007. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Bergen, Linda van. 2000. Pronouns and word order in Old English, with particular reference to the 

indefinite pronoun man. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Manchester. 

Bresnan, Joan, Anna Cueni, Tatiana Nikitina & Harald Baayen. 2007. Predicting the dative alternation. 

Cognitive Foundations of Interpretation ed. by Gerlof Bouma, Irene Kraemer and 

Joost Zwarts, 69–94. Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. 

Denison, David. 2006. Category change and gradience in the determiner system. The Handbook 

of the History of English ed. by Ans van Kemenade and Bettelou Los, 279–304. Oxford and 

Malden, MA: Blackwell. 

Faraway, Julian J. 2006. Extending Linear Models with {R}: Generalized Linear Mixed Effects and 

Nonparametric Regression Models. Boca Raton: Chapman and Hall. 

Haeberli, Eric.1999. Features, categories and the syntax of A-positions. Synchronic and diachronic 

variation in the Germanic languages. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Geneva. 

Haeberli, Eric & Richard Ingham. 2007. “The position of negation and adverbs in Early Middle 

English”. Lingua 117: 1–25. 

Kemenade, Ans van. 1987. Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English. 

Dordrecht: Foris. 

Kemenade, Ans van. 1999. Sentential negation and clause structure in Old English. Negation in 

the History of English ed. by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Gunnel Tottie and Wim van der 

Wurff, 147–165. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Kemenade, Ans van. 2000. Jespersen’s cycle revisited: formal properties of grammaticalization. 

Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms ed. by Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas and 

Anthony Warner, 51–74. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. 

Kemenade, Ans van & Bettelou Los, eds. 2006. The Handbook of the History of English. Oxford 

and Malden, MA: Blackwell. 

Kemenade, Ans van & Tanja Milićev. To appear. Syntax and discourse in Old English and Middle 

English word order. Grammatical Change: Origins, Nature, Outcomes: Proceedings of DIGS 

VIII ed. by Dianne Jonas and Stephen Anderson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Milićev, Tanja. In preparation. Syntax and Discourse linking in Old English. Ph.D. dissertation, 

Radboud University Nijmegen.


Pintzuk, Susan. 1991. Phrase Structures in Competition: Variation and Change in Old English 

Word order. PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. 

R Development Core Team. 2004. R: a language and environment for statistical computing. 

http://R-project.org. 

Rissanen, Matti. 1999. Isn’t it or is it not? On the order of postverbal subject and negative particle 

in the history of English. Negation in the History of English ed. by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van 

Ostade, Gunnel Tottie and Wim van der Wurff, 189–206. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk & Frank Beths. 2003. The York-Toronto-Helsinki 

Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose (YCOE). York: Department of Language and Linguistic 

Science, University of York. Available through the Oxford Text Archive.

The Old English copula weorðan 

and its replacement in Middle English 

Peter Petré 

Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders & University of Leuven 

Hubert Cuyckens 

University of Leuven 

With the aid of a specially compiled corpus, this paper accounts for the 

replacement – mainly by become – of weorðan ‘become’, whose use rapidly 

decreased in Middle English. Drawing on Goldbergian construction grammar, 

the paper posits the existence of a lexeme-independent network of copular 

constructions [Copula + np/ap/…]. Copular uses of weorðan are associated 

with this network, but also form part of a second network exclusive to weorðan, 

which, already in Old English, served as a model for the extension of becuman 

to copular uses. In early Middle English, weorðan reacted to changes in the 

lexeme-independent copular network. Weorðan was no longer used with 

adjectival participles when these were constructionally separated from its most 

frequent collocates, namely human propensity adjectives. Furthermore, reacting 

to an influx of various adjectives in predicate position, becuman, which had no 

collocational preferences, extended its use to these adjectives and eventually took 

over from weorðan completely. 

The focus of this paper is on the use of two verbs in copula-constructions. The first 

of these verbs is obsolete in Present-day English (PDE); it still occurs as worth in 

the nineteenth-century idiom woe worth thee. In Old English (OE), its infinitive 

is usually spelt (ge)weorðan, and in Middle English (ME) (i)worthen. The second 

verb is PDE become (OE becuman, ME bikomen), which, in early ME, is one of 

the two main verbs that replaced weorðan in most of its contexts (the other verb 

is PDE wax, OE weaxan, ME waxen). Because the emphasis in this paper is on the 

OE period, we will from now on refer to these verbs in their OE forms of weorðan 

and becuman. In addition, our main interest will be in the construction types 

. In the present paper, the prefixless verb weorðan and the prefixed verb geweorðan are treated 

as a single lexeme. While this is a simplification, the functions of these two verbs are sufficiently 

similar to justify a global discussion of them.

24 Peter Petré & Hubert Cuyckens 

(A)–(G), whereby (C)–(G) are the ‘real’ copula-constructions ((H) constitutes a 

residual category, containing all marginal constructions, copular as well as noncopular). 

An elaborate definition of the notion ‘copula’ and the various types of 

copula-construction, as exemplified in (C)–(G), will be given in section 2. 

(A) Intransitive construction (no copularizing function; meaning: ‘arise, 

happen, occur’) 

( ) Sona wearð micel eorðbyfung. (c 075. ChrodR : 4.2 ) 

“Immediately a great earthquake occurred.” 

(B) Construction with dative object (no copularizing function; ‘happen to, occur to’) 

(2) Hu mihte æfre englum mara gefea & geofu & blis geweorþan, oþþe mannum 

mara weorðmynd þonne him on þyssum dæge gewearþ? 

(c 000. HomS 46 [BlHom ]: 23. 27) 

“How could ever befall the angels more joy and liberality and merriment, or 

more glory to men, than to him on this day happened?” 

(C) Copula + prepositional phrase (pp) construction (assignment of location/class 

to a subject; ‘come to, turn into’) 

(3) a. Hit wyrð on berne þæt to ðam belimpað. 

“It goes into the barn, that which belongs to them.” 

(c 00. LawGer:3. ) 

b. Gif þu sie Godes sunu, cweþ þæt þa stanas to hlafum geweorþan. 

(c 000. HomS 0 [BlHom 3]:27.4) 

“If you are God’s son, say that the stones turn into breads.” 

(D) Copula + adjectival phrase (ap) construction (assignment of property to a subject; 

‘get, become’) 

(4) For þinum wundrum forhte weorðað. 

“For your miracles they get afraid.” 

(c970. MetPs 64:8) 

(E) Copula + noun phrase (np) construction (assignment of a class to a subject) 

(5) Ond binnan III gearum heo wearð þæs minstres abbud. 

(c 025. Mart [Herzfeld-Kotzor]:De25, C. 5) 

“And within three years she became abbess of that nunnery.” 

(F) Perfect participle construction (i.e., Copula + participle (pple) of intransitive 

verb; assignment of a resulting state to a subject) 

(6) Se hreofla, þe hym ær lange on wæs, wearð þa sona nyðer afeallen. 

(c 075. VSal [Cross]:33.7) 

“The leprosy, which formerly had been long on him, had then immediately 

fallen off [lit. down].” 

(G) Passive participle construction (i.e., Copula + participle (pple) of transitive 

verb; assignment of a resulting state to a subject) 

(7) Þa feoll an of his handum, þæt hit wearð tobrocen & tostrægd on unarimedlice 

styccu. (c 075. GregD [C]:7.49.20- ) 

“Then one [glass lantern] had fallen from his hands, so that it got broken and 

scattered in innumerable pieces.”

Old English weorðan and its replacement in Middle English 25 

(H) Other constructions (e.g., the Copula + Genitive object construction) 

(8) Þa heo þonon hwurfon þa wurdon þa twege cnihtæs al swa fægeres.gen 

hiwæs.gen swa heoræ fæderæs wæron. (c 50. LS 5 [InventCrossNap]:280) 

“When they moved from there then became the two youths also of a fair 

appearance just as their fathers were.” 

The different constructions are here illustrated with the verb weorðan, but as will 

become clear below, most of them are also found for becuman at a particular time 

in the history of this verb. Note also that, in OE, weorðan is not only found in 

copula-constructions, but also in many other constructions (among them, those 

exemplified in (A)–(B)). 

While weorðan was highly frequent in OE, ranging among the five most 

frequent OE verbs, its frequency rapidly decreased in ME, so that it had disappeared 

almost entirely by the end of the fourteenth century. This development, 

taking place during the transition from OE to ME, was far-reaching, as is made 

clear by the following two observations: 

a. Within a relatively short space of time, weorðan disappeared in all its uses. 

b. Instead of a single successor, weorðan apparently got replaced by a set of verbs, 

the most important of which is become. Importantly, not one single verb from 

among this set will assume all former uses of weorðan. 

To our knowledge, no satisfactory explanation for either of these observations has 

so far been given. The main reason for this explanatory gap seems that most of 

the literature on weorðan focusses on one of its functions in isolation, ignoring its 

other functions. 2 In addition to this lack of a comprehensive account of the loss, 

and replacement, of weorðan, very little attention has been paid to OE and ME 

(semi-)copulas in general. Exemplary for this lack of interest is the total absence of 

any literature on the development of become as a copula. 

The present paper is a first attempt to fill these gaps. It is structured as follows. 

A preliminary first section describes the corpus which was compiled for this specific 

purpose. In a second section, it is shown how the different functions of weorðan 

were, originally, interrelated in OE within a network of constructions, i.e., pairings 

of senses of weorðan with syntactic structures in which it occurs. A third section 

focusses on the emergence of the copula becuman, one of weorðan’s successors, and 

its relationship with weorðan. More specifically, it is shown how the development of 

the copularizing function of become can be seen as a process of analogical extension 

2. For instance, Biese ( 932, 952) and Zieglschmidt ( 930) concentrate on weorðan as a 

copula, whereas Frary ( 929) and Kilpiö ( 989) concentrate on weorðan as an auxiliary of the 

passive.


in which becuman copied the copularizing functions of weorðan. A final section, 

then, provides an account of the differences in distribution between weorðan and 

becuman. In addition, this section will also try to shed light on what caused the 

replacement of weorðan in the first place. It will be suggested that a major explanatory 

factor in this respect is a change in the lexeme-independent network of copulaconstructions 

in which the lexeme weorðan was used. 

. Methodological considerations: how (un)representative are the data? 

In general, two approaches exist in research on Old and Middle English, each taking 

a different position on problems that may arise in comparing these two dialects. 

The first approach is mainly philological and descriptive in nature. Its position with 

respect to any problems involved in comparing Old and Middle English is basically 

one of resignation. The second approach is that of theoretical linguistics, which 

is concerned with mechanisms of language change such as grammaticalization 

(i.e., the development of (more) grammatical functions, see Hopper & Traugott 

2003) or lexicalization (i.e., idiomatization). In this approach, problems of comparison 

are more often than not ignored. Either one of these positions is, in essence, 

undesirable. In this section, we will first discuss what underlies these positions; we 

will then explain the principles on which the data sample (or corpus) used in this 

paper was based to avoid either of these undesirable positions. 

First, in philological research on English, it is commonly accepted that a wide 

gap exists between Old and Middle English (see, for instance, Milroy 996: 67 & 

Toon 996: 434–435). Old English manuscripts are predominantly preserved in 

the southern West Saxon (WS) dialect. The earliest Middle English texts (from 

the period 5 – 250), however, are almost exclusively written in the Midland 

dialect, which, if anything, is rather a continuation of the Anglian dialect of Old 

English. The usual conclusion drawn from this observation is one of resignation: 

OE and ME data should not be compared, because they derive from two widely 

differing dialects. 

It cannot be denied that these dialectical differences constitute a fundamental 

problem. And yet, in more theoretically oriented linguistic studies, this problem is 

often largely ignored, and comparisons between Old and Middle English are readily 

made – a point also discussed at length in Lass ( 994: –5). The main argument 

given in defence of this strategy is that the data are so scarce that the best one can 

do is to make use of all of them. In particular, if the language items one is doing 

research on are fairly low or even average in frequency, ignoring is probably the 

only option. However, for the purpose of this paper, i.e., explaining the loss of


weorðan and its replacement by becuman, we are fortunate enough to be dealing 

with the most frequent kind of verbs found in language, namely copulas. Of the 

copulas under investigation, only becuman is somewhat less frequent. Still, because 

of the overall high frequencies involved, we do not have to make the painful choice 

between resigning and ignoring. In this case, it is possible to come to a scientifically 

sound solution. 

To that effect, we compiled our own corpus making use of several existing corpora. 

For the OE period, we used the York Parsed Corpus of OE (YCOE), to which 

we added all verse from the York-Penn parsed Corpus of OE poetry (YPC), as well 

as the complete Paris Psalter and Meters of Boethius. We added the verse to the 

prose YCOE, mainly because OE verse is almost never purely WS, the dialect that 

is least interesting for purposes of comparison between OE and ME data. We also 

included fragment H of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. This fragment contains the 

first instance of becuman + NP, whose absence in the other OE texts of our corpus 

so far appears to constitute an accidental gap, and as such provides important additional 

information on the chronology of becuman. For the ME period, we used the 

Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English (PPCME2), with the addition of 

all texts found additionally in the Helsinki Corpus (mainly verse). We also included 

in the ME data the first half of The Middle English Genesis and Exodus, as well as 

the Winteney manuscript of the Benedictine Rule, which is a twelfth-century copy 

of an OE text, and whose language is sufficiently influenced by the early Middle 

English scribe to consider it an early ME text as regards copula use (it is also a rare 

example of the southern dialect in early ME). 

Given the material thus compiled, there are three possible ways to compare 

the OE and ME data. Applying the policy of ignoring the problem, we could simply 

use all of the material. If we did this, the frequency history of weorðan would 

show a development such as represented by line (A) in Figure . It is at once clear 

that this pattern of changing frequencies is highly unrealistic. Indeed, if it signalled 

a real development within a homogeneous dialect group, weorðan would 

have steadily increased during OE, and then all of a sudden, from the start of ME, 

would have drastically decreased (from 3,339 occurrences pmw in 05 – 50 to 

,5 4 pmw, i.e., less than half, in 5 – 250). This type of scenario is not very 

probable. The reason why the top line in Figure charts an unlikely development 

is that it is obviously based on an overrepresentation of WS in the OE material – in 

effect, this tells us that in WS weorðan was not disappearing at all, but was instead 

on the increase. While this increase in WS is interesting in its own right, our present 

purpose is to compile a corpus enabling a reliable comparison between OE 

and ME. An alternative way of selecting data from the OE material is to take up 

Anglian texts only (either purely Anglian or of mixed dialectical make-up). Such a


3500 

3000 

2500 

2000 

1500 

1000 

500 

0 

750–950 951–1050 1051–1150 1151–1250 1251–1350 

Corpus Size 

(k = 1000 words) 

(A) 

(B) 

(C) 

(D) 

750 – 950 

360 k 

120 k 

120 k 

951–1050 

850 k 

230 k 

110 k 

110 k 

Figure 1. Weorðan: frequencies per million words. 

1051–1150 

340 k 

110 k 

120 k 

30 k 

1151–1250 

270 k 

270 k 

245 k 

190 k 

(A) All texts 

(B) Present 

sample 

(C) Only 

Anglia/Midlands 

(D) = (C) without 

outliers 

selection turns out to be much more promising. The development resulting from 

it is represented in Figure as line (C). 3 

There is still a peculiar increase in late OE. This peak, however, can be 

accounted for by the presence of two outliers. First, in the period 05 – 50, 

Gregory’s Dialogues, which constitutes in itself about half of the entire Anglian 

corpus, contains twice as many occurrences of weorðan as the rest of the Anglian 

material (2,5 3 versus ,303 pmw). Since this text is a later copy of a WS original 

made by an Anglian scribe, rather than a WS copy based on an Anglian original 

(the usual situation for most other texts), it can be assumed that this scribe silently 

adopted the many occurrences of weorðan from the WS original, because 

they were not ungrammatical in his own dialect, only less frequent. The second 

outlier, the Ormulum (?c 200), is even more extreme: 3,089 occurrences pmw 

versus , 26 for the rest of the early ME material. In this case, the explanation 

for the idiosyncratic character of this text lies with its repetitive character and 

the frequent use of two idioms in particular, the first of them patterned after 

the phrase Godd warrþ mann ‘God became man [i.e., through Christ’s birth]’ 

(39 occurrences versus only one in the rest of the ME corpus), the second patterned 

after ʓho wass wurrþenn wiþþ childe ‘She [i.e., Mary or Elizabeth] became 

. Foreign words have been excluded in the word and frequency counts in Figure . 

1251–1350 

175 k 

175 k 

96 k 

96 k


pregnant’ ( 7 occurrences versus two elsewhere). Leaving out these two outliers 

produces the development represented by the bottom dotted line (D). Of all possible 

data selections, the one represented by this line provides the most realistic 

frequency history, and this corroborates the hypothesis that early ME is mainly a 

continuation from the OE Anglian dialect. 

Unfortunately, using only Anglian texts for OE results in a corpus whose size 

is simply too small (see Figure for respective corpus sizes). Therefore, the text 

sample we will use for this paper is a compromise between dialectical homogeneity 

and size. This sample (labelled ‘(B) Present sample’ in Figure ) consists of 

all the material which is not purely WS, as well as a small number of WS texts in 

the period 05 – 50 to increase its sample size. In Figure , no frequency information 

is provided with (B) for the period 750–950 because this period is not 

discussed any further in this paper, which concentrates on the transition from late 

OE to early ME. 

2. The OE network of copula-constructions 

In order to account for the disappearance of weorðan in OE and the emergence 

of becuman as an alternative, we will make use of the Construction Grammar 

framework (see Goldberg 995, 2006; Kay & Fillmore 999 & Croft 200 ). A basic 

notion in this framework is that of construction, a non-compositional combination 

of form (the syntactic component) and meaning (the semantic component) 

(Goldberg 995: 4). As such, constructions constitute a language-specific subset 

of what in cognitive science are called schemas, cognitive devices that capture 

the commonalities within a group of similar occurrences (Taylor 999: 35). 

Furthermore, related constructions form a taxonomic network with different 

levels of abstraction: less schematic (or low-level) constructions are connected 

to each other by means of a more schematic (or high-level) construction (Croft 

200 : 6–29). 

An important assumption of Croft’s construction grammar (Croft 2000) is 

that there are no atomic (i.e., which “cannot be broken down into smaller parts in 

the theory”; Croft 2000: 47) primitive units. More specifically, syntactic categories 

such as nouns, verbs, and adjectives are not the basic, primitive units of syntactic 

representation, and neither are copulas. While in the traditional view, then, copulas 

have been defined as an atomic word class whose members are semantically 

empty, and which always co-occur with lexemes functioning as their predicate 

nucleus (Pustet 200 : 5), in a constructional view, verbs are considered copulas 

only in a derived way, as a class of fillers in a particular role in a copula-construction 

(whose form and meaning are discussed in detail below) – note that, although


the constructional level is non-atomic, it is the basic, or primitive level of syntactic 

representation in construction grammar. To the extent that the term ‘copulaconstruction’ 

evokes the idea of a category of copulas, it is somewhat of a misnomer, 

but it is used here simply for reasons of terminological convenience. 

Adopting a constructional framework allows us to reconsider constructions 

(A)–(G), which served as an illustrative sample of the constructions in which 

weorðan occurred in OE. Although these constructions were given in the form of a 

list, numbered (A) through (G), it is important to realize that they do not represent 

isolated uses of weorðan. In two different ways, they form part of a larger network 

of constructions. First, most of them, and particularly (C)–(G), in which weorðan 

is used as a copula, is an instantiation of a more schematic construction existing 

independently of the lexeme weorðan. At this level, for each of them cognate constructions 

exist involving different copulas (See Figure 2, where Subj = subject, 

Cop = copula, and SubjComp = subject complement). Second, the verb weorðan 

itself unifies these constructions into a single network, which can therefore be 

called a lexeme-dependent or partially substantive network, which means that its 

top node is situated at a lower level of schematicity than is the case with the general 

copula network (See Figure 3). 

NP.Subj Cop PPLE.SubjComp 

-Ag; -Vol; Predicates result 

NP.Subj IS PPLE.SubjComp 

… 

NP.Subj BIÐ PPLE.SubjComp 

… 

NP.Subj WIERÐ PPLE.SubjC 

… 

NP.Subj Cop XP.SubjComp 

-Agentive; -Volitional 

NP.Subj Cop AP.SubjComp 

-Ag; -Vol; Pred. property 

NP.Subj IS AP.SubjComp 

… 

NP.Subj BIÐ AP.SubjComp 

… 

NP.Subj WIERÐ AP.SubjC… 

… 

… 

C, F, H 

… 

G D E 

Figure 2. The OE network of copula-constructions. 

NP.Subj Cop NP.SubjComp 

-Ag; -Vol; Pred. class

G 

NP.Subj WIERÐ PPLE.SubjComp 

… 

D 

Old English weorðan and its replacement in Middle English 

NP.Subj WIERÐ (XP.SubjComp) 

-Agentive; -Volition; +Change (sudden) 

NP.Subj WIERÐ AP.SubjComp 

Figure 3. The constructional network marked by weorðan. 

… 

As regards the first type of constructional network, it is commonly known 

that weorðan is not the only copula found in OE; there are also other verbs that are 

used in the construction types (C)–(G): these are the highly frequent verbs is (no 

infinitive), beon and wesan (functioning as a suppletive past tense for both is and 

beon), as well as (less frequently) some verbs of position such as standan ‘stand’, 

licgan ‘lie’, belifan ‘remain’. Examples (9)–( 6) are illustrations of beon and is in 

these construction types. 

(C) Copula + pp 

(9) ond on ða swiðran healfe þæm ingange […] is stænen bedd seofon fota lang. 

(c 000. Mart 5 [Kotzor]: Ma27, A. 4) 

“And on the right side of the entrance […] is/stands a stone bed seven feet long.” 

( 0) & mon þonne nohtes wyrþe his saule ne deþ […], þa hwile þe he her on life biþ. 

(c970. HomS 4 [BlHom 4]: 95.242) 

“And then one will not do anything profitable for his soul […], as long as he is 

alive here.” 

(D) Copula + ap 

( ) His name is holy & dredeful. (c 350. Earliest Prose Psalter: 39) 

“His name is holy and dreadful.” 

( 2) Geseoþ nu hu bliþe þa earman beoþ, þonne hi mon mid mete & mid hrægle reteþ. 

(c970. HomS 4 [BlHom 4]: 4 .50) 

“Behold, now, how joyful the poor are whenever any one comforts them with 

food and clothing.” 

E 

… 

NP.Subj WIERÐ NP.SubjComp 

… 

A, B, C, F, H


(E) Copula + np 

( 3) Ha nis nan husewif ach is anchurcheancre. (c 225( 200). Ancrene Riwle-2:II.303) 

“She is not a housewife, but [she] is a church-anchoress.” 

(F) Perfect participle 

( 4) Nu is þæt bearn cymen. (c970. Christ: 66) 

“Now the child has come.” 

(G) Passive participle 

( 5) Iudas […] is cwylmed mid deoflum on þæm ecum witum. 

(c970. HomS 7 [BlHom 5]: 63. 42) 

“Judas […] is tortured by devils in eternal punishment.” 

( 6) He byþ gehæled. (c 025. Lch [Herb]: 0. ) 

He will be cured.” 

The main difference between these copulas is of an aspectual nature. For instance, 

weorðan + ap in (4) signals that the transition from ‘not-afraid’ to ‘afraid’ constitutes 

a sudden change (similar to PDE get), is + ap in ( ) expresses a timeless 

truth, and, finally, beoþ + ap in ( 2) is used to express a general condition. Similar 

aspectual distinctions can be read off from the other examples as well. Still, to a 

large extent, these verbs are used as copulas in highly similar contexts. This distributional 

overlap, we would like to argue, has led in (pre-)OE to the emergence 

of a series of high-level constructions in which aspectual differences are no longer 

represented, and only syntactic and semantic similarities between the different 

copulas are preserved. Syntactically, these high-level schemas represent the shared 

potential to co-occur with certain types of subject complement (i.e., pp, ap, np, 

and pple). With each syntactic schema corresponds a semantic schema. In the 

case of NP complements, the shared semantics is that of categorization of the subject 

into a class of entities, in the case of aps that of assigning a property to the 

subject, in the case of pps that of assigning a location or class to a subject, and in 

the case of pples that of a resulting state to a subject. At a still higher level, these 

constructions (C)–(G) can be considered part of an even bigger constructional 

network, to which they are related through an even more schematic construction. 

Syntactically, at least in OE, all the different types of subject complement share the 

property (as in most Indo-European languages) of being in the nominative case, 

and they are obligatory. 4 Semantically, the properties of non-agentivity and nonvolitionality 

of the subject are shared. Furthermore, the subject complements coconstitute 

(with the copulas) what is being predicated of the subject, whereby the 

semantic content of the copula verb is subsidiary to that of the subject complement. 

4. As prepositions are uninflected for case in OE, the case criterion is not relevant for PPs.

Old English weorðan and its replacement in Middle English 

The subsidiary status of the copula verb can, for instance, be inferred from the 

scope of the negation in sentences such as Druncen wyrhta ne wyrð he na welig “A 

drunken worker does not become rich” (c 075. ChrodR :60.6), where the negative 

marker invariably negates the subject complement rather than the copula verb. 

Similarly, Ne becumaþ heo to ænigre reste “They do not get to any resting-place” 

(HomU 5. [Scragg]: 75), for instance, mainly differs from Margareta to ece 

reste becom “Margaret got to [her] eternal resting-place” (LS 6 [Margaret]:2. 0) 

in the negation of the goal location. 5 It is this unique pairing of form and meaning 

which defines the copula-construction and which allows us to treat not only 

[Copula + ap/np] but also [Copula + pp] and [Copula + pple] as instances of the 

copula-construction. A diagram of the resulting taxonomically structured network 

of copula-constructions in OE is given in Figure 2 (the aspectual distinctions 

marked by the individual verbs have been compressed for the sake of clarity). 

What is important about this constructional network is the fact that the topmost 

schematic construction as well as its immediate daughter constructions (which are 

situated on an intermediate level of schematicity) are not associated with a particular 

lexical form. In other words, the similar behaviour of weorðan, beon and wesan 

points to the existence of a constructional network at least to some extent independent 

of one verb in particular. As such, the existence of a network of schematic copula-constructions 

is not very surprising, as copula-constructions also behave very 

similarly cross-linguistically (Stassen 997; Pustet 200 & Croft 200 : 283–3 9). 

As regards the second type of constructional network, all uses of weorðan can 

also be considered as interrelated, if we assume that weorðan is a single, polysemous 

lexeme rather than a single form covering several unrelated meanings. In 

favour of a single network is the shared semantics of ‘(sudden) transition into a 

new state’ found in all uses of weorðan. Syntactically as well, we can see a common 

denominator, in that weorðan is nearly always used intransitively, being either 

non-copular in nature, or being used as an intransitive copula linking a subject to 

a subject complement. The lexeme-dependent constructional network marked by 

weorðan, then, is represented in Figure 3. 

In addition to the existence of (i) a lexeme-independent constructional copula 

network in which weorðan participates and (ii) a constructional network specific 

to the lexeme weorðan itself, it should be noted that the affinity between differ- 

5. Compare in this respect He was not rushed to hospital [which is why he was dead on arrival], 

where the PP to the hospital fills the same slot as the PP in a copula-construction. In this sentence, 

the negative marker only affects the manner of motion towards the goal-PP, while the fact 

that the patient actually ended up in hospital is not negated; this suggests that it is the information 

in the PP which is subsidiary to that in the verb, and the PP hence cannot fill the subject 

complement slot.


ent subconstructions within these networks is not always equally strong. In this 

respect, the link between APs and participles deserves special attention, as it is 

particularly strong in the case of weorðan in comparison to the other copulas (this 

strength is indicated in Figure 3 by a dotted line). 

i. In general, (D) and (G) are very similar syntactically, because, in OE, the past 

participle in (G) still behaves to a large extent as an adjective (denoting the resulting 

quality of the subject after the event has taken place). More specifically, participles 

still show number and case agreement with the subjects they are predicated 

of. This feature is shared by all copulas. 

( 7) His deoflu:nom.m.pl mid him wurdon aworpene:nom.m.pl on hellegrund. 

(c970. LS 20 [AssumptMor[BlHom 3]]: 59.378) 

“His devils, together with him, were thrown on the bottom of hell.” 

ii. In the constructions marked by weorðan, however, this link seems to have 

been stronger than it was in those marked by other copulas. Syntactically as well as 

semantically, the strong link between adjectives and participles is evidenced in the 

occasional occurrence of the co-ordination of adjectives and participles following 

a single occurrence of weorðan. 

( 8) Þanon eorþe wearð eall mid blode mane gemenged:pple, misdædum fah.adj. 

(c970. PPs: 05.28) 

“Thence the earth got wholly mixed with blood-guilt, filthy with evil deeds.” 

( 9) And hys flæsc wearð eall gesett:pple and hal.adj geworden. 

(c 075. VSal [Cross]:9. ) 

“And his flesh had become entirely set and sound.” 

(20) & ward swa wrað.adj & swa awed:pple; þt he al o wodschipe demde hire to deaþe. 

(c 225. St. Margaret:87) 

“And [he] became so angry and so angered, that he wholly out of anger judged 

her to death.” 

Moreover, a look at the distribution of complement types of weorðan (see Figure 4) 

in the sample used reveals that the constructional profile of weorðan is dominated 

precisely by such adjectival and participial complements, which makes a high degree 

of cognitive association between the two all the more likely (the juxtaposition of adjectival 

and participial complements, as illustrated in ( 8)–(20), occurs twelve times 

and is classified under (D); n gives the raw frequencies on which Figure 4 is based). 

iii. Finally, the drift towards the disappearance of weorðan in all these constructions 

points towards the homogeneous status of the network associated with 

weorðan. This homogeneous status, or the existence of strong links between all 

of the constructions marked by weorðan, is corroborated by the gradual loss

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

30% 

20% 

10% 

0% 

951–1050 

(n = 572) 

1051–1150 

(n = 252) 


1151–1250 

(n = 360) 

Figure 4. Weorðan, distribution of constructions. 

of weorðan in all its uses, and at the same pace, as is made clear by the largely 

uniform distribution of the weorðan-constructions in Figure 4. If one of these 

constructions had been isolated from the others, a possible scenario would have 

been that weorðan was lost in this construction only. Consider in this respect the 

development of the modals, which in OE still occurred with nps as fully transitive, 

lexical verbs, but which, partially because of the widening gap in syntax and 

semantics between transitive constructions and constructions involving infinitival 

complements, shed off their use as transitive, lexical verbs + np during the ME 

period (see, for instance, Plank 984). 

. The development of becuman as a copula 

1251–1350 

(n = 77) 

H Other constructions 

G Passive Participle 

F Perfect Participle 

E Copula + NP 

D Copula + AP 

C Copula + PP 

B With dative object 

A Intransitive 

In ME, the frequency of weorðan decreased, and a range of alternatives emerged: 

arise in (A); become in (B)–(E) (become to nought, become rich, become a Christian); 

grow in (D)–(E) (grow old); turn in (C)–(D) (turn into rain, turn pale); the now 

obsolete wax in (A) and (D)–(E) (wax old, wax a man); fall and come in (D) (Biese 

932 & Visser 963: 97–208). In those cases where weorðan was used as a marker of 

the future (as for instance in (35) below), it is replaced by will/shall + inf (Wischer 

2005). Where weorðan, as in (G), contributed a specific semantics in combination 

with a passive participle (e.g., its connotation of sudden change of state) which was 

different from that of beon and is, it is not immediately clear which constructions 

existed to express these semantics in ME (Mustanoja 960: 592).


One of the newly emerging alternatives, becuman, deserves special attention, as 

it is the most frequent alternative from the very beginning, and, more importantly, 

because it went down the grammaticalization path the furthest, eventually shedding 

off all its non-copularizing functions. By ME already, becuman had assumed 

most copula functions of weorðan, as is illustrated in (2 )–(23). 

(C) Copula + pp 

(2 ) Vor al þe lost of þise wordle […] ne byeþ bote a drope of deau/ to þe ziȝþe of þe 

welle. […] huanne me wenþ hine nime: he ualþ agrund/ and to naʓte becomþ. 

(c 340. Ayenbite of Inwit:9 ) 

“Because all the lust of this world […] is but a drop of dew in comparison to the 

well. When one thinks to take it, it falls down and comes to nought [= becomes 

nothing].” 

(D) Copula + ap 

(22) And he bicom riʓth fyne wroþ. (c 400 (?a 300). Kyng Alisaunder I:235) 

“And he became pretty much angry.” (compare (20)) 

(E) Copula + np 

(23) Þe uerste is. huanne/ eny uor drede/ of pouerte. oþer uor couaytise/ uor to wynne: 

uorzaʓþ god/ and þe cristene bileaue. and becomþ bougre. oþer ieu. oþer sarasin. 

(c 340. Ayenbite of Inwit:43) 

“The worst is, when anyone, because of dread for poverty, or for the desire to 

make profit, abandons God and the catholic belief, and becomes heretic, or Jew, 

or Saracen.” 

The only frequent function of weorðan not found for becuman is its use with participial 

complements. Otherwise, the types of construction found with becuman in 

ME are very similar to the major types associated with weorðan. Furthermore, the 

relative frequencies of becuman in ME differ far less from those of weorðan than in 

the preceding OE periods, as is made clear by a comparison of Figure 5 (in which 

occurrences of weorðan + past participle are left out) to Figure 6. In sum, in the 

ME period becuman has acquired all the major functions found with weorðan: it 

occurred as an intransitive verb meaning ‘arise’, with a dative object meaning ‘befall’, 

and as a copula with Prepositional, Adjectival and Nominal subject complements. 

The most striking difference between weorðan and becuman in ME (apart 

from the absence of participial complements) is the higher number of NP subject 

complements in the case of becuman. 

While these relative frequencies make clear that weorðan and becuman behave 

similarly in early ME, they also reveal the vast difference between the two verbs in 

OE. Indeed, while weorðan in OE showed copula uses with adjectival and nominal 

subject complements (in addition to intransitive uses, uses with dative objects, 

and copula uses with pp complements), becuman saw a relatively high proportion of 

copula uses with pp complements, but was hardly ever used as a copula marking

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

30% 

20% 

10% 

0% 


Figure 5. Weorðan, distribution of constructions (without participial constructions). 

100% 

90% 

80% 

70% 

60% 

50% 

40% 

30% 

20% 

10% 

0% 

951–1050 

(n = 401) 

951–1050 

(n = 98) 

1051–1150 

(n = 142) 

1051–1150 

(n = 86) 

1151–1250 

(n = 249) 

1151–1250 

(n = 68) 

Figure 6. Becuman, distribution of constructions. 

1251–1350 

(n = 53) 

1251–1350 

(n = 45) 


E Copula + NP 

D Copula + AP 

C Copula + PP 




E Copula + NP 

D Copula + AP 

C Copula + PP 



adjectival or nominal subject complements. It is only from early ME onwards that 

adjectival and nominal subject complements with becuman increased; and this 

increase was quite dramatic, especially if we take into account that our corpus 

sample was set up to be as well balanced as possible. If we assume that the corpus 

was representative in this respect, the quick success of becuman in these new copularizing 

functions constitutes an unprecedented type of diachronic development. 

It would mean an increase from almost zero frequency prior to 50 to a frequency


of 75 occurrences pmw in the period 5 – 250 (more or less one occurrence in 

half an hour of spoken language). 

Such a sudden change is improbable, at least in the constructional framework 

we adopt. According to Croft (2000), change takes place in the replication of utterances 

(unlike in some generative theories, according to which it is the grammar 

as a unit that changes through its replication by the child). In a first stage, one or 

more individuals replicate one or more utterances while altering one particular 

element in them. The result of this process is an innovation. While an innovation 

in an individual’s language is, by definition, sudden, the spread of an innovation 

in a linguistic community – such as the spread of becuman in the new ap/np 

copula-constructions – involves speakers replicating the new utterances (coined by 

the innovators) until the gradual cumulation of this process of replication reaches 

a point at which a change has taken place in the language as a whole (for empirical 

support, see Croft 2000: 53–78). In this view, it is very unlikely that the early Middle 

English texts, with their overall high frequency of becuman in copula-constructions, 

all represent sudden independent innovations, simultaneously providing the necessary 

spread in the language for the change to occur. Those advocating the resignation 

policy will find a good argument in this case: Old and Middle English simply do 

not compare. However, a more satisfying explanation is not impossible. In this respect, 

it is crucial that at least three examples of construction (D) (Copula + ap) can 

be attested in the OE material; this suggests that becuman had already developed 

a copula function by the end of the tenth century, at least with adjectival subject 

complements (these occurrences are considerably earlier than the earliest attestations 

given in the OED and MED, which date from the mid-twelfth century): 

(24) Us milde bicwom meahta waldend æt ærestan þurh þæs engles word. 

(c970. Christ (Exeter):26.820) 

“The wielder of powers became merciful to us at first through the word of the angel.” 

(25) Gemun ðu min Drihten. þonne ðu mihtig becymst. 

(c 000. ÆCHom II, 4. : 46.253) 

“Remember my Lord, when you become powerful.” 6 

(26) Breac longe ær wlencea under wolcnum; he þy wyrs meahte þolian þa þrage, 

þa hio swa þearl becom. (c970 MetBo : 55.75) 

“[Boethius’] had possessed for a long time before a pride under the sky; he 

could endure this painful time the worse, as it became so strong.” 

These examples indicate that the OE data we have available are at least misleading. 

One plausible explanation is that the OE manuscripts are all very conservative 

in nature, refusing to pick up the new development occurring with a verb such 

6. This example is not derived from the present sample, but from WS material.


as becuman, and trying to copy the Alfredian model of ‘good’ Anglo-Saxon (see 

Milroy 996: 67 & McWhorter 2002). Apparently, the one genre which seems less 

resistant to new function words is that of poetry, from which two of the three examples 

above derive. In this respect, therefore, OE poetry seems the genre closest 

to the constructional potential of spoken language of that time, a finding which is 

in sharp contrast to the lexical archaisms found in it. 

Having described the establishment of becuman in late OE and early ME, the 

question remains how becuman spread to the ap and np copula-constructions. We 

would like to argue that the basic mechanism underlying this spread is a process 

of analogical extension of becuman on the basis of the similarity of its functional 

and semantic range with that of the verb weorðan. This ‘copying’ of constructions 

of weorðan by becuman was likely enabled by the prior existence of a firm distributional 

(and semantic) overlap between these two verbs. While beon and wesan, by 

the time of OE, were already grammaticalized to such an extent that their original 

semantic content was hardly retained, weorðan, besides its abstract function as a 

copula denoting the aspect of sudden change, still preserved its original spatial 

sense in a considerable number of occurrences. It is precisely in these spatial uses 

that a strong parallelism is revealed between weorðan and becuman. The similarity 

between weorðan and becuman in this respect is illustrated in (27)–(30). 

(27) a. Þa wæs geworden to him sweg, se wæs of heofenum sended on windes 

onlicnesse. (c970. HomS 47 [BlHom 2]: 33.4 ) 

b. 

“Then a sound had come to him, which was sent from heaven on a 

resemblance of wind.” 

Swylce eac ær þam becwom hlisa to him þære cristenan æfestnesse, forþon he 

Cristen wif hæfde. (c900. Bede : 4.58. ) 

“For (earlier) rumour had come to him of the Christian religion, because 

he had a Christian wife.” 

(28) a. And cwædon hwæt þæt tacen beon myhte þæt on Ysrahela lande 

geworden wæs. (c 00. Nic [A]: 4.3. ) 

b. 

“And [they] said what that sign might be that had arrived in the land of Israel.” 

Ða becwoman we on þa londgemæro Medo & Persa. (c 000. Alex: 23.7) 

“Then we arrived at the territories of the Medes and the Persians.” 

(29) a. Swa doð wudufuglas; þeah hi wel sien, tela atemede, gif hi on treowum 

weorðað holte tomiddes, hræðe bioð forsewene heora lareowas, þe hi lange ær 

tydon and temedon. (c970. MetBo 3: 72.35) 

b. 

“They act like wild fowl; even if they are good, well tamed, if they get/come 

in the trees amidst the forest, promptly their teachers are neglected, who 

taught and tamed them long before.” 

And þa he on þa ceastre becom Libie, he þa sona axode hwæt hyt soðes wære, 

for hwig hym man swa færlice æfter asende. (c 075. VSal [Cross]: .2)


“And when he came/got in the fortress Libia, he then immediately asked 

what it was really, why they sent him so suddenly after.” 

(30) a. Gif ðu weorðest on wege rihtum up to ðæm earde, […] ðonne wilt þu secgan 

and sona cweðan: ðis is eallunga min agen cyð, eard and eðel. 

(c970. MetBo 24: 90.44) 

“If you get on the way right up to that country, […] then will you call out 

and immediately say: this is indeed my own home, soil and country.” 

b. Se becom on wege to Prisce þam hæþnan gerefan þær he deofolgeldum geald. 

(c 000. Mart 5 [Kotzor]:Se4, A.2. 639) 

“He got on the way to Prisce, the heathen sheriff, where he worshipped 

images of the devil.” 

In addition to this similar use with locational complements, becuman had developed 

an intransitive sense ‘happen, occur’ (possibly independently of weorðan), and a related 

construction with a dative object, meaning ‘befall, happen to’. These extensions 

from the original sense of becuman ‘arrive at’ result from applying the (well-known) 

metaphor Time is Space (cf. Lakoff & Johnson 980; Traugott & Dasher 2002: 

75–78). Taking these senses also into account clearly strengthens the initial similarity 

between weorðan and becuman. Consider in this respect examples (3 )–(32): 

(A) Intransitive, sense ‘happen, occur, arise’ 

(3 ) a. sona wearð micel eorðbyfung. (c 075. ChrodR : 4.2 ) 

“Immediately a great earthquake occurred.” 

b. Þær becom þa on þære hwile mycel swetnysse stænc. 

(a 50. LS 28 [Neot]: 0. 03) 

“There arose then in that period a strong fragrance of sweetness.” 

(B) With dative complement, sense ‘come upon, happen to, befall’ 

(32) a. Lyt sorgodon hwylc him þæt edlean æfter wurde. (c 000. Andreas: 227) 

“They little cared what retribution might come upon/happen to them 

afterwards.’ 

b. & hie gesecgað þæm men þe hie frineð, hwæt godes oþðe yfles him becuman 

sceal. (c 000. Alex:32. ) 

“And they tell the men who ask them, what good or evil shall come 

upon/befall them.” 

In later OE, the initial similarity between becuman and weorðan caused becuman 

to copy other functions of weorðan as well, which it may not have developed without 

this model. As well, it sometimes adjusted its semantics in already existing 

patterns to the abstract copularizing semantics of weorðan. For instance, the hespatial sense of becuman in the construction with a prepositional complement is occasionally 

lost, resulting in becuman acquiring an abstract sense similar to the one 

frequently found for weorðan + pp. Compare (33) with (3b): 

(33) Gif sio adl biþ to langsum becymeþ þonne on wæterbollan.


(c950. Lch II [2]:36. .5) 

“If the disease is protracted too much, [it] turns then into dropsy.” 

Importantly, becuman assumed a copularizing function with adjectival subject 

complements, such as those occurring in (24)–(26). Sentence (24), here repeated 

as (34), provides evidence that this usage of becuman is directly based on similar 

uses found with weorðan rather than being an independent development. The collocation 

becuman + dative + milde ‘merciful’ found in this example has a frequent 

counterpart in which weorðan is used instead, an illustration of which is given in 

(35) (in total, there are 3 occurrences of this pattern in our sample). 

(34) us milde bicwom meahta waldend æt ærestan þurh þæs engles word. 

(c970. Christ (Exeter):26.820) 

“the wielder of powers became merciful to us at first through the word of the angel.” 

(35) … þu me on mode milde weorðe æfter þinre spræce. 

(c970. PPs: 

“ … you will be merciful of mind to me in harmony with your words.” 

8.58) 

Later evidence that becuman gradually assumed the functions of weorðan can be 

found by comparing different manuscripts of the same text. In the sentences given 

in (36) for instance, the earlier manuscript has weorðan, while the later one has 

becuman: 

(36) a. He wearð gehyrsum toþi, þæt he willes deað þrowade. 

(c 025. Benedictine Rule [version translated by Æþelwold]) 

“He grew obedient to the extent that he willfully endured death.” 

b. He becom ʓehyrsum anan to deaþe. 

(c 225. Benedictine Rule [early ME, Winteney version]) 

“He grew obedient all the way to death.” 

In sum, different kinds of evidence suggest that the development of becuman as 

a marker of copula-constructions was made possible, or was at least considerably 

facilitated, by the existence of an original similarity in distribution with weorðan, 

which served as a basis for a process of analogical extension and, in turn, enabled 

becuman to become a member of the group of lexemes used in the constructional 

network of copula-constructions. 

4. Distributional differences between weorðan and becuman explained 

In Section 2, we posited a general network of copula-constructions in OE, and, 

distinct from it, a constructional network specific to weorðan. The discussion in 

Section 3 has offered an explanation for the emergence of an extensive copularizing


function realized by becuman in late Old and early Middle English. The questions 

to be tackled in this section, then, are: why did becuman (and weaxan and several 

other verbs) extend to the network of copula-constructions in the first place, and 

why did weorðan disappear from this network (and, as a consequence, disappear 

altogether)? Ideally, an answer to these questions should also explain the distributional 

differences between weorðan and the newly emerging copulas. 

In general, the answer lies with two kinds of changes in the general network 

of copula-constructions. Before going into these changes into somewhat 

greater detail, it is useful to briefly summarize them. The first change involves 

the emancipation (Bybee 2003: 54) of a ‘true’ passive construction out of construction 

(G), which was originally a construction in which a copula combined 

with an adjectival participle based on a transitive verb and predicating a result 

[[np.Subj Cop pple.SubjComp]/[-Ag.; -Vol; +Result]]. The result of this emancipation 

is that the link (represented by the solid line in Figure 2) from the 

topmost schematic copula-construction (i.e., [[np.Subj Cop xp.SubjComp]/ 

[-Agentive; -Volitional]]) to this construction is lost. However, the constructional 

network of weorðan resisted this split-off, and, as a consequence, weorðan must 

have sounded increasingly archaic. By the same token, this split also prevented 

becuman from spreading to the emancipated passive construction. The second 

change in the constructional network consists in its accommodating the requirements 

of newly appearing time-stable predicates (certain kinds of APs as well as 

NPs) in combination with copulas of change. While there is no principled reason 

why weorðan would not meet these requirements, its high degree of entrenchment 

in collocational patterns involving time-unstable predicate types prevented it from 

spreading to the new, time-stable ones. By contrast, becuman, being a new copula, 

had no such (conservative) collocational profile, and was thus perfectly suited to 

fill this need, as will further be illustrated below. The emergence of new kinds of 

predicates, therefore, also helps explain the success of becuman. 

The first of these changes, the development of a passive construction, was 

made possible by the disappearance – caused by phonetic erosion – of adjectival 

endings on participles and the concomitant loss of agreement marking between 

subject and subject complement. This, in turn, gave rise to a new syntactic pattern 

(Mustanoja 960: 440): through structural reanalysis, the [Cop + Adjectival 

Participle] construction (G) developed into a periphrastic verbal construction of 

the passive [Subj Aux V], in which the former copula became an auxiliary containing 

largely grammatical information (tense, number, aspect) and in which the 

verbalized participle carried all the lexical content (Langacker 99 : 27– 47 & 

Denison 993). Moreover, this new passive construction also developed a new 

function (see Seoane 2006), whereby the subject of the passive was conceived as 

the patient of a transitive event rather than as the non-agent of an instance


of intransitive predication. This new semantics of the subject enabled using 

the passive construction as a way to topicalize the patient of a transitive event. 

While topic function of a transitive patient could still be signalled by OSV word 

order in OE, this order was no longer available in ME, during which period the 

SVO order typical of PDE was established. The new SVO order, then, required 

a new topicalizing strategy, and using the passive (or formerly, Copula + pple) 

construction for this purpose was the easiest way out. As such, the new function 

of the passive implied a definite split-off from construction (D), which, being a 

one-participant construction without any (implicit) agent, had never been used 

in this way. 

While it is generally assumed that this new function only developed in late 

ME, there is evidence that it already came into being in early ME, precisely the 

period in which weorðan started to disappear. Restricting ourselves to a single 

piece of evidence for this earlier date (for a more detailed account, see Petré 2006), 

let us consider the emergence of prepositional passives. Contrary to what is often 

assumed, the first attestation of this passive type, given in (37) already dates from 

the thirteenth century. 

(37) Þer wes sorhe te seon hire leoflich lich faren so reowliche wið. 

(c 225. St.Juliana (Roy):22. 95) 

“It was painful to see her lovely body dealt so cruelly with.” 

(Taken from Denison 985: 9 ) 

The emergence of this remarkable construction can be seen as constituting a 

clear actualization of the new function of the passive. First, it differs in its syntax 

from construction (D) (Copula + ap), and, second, it also illustrates how the new 

topicalizing strategy was implemented. Compare in this respect (37) to (38) and 

(39) respectively: 

(38) *he is afraid of (meaning: someone was afraid of him) 

(39) ?With her body they dealt cruelly (infelicitous construction from ME onwards) 

While weorðan is found with past participles during its entire period of use, it is 

not found with prepositional passives, nor is there any indication that it participated 

in the new topicalizing function of the passive construction. We would like to 

argue that this lack of participation can be accounted for by means of the close association 

between participle and adjectival constructions with weorðan, described 

in Section . This association prevented the spread of weorðan to non-adjectival 

passives. As a consequence, weorðan started to sound archaic and eventually was 

lost. The split of the passive from the rest of the copula network can also explain 

that becuman was not used in combination with participles at all. The spread of


becuman to different copula-constructions is a gradual process, which seems to 

have proceeded from Copula + pp (early OE already) to Copula + ap (see (24)–(26)) 

to Copula + np (twelfth century). Apparently, then, before becuman was able to 

extend to the Copula + pple construction, this construction had split from the 

other copula-constructions, in that way creating an associative gap that could not 

be overcome by becuman. An additional reason why becuman did not spread to 

the passive construction can be found in its semantics. Unlike weorðan, becuman 

sometimes seems to carry a connotation of volition (see, for instance, the free 

choice involved in becoming a Jew, Saracen or heretic in (23)). Such a connotation 

is infelicitous in the case of a true passive construction, in which the patient is emphatically 

involuntarily affected by the action denoted by the participle. 

Besides a possible connotation of volition, becuman also seems to express a 

more gradual type of change than weorðan, and is, in its copular use, similar in 

meaning to a concept such as ‘develop into’, a sense that naturally derives from 

its original spatial meaning ‘come to some place’, which expresses an accomplishment. 

Together, these two semantic components of becuman can be related to the 

second change we mentioned, as they provide the main reason for the development 

of becuman into a copula, namely its usefulness in meeting the need of new 

types of predicates introduced in the English language. Specifically, comparing 

the time-stability of the subject complements collocating with weorðan to those 

collocating with becuman enables us to provide an elegant explanation of the loss 

of weorðan and the specific development of becuman. 

The OE verb weorðan seems to have had a general preference for time-unstable 

collocates. More specifically, its most frequent collocates are either resultative participles 

or adjectives denoting human propensity, such as angry or happy. The first 

group of collocates, that of resultative participles, is inherently time-unstable. The 

participle hurt in he got hurt refers to the fact that being hurt may be associated 

with a resulting feeling of pain, a state that does not last very long (as compared, 

for instance, to an entire lifetime) – it never refers to an enduring state of pain. The 

second group of collocates of weorðan derives largely from the semantic field of 

human propensity; examples are: milde ‘merciful’, forht ‘afraid’, bliðe ‘joyful’, sæne 

‘hesitant’, wrað ‘angry’, yrre ‘angry’, fyrwitgeorn ‘curious’, ormod ‘despairing’. These 

adjectives are low on the time-stability scale, and differ considerably from more 

time-stable adjectives such as those denoting age (old, young) or those denoting 

material (wooden, silver) (see Stassen 997 & Pustet 200 ). The similar degree of 

time-stability found in participles and adjectives collocating with weorðan is an 

additional indication that a strong link existed between them. The co-ordination 

of wrað ‘wroth’ and awed ‘angered’ in (20), for instance, shows that the same timeunstable 

concept can be expressed sometimes by both participles and adjectives.


By contrast, the verb becuman, if used as a copula, does not have such a 

restricted collocational profile and could also be found with more time-stable 

adjectives, such as those denoting age or colour in (40) and (4 ) respectively: 

(40) Ich was ʓonge, and by-come olde. (c 350. Earliest Prose Psalter:44) 

“I was young, and became old.” 

(4 ) þe yefþe of pite. þet is a grace þet bedeaweþ þe herte and makeþ his zuete […], 

and makeþ his al become grene. (c 340. Ayenbite of Inwit: 6) 

“the gift of pity, which is a grace that bedews the heart and makes it sweet […], 

and makes it all become green.” 

Recall from Section 3 that becuman has a preference for the Copula + NP construction 

not found with weorðan. This preference can now be explained in terms 

of time-stability as well: NPs prototypically denote entities or classes, which are 

‘self-contained units’, and therefore inherently time-stable. In sum, unlike weorðan, 

becuman has no preference for time-unstable subject complements. 

The predication of time-stable concepts in combination with a copula of 

change, however, is peculiar. This holds in particular for a subject entity linked by 

such a copula to an NP subject complement referring to a class of entities: it is not 

to be expected that this entity changes class membership spontaneously or instantaneously; 

that is, a certain degree of effort will be required. For instance, in order 

for John to change class-membership from the class of non-teachers to the class of 

teachers (as in the proposition John became a teacher), John will first have to study 

for a degree enabling him to teach. Moreover, in this particular instance this effort 

is volitional. Such cases of volitional change of class membership can also be found 

in ME uses of becuman, as example (23) illustrates. The difference in collocational 

profile between weorðan and becuman, then, mirrors a difference in semantics: 

sudden change beyond the control of the subject (weorðan) and gradual change, 

possibly controlled by the subject (becuman). The influx of new types of predicates 

involving gradual change or volition accounts for the quick success of becuman 

(and probably also weaxan). Once again, the strong association of weorðan with 

time-unstable collocates prevented this verb from extending to these new predicate 

types. As a consequence, weorðan was felt to be archaic, and copulas such as 

becuman or weaxan were preferred instead. 

The final question that remains is the following: where do these new predicate 

types come from? As a first tentative explanation, we would like to suggest that 

this increase indicates a kind of typological shift. The increase in Copula + NP 

constructions could be attributed to a takeover by intransitive predication constructions 

of some of the functions previously expressed by transitive constructions. 

An illustration is the development of the well-known OE idiom he feng to rice 

‘he came into power [lit. he took to the kingdom]’ into the PDE intransitive


predicate construction He became king. This might not be the only example of such 

a change of idiom, but more research is necessary to establish the general character 

of this kind of shift. As regards the increase in Copula + AP constructions, 

becuman + AP can be seen as the successor of the second class of weak verbs, 

which disappeared in early ME. Many verbs from this class expressed properties 

of all degrees of time-stability, as for instance ealdian ‘grow old’, hwitian ‘whiten’, 

ascortian ‘shorten’, etc. It would indeed be highly unlikely that the co-occurrence 

of the disappearance of this class and the emergence of phrases such as become old 

or become green are a coincidence. In sum, these changes point towards a sweeping 

change in the constructional idioms available in English, a change which, however, 

will have to be examined in more detail in future research. 

5. Conclusion 

In this paper, we have established the existence of a constructional network of 

copula-constructions in OE and ME. We have focussed on two verbs used in this 

constructional network, namely weorðan, which disappeared in early ME, and 

becuman, which appeared as an alternative. The appearance of becuman has been 

shown to be an instance of analogical extension, made possible through the initial 

distributional similarity between this verb and the copula weorðan. Moreover, the 

replacement of weorðan by becuman (and other copulas such as weaxan) has been 

explained in terms of a change of the constructional network of copulas. More 

specifically, (i) the emancipation of a passive construction seems to have contributed 

to the archaisization of weorðan and prevented the spread of becuman to this 

new passive construction; and (ii) becuman also apparently filled a need for a new 

copula of change, allowing volitional and gradual kinds of change, which emerged 

as a consequence of the influx of time-stable predicates (both aps and nps) during 

the late OE and early ME periods. The causes for this influx, finally, are still in need 

of a more thorough investigation. 

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Verb types and word order in Old 

and Middle English non-coordinate 

and coordinate clauses 

Kristin Bech 

University of Oslo 

This paper focuses on the relation between word order, verb types and clause 

types in Old and Middle English, with reference to the change of English 

from a language with a verb-second constraint to a verb-medial language. 

The word order patterns dicussed are the XVS, SVX and XSV patterns, and 

the verb categories operated with are verbs with complement, verbs without 

complement, copulas and existential verbs. A distinction is made between 

coordinate clauses; i.e., clauses introduced by a coordinating conjunction, and 

non-coordinate clauses. The results show that there is a difference between the 

two clause types and between the word order patterns in the distribution of 

verbs. Furthermore, there is a clear development from Old and Middle English 

as regards verb distribution in the clause types and word order patterns, and 

this development is especially noticeable in the XVS pattern. It may thus be 

deduced that word order is not only determined on the basis of syntactic rules, 

but is also related to the information content of the sentence. Consequently, 

studying word order and word order change from a functional perspective is 

highly relevant. 

1. Introduction 

The aim of this paper is to explore some verb types in Old and Middle English 

declarative main clauses with the word order XVS, SVX and XSV. 1 I distinguish 

between two types of main clauses: coordinate clauses (i.e., clauses introduced by 

a coordinating conjunction, in most cases and and to some extent but) and noncoordinate 

clauses. Through a study of the interrelation between the factors ‘type 

of verb’, ‘type of clause’ and ‘word order’, I will attempt to show that different word 

orders have different functions, that these functions may have changed in the 

1. This paper is based on a section from my doctoral dissertation (Bech 2001). I would like to 

thank the anonymous readers for this volume for relevant and helpful comments.

50 Kristin Bech 

course of time, and also how the differences between coordinate and non- 

coordinate clauses relate to word order. In other words, the focus here is on 

word order from a functional perspective. 

2. Material and method 

2.1 The corpus 

The corpus on which this work is based consists of 5,000 main clauses from Old 

and Middle English prose texts; 1,250 from each of the four periods: early Old 

English (870–950), late Old English (950–1150), early Middle English (1150–1350) 

and late Middle English (1350–1500). The clauses have been excerpted from 

19 different texts, four from the early OE period and five from each of the other 

periods. 2 A list of the texts, including the number of clauses taken from each text, 

is given in the references, together with their abbreviated reference forms. 

2.2 The word order patterns 

The word order patterns that will be discussed here are the XVS, SVX and XSV 

patterns. In the XVS word order, there is one initial X element, followed immediately 

by the verb. The subject usually follows the verb, and it may in turn be 

followed by other clause elements. Clauses in which the verb is followed by one 

or more X elements, and with the subject in a later position, are also included 

in this pattern, i.e., XVXS order. If the verb phrase is complex, the finite and the 

non-finite verb need not be contiguous; it is the finite verb that needs to occur in 

second position. In (1), the clause starts with the subject complement non richere, 

followed by the finite verb: 

(1) and non richere shal on man ben than anothir 

“and no richer shall one man be than another” (Mandeville 97: 10) 

In SVX clauses the first clause element is the subject, followed immediately by the 

verb, and usually by one or more X elements, which may be objects, adverbials, 

subject complements, and, occasionally, object complements. In this pattern are 

2. The texts were selected in a ‘quasi-random’ manner. I chose texts that represent different 

genres and different periods, but I did not check the texts for particular word order aspects 

before I started extracting the clauses. Furthermore, I did not always start the extraction of the 

clauses at the very beginning of the text.

Verb types and word order 51 

also included clauses with just a subject and a verb, i.e., clauses where there is no X 

element following the verb. 3 An example of an SVX clause is shown in (2): 

(2) wit geanbidiað þinre ondswore 

both-of-us await your answer 

“both of us await your answer” (Bo 19: 24) 

In XSV word order, there is a single initial X element, followed by the subject, 4 

and the verb occupies third position. If the verb phrase is complex, the order of 

the verbs must be finite–non-finite, i.e., the finite verb must precede the non-finite 

verb immediately. There may of course be elements following the verb, as in (3), 

where there is a clausal object. 

(3) Nu ge habbað gehered hu se hælend be him sylfum spræc 

Now you have heard how the Savior of him self spoke 

“Now you have heard how the Savior spoke of himself ” (ÆLS 10: 11) 

The distribution of XVS, SVX and XSV clauses is given in Table 1. In general, we 

see that the proportion of SVX and XSV clauses increases throughout the periods, 

and that there is a decrease in XVS clauses, all of which is as expected in view of 

the fact that English changed from a language with a verb-second constraint into 

an SVX language. 

What is also interesting, however, is the development of the category I have 

called other, which means any other word order pattern, e.g., verb-initial, verb-final 

and verb-late word order. In early OE, 32.5% of the non-coordinate clauses and 

45.8% of the coordinate clauses have a word order other than XVS, SVX or XSV, 

but by late ME the proportion has decreased to 15.0% and 12.9%, respectively. 

This clearly illustrates the fact that OE word order was relatively free, which is 

why postulating clear-cut word order rules for this period is a risky undertaking. 

It also illustrates the word order change and the increasing restrictions that took 

place in the course of the ME period, to the effect that by late ME, a great majority 

of the main clauses had verb-medial word order, i.e., SVX or XSV. The present 

paper is concerned with verb types in the three main word order patterns, but the 

general word order development of English should be kept in mind throughout 

the discussion. 

3. These are extremely infrequent: only seven occurrences in the entire corpus. 

4. The subject may be nominal or pronominal; i.e., I do not regard pronominal elements as 

clitics. Apart from the fact that it is not really necessary to operate with clitics, there are other 

good reasons for disregarding the concept of clitics in the study of the word order history of 

English, cf. Bech (2001: 79ff). This does not mean, however, that the distinction between nominal 

and pronominal elements is irrelevant.


Table 1. Word order distribution in Old and Middle English non-coordinate and 

coordinate clauses 

Noncoord. 

clauses 

Coord. 

clauses 

Old English Middle English 

Word 

order 

Early OE Late OE Early ME Late ME 

patterns No. % No. % No. % No. % 

XVS 321 36.3 263 32.1 204 23.3 123 20.1 

SVX 175 19.8 230 28.0 336 38.4 249 40.6 

XSV 101 11.4 86 10.5 145 16.6 149 24.3 

Other 288 32.5 241 29.4 190 21.7 92 15.0 

Total 885 100.0 820 100.0 875 100.0 613 100.0 

XVS 47 12.9 49 11.4 42 11.2 64 10.1 

SVX 92 25.2 130 30.2 127 33.9 224 35.2 

XSV 59 16.2 42 9.8 91 24.3 267 41.9 

Other 167 45.8 209 48.6 115 30.7 82 12.9 

Total 365 100.1 430 100.0 375 100.1 637 100.1 

2.3 Verb types 

For the purposes of this study I distinguish between verbs with complement, verbs 

without complement (cf. Visser 1963), copulas and existential verbs. The reason 

why I do not use the terms ‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’ is that, in Old English, 

the distinction is not between direct and indirect objects, but between accusative, 

genitive and dative objects (Mitchell 1985 I: 651). Besides, if a verb is classified as 

‘transitive’ and ‘intransitive’, it is the potential verb complementation that is meant, 

and some verbs may be inherently both transitive and intransitive. I am here interested 

in what is actually there; what clause elements are overtly expressed. 

Verbs with complement are thus verbs that take accusative, genitive or dative 

objects, or an object clause, and in addition any adverbial elements. Verbs without 

complement occur in clauses with just a subject and a verb, or in clauses with 

subject, verb, and one or more adverbial elements. Visser classifies copulas as a 

subcategory of verbs with complement (1963: 189), but I have categorized them as 

a separate group. However, clauses with a copular verb may have another complement 

as well, and in these cases the verb has been classified as both a copula and a 

verb with complement. 

‘Verbs of appearance or existence on the scene’, or existential verbs, is a category 

introduced by Firbas (1957, 1966, 1992), and covers verbs that “imply or even 

explicitly express ‘appearance – a kind of coming into existence – on the scene’ 

(i.e., the scene created by the narrow, ad hoc context at the moment of utterance) 

or simply ‘existence’ on this scene” (Firbas 1966: 243). Existential verbs, of which


typical examples are be, appear, come, belong in the category of verbs without 

complement, but in the tables below I have presented them as a separate category, 

because existential constructions are particularly interesting in a historical perspective, 

as we shall see. In other words, the category ‘verbs without complement’ 

comprises verbs without complement other than existential verbs. 

Clauses with passive verb phrases have been excluded, except for a few cases 

where the passive verb phrase has a copular function or existential meaning. In (4), 

the verb phrase wæs funden has existential meaning, and has been included in the 

category of existential verbs, and (5) is an example of a passive copular verb: 

(4) 7 þær wæs ungemetlic micel licgende feoh funden on ðæm wicstowum 

and there was immeasurable much ready money found at the camp 

“and immeasurably much ready money was found at the camp” (Or 69: 3) 

(5) and sir Baudewyn of Bretayne was made constable (Arthur 16: 33) 

The reason for operating with this mixture of syntactic and semantic categories is 

to be able to relate word order not only to syntax, but also to semantics and information 

structure, without having to operate with categories that are too small in 

relation to the size of the corpus. 

3. Analysis and discussion 

As mentioned in the introduction, the main aim of this paper is to compare noncoordinate 

and coordinate clauses with respect to the distribution of verb types in 

the different word order patterns in the four periods. Non-coordinate clauses and 

coordinate clauses, though both are main clauses, are presumably not functionally 

identical, and a study of the verbs may give us information about what characterizes 

these two clause types. Furthermore, studying the verbs not only in relation to the 

distinction between non-coordinate and coordinate clauses, but also in relation to 

the word order patterns within these clause types, may throw some light on the 

functional differences between the word orders. Finally, the diachronic data show 

the historical development of these particular structures. 

The basic assumption is that coordinate clauses have an elaborating or modifying 

function (Traugott 1992: 277) and that they may therefore relate to the immediate 

previous context in a more direct way than non-coordinate clauses. According to 

Quirk et al. (1985: 930ff.), the main function of the coordinate clause does not lie in 

establishing what the action is, but rather how it relates to the preceding sentence, by 

expressing e.g., contrast, explanation, consequence, result or addition. This does not 

mean that non-coordinate clauses do not relate to the previous context, but it is not a 

necessary condition; non-coordinate clauses may introduce a completely new topic.


I therefore hypothesize that this difference between coordinate and non-coordinate 

clauses has consequences for what types of element may occur in the various word 

order patterns, and for what verb types are found. 

Tables 2–5 show the distribution of verb types in XVS, SVX and XSV noncoordinate 

and coordinate clauses in early and late OE, and early and late ME. 5 

This paper focuses on the following aspects of the tables (corresponding to the 

boldface percentages): 

Table 2. Verb types in early OE non-coordinate and coordinate clauses 

Non- 

coord. 

cl. 

Coord. 

cl. 

Word 

order 

patterns 

With compl. 

Early Old English 

Without compl. 

except ex. verbs copula Existential verb 

No. % No. % No. % No. % 

XVS 127 39.6 72 22.4 32 10.0 64 19.9 

SVX 66 37.7 14 8.0 78 44.6 12 6.9 

XSV 61 60.4 20 19.8 13 12.9 4 4.0 

XVS 13 27.7 4 8.5 4 8.5 20 42.6 

SVX 36 39.1 12 13.0 29 31.5 10 10.9 

XSV 38 64.4 11 18.6 3 5.1 4 8.5 

Table 3. Verb types in late OE non-coordinate and coordinate clauses 

Non- 

coord. 

cl. 

Coord. 

cl. 

Word 

order 

patterns 

With compl. 

Late Old English 



No. % No. % No. % No. % 

XVS 133 50.6 38 14.5 33 12.5 51 19.4 

SVX 94 40.9 26 11.3 89 38.7 15 6.5 

XSV 53 61.6 12 14.0 15 17.4 4 4.7 

XVS 12 24.5 7 14.3 11 22.4 16 32.7 

SVX 45 34.6 34 26.2 29 22.3 18 13.8 

XSV 25 59.5 8 19.1 6 14.3 3 7.1 

5. Note that the tables should be read horizontally, not vertically. The percentages have been 

calculated out of the total number of verbs (which equals the total number of clauses) in each 

word order pattern, cf. the figures in Table 1. Consequently, the sums of the percentages for each 

word order pattern in Tables 2–5 do not always add up to 100, since not all verbs, e.g., passives, 

could be classified in terms of the categories operated with here.

Table 4. Verb types in early ME non-coordinate and coordinate clauses 

Non- 

coord. 

cl. 

Coord. 

cl. 

Word 

order 

patterns 

With compl. 

Early Middle English 




No. % No. % No. % No. % 

XVS 79 38.7 40 19.6 28 13.7 45 22.1 

SVX 140 41.7 40 11.9 115 34.2 30 8.9 

XSV 81 55.9 24 16.6 19 13.1 9 6.2 

XVS 16 38.1 12 28.6 9 21.4 5 11.9 

SVX 55 43.3 22 17.3 29 22.8 18 14.2 

XSV 55 60.4 24 26.4 5 5.5 7 7.7 

Table 5. Verb types in late ME non-coordinate and coordinate clauses 

Non- 

coord. 

cl. 

Coord. 

cl. 

Word 

order 

patterns 

With compl. 

Late Middle English 



No. % No. % No. % No. % 

XVS 17 13.8 12 9.8 6 4.9 74 60.2 

SVX 109 43.8 26 10.4 74 29.7 34 13.7 

XSV 68 45.6 33 22.2 17 11.4 18 12.1 

XVS 23 35.9 5 7.8 4 6.3 20 31.3 

SVX 90 40.2 33 14.7 61 27.2 24 10.7 

XSV 150 56.2 53 19.9 21 7.9 25 9.4 

• Existential verbs in the XVS pattern. OE XVS coordinate clauses have a higher 

proportion of existential verbs than non-coordinate clauses. In ME, the distribution 

is inverse (see 3.1). 

• Verbs with complement in the XVS pattern. In OE, XVS non-coordinate 

clauses have a higher proportion of verbs with complement than coordinate 

clauses. In early ME, the distribution is equal, whereas in late ME the highest 

proportion of XVS clauses with verbs with complement is found in the coordinate 

clause category (see 3.2). 

• Verbs with complement in the XSV pattern. There is a preponderance of verbs 

with complement in this pattern, both in non-coordinate and coordinate 

clauses, and in all four periods (see 3.3). 

• Copulas in the SVX pattern. The proportion of copulas is higher in SVX noncoordinate 

clauses than in coordinate clauses in the three first periods. In late 

ME, the proportion is approximately the same in the two clause types (see 3.4).


3.1 Existential verbs in the XVS pattern 

The first feature to be discussed is the distribution of existential verbs in the 

XVS non-coordinate clauses vs. coordinate clauses. As the tables show, in OE 

the coordinate clause category has a higher proportion of existential verbs than 

the non-coordinate clause category, whereas it is the opposite in ME, with an 

especially pronounced difference between the two clause types in late ME. In 

early OE and late ME the difference between non-coordinate and coordinate 

clauses is statistically significant, whereas in late OE and early ME it is not. 6 

If we take a closer look at the individual texts and start with the early OE 

period, it appears that one of the texts, Orosius, contains 16 out of the 20 existential 

coordinate clauses. They all occur in Book I, chapter I, which contains 

the tale of the voyages of Ohthere and Wulfstan, as well as a description of 

Greece and Italy. This text is thus descriptive, and in that way lends itself well 

to existential constructions, and it is descriptive in an enumerative way, which 

also explains the use of coordination. An example is given in (6): 

(6) 7 on suðhealfe 7 on westhealfe þæs muðan sindon Mæsi, Creca leode – 7 be westan 

þære byrig sindon Traci 

and on the-south-side and on the-west-side of-the-mouth are the-Moesians, 

of-Greeks people – and on the-west of-the city are the-Thracians 

“and on the south and on the west side of the mouth are the Moesians, a Greek 

tribe, and on the west of the city are the Thracians” (Or 18: 9) 

In the late OE texts, it turns out that 10 out of the 16 existential coordinate 

clauses occur in Wulfstan’s Homilies, most of them of the kind exemplified in (7): 

(7) 7 of þære mægðe com se mæra mann Abraham 

and from that tribe came the famous man Abraham 

“and from that tribe the famous man Abraham came” (WHom 148: 99) 

In Wulfstan, however, the existential clauses do not occur in one particular 

part of the text, but throughout the text, and we may note that they occur in contexts 

where coordination is natural, since the initial adverbial refers anaphorically 

to a constituent in the previous discourse. 

As the examples from Orosius and Wulfstan demonstrate, certain textual, 

genre-specific features may have consequences for the distribution when the 

number of tokens is relatively small. Hence, we cannot draw any firm conclusions 

about the general linguistic picture, but will have to content ourselves 

with postulating ‘tendencies’ and ‘indications’. One conclusion that may be 

drawn, however, is that in OE, the distribution of existential verbs in the XVS 

6. Late OE: chi-square value = 3.416, p ≈ 0.07; early ME: chi-square value = 1.74, p ≈ 0.19.


pattern is related to the properties of typically descriptive texts, which often contain 

lists of features. 

In early ME, the proportion of existential verbs is larger in non-coordinate 

clauses than in coordinate clauses, which is the opposite from OE, but the difference 

is not statistically significant. However, as we shall soon see, in late ME the 

difference is very definite, so perhaps the early ME distribution is a signal of what 

is to come. The main reason for the distributional differences between OE and 

early ME may be that in the early ME period, English had begun to change with 

respect to word order, though the results of this change cannot be seen clearly until 

the late ME period. 

In late ME, the great proportion of existential verbs in the XVS non-coordinate 

clauses clearly indicates that a restriction has taken place in the use of XVS word 

order, to the extent that it is now found primarily with this sentence type, because 

of the heavy (i.e., large and complex) and new subject that it contains, which resists 

clause-early position. It is interesting to look at the texts from this period, because 

two of them, Mandeville and Mirrour, have higher proportions of XVS sentences 

in general, 7 and consequently also a higher proportion of existential clauses: 63 

out of 74, i.e., 85.1%, of the XVS non-coordinate existential clauses occur in these 

two texts, both of which are descriptive texts. In other words, XVS order in noncoordinate 

clauses is now increasingly associated with existential verbs, and the 

two texts are notable for a high frequency of both. 

As regards XVS coordinate clauses, the distribution is not as ‘extreme’ as in the 

non-coordinate clause category. This must mean that XVS word order is not restricted 

to existential clauses to the same extent in the coordinate clause category; 

in particular, the proportion of verbs with complement is higher in XVS coordinate 

clauses than in non-coordinate clauses. An examination of the individual 

texts reveals that many (11 out of 23, i.e., 47.8%) of the coordinate clauses with 

a verb with complement have the initial element herfor/þerfore/therfor/therfore 

“therefore”, as in (8): 

(8) And therfore wold he hym self create & make man [to the ende that …] 

(Mirrour 47: 17) 

Therefore is a conjunct, and as such has “the function of conjoining independent 

units rather than one of contributing another facet of information to a single integrated 

unit” (Quirk et al. 1985: 631). It is no great surprise, then, that it may be found 

at the beginning of a coordinate clause, after the coordinating conjunction, where 

7. For exact figures and frequencies, cf. Bech (2001: 78). In Mandeville and Mirrour, the overall 

proportion of XVS sentences is 20.7% and 26.0%, respectively, whereas it ranges from 6 –10% 

in the other three texts.


it provides information on the relationship between the coordinate clause and the 

preceding clause. As regards the word order of clauses with initial therefore, it is not 

the case that therefore is obligatorily followed by the verb: in OE it is sometimes 

followed by the verb and sometimes by the subject, often depending on whether 

the subject is nominal or pronominal. The same pattern is found in ME. In other 

words, although the language is changing into a verb-medial language, verb-second 

(XVS) order is still possible in some contexts. It is thus conceivable that the process 

by which XVS word order largely becomes restricted to existential clauses first happens 

in non-coordinate clauses, and that it takes a little longer in coordinate clauses. 

The reason is that the function of coordinate clauses entails that an adverb such as 

therefore will occur naturally in the initial X position, and that the clauses in which 

they occur sometimes have verb-second word order, on the pattern of OE. 

3.2 Verbs with complement in the XVS pattern 

Tables 2–5 also show the distribution of verbs with complement in the XVS 

pattern. In OE the proportion of verbs with complement is greater in the XVS 

non-coordinate clause pattern than in the coordinate clause pattern; 8 in early ME 

the proportions are equal in the two clause types, and in late ME the XVS coordinate 

clause category has a significantly higher proportion of verbs with complement 

than the non-coordinate clause category. In the OE period, XVS was still 

a productive word order, and we would therefore expect to find this word order 

used with different verb types. As we saw above, existential verbs account for only 

around 20% of the verb types in the XVS non-coordinate clauses in the first three 

periods. 

A closer study of the XVS non-coordinate clauses reveals that in OE, a majority 

(340 of 584, or 58.2%) of them have initial þa or þonne. The adverbial þa, in addition 

to being an adverbial of time, may also imply sequence, that an event takes place 

after another event. Enkvist (1972) suggests that þa is an ‘action marker’, and Pintzuk 

(1995) calls clauses with initial þa ‘narrative advancing clauses’. (9) is an example 

of a typical þa sequence: 

(9) ƿa com se dæg þe se dema gesætte . and wæron gegeorcode þa reðan wyta . 

and wurdon gefætte æt-foran þam deman . þa unscildigan cristenan … Đa cwæð . 

philippus . mid fullum graman . to eugenian his agenre dehter ‘…’ Đa cwæð 

eugenia . þæt … 

Then came the day that the judge set, and were prepared the cruel tortures, and 

were brought before the judge the innocent Christians … Then said Philip with 

8. In early OE, the difference is not statistically significant on the 0.05 level (chi-square value 

1.538, p ≈ 0.22), whereas the difference in late OE is significant.


great anger to Eugenia his own daughter, ‘…’ Then said Eugenia that … 

“Then the day came that the judge had set, and the cruel tortures were prepared, 

and the innocent Christians were brought before the judge … Then Philip said, 

with great anger, to Eugenia, his own daughter, ‘…’ Then Eugenia said that …” 

(ÆLS 36: 195) 

As regards þonne, it is in XVS clauses primarily used as the second correlative 

in gif … þonne “if … then” constructions, or þonne … þonne “when … then” 

constructions. In my corpus I have analyzed the initial adverbial subclause as a 

left-dislocated element. Quirk et al. describe left-dislocation, or reinforcement, 

as follows: 

[A] reinforcing or recapitulatory pronoun is sometimes inserted within a clause 

where it stands ‘proxy’ for an initial noun phrase … [I]n each case a complete 

noun phrase is disjoined from the grammar of the sentence, its role […] being 

grammatically performed by subsequent pronouns. (1985: 1416 –1417) 

Quirk et al. relate left-dislocation primarily to noun phrases, but they also state that 

“some conjuncts can correlate with the subordinator of a preceding clause to reinforce 

the logical relationship between the parts of a sentence … [A] similar logical 

relationship is effected both by the subordinator and the conjunct” (1985: 644). Thus, 

the idea of reinforcement is used for correlative constructions, too. In my analysis 

of OE sentences, I therefore extended the definition of dislocation to include the 

adverbial subclauses in correlative constructions as well. Thus, the word order of 

(10) is XVS, with þonne in the X position: 

(10) [Gif þu nu witan wilt hwonan hi cumað,] þonne meaht þu ongietan þæt hi cumað 

of woruldgidsunga 

[If you now know will whence they come,] then may you observe that they 

come of covetousness 

“[If you wish to know whence they come,] then you may observe that they 

come of covetousness” (Bo 15: 7) 

The reasons why in OE we find a greater proportion of verbs with complement 

in the non-coordinate clause category than in the coordinate clause category may 

thus be outlined as follows: non-coordinate clauses are more context independent 

than coordinate clauses. In non-coordinate clauses with the word order 

XVS, the initial X element is very often þa or þonne. þa is a sequential marker 

of action, which means that in the clause there is an agent that carries out an 

action, and this action will often affect another participant, or, with a verb of saying, 

thinking, feeling, etc., the object may be clausal. Hence, the purpose of such 

clauses is not primarily to relate the action to the previous clause, but to signal a 

new turn of events. þonne is often used in the X position of XVS clauses with a 

left-dislocated adverbial subclause, which means that the þonne clause will have


anaphoric reference to the subclause, not the preceding main clause. In these 

clauses as well, it is common to find a verb with complement. In coordinate clauses, 

on the other hand, it is quite rare to find initial þa or þonne, but what we see in 

coordinate XVS clauses with a verb with complement is that the initial element 

is often a pronominal object, 9 which means that in these clauses, there is, at the 

beginning of the clause, direct reference to the previous clause, in accordance with 

the function of coordinate clauses. (11) is an example: 

(11) [ic sende eow swurd to] and eow sleað eowre fynd 

[I send you sword to] and you (O) slay your enemies (S) 

“[I will send the sword to you] and your enemies will slay you” (ÆLS 294: 170) 

Pronominal objects are, however, rare in the X position of XVS clauses, compared 

to þa and þonne. 10 Thus, we may say that in OE, XVS word order is to a great 

extent used for narrative-advancing purposes, and this entails non-coordination 

and a high proportion of verbs with complement. XVS word order in coordinate 

clauses does not have this function; therefore the proportion of verbs with complement 

is lower, whereas there is a higher proportion of other verb types, e.g., existential 

verbs (cf. 3.1). 

Early ME is different from OE in the way that the proportion of verbs with 

complement in the XVS word order pattern is the same in non-coordinate clauses 

and coordinate clauses. This, I believe, has to do with the fact that in this period, 

the type of clause that took XVS order had begun to change. In general, the proportion 

of initial þa/þenne/þanne in this word order pattern is much lower in early 

ME than in OE; in early ME only a quarter (21 out of 79, i.e., 26.6%) of the XVS 

non-coordinate clauses with a verb with complement have this element initially, 

as opposed to 70.8% (184 out of 260) in OE. In addition to þa/þenne/þanne, we 

now typically find other short adverbials such as nu “now”, for ði “therefore”, or giet 

“yet” in initial position. Adverbial prepositional phrases and clauses also occur, 

and unmarked, non-topicalized objects, of the type illustrated in the OE example 

in (11), are still possible in initial position. 

It is possible that there is a change in narrative style between OE and ME, to the 

effect that the þa/þonne constructions become less used. In any case, the typical OE 

function of XVS word order of signaling sequence – perhaps we may call it a style 

associated with OE – is in early ME much less pronounced. With a change in the 

narrative style, and thus a change in the function of the XVS word order, there is 

no longer a particular reason why there should be a larger proportion of verbs with 

9. Out of 25 Old English XVS coordinate clauses with a verb with complement, 13 (52%) have 

an object in the X position. Only four have initial þa or þonne. 

10. Out of altogether 680 OE XVS clauses (non-coordinate and coordinate combined), 350 

(51.5%) have initial þa/þonne, and 41 (6.0%) have an initial pronominal object.


complement in the non-coordinate group of clauses than in the coordinate clause 

group in early ME. XVS coordinate clauses still occur with initial pronominal 

objects, and in the later part of the period with the adverbial þeruore “therefore”. 

If we compare Tables 4 and 5, we see that late ME is different from early ME. 

As regards verbs with complement, the proportion remains quite high in the coordinate 

clause category, but it is lower than ever in the non-coordinate clause group. 

This correlates with the fact that non-coordinate XVS clauses are now to a great 

extent existential clauses. Coordinate clauses, on the other hand, do not seem to 

be existential to the same extent as non-coordinate clauses, and the reason for this 

distribution was discussed in 3.1, in connection with the therefore constructions. 

We may relate the proportion of verbs with complement in XVS clauses to the 

occurrences of existential verbs, since they seem to be inversely correlated: in OE 

XVS non-coordinate clauses, the proportion of verbs with complement is higher than 

the proportion of existential verbs, whereas the situation is the inverse in coordinate 

clauses. Thus, if we take a step back and look at the whole XVS word order picture, assuming 

now that the data are representative, we see a pattern in which the OE period 

is marked by the þa/þonne style, which is associated with non-coordinate clauses. 

Verbs with complement are represented to a greater extent in this clause type than in 

coordinate clauses. The proportion of existential verbs in XVS clauses, on the other 

hand, is higher in coordinate clauses, particularly because of the features of descriptive 

narrative texts. Early ME may be said to be a transition period, whereas the late 

ME period is the opposite of the OE period. The great proportion of existential verbs 

and the low proportion of verbs with complement in the non-coordinate XVS pattern 

point to a narrowing down of the XVS word order option. In coordinate clauses, the 

proportion of existential verbs is lower than in non-coordinate clauses, though still 

quite high, but coordinate clauses also have quite a few verbs with complement, due 

to the therefore constructions, which keep XVS order, on the pattern of OE. 

3.3 Verbs with complement in the XSV pattern 

In the XSV pattern, there seems to be a clear preference for verbs with complement, 

both in non-coordinate and coordinate clauses, in all the periods. 11 This is 

probably because: 1) in earlier stages of English, as in Modern English, the most 

common initial element was an adverbial, even though OE to a greater extent than 

Modern English allowed other elements in this position, e.g., objects (cf. Bech 

2001: 119ff.). Consequently, we would not expect to find many copular verbs in 

the XSV pattern, since the combination of an adverbial and a copula is not very 

common; after all, the attribution of a quality to a subject does not usually call for 

11. It is only in late ME non-coordinate XSV clauses that the percentage is under 50, vs. around 

60% in OE, but the difference between the periods is not statistically significant.


additional information about time, place or manner. 2) In OE, both postverbal and 

preverbal position were possible for the subject. As a result of this situation, subject 

placement was partly determined by principles of information structure, to the effect 

that if the subject occurred before the verb, it was often light and/or given, whereas 

postverbal position could be filled by either light/given subjects or heavy and/or 

new subjects, with existential clauses being a typical example of the latter. In XSV 

clauses, then, the subject is usually given, and that, in combination with the likelihood 

of the initial X element being an adverbial, often one relating to the previous 

context, means that the verb would most likely be a verb with complement, because 

otherwise the clause would be rather uninformative. Since sentences usually have 

to contain some new, salient information, it is very likely that the given subject, the 

agent, carries out an action, and that this action will affect someone or something, 

which means that the verb will take a complement. The situation in late ME resembles 

the earlier periods: the majority of the verbs in the XSV pattern are still verbs 

with complement. Since English word order moved towards verb-medial syntax, we 

would not expect the verb distribution in this pattern to alter dramatically. 12 

3.4 Copulas in the SVX pattern 

The last feature to be discussed is the higher proportion of copulas in non-coordinate 

SVX clauses than in coordinate clauses in all but the last period. For late OE 

and early ME, the distributional difference is statistically significant on the 0.05 

level, whereas for early OE, p ≈ 0.11. 

As mentioned, coordinate clauses are presumably closely related to the previous 

clause or sentence, whereas non-coordinate clauses are more context independent. 

Furthermore, a characteristic of SVX word order is that the X element(s) will in 

most cases be heavy and/or new, in accordance with general pragmatic principles. 

Finally, copular clauses are characterized by the fact that the main focus is on attributing 

a quality to a subject, which means that the subject is likely to be known 

and the attributed quality will constitute the new information. If we consider 

these three factors together, it becomes clear why there is a greater proportion 

of copular verbs in non-coordinate SVX clauses than in coordinate SVX clauses: 

since the focus of a copular clause is on attributing a quality to a subject, and not 

relating any action to the previous sentence, a copular clause is less likely to point 

back to the previous sentence than to stand on its own, or function as a frame or 

background for what follows, as exemplified in (12). 

12. What we would expect, however, is an increase in heavy and/or new subjects in the XSV 

pattern, since the loss of verb-second order meant that the option of choosing postverbal position 

for heavy subjects disappeared, and that is in fact what happens: in late ME, the proportion 

of nominal subjects in this pattern is much higher than in the earlier periods (Bech 2001: 97).


(12) He wæs mid þæm fyrstum mannum on þæm lande; [næfde he þeah ma ðonne 

twentig hryðera, 7 twentig sceapa 7 twentig swyna] 

He was among the foremost men in that district; [not-had he however more 

than twenty cattle, and twenty sheep and twenty pigs] 

“He was among the foremost men in that district, [even though he did not have 

more than twenty cattle, and twenty sheep and twenty pigs]” (Or 15: 11) 

The above comments are meant to throw some light on the difference between 

non-coordinate and coordinate clauses as regards the distribution of verbs. However, 

in order to get information about word order in copular sentences in general, 

we may also read the tables vertically, instead of horizontally. As mentioned, in SVX 

word order, the X element(s) will in most cases be heavy and/or new, and in copular 

sentences, the main focus is on attributing a quality to a subject (presumably 

new information). Thus, SVX word order is to be expected if the verb is a copula; 

i.e., word order is seen as a consequence of the information content of the sentence. 

If the tables are read vertically, we see that SVX order is indeed preferred 

for copular clauses; in early OE, for example, 107 (67.3%) out of altogether 159 

copular sentences have SVX word order. 13 

It is, as the tables show, not the case that coordinate clauses are never copular 

clauses, but when a coordinate clause contains a copular verb, the preceding sentence 

is also often copular, so that the sequence becomes a listing of qualities, or a 

repetition of the same quality: 

(13) Se fæder is angin . and se sunu is angin . and se halga gast is angin . ac hi ne synd 

na þreo anginnu . ac hi ealle þry synden an angin 

The Father is Beginning, and the Son is Beginning, and the Holy Ghost is Beginning, 

but they not are not three Beginnings, but they all three are one Beginning 

“The Father is the Beginning, and the Son is the Beginning, and the Holy Ghost 

is the Beginning, but they are not three Beginnings, but they all three are one 

Beginning” (ÆLS 10: 14) 

In Table 5, we see that the late ME distribution differs from the earlier three periods 

in having an approximately equal proportion of copulas in the non-coordinate 

and coordinate SVX patterns. A closer examination of the individual texts reveals 

13. Notice that what the tables show in terms of the percentages given is 1) the proportion of 

copulas in the SVX non-coordinate clause category vs. the SVX coordinate clause category, 

and 2) the proportion of copulas in the SVX pattern in relation to other verbs in the same pattern. 

The percentages do not tell us that SVX copular sentences are more often non-coordinate 

clauses than coordinate clauses or that the SVX pattern contains more copulas than the other 

patterns. However, information about these features may also be drawn from (the raw data of) 

the tables if, as mentioned above, they are read vertically instead of horizontally.


that Arthur deviates from the other texts in having twice as many copular coordinate 

clauses as non-coordinate clauses (21 out of 33 SVX copular clauses in Arthur are 

coordinate clauses). Or, to put it another way, in Arthur, the SVX non-coordinate 

clause category contains a lower proportion of copulas than the SVX coordinate 

clause category does, and in this it differs from the other texts from that period. 

If we disregard the Arthur data, the difference between coordinate and noncoordinate 

clauses does not become statistically significant, but the tendency 

becomes approximately the same as in early OE (p ≈ 0.14). The reason for the 

distribution in Arthur probably has to do with style. In addition to several instances 

of the kind of repetitive sequence exemplified in (13), Arthur also uses 

coordination when it is not strictly speaking necessary. In (14), for example, the 

coordinating conjunction in and his name is sir Ector seems superfluous; the 

sentence could just as well have read His name is sir Ector without any loss of 

meaning. Likewise, in (15), the second clause could have started with Syr Kay 

was made … instead of with the coordinating conjunction. 

(14) ‘Wel’, said Merlyn, ‘I knowe a lord of yours in this land that is a passyng true man 

and a feithful, and he shal have the nourysshyng of your child; and his name is 

sir Ector, and he is a lord of fair lyvelode in many partyes in Englond and Walys.’ 

(Arthur 10: 36) 

(15) … and with hym rode syr Kaynus, his sone, and yong Arthur that was hys nourisshed 

broder; and syr Kay was made knyght at Alhalowmas afore (Arthur 13: 21) 

Again, what we see here is how the characteristics of individual texts also play 

a role with regard to distributional features. 14 In a relatively detailed classification 

of the data, as in Tables 2–5, the number of occurrences becomes quite small for 

each category, even though the corpus as a whole is quite large. Consequently, it 

becomes important to keep an eye on the particular features of the individual texts, 

as these might have a bearing on the statistics. In the case of the late ME distribution 

of copulas in non-coordinate vs. coordinate clauses, more data are needed 

in order to be able to draw conclusions. For the other periods it seems that there 

is a clear difference between non-coordinate and coordinate clauses with respect 

to copulas, and that this can be seen in light of the functional characteristics of 

14. Since the number of clauses collected from each text varies (cf. References), and this may 

affect the statistics if the features of individual texts play a role, I also did an experiment where I 

‘normalized’ the data, in the sense that I analyzed an equal number of clauses from each text, for 

all the features discussed in this paper. For the late OE, early ME and late ME periods I analyzed 

150 clauses from each text, and for the early OE period 187/188 clauses from each text, since the 

corpus only contains four texts from that period, and I needed an equal number of clauses from 

each period. The corpus thus consisted of 3,000 clauses, 750 from each period. The results were 

interesting and reassuring, since the distribution of verb types was very similar to the data in


non-coordinate vs. coordinate clauses in relation to the pragmatic features of SVX 

word order and the communicative function of copular clauses. It is likely that this 

also applies to late ME, and to Modern English. 

4. conclusion 

In this paper I have attempted to show the relation between non-coordinate and coordinate 

clauses, some verb types and word order in Old and Middle English. In spite 

of certain problematic aspects, such as the question of different text types and their 

possible idiosyncratic features, and a low number of tokens in some instances, some 

conclusions may be attempted. Since there is a difference between non-coordinate 

and coordinate clauses with respect to the distribution of certain verbs within some 

of the word order patterns, we may assume that these two clause types have different 

functions. Furthermore, since verbs say something about what kind of information 

a sentence contains, and since there is a difference between the word order patterns 

as regards the verb distribution, we may assume that a functional perspective on 

word order is not irrelevant, i.e., word order is related to the information content of 

the sentence. Lastly, the diachronic data show the development of the verb distribution 

within the different word orders in non-coordinate and coordinate clauses. The 

most conspicuous development takes place in the XVS pattern, and can be related to 

the fact that English changed into a verb-medial language. 

References 

A. List of source material consulted 

For Early Old English 

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Bede, 250 clauses) 

King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care (Cura, 250 clauses) 

The Old English Orosius (Or, 500 clauses) 

King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophiae (Bo, 250 clauses) 

Tables 2–5, percentagewise. This means that the features I have discussed occur independently 

of the number of clauses extracted from the texts. However, what did happen was that some of 

the results were no longer statistically significant. For example, in my original data, the proportion 

of copulas in early ME SVX non-coordinate and coordinate clauses was 34.2% and 22.8%, 

respectively (cf. Table 4), and the chi-square test showed statistical significance on the 0.05 level. 

In the ‘normalized’ data, the corresponding proportions were 32.8% and 21.6%, i.e., almost 

identical to the original data, but the difference was no longer statistically significant (p ≈ 0.14). 

This just illustrates that the smaller the corpus, the less certain the results.


For Late Old English 

The Blickling Homilies (BlHom, 200 clauses) 

Ælfric’s Lives of Saints (ÆLS, 500 clauses) 

The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Story of Apollonius of Tyre (ApT, 200 clauses) 

The Homilies of Wulfstan (WHom, 200 clauses) 

The Peterborough Chronicle (OE Peterb, 150 clauses) 

For Early Middle English 

The Peterborough Chronicle (ME Peterb, 250 clauses) 

Old English Homilies (Homilies, 200 clauses) 

Vices and Virtues (Vices & Virtues, 250 clauses) 

Sawles Warde (Sawles W, 200 clauses) 

Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt (Ayenbite, 350 clauses) 

For Late Middle English 

The English Works of Wyclif (Wyclif, 250 clauses) 

Middle English Sermons (ME Sermons, 150 clauses) 

The Bodley Version of Mandeville’s Travels (Mandeville, 300 clauses) 

The Works of Sir Thomas Malory: The Tale of King Arthur (Arthur, 300 clauses) 

Caxton’s Mirrour of the World (Mirrour, 250 clauses) 

B. Printed primary sources 

For Old English 

Bately, Janet, ed. 1980. The Old English Orosius. EETS s.s. 6. London: Oxford University Press. 

Bethurum, Dorothy, ed. 1957. The Homilies of Wulfstan. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Clark, Cecily, ed. 1958. The Peterborough Chronicle 1070–1154. London: Oxford University 

Press. 

Garmonsway, G.N., ed. 1967 [1954]. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. 2nd ed. London: Dent; 

New York: Dutton. 

Giles, T.A., ed. 1969 [1858]. The Whole Works of King Alfred the Great. Vol. II. New York: AMS 

Press. 

Goolden, Peter, ed. 1958. The Old English Apollonius of Tyre. London: Oxford University 

Press. 

Miller, Thomas, ed. 1890. The Old English Version of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English 

People. EETS o.s. 95, 96. London: Trübner & Co. 

Morris, Richard, ed. 1874–1880. The Blickling Homilies. EETS o.s. 58, 63, 73. London: Oxford 

University Press. [Reprinted as one volume in 1967.] 

Sedgefield, Walter J., ed. 1968 [1899]. King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius De Consolatione 

Philosophiae. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft. 

Sedgefield, Walter J. 1900. King Alfred’s Version of the Consolations of Boethius. London: Henry 

Frowde. 

Skeat, Walter W., ed. 1881–1885. Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, Vol. I, i & ii. EETS o.s. 76, 82. London: 

Trübner & Co. 

Skeat, Walter W. 1890–1900. Ælfric’s Lives of Saints. Vol. II, i & ii. EETS o.s. 94, 114. London: 

Oxford University Press. [Reprinted as one volume in 1966.]


Sweet, Henry, ed. 1909 [1871]. King Alfred’s West-Saxon Version of Gregory’s Pastoral Care. EETS 

o.s. 45. London: Trübner & Co. and Oxford University Press. 

Thorpe, Benjamin, ed. 1834. The Anglo-Saxon Version of the Story of Apollonius of Tyre. London: 

John & Arthur Arch. 

For Middle English 

Gradon, Pamela. 1979. Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt. Vol. II. EETS. Oxford: Oxford University 

Press. 

Holthausen, Ferdinand, ed. 1888. Vices and Virtues. Part I. EETS o.s. 89. London: Trübner & Co. 

Matthew, F.D., ed. 1880. The English Works of Wyclif Hitherto Unprinted. EETS o.s. 74. London: 

Trübner & Co. 

Millett, Bella & Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, eds. 1990. Medieval English Prose for Women. Selections 

from the Katherine Group and Ancrene Wisse. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Morris, Richard & Pamela Gradon, eds. 1965 [1866]. Dan Michel’s Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse 

of Conscience. Vol I. EETS o.s. 23. London: Oxford University Press. 

Morris, Richard, ed. 1969 [1868]. Old English Homilies and Homiletic Treatises of the Twelfth and 

Thirteenth Centuries. EETS o.s. 29, 34. New York: Greenwood Press. 

Prior, Oliver H., ed. 1966 [1913]. Caxton’s Mirrour of the World. EETS e.s. 110. London: Oxford 


Ross, Woodburn O., ed. 1960 [1940]. Middle English Sermons. Edited from British Museum MS. 

Royal 18 B. xxiii. EETS o.s. 209. London: Oxford University Press. 

Seymour, M.C., ed. 1963. The Bodley Version of Mandeville’s Travels. EETS 253. London: Oxford 


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73: 90–96. 

Firbas, Jan. 1957. Some Thoughts on the Function of Word-order in Old English and Modern 

English. Sborník Prací filosofické fakulty Brnûnské university A5. 72–100. 

Firbas, Jan. 1966. Non-thematic Subjects in Contemporary English. Travaux linguistiques de 

Prague 2.239–256. 

Firbas, Jan. 1992. Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication. 

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Pintzuk, Susan. 1996 [1995]. Variation and Change in Old English Clause Structure. Language 

Variation and Change 7 ed. by David Sankoff, William Labov & Anthony Kroch, 229–260. 


Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik. 1985. A Comprehensive 

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by Richard M. Hogg, vol. I, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

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From locative to durative to focalized? 

The English progressive and ‘PROG 

imperfective drift’ 1 

Kristin Killie 

Faculty of Humanities, University of Tromsoe 

In the present paper I test the claim of Bertinetto et al. (2000) that the English 

progressive has undergone ‘PROG imperfective drift’, originating as a locative 

construction, to develop into a durative progressive and subsequently also into a 

focalized progressive. I argue that it is doubtful whether the English progressive 

has evolved along these lines. While the construction has clearly become much 

more focalized, and less durative, there is no evidence of a predominantly 

durative stage. Instead, the English progressive shows a variety of functions all 

through the period under study, and the durative type is not among the most 

frequent types in any one period. As for origins, the many meanings or functions 

of the progressive in the earliest records may seem to suggest multiple origins 

rather than a single, locative source. 

1. Aims and organization 

Although a large number of monographs and articles have been written on the 

history of the English progressive, the problems surrounding its origins and 

semantic development remain unsolved. As for origins, a number of hypotheses 

have been proposed. Poppe (2003: 16) sums up the status quo in the following 

manner: 

Historical linguists seem to have reached no definitive agreement on the origin of the 

English progressive, i.e., on the construction which formed the basis for Modern 

English ‘be’ plus V-ing. The main candidates are Old English ‘wesan/beon’ 

plus present participle in -ende, or Old/Middle English ‘be’ plus preposition (later 

reduced > a > zero) plus a nominal form in -ing/-ung, or possibly a blend of the 

two constructions, with or without further external (Latin, French and Brythonic 

Celtic) influences. 

1. I thank Åsta Haukås, Tore Nesset, and Toril Swan for reading and commenting on an early 

draft of this paper. I also thank two anonymous readers.

70 Kristin Killie 

Opinions concerning the meaning or function of the progressive are also 

divided. Terms used to characterize the Old English progressive include the following: 

durative, frame time/simultaneity, terminate, bounded, intensive, emphatic, 

futurity, repetition, characterizing, qualifying, descriptive, expression of 

emotions, etc. (see Denison 1993 & Núñez-Pertejo 2004 for accounts). 2 A surprisingly 

similar set of terms has been used to describe the English progressive 

in more recent periods, even including Present-day English (cf. the overviews 

and discussions in Núñez-Pertejo 2004); yet, it is clear that the progressive has 

gone through some major changes. To date there are only a few principled accounts 

of what path the progressive has developed along and why. In the present 

paper I test one of these hypotheses, viz. the claim of Bertinetto et al. (2000) 

that the English progressive has undergone ‘PROG imperfective drift’, originating 

as a locative construction, to develop into a durative progressive and subsequently 

also into a focalized progressive. I argue that the English progressive 

has clearly become more focalized through time. However, if there was ever 

a stage at which durative uses predominated, this stage goes so far back that 

it cannot be traced even in the earliest written records. As for the origin of 

the English progressive, the earliest data do not lend support to the ‘locative 

hypothesis’. 

The organization of the paper is as follows. In Section 2 I explain the concept 

of PROG imperfective drift in some more detail. In Section 3 I discuss some 

methodological issues, while Section 4 contains the data and analysis. Section 5 

provides a summary and discussion. 

2. Background: locative, durative and focalized progressives 

and PROG imperfective drift 

As mentioned above, Bertinetto et al. claim that the English progressive has 

developed from being a locative, to becoming a durative and then increasingly a 

focalized construction. To understand this hypothesis, we need to understand how 

Bertinetto et al. define terms such as ‘locative’, ‘durative’ and ‘focalized’. I therefore 

start by explaining the relevant terms. 

According to Bertinetto et al. (2000: 539), ‘locative’ implies that the meaning 

of the progressive was originally that of “being (i.e., finding oneself/itself) in a 

state”. The locative element may be of various types: 

2. Scholars that list a number of functions for the progressive seem to agree that of those functions 

some are somehow basic, while others are derived or secondary; however, there is no consensus 

as to which functions are basic and which derived.

The English progressive 71 

PROG constructions include, in one way or another, a locative morpheme. This 

may consist for instance of an auxiliary verb indicating existence or position 

(as in virtually every European PROG device), of an explicit marker of locativity 

(like the inessive case in Finnish PROG), or of a combination of more than one 

such morphemes (as again in Finnish PROG, which combines both of the above 

features). (Bertinetto et al. 2000: 532) 

Bertinetto et al. give no concrete examples of locative source constructions, 

but I give some examples in (1) below of constructions which are normally assumed 

to be locative. The examples here all involve a locative preposition. This is a 

construction type which is said by Comrie (1976: 98–103) to be very common. 

(1) a. German: 

Der Mann ist am/beim Lesen. 

the man is at-the reading 

b. Dutch: 

De man is aan het lezen. 

the man is at the reading 

“The man is reading.” 

c. Middle English: 

‘Palmer’, a sede, ‘whar is þe king?’ 

‘Sire!’ a seide, ‘an honting Wiþ kinges fifteen.’ 

(The Romance of Sir Beues of Hamtoun; 

cf. de Groot 2007 for publication data.) 

The example in (1c) is an example of the well-known be on hunting construction. 

It is this construction which is normally taken to be the source construction 

in accounts that argue in favour of a locative origin for the English progressive 

(e.g., Jespersen 1924: 278; Dal 1952; Braaten 1967, and others; see the discussion 

in Núñez-Pertejo 2004: 113–118). 3 However, Bertinetto et al. apparently assume 

that the beon/wesan + Vende construction was originally locative, as we will see in 

section 4.2. 

Durative progressives are defined in the following way: 

‘Durative’ progressive constructions [. . .], i.e., those that are evaluated relative to 

a larger interval of time. [. . .] the actual duration of the event remains indeterminate. 

Even when a durative temporal adverbial is present, this does not delimit the 

event but merely yields a vantage point from which the situation is observed. 

(Bertinetto et al. 2000: 527) 

3. De Groot (2007) also assumes that the English progressive goes back to the be on hunting 

construction. However, he regards the original construction as an absentive construction, which 

developed into a progressive construction because the absentive and the progressive partially 

overlap semantically.


Examples of the durative progressive are provided by the parallel examples in (2): 

(2) a. English: 

[Yesterday, during my sleep], Ann was playing for two hours all by herself. 

b. Catalan: . . . 

l’Anna va estar jugant tota sola durant dues hore. 

c. Portugese: 

. . . A Ana esteve a jogar sozina durante dos horas. 

(from Bertinetto 2000: 571) 

Focalized progressives are defined as follows: 

‘Focalized’ progressive constructions [. . .], i.e., those expressing the notion of an 

event viewed as going on at a single point in time, here called ‘focalization point’. 

The focalization point may be overtly expressed in the sentence, or else it may be 

recovered from the context, being the object of a presupposition. Needless to say, 

the focalization point does not exhaustively localize the event; it simply indicates 

a point in time overlapping the progressive event, while the actual duration of the 

latter remains indeterminate. (Bertinetto et al. 2000: 527) 

One type of focalized progressive is the ‘frame construction’, in which the 

event denoted by the progressive verb functions as a background event to an event 

expressed by a non-progressive verb form (Bertinetto 2000: 565). Examples are 

given in the parallel examples in (3). 

(3) a. English: 

when John came, Ann was still working. 

b. Catalan: 

quan en Joan va venir, l’Anna encara estava treballant. 

c. Portugese: 

quando o João chegou, a Ana ainda estava a trabalhar. 

(from Bertinetto 2000: 564–565) 

According to Jespersen (1909–1949: 178–180), the frame construction represents 

the prototypical use of the progressive in Modern English. Below we will see 

that this use of the progressive was not very frequent in earlier English. 

What durative and focalized progressives have in common is that they both 

view events as unbounded, i.e., it is the middle of the event which is in focus, while 

the beginning and end of the event are not; in other words, the temporal boundaries 

of the event are blurred. By contrast, a bounded event is an event which is 

perceived as a whole, i.e., including temporal boundaries. As we will see below, 

earlier English made extensive use of the progressive in contexts in which Modern 

English requires a non-progressive form because the event in question is perceived 

as clearly bounded.


Bertinetto et al. refer to the development from locative to durative to focalized 

(and finally also possibly to imperfective) as ‘PROG imperfective drift’. 4 The 

process involves the following stages: 

i. pure locativity = stative, durative 

ii. progressivity I = residually locative, durative 

iii. progressivity II = durative 

iv. progressivity III = focalized, strictly imperfective 

v. pure imperfectivity = loss of the progressive character 

Figure 1. ‘PROG imperfective drift’ (Bertinetto et al. 2000: 540) 

As can be seen in Fig. 1, it is assumed that progressives typically originate as 

locative constructions. 5 These are said to express stative or durative meaning. In 

the original construction, the locative verb does not function as an auxiliary, but 

as a full lexical verb, which is followed by an independent non-verbal element 

(predicative or adjunct). What happens in PROG imperfective drift is that the 

verb and the predicative or adjunctive element in the source construction are 

reanalysed as constituting a complex VP; thus, the main verb is reanalysed (and 

bleached) into an auxiliary, while the predicative/adjunctive element acquires the 

status of main verb. Stage (ii) represents the initial stage of grammaticalization. 

Here the locative or postural verb begins to develop into an auxiliary. The construction 

now expresses durative meaning, but this meaning co-exists with the 

older locative meaning. (Such overlapping of meanings and functions is, of 

course, common in grammaticalization processes.) At stage (iii), the locative 

verb is fully grammaticalized into an auxiliary, and the construction sheds its 

4. I do not think the term ‘drift’ here is meant to imply that the development in question is an 

example of language changing by itself. The term is probably meant simply to refer to the fact 

that the development of certain constructions tends to follow specific stages and paths, and that 

the change tends to be in a certain direction. 

5. The view that progressive devices typically go back to locative constructions has become 

almost standard by now (cf. e.g., Comrie 1976: 98–103; Bybee et al. 1994: 136; Torres Cacoullos 

2000: 121 and Heine 2003: 594), and it is based on ample evidence. Thus, Heine & Hünneyer. 

(1991) found more than a hundred African languages which had progressives based on locative 

sources, and Bybee et al. (1994: 128–129) also provide numerous examples from languages of 

diverse types.


locative meaning, being now exclusively durative. During stage (iv), the construction 

acquires a focalized meaning, while finally, at stage (v), the progressive 

meaning is lost, being replaced by a pure imperfectivity meaning. The latter 

stage is only attested in a few languages (Comrie 1976: 100, 101; Bertinetto, 

et al. 2000: 540 and Johanson 2000: 99–100), and will not be discussed any 

further here. While some progressive constructions perform only one of the functions 

shown in Fig. 1, others cover more than one stage. For example, the Italian 

stare + gerund progressive is exclusively focalized, and thus belongs to stage (iv), 

whereas the Estonian progressive is said to cover three stages, viz. (ii)–(iv). The 

English and the Ibero-Romance languages have progressives which cover stages 

(iii) and (iv). 6 

The categorizations made by Bertinetto et al. are somewhat difficult to relate 

to those made in other studies of the English progressive. For example, it is not 

common to divide progressives into a durative and a focalized type. However, the 

distinction may be important. While it may be argued that the development from 

durative to focalized (as defined by Bertinetto et al.) is trivial, simply reflecting 

a shift in preferences, style etc, this does not seem to be the case. That there are 

grammatical issues involved is shown by the fact that the Italian stare progressive 

can no longer be used as a durative device, while it was used as such in its Latin past 

(Bertinetto 2000: 563). However, this does not necessarily mean that this distinction 

is relevant for the English progressive. 

Unfortunately, Bertinetto et al. do not try to explain what factor(s) may have 

motivated the development from durative to focalized; neither do they try to account 

for the other steps sketched in Fig. 1. However, Comrie (1976), who also claims 

that progressives (including both durative and focalized ones, apparently) typically 

develop out of locative constructions, argues that the process of metaphor is crucial 

in this development (cf. also de Groot for an interesting account): 

Some attention must now be given to possible reasons for this relation between 

locative and progressive. The clue to the relation is perhaps in English expressions 

like to be in the process of doing something or to be in progress, in which we 

see that we can refer to some instance of a process by viewing the whole of the 

6. Bybee et al. (1994: 142) also assume a development from locative to progressive to imperfective; 

however, their trajectories do not include a durative stage. Comrie (1976: 103) claims that “of 

the languages examined where habitual meaning is expressed by means of a locative, it is always 

the case that progressive meaning is also expressed as a locative, indeed it is usually the case 

that the same locative construction is used for both meanings. Thus one can establish a certain 

implicational relation between locative expression of progressive and of habitual meaning: the 

locative expression of progressive meaning is basic, and only if a language has this possibility can 

it further extend the same form to habitual meaning, and this extension is rather an extension of 

the earlier progressive to become the only imperfective form”.


situation as if it were spatial, when it is quite natural to refer to some specific 

point of the situation as being ‘in’ that situation. Thus really, the only requirement 

is that we should be able to transpose from space to time, and languages do 

this quite readily already in the use of originally locative prepositions, etc., as 

temporal, e.g., on the table, on Friday. (Comrie 1976: 102–103) 

The development sketched in Fig. 1 is based mainly on studies of progressive 

constructions in the Romance languages, but it is claimed that progressive devices 

in other languages have followed the same course, and this includes the English 

progressive (Bertinetto et al. 2000: 540 and Johanson 2000: 99–100). However, 

Bertinetto et al. present no evidence for their claim that the English progressive 

has developed along these lines. The present paper aims to test the relevant 

hypothesis by providing the necessary quantitative data, but before I discuss the 

data, a few methodological comments are in order. 

3. Corpus and methodology 

If the English progressive has gone through PROG imperfective drift, this should 

be reflected in a shift in the relative proportions of the various types of progressives. 

I therefore present evidence showing the proportions of the relevant types in different 

periods of English. The periods covered are Old English (> 1150), Middle English 

(1150–1500), and Early Modern English (1500–1710). The data come from the 

historical part of the Helsinki Corpus. I have also used six additional Middle English 

texts (see section 4.1 and the references). Note that the data and discussion focus on 

the possible shift from a prototypically durative to a prototypically focalized construction. 

I nevertheless briefly discuss the question of origins in section 4.2. 

Although the study focuses on the shift from a prototypically durative to a prototypically 

focalized progressive, the data include progressives with other meanings 

or functions as well, notably ‘narrative’ and ‘stative’ progressives, which are 

clearly non-aspectual (cf. the discussion in section 4). Such uses are not included 

in Bertinetto et al.’s diachronic sketch of progressives; however, they should have a 

place in our discussion as they represent a common use of the English progressive 

historically and are therefore a part of the total picture. 7 The tables in Section 4 

therefore include such uses of the progressive as well. 

In this study the term ‘progressive’ refers to any verbal use of be + Vende/ing in 

which the first and second element form a verbal periphrasis, regardless of the mean- 

7. They also feature quite prominently in the history of many other European progressive constructions 

(cf. the discussion in Poppe 2003), and should therefore, in my view, somehow have 

been included in Bertinetto et al.’s diagram.


ing of this periphrasis. Although Bertinetto et al. assume that the Present-day English 

progressive goes back to the beon/wesan + Vende construction, I have also included 

syntagms such as be in milking, be a-milking, and be milking of, which are considered 

to be variants of the be + prep + Ving pattern since these appear to have a progressive 

meaning. The fact that there are hybrid forms which apparently have elements of both 

be on hunting and beon/wesan/be + Vende/ing, i.e., represent a mixture of verbal and 

nominal elements (e.g., on feohtende wæron, cf. Elsness 1994: 23–24, n. 4), suggests 

that the two constructions may have merged at some stage. There are only twenty-two 

examples of the be on hunting construction in the Helsinki data. With one exception 

(a late Middle English example), these uses are all from the Early Modern period. 

They mostly have a focalized function, just like the majority of the be + prep + Ving 

uses at this time. I have not kept these uses separate from the non-prepositional uses 

as their impact on the statistics is negligible. The number of be + prep + Ving periphrases 

in the supplementary Middle English corpus is also very small. There are six 

occurrences: one from the 12th, one from the 14th and four from the 15th century. 

The most useful diagnostics in distinguishing between durative and focalized 

progressives have been adverbial collocates. Durative and focalized progressives 

differ with respect to what adverbial collocates they take. Some examples of durative 

adverbials are found in (2); others are e.g., since early this morning, until midnight, 

during the uprising, gradually, etc. Focalized progressives may occur within a frame 

construction (typically a when or as clause), as in (3). They may also collocate with 

adverbials such as at the moment, now, still, etc. Time adverbials have been useful 

in interpreting the function of many progressives; however, given that as many as 

fifty-eight percent of the corpus progressives do not involve a time adverbial at all, 

it follows that the context has often been all-important. 8 

4. Analysis 

4.1 Durative, focalized and other progressives in Old to Early 

Modern English 

It is clear that both durative and focalized progressives are found in all historical 

periods of English. The sentences in (4)–(6) below are examples of durative 

progressives taken from the Old English subcorpus. 

8. Cf. Freckmann (1995) for a discussion of the adverbial collocates of progressives. Bertinetto 

et al. also suggest other diagnostics for determining the function of progressives, but these have 

not been very useful in the present study. For example, it is claimed that durative progressives 

are more likely than focalized progressives to occur with the perfect, but given the scarcity of 

perfect progressives in the periods under study, this diagnostic has not been of much help.


(4) þa þæt þa Porsenna gehierde, he ðæt setl & þæt gewin 

when that then Porsenna heard he that siege and that battle 

mid ealle forlet, þe he ær þreo winter dreogende wæs 

with all left which he already three winters fighting was 

“When Porsenna heard that, he gave up the siege and battle against everybody, 

which he had been fighting for three winters already.” 

(Alfred’s Orosius; HCO2) 

(5) & hie alle on þone Cyning wærun feohtende oð þæt hie 

and they all against that king were fighting until that they 

hine ofslægenne hæfdon 

him slain had 

“And they all fought (?were all fighting) against the king until they had 

slain/killed him.” 

(Chronicle ms A early; HCO2) 

(6) & he wæs endebyrdlice settende bi muneca life & bi 

and he was little by little settling by monestic life and by 

heora stilnesse 

its stillness 

“and little by little he settled (?was settling) down to monastic life and to its 

stillness” 

(Bede’s Ecclasiastical history; HCO2) 

In these sentences, the adverbials clearly give away the durative nature of the 

progressive. Thus, þreo winter specifies a time span during which the activity took 

place, oð þæt hie hine ofslægenne hæfdon defines the endpoint of the situation 

referred to, while endebyrdlice denotes an indefinite time span. 

The sentences in (7)–(9) contain focalized uses of the Old English 

progressive. 

(7) Mid þi þe he þas þing wæs sprecende to him silfum, þa 

while he that thing was speaking to himself then 

færinga geseah he sumne fiscere gan 

suddenly saw he some fishermen go 

“while he was speaking about that subject to himself, suddenly he saw some 

fishermen leave” 

(The Old English Apollonius of Tyre; HCO3) 

(8) & eode on ærne merien in to ðam getelde, & efne 

and went into house next morning into the tent and precisely


ða wæs growende Aarones gyrd on blostmum & on leafum on 

then was growing Aron’s twig into flowers and into leaves in 

hnutbeames wisan 

nut tree’s manner 

“and he went into the cottage/house and the next morning into the tent, and 

precisely then Aron’s twig was growing into flowers and leaves in the manner of 

a nut tree” (The Old Testament; HCO3) 

(9) Saga me for hwam stanas ne synt berende? 

tell me wherefore stones not are carrying 

“Tell me, why are you not carrying stones?” 9 (Solomon & Saturn; HCO4) 

While (7) and (8) have focalization points which are overtly expressed by adverbials, 

respectively mid þi þe and efne ða, the focalization point in (9) is an implicit 

‘now’. The sentence in (7) is one of the few examples of the frame construction found 

in the Old English data, while the sentence in (8) rather seems like the opposite: the 

non-progressive form functions as the background to the progressive form. 

The question, then, is to what extent durative and focalized progressives are 

used in the various periods. The PROG imperfective drift hypothesis predicts that 

durative progressives should represent the prototypical use in the early data, 

while focalized progressives gradually take over this role. The data in Table 1 

show the distribution of durative and focalized progressives in the Helsinki Corpus 

(where OE, ME and EModE refer to the Old English, Middle English and Early 

Modern English subperiods, respectively). The figures are given in absolute frequencies, 

in percentages (in parentheses), and in frequencies per 10,000 words. 

The figures in square brackets in the column for focalized progressives give the 

number and percentage of frame constructions in each period. 

Table 1. Functions of the progressive in the Helsinki Corpus 

Durative Focalized Other/indet. Total 

OE 37 (15%) 0.9 71 (28%) 1.7 144 (57%) 3.5 252/6.1 

[5 = 2%] 

ME 8 (9%) 0.1 17 (19%) 0.3 63 (72%) 1.0 88/1.4 

[3 = 3%] 

EModE 13 (7%) 0.2 111 (61%) 2.0 57 (32%) 1.0 181/3.3 

[32 = 18%] 

Total 58 199 264 521 

9. This is an early example of the passival construction, i.e., a progressive with active form but 

passive meaning (cf. Denison 1993: 389–393).


We see that focalized progressives are more frequent than durative ones in 

all the three subperiods under study. It is nevertheless clear that the difference 

in frequency between the two types increases over time. Thus, while the ratio 

of durative to focalized progressives is approximately one to two in the Old 

and Middle English data, the corresponding Early Modern rate is one to nine. 

The data are thus compatible with the hypothesis that the English progressive 

used to be more durative, but has over time developed into a prototypically 

focalized construction. However, given the rather low frequency of durative 

progressives even in the earliest data, a development from prototypically durative 

to prototypically focalized presupposes that the first stages of this development 

took place before the time of the written records. On the other hand, it is 

also possible that the English progressive was never a predominantly durative 

construction. In any event, there is no doubt that the construction has become 

much more focalized with time. There has also been a clear increase in the use 

of the frame construction during the time span under study. Frame uses are 

highly infrequent in Old and Middle English, while they constitute almost eighteen 

percent of the tokens in the Early Modern period. However, such uses are 

hardly frequent enough to be referred to as prototypical, at this stage at least. 

Thus, if Jespersen is at all right in claiming that the frame construction represents 

the prototypical use of the English progressive, this must be a relatively 

recent development. 

The rise in the use of focalized progressives and the decrease in the use of 

durative progressives may be seen as a result of the increased grammaticalization 

of the English progressive as an aspectual, focalizing device. The sharp decrease 

in the use of the progressive in other functions is of course another important 

aspect of this process; the more the progressive was conceived of as an aspectual 

device, the less likely it was to be used as a non-aspectual device. However, judging 

from the data in Table 1, the grammaticalization of the English progressive 

was not a tidy and linear development. In particular, there is a puzzling fall in the 

use of focalized progressives between Old and Middle English, from twenty-eight 

to nineteen percent, and from 1.7 to 0.3 occurrences per 10,000 words. This decrease 

is not due to a rise in the use of durative constructions in Middle English; 

instead, the data show an increase in the category ‘other’. In order to determine 

whether this rise was caused by a specific type of use, which came to be favoured 

by Middle English writers, I decided to carry out a more fine-grained analysis of 

the progressives in this category. Another good reason for doing this is the fact 

that the ‘other/indeterminate’ category is by far the largest category in the Old and 

Middle English data, so a further subdivision of the relevant progressives seemed 

pertinent in order to better understand the history of the progressive. The result of 

the analysis is displayed in Table 2.


Table 2. Functions of the progressive in the Helsinki Corpus, more fine-grained analysis 

Durative Focalized Narrative Stative Other Total 

OE 37 (15%) 71 (28%) 53 (21%) 55 (22%) 36 (14%) 252 

ME 8 (9%) 17 (19%) 3 (3%) 49 (56%) 11 (13%) 88 

EModE 13 (7%) 111 (61%) 4 (2%) 34 (19%) 19 (10%) 181 

Total 58 199 60 138 66 521 

In Table 2, ‘narrative progressives’ and ‘stative progressives’ are treated as separate 

categories, due to their high frequencies. Less frequent types have been put in the 

‘other’ category. 10 

‘Narrative progressives’ are progressives which occur in dynamic predicates, 

but which do not serve to express progressivity or ongoingness. They are bounded, 

i.e., view the event as a whole. According to Fitzmaurice (1998), such progressives 

have a textual function. They serve to mark peaks in a narrative; hence the term 

‘narrative progressive’. Examples are given in (10) and (11). 

(10) þa somninga se min latteow gestod & butan eldenne 

then suddenly this my travel-servant stood and without hesitate 

wæs eft his gong cerrende: & me eft lædde ðy selfan 

was then his path turning and me then led the same 

wæge, ðe wit ær coman 

way that we-two earlier came 

“then suddenly my travel-servant stood still and then, without hesitating, 

turned around and led me along the same road that the two of us had come 

earlier” (Bede’s Ecclasiastical history; HCO2) 

(11) Her cuom micel sciphere on West Walas, & hie 

In this year came big ship-army into West-Wales and they 

to anum gecierdon & wiþ Ecgbryht West Seaxna cyning 

to each turned and with Ecgbryht West Saxon king 

winnende wæron 

fighting were 

“In this year a large (Viking) army arrived in western Wales and they turned 

to each and every one and fought with Egbert, the West-Saxon king” 

(Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; HCO2) 

These examples illustrate one interesting aspect of narrative progressives, viz. 

the fact that they often occur within a sequence of verb forms, where the neighbouring 

verb forms are non-progressive. The function of the longer progressive 

10. The new ‘other’ category contains a few habitual progressives (fourteen occurrences), 

hyperbolic always progressives (five occurrences), interpretative uses (thirteen examples) and 

‘hypothetical’ uses (e.g., Ac ic wolde beon ȝyrnende ȝif hit godes willæ wære ‘But I would yearn/be 

yearning if it God’s will were’; sixteen examples), in addition to ambiguous and otherwise 

indeterminate uses.


form is probably to draw attention to one specific verb phrase, making it stand 

out from the surrounding verb phrases. Such uses may therefore be characterized 

as emphatic. As shown in Table 2, narrative progressives are quite common in Old 

English, while they represent a peripheral phenomenon in more recent periods. 

Table 2 shows that the increase in the category ‘other’ in Middle English is 

due to a rise in the proportion of ‘stative progressives’. Stative progressives, as their 

name implies, do not involve dynamic situations at all, but refer to facts or unchanging 

relations such as belonging, feelings, eternal truths, habits, etc. Also in this use, 

the progressive most probably provides emphasis. Examples of stative progressives 

are given in (12) and (13). 

(12) & ymbutan þone weall is se mæsta dic, on þæm is iernende 

and around that wall is the greatest ditch in which is running 

se ungefoglecesta stream 

the most enormous river 

“and around that wall is the greatest ditch, in which the most enormous river 

runs” (Alfred’s Orosius; HCO2) 

(13) Arestotill sais þat þe bees are feghtande agaynes hym þat will 

Aristotle says that the bees are fighting against him that will 

drawe þaire hony fra thaym. 

steal their honey from them 

“Aristotle says that bees fight against those who try to steal their honey from them.” 

(The bee and the stork; HCM4) 

More than half of the Middle English progressives in the Helsinki Corpus are 

of the stative type. This fact sets the Middle English period off from the other periods. 

There is a corresponding difference between the verb types or meanings 

found in the progressive in this subcorpus, and the verb types found in the other 

subcorpora, in the sense that certain ‘stative meanings’ are particularly well represented 

in the Middle English subcorpus. In particular, the most frequent verbs 

are those with meanings such as “live, remain” (viz. wunien, eardien): seventeen 

of the eighty-eight occurrences, viz. nineteen percent, involve these verbs. 11 The 

next most frequent verb is also a highly stative verb, viz. ʓeornen “yearn, desire”. 

This verb occurs six times in the data, constituting approximately seven percent 

of the Middle English tokens. Thus, wunien, eardien and ʓeornen alone make up 

one fourth of the Middle English uses. By comparison, only eight percent (twenty 

tokens) of the Old English progressives involve “live, remain” verbs, while “yearn” 

is not represented at all. Some examples of “yearn, desire” and “live, remain” progressives 

from the Middle English corpus are given in (14)–(16). 

11. Live is, of course, not infrequent in the progressive in Present-day English. However 

progressive live does not normally refer to a permanent situation in Present-day English, as it 

does in earlier English.


(14) Ða dyde þe cniht swa moyses him bead þa he hit al isceawæd 

then did the knight as Moses him bade when he it all seen 

hæfde; þa cwæð he þt he nan þare ðingæ ʓyrnende nære 

had then said he that he none of-the things yearning not-was 

ðe he ðær iseah. 

that he there saw 

“Then, when he had seen it all, the knight did as Moses told him to. Then he 

said that he did not yearn for any of the things that he saw there.” 

(History of the Holy Rood-Tree; HCM1) 

(15) & þider ʓe beoð ibrohte mid muriʓe lofsongum, & þær 

and thither they are brought with merry praise and there 

ʓe beoð mid me wuniende on heofene rice 

they are with me living in heaven’s kingdom 

“and there they are taken with merry praise, and there they will live with me in 

heaven’s kingdom” (Bodley homilies; HCM1) 

(16) Elmesʓeorn nes heo nefre. ah prud heo wes swiðe and 

charitable not-was she never and proud she was very and 

modi. and liʓere and swikel. and wreðful and ontful. 

moody and deceitful and treacherous and angry and evil 

and forði heo bið wuniende inne þisse pine. 

and therefore she is remaining in this pain 

“She was never charitable. She was very proud and moody, and deceitful and 

treacherous, and angry and evil. And therefore she remains in this pain.” 

(Lambeth Homilies; HCM1) 

The Old English progressives involve a whole range of verbs. The most frequent 

verb meanings are “fight” (feohtan, winnan; twenty-two occurrences); “live, remain” 

(wunian, wesan; twenty occurrences), “go, travel” (faran, gan; seventeen 

occurrences), and “speak” (sprecan; seventeen occurrences). Three of these are 

dynamic meanings. The relevant meanings are poorly represented in the Middle 

English data: “fight” and “go, travel” occur only two times each, while “speak” is 

not represented at all. 

It is clear, then, that there are some puzzling differences between the Old 

English and Middle English subcorpora with regard to both the function of the 

progressive and the verbs involved. Since the Middle English data show a somewhat 

unexpected development, I decided to look more closely at the distribution 

of the progressive across the various texts. What I found was that certain texts are 

overrepresented in the data. More specifically, out of the eighty-eight Middle English 

progressives, eleven are found in The history of the holy rood tree, nine in The earliest 

complete English prose psalter, and eight in Vices and Virtues. Thus, the progressives 

in these three texts alone constitute almost a third of the Middle English tokens.


Such a distribution is, of course, unfortunate if we wish to discover general trends 

in the use of a construction. As almost all the progressives in the abovementioned 

texts either involve a verb meaning “live, remain” or “yearn” (fourteen examples), 

or some other completely stative verb or predicate, it seemed possible that the high 

incidence of stative progressives could be due to idiosyncratic usage, or in other 

words, that the Middle English totals could be skewed by these idiosyncratic uses. 

For this reason I decided to study the use of the progressive in some other Middle 

English texts as well. I studied six additional texts, viz. The English conquest of Ireland; 

The buke of John Mandeuill; The Alphabet of Tales; An English Chronicle; The 

Lyf of the noble and Crysten prynce, Charles the Grete; and The right plesaunt and 

goodly historie of the foure sonnes of Aymon (see References for publication details). 

The relevant data are provided in Table 3. (The reason why there is no separate column 

for narrative progressives is that the category is almost non-existent in these 

texts; there are only three examples of such uses, and they have therefore been put 

into the ‘other’ category.) 

Table 3. The use of the progressive in six Middle English texts 

Durative Focalized Stative Other Total 

English Conquest 2 9 2 – 13 

Mandeville 1 2 32 2 37 

Alphabet – 13 1 3 17 

English Chronicle – 3 4 – 7 

Lyf Noble – – 3 1 4 

Right plesaunt 1 20 1 3 25 

Total 4 (4%) 47 (46%) 43 (42%) 9 (9%) 103 

Although the figures in Table 3 are not large, they nevertheless throw interesting 

light on the use of the progressive in Middle English. Most importantly, the 

data tell us that the use of the progressive was very variable at this stage, not only 

in terms of number, but also in terms of the way the construction was used. We 

have seen that in The history of the holy rood tree, The earliest complete English prose 

psalter, and Vices and Virtues, the progressive was first and foremost used with 

stative predicates, probably as an emphatic marker. If we look at Table 3, we find 

that the same goes for Mandeville’s travels. 12 By contrast, focalized progressives 

predominate in The English Conquest of Ireland, The Alphabet of Tales and The 

Right Plesaunt and Goodly Historie of the Foure Sonnes of Aymon. Such variation 

12. Of the thirty-seven progressives in this text, be dwelland occurs eighteen times and be 

liffand once; hence, half of the recorded examples involve “live, remain” verbs.


is, of course, not unusual when a construction is undergoing grammaticalization, 

which the progressive was clearly doing in Middle English. The totals for focalized 

and stative progressives in Table 3 diverge sharply from the corresponding Middle 

English figures in Table 2, with focalized and stative progressives emerging as equally 

frequent in Table 3. The data in Table 3 probably give us a more representative 

picture of the use of the progressive in Middle English. They indicate that the progressive 

was becoming steadily more focalized between Old and Early Modern 

English. By contrast, the figures in Table 1 and 2 seem to suggest that this development 

was reversed in the Middle English period. What all the texts in Table 3 have 

in common is a low incidence of durative progressives. As we have seen, this is a 

feature they share with the Middle English texts in the Helsinki Corpus. 

4.2 The origin of the progressive 

As we have seen, not only Bertinetto et al., but also a number of other scholars 

believe that the English progressive has developed out of a locative construction. 

The majority of these scholars identify this locative construction as the be on hunting 

construction. Bertinetto et al., by contrast, claim that the beon/wesan + Vende 

periphrasis itself was originally locative. They do not discuss this issue in any detail, 

however, and the scope of this paper prevents me from embarking on such a 

discussion. Suffice it to say here that in my view, the very varied semantics of the 

progressive in the Old English subcorpus indicates that the English progressive 

does not have a locative origin, or at least its origin could not have been exclusively 

locative. As noted by Ziegeler (1999), the locative hypothesis presupposes that the 

progressive was first used with activity/agentive verbs only and then later spread to 

other types of contexts, including stative ones. Such a hypothesis therefore cannot 

explain the large number of stative progressives in Old English. If we assume that 

locative uses were reanalysed into aspectual progressives, as seems to be the standard 

assumption, the locative hypothesis does not seem to account for the large 

number of narrative progressives in Old English either. The multi-facetedness of 

the progressive may be at least partly due to the fact that the construction represents 

a blend of (at least) two sources, viz. the subjective/expressive beon/wesan + 

Vende, which was a textual or expressive device, and which was only used in writing, 

and the aspectual be on hunting, which was used in speech (Hübler 1998: 90; 

cf. the discussion in Smitterberg 2005: 59–60). This hypothesis is compatible with 

the analysis of the progressive proposed by Rydén (1997). According to Rydén, the 

basic meaning of the progressive is that of ‘dynamic process’. This meaning has two 

‘facets’ – one ‘action-focussed’ and one ‘attitude-focussed’, the former corresponding 

to the actional and aspectual uses of the progressive, the latter “subsuming 

‘evaluation’, ‘interpretation’, ‘tentativeness’, or other ‘modal’ aspects” (1997: 421).


If we assume that the ‘attitude-focussed’ uses of the progressive go back to the 

beon/wesan + Vende construction, this accords well with the fact that narrative 

and stative progressives are so well represented in the Old English data, i.e., in the 

period when the beon/wesan + Vende periphrasis was prevalent. 

It may seem, then, that the English progressive has not undergone PROG 

imperfective drift, at least not on the above definition of the phenomenon. However, 

Bertinetto et al. present an alternative version of PROG imperfective drift as 

well. Their secondary hypothesis is expressed in their discussion of the following 

well-known sentence from Old English: 

(18) Sume syndan creopende on eorða mid eallum lichoman, swa swa 

some are creeping on the earth with all body such as 

wurmas doð. Sume gað on twam fotum, sume on feower fotum, sume 

worms do some walk on two feet some on four feet some 

fleoð mid fyðerum. 

fly with wings 

“some creep on the earth with their whole body, just as worms do. Some walk 

on two feet, some on four feet, some fly with wings” 

(Ælfric’s Lives of Saints, I, 11.52–55) 

This sentence is given a peculiar treatment by Bertinetto et al. The whole idea 

that the English progressive was originally locative seems to rest on this very sentence 

as it is the only example they give from Old English. Then later on – in a 

footnote! – it is admitted that the relevant sentence is in fact a dubious example of 

a locative construction and therefore throws doubt on the hypothesis in Fig. 1. The 

relevant passage is given below: 

Note, however, that the permanent stative (or individual-level) interpretation 

of example (25b) [my example 18, KK] presupposes an equative, rather than 

a locative meaning of the copula. Thus, there are grounds to believe that there 

are in fact two possible sources for progressive periphrases, incorporating an existential-locative 

meaning or an existential-equative meaning respectively, with 

the latter converging with the former at some stage. 

Another hypothesis that one could plausibly put forth is that stage (i) constitutes 

an entirely independent evolutionary path. Accordingly, one could suppose 

that the periphrases of stage (ii) exploited an already existing morphosyntactic 

structure, which had become available for a different usage. However, this hypothesis 

is weakened by the fact that the same development has made its appearance 

in two fairly heterogeneous languages, Latin and Old English. 

(Bertinetto et al. 2000: 553, note 16) 

The last sentence of this paragraph is an odd statement given that the reason 

why Bertinetto et al. offer an alternative hypothesis in the first place is precisely the 

fact that their original hypothesis did not seem to be borne out by the English data.


It is possible that Bertinetto et al.’s alternative hypothesis about the origins of progressive 

constructions is closer to the truth than is their primary hypothesis. It may 

well be true that many progressives originate as locative constructions, but judging 

from the history of the English progressive, this need not be the case. Thus, if we 

reformulate stage (i) so as to allow of several types of source constructions, assuming 

that stage (i) “constitutes an entirely independent evolutionary path”, it is possible 

that the English progressive has indeed undergone PROG imperfective drift, 

provided that the predominantly durative stage goes back to a time before written 

records. 13 Alternatively, the generalization in Fig. 1 may be generally correct, while 

the English progressive represents an aberrant development. 

5. Conclusion 

The clearest result of this corpus study is the finding that the English progressive 

has become increasingly focalized: while only twenty-eight percent of the Old 

English progressives are focalized, sixty-one percent of the Early Modern English 

progressives are. However, the data presented can neither confirm nor refute the 

claim of Bertinetto et al. (2000) that the English progressive has undergone PROG 

imperfective drift. We have seen that the answer to this question to some extent 

depends on our definition of the process, i.e., on whether we presuppose that all 

progressives have a locative source, or whether we allow for multiple origins. It is 

doubtful whether the source of the progressive is to be found exclusively in a locative 

construction; most probably there are several sources. 

But it is not only stage (i) in Fig. 1 which is problematic; stages (ii) and (iii) 

cannot be traced in the data either. Durative progressives do not seem to have been 

frequent at any point in the written history of English. Thus, if the English progressive 

was ever predominantly durative, this stage must antedate the written records. 

This is not impossible, of course, and at least the figures suggest a decrease in the 

use of durative progressives over time, as we would expect if the focalized progressive 

is indeed gradually replacing the durative progressive, becoming grammaticalized 

as the prototypical use of the English progressive. However, what role the 

durative progressive has played in the history of English remains unclear. What 

seems clear is that narrative progressives are essentially an Old English phenomenon, 

while stative progressives are common in both Old and Middle English. The 

increased grammaticalization of the focalized progressive involves the loss of narrative 

progressives and decreased use of durative and stative progressives. It also 

involves increased use of the frame construction. 

13. This hypothesis naturally does not work if one adopts the view that the beon/wesan + Vende 

construction was a literary phenomenon (cf. Dal 1952).

References 

Primary sources 


All periods: 

VARIENG (The Research Unit for Variation and Change in English). 1991. The Helsinki corpus 

of English texts: diachronic part. Early Modern English section, in: ICAME. Bergen: 

Norwegian Computing for the Humanities. 

Additional Middle English corpus: 

Banks, Mary Macleod, ed. 1904, 1905. Alphabet of Tales: An English 15th Century Translation 

of the Alphabetum Narrationum of Etienne de Besançon, from additional MS. Add. 25719 

of the British Museum. (= EETS, OS 126–127.) London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, & 

Co., Ltd. 

Davies, John Silvester, ed. 1856. An English chronicle of the reigns of Richard II, Henry IV, Henry 

V, and Henry VI written before the year 1471; with an appendix, containing the 18th and 

19th years of Richard II and the Parliament at Bury St. Edmund’s, 25th Henry VI and supplementary 

additions from the Cotton. ms. chronicle called ‘Eulogium’. (= Camden Society, 64.). 

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Furnivall, Frederick James, ed. 1969. The English Conquest of Ireland: A.D. 1166–1185: Mainly 

from the Expugnatio Hibernica of Giraldus Cambrensis: Part I, the Text. (= EETS, OS 107.) 

New York: Greenwood Press. 

Herrtage, Sidney J.H., ed. 1880–1881. Lyf of the noble and Crysten prynce, Charles the Grete, 

Translated from the French by William Caxton. (= EETS, OS 36–37.) London, New 

York, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1880–1881. 

Richardson, Octavia, ed. 1884. The right plesaunt and goodly historie of the foure sonnes of 

Aymon. Englisht from the French by William Caxton, and printed by him about 1489. Ed. 

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Mandeville, knight, 1322–1356: a hitherto unpublished English version from the unique 

copy (Egerton ms. 1982) in the British Museum. (= Roxburghe Club, 119.) Westminster: 

Nichols & Sons. 

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Michigan’s Humanities Text Initiative (HTI). Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse. http:// 

www.hti.umich.edu/ 

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2000: 559–604. 

Bertinetto, Pier Marco, Karen H. Ebert & Casper de Groot. 2000. The Progressive in Europe. 

Dahl 2000: 517–558. 

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21: 167–180. 

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and Modality in the Languages of the World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


Comrie, Bernard. 1976. Aspect. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Dahl, Östen, ed. 2000. Tense and Aspect in the Languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Dal, Ingerid. 1952. Zur Entstehung des Englischen Participium Praesentis auf Hing. Norsk 

Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 16: 5–116. 

Denison, David. 1993. English Historical Syntax: Verbal Constructions. London: Longman. 

De Groot, Casper. 2007. The King is on Huntunge: On the Relation between Progressive and Absentive 

in Old and Early Modern English. Structural-functional studies in English Grammr: 

In Honour of Lachlan Mackenzie ed. by Mike Hannay & Gerard J. Steen, 175–190. Amsterdam 

& Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

Elsness, Johan. 1994. On the progression of the progressive in Early Modern English. ICAME 

Journal 18: 5–25. 

Fitzmaurice, Susan. 1998. Grammaticalisation, Textuality and Subjectivity: the Progressive and 

the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Virtues of Language: History in Language, Linguistics and 

Texts. Papers in Memory of Thomas Frank ed. by Dieter Stein & Rosanna Sornicola, 21–49. 

Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Freckmann, Norbert. 1995. The Progressive and Adverbial Collocations: Corpus Evidence. Anglistentag 

1994 Graz: Proceedings ed. by Wolfgang Riehle & Hugo Keiper, 255–267. Tübingen: 

Max Niemeyer. 

Heine, Bernd. 2003. Grammaticalization. The Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. 

Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 575–601. Oxford: Blackwell. 

Heine, Bernd, Ulrike Claudi & Friederike Hünnemeyer. 1991. Grammaticalization: a Conceptual 

Framework. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 

Hübler, Alex. 1998. The Expressivity of Grammar: Grammatical Devices Expressing Emotion 

across Time. Berlin: Mouton. 

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Time and tense. London: George Allen. 

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Johanson, Lars. 2000. Viewpoint Operators in European Languages. Dahl 2000: 27–187. 

Núñez-Pertejo, Paloma. 2004. The Progressive in the History of English: with Special Reference to 

the Early Modern English Period: a Corpus-based Study. München: Lincom. 

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Hildegard L.C. Tristram, 65–84. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter. 

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a Study of Spanish Progressive –ndo Constructions. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

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Philological Society 97: 51–101.

Gender assignment in Old English 

Letizia Vezzosi 

University of Perugia 

Old English has a three-gender formal assignment system, there are more 

than scanty instances where the same noun shows more than one gender. 

The phenomenon has been so far generally neglected both in textbooks and 

linguistic literature. In the present paper, the author classifies the Old English 

data, selected through a corpus analysis of electronic corpora and complete 

literary works on the base of a comparison with relevant data from typological 

investigations and historical linguistic studies, and shows that Old English 

gender variance depends on semantic and pragmatic factors that interfere with 

grammatical gender assignment, a linguistic fact that is cross-linguistically 

common. More precisely, besides the cross-linguistically frequent semantic traits 

such as [± animate] [± human], gender assignment in Old English seems to be 

sensitive to semantic roles. This parameter does not conflict with the previous 

semantic ones, since all of them can be derived from the more general feature 

[± individuated]. 


Old English is undisputedly said to have a grammatical gender, i.e., it resorts to 

a formal gender assignment system according to Corbett’s (1991) definition of 

linguistic gender: formal – namely morphological – rules determine whether a 

noun is feminine, masculine or neuter regardless of its meaning. 

This system is not fully consistent, and shows a significant number of exceptions, 

where nouns appear to have more than one gender or a different gender from 

their grammatical one. At the letter A in Clark’s Old English Dictionary 29 out of 72 

nouns have more than one gender. This phenomenon was noticed at the end of the 

19th century (cf. Fleischhacker 1889), although neither of the standard grammars 

1. I would like to thank Prof. Koenig, Prof. Rosenbach and two anonimous reviewers for their 

helpful comments. Any remaining inadequacies or mistakes are of course my own.

90 Letizia Vezzosi 

(Campbell 1959; & Brunner 1962) hints to it, 2 but has so far received little if any 

attention. At most it has been considered as either the outcome of language contact 

interference (Latin influence) or scribal error (Fisiak 1975; Mitchell 1985 & Wełna 

1978; etc.). 

The topic of the present chapter is exactly those gender assignment deviations 

from the formal system, with the exception of borrowings, loanwords and words 

formed on a Latin pattern. We intend to investigate whether it is a random phenomenon, 

due to scribal misunderstanding or error, or whether it shows some 

kind of consistency on the basis of which one can figure out rules that can account 

for gender assignment aberrations. 

To do so, Old English textual data, gathered from the Anglo-Saxon Dictionary by 

Bosworth and Toller (1898), the Toronto on-line Old English Dictionary and the Helsinki 

Corpus, will be compared with relevant data from typological investigations 

and historical linguistic or Indo-European studies, and consequently classified according 

to the type of gender assignment they take. This approach will prove to be 

a valuable tool for identifying coherence in gender inconsistency. Indeed, it clearly 

reveals that gender variance is not arbitrary, but depends on various semantic and 

pragmatic factors that may interfere with the Old English grammatical gender assignment 

system, i.e., the Old English noun classification. More precisely, besides 

semantic traits such as [± animate] [± human], further semantic differentiations, 

significant from an anthropological or cultural point of view, such as [± containing] 

[± power], are related to gender variability. Whereas semantic features such as 

[± animate] or [± power] play roles in gender assignment systems in the languages 

of the world, gender assignment in Old English seems to be sensitive to another 

unexpected feature, namely semantic roles: more precisely, masculine and feminine 

genders are preferred when the noun plays the role of an agent, whereas neuter 

gender is selected for the patient. This parameter like the other semantic features 

interfering with the Old English grammatical gender assignment will be shown to 

derive from the same and more general principle [± individuated]. Interestingly 

enough, this is the same macro-factor which is nowadays responsible for gender 

variation in spoken English varieties and dialects. 

1.1 Gender definition 

Before starting the core discussion, it may be worth recalling what we mean by 

the term ‘gender’. It is certain that gender is a category of any nominal system in the 

. Campbell (1959 § 569 and refs) and Brunner (1962 § 236Anm) do not ignore the 

phenomenon, but mention it only in relation to late confusion in inflections which in turn 

contributed to it.


languages of the world 3 ; less certain is how to define what it is. Since Hockett proposed 

to define genders as “classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated 

words” (Hockett 1958: 231), gender has been associated with noun classification and 

with agreement in view of the fact that gender only exists if grammatical forms with 

variable gender (e.g., adjectives, pronouns, numerals and so on) regularly adopt 

forms to agree with grammatical forms of invariable gender, usually nouns (Fodor 

1959: 2). If the determining criterion of linguistic gender is agreement, then saying 

that a language has three genders implies that there are three classes of nouns which 

are syntactically distinguished by the agreements they take. 

The way in which nouns are allotted to different genders is an intriguing question. 

If agreement can be used as a test to establish the gender of a given noun, 

native speakers must know the gender of nouns to produce correct sentences. 

According to Corbett (1991: 7), gender assignment depends on two basic types 

of information about the noun: its form and its meaning and accordingly formal 

and semantic gender assignment systems can be distinguished. 

Semantic systems are those systems where semantic factors 5 are sufficient on 

their own to account for the assignment. In semantic terms, nouns can be divided 

into those denoting animates and those denoting inanimates; the animates can 

be subdivided into those which are sex-differentiable and those which are not, 

the former in turn being subdivided into male and female. A case in point is the 

Present Day English gender system, where words like woman or girl or cow are 

feminine only for the reason that they refer to biologically female entities, man 

or boy or bull are masculine since their referents are male, and book, table, kitten 

and so on are neuter, because either they name inanimate entities, and therefore 

biologically neither female nor male, or their sexuality is irrelevant. 

. In some languages gender markers are also present in verbal forms, e.g., the Bantu form 

a-likuja ‘came’ has the marker a- which marks gender 1/2 singular, in Arabic there are feminine vs. 

masculine agreement forms in the verb, in a way similar to Italian: è andato/a ‘he/she has gone’. 

. Corbett (1991: 33) claims that “there are no syntactic systems”. By ‘syntactic systems’ he 

means types of gender assignment rules which determine the gender of a noun on exclusively 

syntactic criteria, such as “nouns which take prepositional complements are neuter” (Corbett 

1991: 33), according to which a noun is neuter only if it governs prepositions, but it is not neuter 

in all the other syntactic environments. But we will show later that syntax can play a role in 

gender assignment, at least in the old stages of Indo-European languages. 

. In non-strict semantic systems, besides the core semantic distinctions [± human] and 

[± animate], other concept associations may be responsible for noun classification (see also 

Lakoff 1987): [± harmful], [± power] [± concrete] etc. (Corbett 1991: 16–32). Given that similar 

distinctions are found in languages of totally unrelated families, classifications of gender semantic 

systems since the 19th century have been proposed according to the patterns of distinctions 

involved (see de la Grasserie 1989: 61 –15).


In a sense, all gender systems are semantic in that there is a semantic core even 

in formal gender assignment systems 6 (Aksenov 198 : 17–18); for example, in Old 

Germanic languages, nouns with animate and more constantly human referents 

very rarely conflict with their formal gender. Nevertheless, in formal systems, 

irrespective of any semantic-biased considerations, the rules for gender assignment 

primarily depend on the form of nouns rather than their meaning. In those 

systems, information for gender assignment may in turn be word-structure, comprising 

derivation and inflection (morphology) and sound-structure (phonology). 

Qatar (i.e., an East Cushitic language) is a language where gender assignment 

depends on phonological criteria, since nouns that end in an accented vowel are 

feminine (e.g., baxà ‘daughter’, catò ‘help’) whereas all the others are masculine 

(e.g., bàxa ‘son’, baànta ‘trumpet’); Russian can be an example of morphological 

gender systems, since the gender of a noun can be predicted on the basis of 

its declensional type: e.g., nouns of declensional type I are masculine, nouns of 

declensional types II and III are feminine and all the others are neuter (Corbett 

1991: 36). In German derivation suffixes determine the gender of a noun: e.g., 

nouns ending with -heit, -keit, -ung, -schaft, -erei, are feminine, diminutives in 

-lein, -chen are neuter as well as collectives with ge-prefix and -e suffix, and derivatives 

with -ismus are masculine. Here the gender is clear from the noun itself and 

not only from the agreeing forms: this phenomenon is known as overt gender. 

Since the relationship with the meaning of the word is accessory, in such systems 

there is a sort of arbitrariness in gender assignment and possible incompatibility 

between sex and gender: noun x is feminine because it takes agreement y; in order 

to produce agreement y correctly the native speaker must simply know that noun 

x is feminine. 

Gender is defined as a grammatical category proper to nominal systems. 7 

However, as a grammatical category it has a special status. With regard to other 

grammatical categories, such as tense and mood in verbal systems or number and 

case in nominal systems, there is always an alternative choice inasmuch as a verb 

can be either present or past, either indicative or subjunctive, and a noun can be 

either singular or plural in the nominative rather than genitive case, and so on. 

. For a system to be exclusively formal, there would also be no correlation between semantics 

and the genders established in this way: “the distribution of the nouns across the genders would 

be completely random as far as their meaning was concerned. Such a system is not found in any 

natural language” (Corbett 1991: 63). 

. Starting from the assumption that the agreement evidence is what counts as far as gender 

is concerned, there is the need to distinguish the sets in which nouns are divided (controller 

genders) from the agreement forms found (target genders).


On the contrary, nominal gender allows no choice: as a rule, the gender of a noun 

cannot possibly be equally masculine or feminine or neuter. 

Moreover, not only is gender visible through agreement, but also the function 

of gender itself seems to be reduced to agreement, unlike the other nominal 

categories which, while showing agreement, are not reduced to it. 

. Gender in Old English 

In Old English grammars and textbooks it is commonly stated that Old English 

has a formal system of gender assignment, like the other Old Germanic languages. 

Specifically there are three grammatical genders, i.e., feminine, masculine and 

neuter, whose assignment is claimed to be at most semantically unmotivated. 

Thus, different words referring to the same object can have different genders, as 

shown in the Old English pair ecg (f.) sweord (m.) for ‘sword’; the nouns wifman or 

wif (both for ‘woman’) are masculine and neuter respectively. 

As in Modern German, the Old English formal system is based not on the 

sound-form of the noun, but on its morphological structure. In other words, the 

gender of a noun is dependent on the presence of derivational suffixes or on the 

declensional type. Thus, suffixes such as -lac or -et mark neuter gender (e.g., boclac 

‘decree’, þeowet ‘slavery’), -ð/ðu(*-iþō), -ung, *-īn, * -jō, -nes, -estre and -wist 

belong to the feminine gender (e.g., mægðmaiden’, hræglung ‘clothing’, strengu 

‘strength’, þiefþu ‘theft’, clænes ‘purity’, lærestre ‘teacher’, huswist ‘household’), and 

-aþ/-oð, -dom, -end, -els, -ere, -had, -scipe masculine (e.g., fiscoþ ‘fishing’, cynedom 

‘reign’, hælend ‘Saviour’, cnyttels ‘sinew’, leornere ‘disciple’, cildhad ‘childhood’, burgscipe 

‘township’). Analogously, some thematic classes determine the gender of the 

nouns following their inflectional patterns: e.g., strong declension in -o- or in -a- 8 

only comprise nouns of masculine/neuter and feminine nouns respectively (e.g., 

stan-stanes pl. stanas ‘stone’ or wif-wifes pl. wifu as an -a-stem noun vs. giefu-giefe pl. 

giefa-e ‘gift’ an -o-stem noun). 

In Old English, gender is a covert and selectional parameter, to use Whorf ’s 

terminology (19 5: 3ff.), since it has no overt exponent, but becomes visible only 

by selecting a specific exponent for case and number both inside and outside the 

NP. In the following examples the predicative strongly inflected adjective tilu, the 

attributive weakly inflected brade and the deteminer seo appear in their feminine 

. It should be recalled that the gender of most Old English nouns is not predictable from 

their morphology: e.g., a strong noun-ending with a consonant in the nominative singular could 

belong to any of the three genders.


form to agree with the singular number, the nominative case and the feminine 

gender of the noun lind, although the referent of lind is inanimate; for similar 

reasons, wimman (m.) selects the masculine form of the determiner se. 

(1) a. Seo brade lind wæs tilu and ic hire lufode. 

“That broad shield was good and I loved it.” 

b. [Ch 1 7] Þurwif hatte se wimman… . Þa tymde Wulfstan hine to 

Æþelstane æt Sunnanbyrig. 

“The woman’s name was Th… . Then W. called her [as witness] 

for Æthelstan at S.” 

c. [ÆCHom ii.66.22] Babilonia … is gereht ‘gescyndnys’. Seo getacnað helle. 

“Babilonia is described as ‘shame’. It denotes hell.” 

As is clear in (1a–c), gender is also made explicit in terms of gender-specific pronominal 

reference by personal pronouns: hire is feminine because it refers to lind 

which is feminine, hine is masculine because wimman is grammatically masculine, 

although semantically referring to a female being, and the demonstrative seo is 

feminine because Babilonia is a burg ‘town’ which is feminine. 

As undeniable as the grammatical nature of the gender system in Old English 

might be, there are more than random instances of ‘unexpected’, ‘ungrammatical’ 

gender assignment as well as nouns of unstable gender (Matasović 200 ). This 

phenomenon was noticed a long time ago, but for Old English it has so far been 

analysed mainly in relation to borrowings (Wełna 1978) and Latin calques, 9 where 

one can claim that the uncertainty in gender assignment can be ascribed either to 

clashes between the source language and the target language or to such processes 

as semantic analogy 10 and concept associations (Fleishhacker 1889). 

Gender fluctuation is not limited to these cases, but also concerns words of 

Germanic origin, completely unrelated to any foreign language influence. There 

are three types of gender deviance from the norm: (a) some words show gender 

variability outside and inside the NP (i.e., determiner, adjective, participles, 

relative and personal pronouns) inasmuch as they may agree with the natural 

gender of the referent, in contrast with their grammatical gender; (b) related 

words with morphological differentiation and accordingly different gender may 

express difference in perspective of their semantic content; and (c) more than 

one gender is assigned to the same word, apparently without any motivation or 

consequence. 

9. In the present paper borrowings and Latin-based calques are objects of analysis. See also 

Wełna (1978) who considers the conflicting factors involved in the assignment of some fifty 

loanwords from Latin and Old Icelandic into Old English, or Fisiak (1975). 

10. Semantic analogy concerns the loanword taking the gender of a noun of similar meaning 

already in the language.

.1 First type of gender deviance: nature over grammar 


The (a) type of deviance concerns the predominance of the natural gender of the 

referent over grammatical gender. This phenomenon can take place both within 

the NP, where variable gender words such as determiners and adjectives agree 

with the natural gender of the referent of the head noun – e.g., (2a–b) – and outside 

the NP, where the choice of the pronominal elements depends on the meaning 

of the antecedent both in the case of anaphoric reference – e.g., (3a–b) – and relative 

pronoun – e.g., (3c). This happens quite frequently when grammatical gender 

and semantic gender conflict. Consequently it is not surprising that such deviance 

mainly concerns words with animate and human referents, and less frequently 

nouns referring to inanimate entities. 

(2) a. [Judg .21] seo (f.) wifman (m) 

“the woman” 

b. [Cd. 32 Gen. 691] He hogode on ðæt (n.) micle morþ (m.) me forweorpan, 

forlætan and forlædan. 

“He (the devil) intended to throw me in the great death, to abandon 

and seduce” 

(3) a. [ÆCHom i.1 .21] geworhte of ðam ribbe ænne (m.acc.) wifman (m.) and 

axode Adam hu heo (f.) hatan sceolde 

“[he] created from the rib a woman and asked Adam how to call her” 

b. [ÆCHom i. 20.31] Wyrc þe nu ænne arc … gehref hit eall 

“Prepare now an arc … roof it all” 

c. [ÆCHom I.2 .22.] to anum mædene (n.) … seo (f.) wæs Maria gehaten 

“to one virgin … whose name was Maria” 

As for anaphoric reference, the frequency of semantic gender assignment is 

directly proportional to the distance between the antecedent and the pronominal 

element: in ( a) wisdom is modified by an accusative masculine determiner and in 

its immediate sentence it is referred to by means of hiene, i.e., accusative masculine 

pronoun, as one would expect since it is a masculine singular; in the following 

sentence, where the personal pronoun is quite separated from its antecedent, the 

word wisdom is referred to by means of hit, namely a pronoun that agrees with 

the natural gender of the referent [– animate]; in ( b), whereas inside the NP the 

determiner agrees with the grammatical gender of its head, the referring pronoun 

agrees with the natural gender of the referent of wif. 

( ) a. [CP 3.2 ] þæt ðu þone wisdom ðe ðe God sealde ðær ðær ðu hiene 

befæstan mæge befæste. Geðenc hwelc witu us ða becomon for ðisse worulde, 

ða ða we hit nohwæðer ne selfe ne lufodon ne eac oþrum monnum ne lefdon … 

“that wisdom which God gave to you where you may implant it there 

implant it. Think what punishment would come to us for this world if we 

did not love it nor allowed others to do so”


b. [Genesis 2382–2383] þa þæt wif ahloh wereda drihtnes nalles glædlice, 

ac heo gearum frod 

“then the woman laughed at the lord of hosts, by no means kindly, for 

she, [was] advanced in years” 

In all those cases there is a conflict between ‘semantic’ agreement and ‘syntactic’ 

agreement: a linguistic fact cross-linguistically quite frequent in formal gender 

assignment systems, when the grammatical gender and the meaning of the noun 

clash. Especially in the case of pronominal gender, Moravcsik (1978) had already 

noticed that in noun phrase external agreement (e.g., agreement between 

nouns and verbs or anaphoric pronouns) grammatical gender agreement is often 

optional. 11 In his typological studies, by handling many instances of gender 

divergence and fluctuation between semantic and syntactic agreement, Corbett 

individuates four types of agreement targets, arranges them into a hierarchy 

of agreement (5), and formulates constraints about the possible agreement 

patterns, as in (6a–c). 

(5) Agreement hierarchy (Corbett 1991: 20 ) 

Attributive > Predicative > Relative Pronoun > Personal Pronoun 

(6) a. As we move rightwards along the hierarchy, the likelihood of semantic 

agreement will increase monotonically (that is with no intervening 

decrease). (Corbett 1991: 20 ) 

b. If parallel targets show different agreement forms, then the further target 

will show semantic agreement. (Corbett 1991: 235) 

c. For any particular target type, the further it is removed from its controller, 

the greater the likelihood of semantic agreement. (Corbett 1991: 235) 

These are also the agreement targets present in Old English and the discrepancies 

noted above are explicable in terms of Corbett’s maxims (6a–c). In a typological 

perspective, then, Old English does not differ from many other languages 

with formal gender systems, at least with regard to this kind of gender fluctuation. 

When grammatical gender is not as expected, it is only because the referential 

gender of the noun overrides the lexical gender (Dahl 2000: 105–106). Like other 

languages in the world, this also happens in Old English when the morphology of 

the noun does not match its semantic content, and accordingly the gender of the 

variable gender words may be determined by the gender of the conceptualised 

referent. 

11. Moravcsik (1978) distinguishes noun-phrase external agreement from noun phrase internal 

agreement (i.e., inflection of nouns, relative pronouns, adjectives, demonstratives, possessives, 

articles and numerals) where grammatical gender agreement is obligatory.

. Second type of gender deviance: semantic perspective 


Effective as it might appear, the predominance of referential gender over lexical 

gender cannot account for the second type of gender deviance in Old English, 

where the same lexemes or groups of etymologically and formally related words 

show different genders completely unrelated to the natural gender of their referents. 

Although less frequent, this phenomenon is intriguing, especially because it 

is found in Proto-Indo-European and all the other Old Germanic languages. 

This type of gender variation concerns cases such as the triad lig (m.) – liget 

(n.) – ligetu (f.) or the pair list (f.) – list (m.), where there seems to be no semantic 

difference in correspondence to gender fluctuation. Looking directly at their textual 

occurrences, however, it is possible to discern a slight, but consistent variation 

in meaning. Substantially, although, for instance, lig (m.) – liget (n.) – ligetu (f.) are 

all related to the idea of ‘fire’, not all of them express ‘fire’: lig (m.) appears to refer to 

‘flame’, whereas liget (n.) specifically means ‘fire’ and ligetu (f.) denotes ‘lightening’. 

Similar differentiation of meanings turns up in pairs like tungol (n.) – tungol (m.), 

where the noun, if masculine, denominates the single items, i.e., ‘star, planet’, that 

constitute the entity, i.e., ‘constellation, firmament’, referred to by the same noun 

but in neuter gender. The alternation may involve both animate genders: for example, 

leod (f.) ‘people, nation’ – leod (m.) ‘man’, mircels (f.) ‘seal’ – mircels (m.) ‘mark’, 

list (f.) ‘cleverness, art’ – list (m.) ‘skill’, or traht (f.) ‘exposition, treatise’ – traht (m.) 

‘passage’. Here, again, the masculine gender turns out to express a single example of 

the general concept, whereas the feminine expresses a collective view. 12 

This linguistic fact is observable in other Old Germanic languages: in Old Norse 

(Gordon 1988) grunnr (m.) means ‘ground or sea floor, bottom’ whereas grunn (n.) 

indicates ‘shallows’ and grund (f.) a ‘grassy area, ground’; in Old High German 

(Leiss 2003) luft may have different meanings, namely luft (f.) ‘sky’, luft (m.) ‘gentle 

breeze’ and luft (n.) ‘air’ or felis (m.) ‘piece of rock’ and felisa (f.) ‘rock as substance’. 

Such correspondence between different genders and different meanings was 

not unknown in the old stages of Indo-European languages: it was already noticed 

by Schmidt (1889) and Brugmann (1889) who related it to the origin of grammatical 

gender in Indo-European. In this line of arguing, Delbrück (1893: 117) claimed 

that “Die häufige Doppelgeschlechtigkeit dürfte sich darus erklären, dass in der 

Urzeit der Prozess der Nachahmung noch nicht derart abgeschlossen war, dass 

für jedes Wort ein festes Geschlecht bestimmt gewesen wäre.” Hence, instability 

1 . Here, we are not confronted with such cases as those cross-linguistically observed where 

different genders correspond to different meanings. In Ojibwa mettik means ‘tree’ and is animate, 

or it can mean ‘piece of wood’ and is then inanimate (Bloomfield 1957: 31–2). In the Old English 

instance, there is only one ‘idea’, but different perspectives from which it is conceptualised.


of gender assignment was traditionally considered to reflect an intermediate stage 

between the Proto-Indo-European system which opposes common gender to neuter 

gender (Brugmann 1897; Schwink 200 & Sieburg 1997) and a subsequent 

stage with three gender oppositions. Initially every noun could be inflected with 

three different nominal endings, i.e., assigned to three genders, which modify the 

meaning of the noun in a specific way (Lehmann 1958): masculine had ‘singulative’ 

quality, neuter was a nominal resultative and feminine a collective. 

What has been observed in Old English examples, as well as in the other Old 

Germanic languages, could be a reflex of the original Indo-European categorical 

meanings of the three gender opposition, before the gender oppositions formally 

dissolved and the corresponding semantic oppositions consequently broke down, 

giving rise to grammatical gender. 

. Third type: more than one gender related to [± individuated] 

The most immediate case of multiple gender pertains to those nouns like baby, 

doctor and so on, otherwise called ‘nouns of common gender’ (Corbett 1991: 181). 

In Old English, such nouns have different derivative suffixes that express gender 

difference: thus the word ‘wolf ’ appears as wulf following the a-stem declension 

when referring to both to wolves and to he-wolf, but is wylf, i.e., jo-stem noun 

derived from wulf if feminine; similarly henn is the feminine derivative from the 

masculine hann ‘cock’; otherwise, different suffixes were used, as in the case of 

hunta (m) ‘hunter’ and hunticge/huntigestre (f.). Therefore, they do not represent 

any ambiguous instance of gender encoding in Old English. 

Much more interesting is another subset of Old English nouns that appears with 

inflectional morphology associated with two or three gender classes and includes 

inanimates: for example, sæ ‘sea’ can be either feminine or masculine; sæl ‘time’, usually 

masculine, also occurs as feminine; hearg ‘temple’ is masculine as often as it is 

feminine, and so on. In fact, such a fluctuation in gender assignment cannot possibly 

be explained in terms of Corbett’s hierarchy or maxims and is not easily inserted 

in Lehmann’s (1958) frame. Apparently no such pragmatic or semantic reasons as 

those in § 2.1 can be called for, nor do their meanings differ in terms of the singulative 

– collective – resultative perspective, although they mean differently. 

In a very restricted group, the ‘connotations’ of gender appear to be brought to 

the surface. Following Jakobson’s (1966) intuition, 13 in some circumstances, the 

factors which help determine the semantic rule, that is, the things which help us 

1 . Jakobson (1966: 236–7) is also more extreme, when he claims ‘everyday verbal mythology 

and poetry’ can be ‘potential circumstances’ in which semantic gender may appear meaningful


establish a person’s sex, can be extended beyond their obvious domain and be 

applied to nouns which would normally belong to what Corbett calls ‘semantic 

residue’, i.e., biologically undistinguished. This could be the underlying mechanism 

on the basis of which the Latin word vinea ‘vineyard-vine’ is glossed in the 

Lindisfarne Gospel (see ex. 7) consistently with wingeard (f.) to express the idea of 

vineyard and with wingeard (m.) to indicate vine. Here the feminine gender is a 

meaning feature that denotes ‘X bearing Y’. 1 

(7) [Lxxi/13,15] 

and ongann ðæm³ him on bispellum sprecca wingeard gesette mon 

et coepit illis in parabolis loqui vineam pastinauit homo 

and sende to lond-buendum on tid esne þte from þæm lond-buendum 

et misit ad agricolas in tempore serrum ut from agricolis 

onfenge of wæstm þære wingearde and gelahton hine ofslogon and 

acciperit de fructu vineae et apprehendes eum occiderunt et 

gewurpon buta ðæm wingeard hwæt ofðon doeð hlaferd ðære 

eiecerunt extra uineam quid ergo faciet dominus 

wingearde cymeð and fordoeð ða lond-buendo and dabit þ 

uineae uenit et perdet colonos et dabit 

winegeard oðrum 

uineam aliis 

In a few cases, concept associations cause the assignment of different genders to 

the same noun: hæð occurs as feminine, masculine and neuter, probably in analogy 

to feld (m.) and gærs (n.) (see Fleischhacker 1889). 

But cases such as wingeard and hæð are not the norm in this subset. With most 

of those more-than-one-gender nouns, there is an alternation between neuter 

and non-neuter gender, and if gender fluctuation has a meaning, it is not always 

easily explicable in terms of extension of the semantic features prototypically 

associated with feminine and masculine gender, nor with concept associations. 

Nevertheless, there are behavioural consistencies: non-neuter gender is often 

associated with (a) plurality, (b) specific interpretation, (c) individuatedness, and 

(d) semantic roles. 

in the residue gender. More specifically he accounts for the gender of Russian words for ‘fork’ 

and ‘knife’ to a Russian popular superstition according to which if a knife is dropped a male 

guest will come, while if a fork is dropped a female guest can be expected. That’s why ‘knife’ 

in Russian is masculine and ‘fork’ is feminine. Of course these are post hoc explanations of an 

apparently arbitrary phenomenon. 

1 . Slightly different, but connected, meaning is embodied by feminine gender in Italian word 

pairs, such as cassetto (m.) ‘drawer’ – cassetta (f.) ‘box’, cesto (m.) – cesta (f.) ‘corb’, where the feminine 

gender denotes a bigger size of an object (e.g., [+ big]), often more suitable as a container.


.1 Third type of gender deviance: [± countable] 

The close relationship between number and gender is so undisputedly recognized 

for gender to be the category most often realised together with number: 

indeed Greenberg claims that agreement in gender implies number agreement 

(1978: 9 ). Cross-linguistically, phenomena of syncretism are commonly observed, 

where singular forms have more gender specifications than the plural. In a convergent 

system there is only one form for the plural with no gender distinction 

(cf. in German there are three genders in the singular, e.g., der Tisch – die Tasche 

– das Buch vs. one in the plural, e.g., die Tische-Taschen-Bücher); in cross systems 

the gender distinctions in the plural are also found in the singular (cf. in Tamil 

the singular indicates masculine, feminine and neuter while the plural rational vs. 

neuter, or in Qatar where the associative particle in the masculine form is used 

also for feminine 15 and masculine plurals, e.g., -ka). 

Gender syncretism of this kind is proper to Old English too, but has nothing 

to do with gender instability. In Old English there is an alternation between the 

neuter gender in the singular (cf. 8a and 9a) and the masculine or feminine gender 

in the plural (cf. 8b and 9b) within the paradigm of the same noun. 

(8) a. [Bt.Met. Fox 26, 235] ðæt ingeþonc ælces monnes ðone lit [læt] ðider hit wile 

“the mind of every man bands the body whither it will” 

b. [Bt. 7.1; Fox 16, 5] Oþ ðæt he ongeat ðæs modes inngeþoncas 

“until he understood the mind’s thoughts” 

(9) a. [Chr. 1086] … Hy arerdon unrihte tollas 

“They established unfair tributes” 

b [Chart.Th. 635, 2 ] and Ælfric Hals nam þæt toll for ðæs kynges hand. 

“and Ælfric Hals took the impost for the king’s hand” 

More than one reason can be advanced to justify the shift from neuter to nonneuter 

gender, the first being morphological transparency, since in many inflection 

paradigms plural neuter nouns are not distinguished from singular ones. 

However, while it is certain that plurality is associated with non-neuter gender, 

what can be pluralized can also be counted: In other words, the semantic feature 

connected with non-neuter gender in these instances is [± countable]. 

. Third type of gender deviance: [± specific] [± individuated] 

In another subset of nouns, the alternation neuter vs. non-neuter seems to depend 

on the interpretation of the referent: cwælm in (10a) is different from cwælm in 

1 . In Qatar the associative particle in the feminine form is –ta.


(10b) only in terms of specificity, that is, in (10a) it refers to the act through which 

Abel was slaughtered, whereas in (10b) it refers to the event of dying. 

(10) a. [Beo 107] þone cwealm gewræc ece drihten, þæs he Abel slog 

“the eternal Lord punished the slaughter with which he murdered Abel” 

b. [Prog. 1.2. (Foerst) 6] Gif on frigedæg geþunrað þonne getacnað 

þæt nytena cwealm 

“If on Friday it thunders, then it means death to the ignorant” 

Such a contrast between a specific and a generic interpretation could also be the 

reason why in Riddle (c) the neuter gender wiht is maintained in the choice of the 

gender–specific pronoun (e.g., him) when it is generically mentioned, but is changed 

when the ‘creature’ becomes more and more individuated (e.g., seo wiht and he). 

Analogously, if the non-neuter gender is considered to be semantically connected 

with the feature [+ individuated], the alternation neuter vs. non-neuter gender in 

(12a) vs. (12b) becomes remarkably significant: in (12a) geniht is generically interpreted, 

whereas in (12b) it becomes specific thanks to its genitive modifier ðines 

huses, and individuated as it is contrasted with the abundance of other houses. 

(11) [Riddle (c)] 

Ic ða wiht (n) geseah wæpnedcynnes. 

Geoguðmyrðe grædig him on gafol forlet 

Mon maþelade, se þe me gesægde: 

Seo (f.) wiht, gif hio gedygeð duna briceð 

gif he tobirsteð bindeð cwice 

“then I saw a creature of masculine nature/with joy of youth greedy for itself as 

a gift let/he said who spoke to me /The creature if survived breaks hills/if dies it 

binds the living.” 

(12) a. [Bt. 33.1] Wenst ðu ðæt se anweald and ðæt geniht seo to forseonne 

“thinkest thou that power and abudance are to be despised?” 

b. [Ps.Th. 35.8] Hy beoþ oferdrencte on ðære genihte ðines huses 

inebriabuntur ab ubertate domus tuae 

. Third type of gender deviance: agent vs. patient 

Neither past nor recent scientific literature has paid any attention to the possible 

correspondence between gender assignment and semantic roles. Such complete 

neglect could be due to the fact that this condition is often intertwined with or 

can be interconnected with other factors. Even typologically, Corbett (1991: 33) 

argues that there are no syntactic systems of gender assignment, that is, there is no 

system where gender assignment only depends on syntactic rules. Nevertheless, 

it has been noticed that several of the criteria which underlie gender systems also 

turn up regularly in other aspects of morphology and syntax, e.g., in Tlapanec


where its semantic gender system has reflexes in its syntax, specifically in its 

Word Order. 

The case in point consists of those occurrences where the same word, although 

denoting the same entity, shows different gender. In those instances no other reason 

can be put forward to motivate the change but the semantic roles 16 encoded 

by the NP: in (13a–b) lyft denotes the same entity, but in (13a) it is neuter and in 

(13b) it is feminine; the only difference between the two passages is that in (13a) 

lyft is the object of the action and in (13b) it is the subject. 

This preference for non-neuter gender for agent roles and for neuter gender for 

patient roles could be one of the reasons why in (13c) cild is masculine, since in the 

same text, i.e., Lindisfarne Gospel, it is regularly neuter if in the object position. Similarly, 

in (13d) the formal rule, according to which the suffix –ung forms feminine 

nouns, is rendered completely ineffective by the patient role played by geddung. 

(13) a. [Hexam 6] He gesceop ðæt upplice lyft … 

“the heavenly sky he created” 

b. [Lchdom.iii.272.12] Ðeos lyft … is an ðæra feower gesceafta 

“This sky is one of the several creations … ” 

c. [L i/ 1, ] gefeade se cild (n.) in inna ire 

exultauit infans in utero eius 

d. [L xix /11] ðas ðæm geherendum to-geecde cuoeð þ geddung 

haec illis audientibus adiciens dixit parabolam 

In those occurrences, gender variation in the same lexeme apparently seems 

to be unrelated to the above-mentioned semantic and pragmatic features, such as 

[± countable], [± individuated]. On the other hand, semantic roles are linked to 

other pragmatic features: topicality and animacy, first of all, for agents are prototypically 

human or animate and topical, but also individuality, agents being generally 

high in the individuality scale (cf. Givón 198 : 139 or Sasse 1993: 659). Consequently, 

semantic roles also present the pertinent semantic and pragmatic traits already 

investigated in the other instances of gender deviance, i.e., [± human] [± animate] 

[± countable] [± specific] [± individuated], which are in turn specific manifestations 

of the more general principles of ‘individualisation’ (Seiler 1986: 25). 

1 . A similar phenomenon was noticed by Lazzeroni (2002) in Old Greek, in Sanskrit and in 

Hittite, where words with the same referent but different gender had a complementary distribution 

in the sentence, that is, masculine gender to encode the ‘actor’ and neuter the ‘undergoer’: 

Sanskr. svar (n.) and sūrah ‘sun’, Sanskr. udaka-,udan-,vār-(n.) and ap-(f.) ‘water’; OGreek ὄυаρ 

(n.) and ὄυєιοϚ (m.) ‘dream’; in Hittite watar ‘water’ is masculine when it purifies, but neuter 

when is given. Already according to Meillet (1921: 129 ff.) the masculine form of ‘dream’ represented 

the dream as active force, where the neuter as an event.


In other words, Old English gender incoherence is not chaotic, but depends 

on the primary conceptual parameter of individualisation or ‘divisibility’ (Vogel 

2000), which secondary features underlie (Weber 2000): 

[+ countable] [– countable] 

[+ individualized] [– individualized] 

[+ external perspective] [– external perspective] 

[– additive] [+ additive] 

[– divisible] [+ divisible] 

All the traits on the left column speak for a higher degree of individualisation and 

consequently favour the non-neuter gender assignment. On the contrary, every 

feature in the right column characterises lower degree of individualisation and 

often corresponds to neuter nominal gender. 

. Conclusion 

Nearly all historical discussions of English classification suggest that English gender 

evolved from a grammatical to a natural system. Such a shift is generally explained 

as the direct result of the decay of noun and modifier inflectional endings 

in the late Old English and early Middle English (Mustanoja 1960). Along this line 

gender inconsistency is considered to be connected with the decadence 17 of the 

Old English nominal system: 18 developments such as “the dissolution of inflectional 

classes, the dissociation of the categories of case and number and the gradual 

generalization of word-based noun morphology” (Kastovsky 2000: 709–10) 

affected the rules on which the Old English formal system was based. 

Accordingly, gender variability simply signals “the disintegration of the category 

as such and consequently of the gradual loss of any sensitivity for grammatical 

gender” (Kastovsky 2000: 722). However, it has been attested in all types 

of texts, irrespective of text genres and chronology: it is not rare to come upon 

gender deviance even in Beowulf (see 1 ). Therefore, we agree with Kastovsky 

(2000: 709–10) when he argues that “the decay of [grammatical] gender is not just 

1 . The analyses of Fleischhacker (1889) and Wełna (1978) also concord with this view: borrowings 

or loanwords are not internalised into the target language morphology and prestigious 

foreign languages could be very influential, as well as concept associations and morphological 

levelling were possible, because of the weakness and opacity of the Old English nominal system. 

1 . Mitchell (1985: § 62–65) provides three explanations for these mixtures of forms: errors 

from ignorance of a ‘dying system’; analogical confusion confined to a particular context; variation 

(or confusion) of gender and class in Germanic and in Old English.


a phenomenon of the late Old English and early Middle English periods.” Already 

in Beowulf one can find instances of semantic gender agreement overriding formal 

gender agreement: in (1 ) hlæw ‘mound’ is grammatically feminine, but its 

referent is inanimate; accordingly the anaphoric pronoun is hit, namely the accusative 

neuter form, and not the expected accusative feminine hie which would 

agree with the gender of its antecedent. 

(1 ) [Beowulf 2802–2807] 

Hatað heaðomære hlæw gewyrcean 

… 

þæt hit sæliðend syððan hatan 

Biowulfes biorh 

“Bid the warriors to build a mound … that afterwards sailors call it the barrow 

of Beowulf ” 

Nor is help provided by standard grammars of Old English, in which gender 

confusion is related to inflectional confusion or is at most taken into consideration 

only in connection with natural agreement overruling grammatical agreement 

(Mitchell 1985 § 69). Even in this case, it continues to be common practice to 

attribute gender variation found in the manuscripts to ‘scribal error’, and, indeed, 

scribes certainly made plenty of mistakes in copying. Nevertheless, when confronting 

unexpected forms, from a heuristic point of view, it would be, in my opinion, 

preferable to invoke scribal error only when the evidence clearly supports such a 

hypothesis. On the other hand, the regularity and consistency of variant gender 

forms require investigation in themselves. 

Undoubtedly this phenomenon must be related to a general progressive change 

in Old English morphology through which “the functional load of grammatical 

gender markers diminish[ed]” (Braunmüller 2000: 9). Conversely, gender marking 

was not lost, but, thanks to its diminishing grammatical function, it could be 

“used for other purposes […] reinterpreted as a semantic feature in order to express 

other grammatical categories or functions” (Wurzel 1986: 9 ). Old English 

gender deviations might be a remnant of the original Indo-European categorial 

meanings of the three gender opposition (Lehmann 1958): masculine encoded 

countability, feminine expressed collectiveness without distributive character, and 

neuter represented uncountable mass nouns. In other words, Indo-European gender 

marking encoded the concept of [individuality]. 19 But it is undoubted that Old 

English already had such a well-developed formal system of gender assignment 

19. In Indo-European languages (cf. Serzisko 1982: 99–103) the concept of gender is based on 

a quantitative opposition, i.e., definite vs. indefinite, which corresponds to the opposition masculine 

vs. feminine/neuter since the feature [+ individuated] includes the feature [+ definite].


that this one was about to decline. More convincingly one could then suppose that 

a new gender category apparently acquired a new function, that is, difference in 

gender corresponded to difference in the perspectivisation of nouns: gender variation 

underlies the primary conceptual parameter of ‘individuality’. 

The pervasiveness and the consistency of the phenomenon raises the question 

whether this perspectivisation function might be simply interpreted as the outcome 

of a re-interpretation process of gender due to the decay of the Old English 

formal system, or whether it is deeply rooted in the grammatical category of gender. 

This chapter cannot provide a definitive answer, but a preliminary and tentative 

hypothesis can nevertheless be attempted. 

Present Day English represents a language with a strict semantic gender system. 

However, there are cases where the straightforward semantic rules are overridden 

by emotive and affective factors (Vachek 196 ), and especially in colloquial usage, 

considerable variation is possible: humans may be downgraded by the use of it, 20 

and inanimates upgraded by the use of he or she, only if they are countable and individuated 

(cf. 15a–b). In English varieties and dialects gender variation is common, 

and there is general agreement that the determining feature underlying such fluctuation 

is the individuality parameter (Siemund 2001; Kortmann & Scheider 200 ): 

feminine and masculine pronouns 21 are also used with inanimates if characterised 

by the feature [+ individuated], but never with mass nouns (cf. 16a). 

(15) a. Is he washable? [thus an American female customer at a store refers to a 

bedspread (Corbett 1991: 12)] 

b. You said the black knife, you said. I said the sharp one this one he’s fairly 

cheap but they use him a lot [BNC KD0] 

(16) a. how did they do that [sc. Baking] again? Well, y-you see, you and-, 

had – ’twas hearth fires then, th., th-, right down on the hearth, you see, and 

they had a big round iron with a handle on ‘n, and they used to put he under 

the fire and he’d get hot; then they used to put some – take some fire from the 

corner o’the fireplace like and put it here where you was going to bake to, and 

put this iron on top of it [South West England (Wakelin 1986: 103– )] 

b. they heard the sneck o the door liftin, and the door tried but sho would no 

open [Orkney speaker (Wales 1996: 138)] 

0. Mathiot and Roberts (1979) give examples from American English in which humans are 

downgraded by the use of it: e.g., the burglar broke into the house. It destroyed our furniture while 

stealing. 

1. Hockett calls the animate gender ‘absorptive’, by which he means that ‘there are routes for a 

shift of gender from inanimate to animate, but not the opposite’ (1966: 62).


North Germanic languages, such as Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, have a 

two-gender system, i.e., uter gender – historically derived from the syncretism of 

Old Germanic feminine and masculine – vs. neuter gender. Their distribution 

is formally ruled. However, they can alternate in special circumstances, as is clear 

in (17). 

(17) a. Är färsk sill gott? [Swedish] 

is fresh herring [uter] good [neuter]? 

“is fresh herring good?” 

b. Nyfångad sill är särskilt god [Swedish] 

new-caught herring [uter] is specially good [uter] 

“the herring, recently caught, is good in a special way” 

Here, as in Present Day English varieties and dialects, the difference in gender 

appears to correspond to a difference in perspectivisation. If a noun is 

[+ individuated], then uter agreement is favoured. This also holds true in other 

Germanic languages, such as Dutch: if ‘toothpaste’, which grammatically is of 

common gender, is conceptualised as mass noun, the specific-gender pronoun is 

neuter, but when ‘toothpaste’ is individuated it becomes of common gender (18). 

(18) a. Is de tandpasta op? ja, het is op. [Dutch] 

is the.common toothpaste up? yes, Pron-Neut. is up 

“Is toothpaste finished’ Yes, it is” 

b. Is de tube tandpasta leeg? Ja, hij (common) is leeg [Dutch] 

Is the.common toothpaste empty? Yes, Pron.Common is empty 

“Is the toothpaste tube finished’ Yes, it is” 

To conclude, gender is traditionally described as a sort of ‘secondary grammatical 

category’ of the noun (Ibrahim 1973: 26), because unlike other grammatical categories 

it allows no choice and has no ‘authentic relation’ to conceptual categories. 

Thus gender is given a special status. From the analysis of Old English data and 

comparison with Germanic and cross-linguistic data, it clearly appears that gender 

is either primarily or secondarily linked to some semantic or pragmatic factors, 

in any gender assignment systems. Accordingly, if one thinks gender essentially 

underlies the concept of [± individuality], then its function is no longer reduced 

to agreement, but becomes a meaningful feature of the noun: among the nominal 

grammatical categories, the function of gender can be categorised as ‘nominal 

aspect’ or ‘perspectivisation’ of the noun. 

Consequently, in periods such as Old English, gender deviance in no way signals 

the disintegration of the category, but represents a special circumstance in 

which the basic function of gender marking becomes more visible, thanks to a 

weakening of the formal nominal inflectional system.

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On the position of the OE quantifier eall 

and PDE all* 

Tomohiro Yanagi 

Chubu University 

This paper, through a study of the corpus of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, shows 

that the quantifier eall in Old English exhibited the same distributional properties 

as the quantifier all in present-day English: (i) eall can float from a nominative 

noun phrase (NP) it modifies; (ii) eall can float from an accusative NP when it is 

followed by a predicative complement; and (iii) the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order is 

more frequent than the ‘quantifier-pronoun’ order. The paper also argues that the 

quantifier eall is base-generated as the head of the Quantifier Phrase (QP) and 

selects an NP as its complement. The ‘full-NP-quantifier’ order can be derived by 

adjoining the NP to the QP. However, this operation is not applied to an NP in 

the argument position, due to the ban on adjunction to arguments. Unlike NPs, 

pronouns are adjoined to the head of a QP, yielding the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ 

order more freely. 


It is well-known that in present-day English (PDE) the quantifier all can occur in 

various positions as in (1), as well as in the pre-nominal position as in (2). 

(1) a. The children all would have been doing that. 

b. The children would all have been doing that. 

c. The children would have all been doing that. 

d. The children would have been all doing that. (Baltin 1995: 211) 

(2) All the children would have been doing that. 

* An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 14th International Conference on 

English Historical Linguistics, held at the University of Bergamo, Italy on 21–25 August 2006. 

I am grateful to Masayuki Ohkado and anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and 

suggestions. I am also indebted to Patrick Miller for correcting stylistic errors. Of course, all 

remaining inadequacies are my own.

110 Tomohiro Yanagi 

The sentences in (1) involve the quantifier floating from the subject it modifies. 1 

The positions of this floating quantifier are generally assumed to be the positions 

a subject occupies in cyclically moving to the sentence-initial position as 

in (2). By contrast, the quantifier cannot occur after an object NP unless it is followed 

by a predicative complement. These facts have been discussed in generative 

literature. 2 

On the other hand, it seems that little attention has been paid to the quantifier 

eall in Old English (OE) from a generative point of view. 3 This chapter therefore 

focuses on the OE quantifier eall, and shows that eall in OE exhibits the same 

distributional properties as the quantifier all in PDE. We also examine in what 

positions the OE quantifier eall can occur. 

2. PDE quantifier all 

Before dealing with the OE quantifier eall data, this section reviews some syntactic 

properties of the quantifier all in PDE. First, the PDE quantifier can ‘float’ from a 

subject it modifies, as in (3b). 

(3) a. All the students have finished the assignment. 

b. The students have all finished the assignment. (Bobaljik 2003: 107) 

In (3a) all occurs before the subject NP while all in (3b) occupies the position 

between the two verbs have and finished. 

Second, unlike the quantifier modifying a subject, the quantifier modifying an 

object generally cannot follow the object, as in (4). 

(4) a. * Mary hates the students all. 

b. * I like the men all. 

c. * I saw the men all yesterday. 

However, these sentences become grammatical if the objects are pronominalized 

as in (5). 

1. In the recent generative framework the term ‘floating’ would be replaced by ‘stranded’, but 

this paper uses the conventional term. 

2. There are two major approaches to the floating quantifier: the stranding analysis (cf. Sportiche 

1988; McCloskey 2000; Bošcović 2004, and others) and the adverbial analysis (cf. Williams 

1982; Baltin 1995; Torrego 1996, and others). See Bobaljik (2003) for an extensive overview of 

floating quantifiers. 

3. For a diachronic study of the quantifier all and other quantifiers such as each, many, and 

some, see Carlson (1978) and Lightfoot (1979).

(5) a. Mary hates them all. 

b. I like them all. 

c. I saw them all yesterday. 


Third, in contrast to sentences like (4), if a predicative complement follows the 

quantifier, the sentence will be grammatical. This is illustrated in (6). 

(6) a. I gave the kids all some candy to keep them quiet. 

b. Mom found the boys all so dirty when she got home, that she made them 

(all) take a bath. 

c. Cinderella’s fairy godmother turned the pumpkins all into handsome coaches. 

d. Hang your coats all up on hangers. (Maling 1976: 715) 

The distribution of the PDE floating quantifier can be summarized in (7). 

(7) In PDE the quantifier all can float when 

i. the noun phrase it modifies is a subject; or 

ii. the noun phrase it modifies is an object that is followed by a predicative 

complement. (cf. Bowers 2001) 

3. OE quantifier eall 

This section provides examples of the quantifier eall in OE. The examples were retrieved 

from the parsed corpus of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies, 4 the First and Second 

series, which is part of The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English 

Prose (YCOE; Taylor et al. 2003). 5 Following the YCOE tag system and searching 

the corpus for nominative and accusative eall, I have found 420 examples with 

nominative eall and 451 examples with accusative eall. 6 

3.1 Eall with full NP 

Let us first take examples with nominative eall and a full NP it modifies. Among 

the 420 examples of nominative eall, 237 contain full NPs. Some examples are 

4. The present study is limited to the data collected from Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies in order to 

exclude some possible effects of the difference in the genre, author, and period on the distributional 

properties of the quantifier. 

5. The editions of Ælfric’s Catholic Homilies included in the YCOE are Clemoes (1997) for 

the first series and Godden (1979) for the second series. In citing examples from the YCOE, 

Thorpe’s (1844–1846) PDE translations are added to them except for example (9c). 

6. The tags used for retrieval are ‘Q^N’ for nominative eall and ‘Q^A’ for accusative eall. 

‘Q’ with no case was not searched since it is difficult to distinguish a floating quantifier from 

adverbial use.


given in (8) and (9). In what follows the quantifier eall is in boldface, and its related 

elements are in bold italics. 

(8) nominative eall and full NP following it (234 exx.) 

a. Hit ne mihte eall mancyn gedon gif he sylf nolde; 

it neg might all mankind do if he self not-would 

“All mankind could not have done it, if he himself had not willed it;” 

(ÆCHom I 343.238) 

b. Nabbað ealle men gelice gife æt gode; for þan ðe he forgifð þa 

not-have all men like grace at God because he gives the 

gastlican geþincþu. ælcum be his gecnyrdnyssum; 

ghostly honours each about his endeavours 

“All men have not like grace from God, for he gives ghostly honours to 

every one according to his endeavours.” (ÆCHom I 376.151) 

(9) nominative eall and full NP preceding it (3 exx.) 

a. his neb bið gerifod. 7 his leomu ealle gewæhte; 

his face is wrinkled and his limbs all afflicted 

“his face [is] wrinkled, and his limbs all afflicted;” (ÆCHom I 528.113) 

b. ac gif we ða modru acwellað. þonne beoð heora bearn 

but if we the mothers kill then are their children 

ealle adydde; 

all destroyed 

“but if we kill the mothers, then will all their children be destroyed” 

(ÆCHom II 124.491) 

c. Þa ongunnon ða gelaðedan ealle hi beladian; 

then began the invited all them excuse 

“Then the invited people all began to make excuses.” (ÆCHom II 213.6) 

The quantifier in (8) precedes the full NP and in (9) it follows it. Out of the 237 

examples, 234 are of the former type while only three are of the latter type. 

Next we take examples with accusative eall and a full NP it modifies. As in the 

case of nominative eall, the ‘quantifier-full-NP’ order is dominant. In 377 out of 

383 examples the quantifier precedes a full NP, as in (10) while only six exhibit the 

‘full-NP-quantifier’ order, as in (11). 

(10) accusative eall and full NP following it (377 exx.) 

a. Ealle ðas word spræc se symeon be ðam cylde to þam 

all these words spoke the Simeon about the child to the 

heofenlican fæder; þe hine to mannum sende; 

heavenly father who him to men sent 

“All these words concerning the child, Simeon spake to the heavenly Father, 

who sent him to men.” (ÆCHom I 253.139)


b. ealle ðas þincg ic forgife ðe. gif ðu wilt afeallan to minum 

all these things I give thee if thou will fall to my 

fotum. 7 þe to me gebiddan; 

feet and thee to me adore 

“All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall at my feet, and adore me.” 

(ÆCHom I 269.87) 

(11) accusative eall and full NP preceding it (6 exx.) 

a. Hwæt ða siððan se sigefæsta cempa. þone eard ealne. emlice 

thereupon the victorious champion the country all equally 

dælde. betwux twelf mægðum. þæs æðelan ancynnes. 

divided between twelve tribes of the noble race 

“Thereupon the victorious champion equally divided all the country 

among the twelve tribes of the noble race” (ÆCHom II 122.409) 

b. and he ðone eard ealne todælde. betwux ðam twelf mægðum 

and he the country all divided between the twelve tribes 

þe him mid fuhton; 

which him with fought 

“and he divided all the country among the twelve tribes 

which had fought with him” (ÆCHom II 122.440) 

The distribution of the quantifier eall and full NP is summarized in Table 1. 

Table 1. Distribution of eall and full NP 

Q-NP NP-Q Total 

Nominative 234 (98.7%) 3 (1.3%) 237 (100%) 

Accusative 377 (98.4%) 6 (1.6%) 383 (100%) 

Total 611 (98.5%) 9 (1.5%) 620 (100%) 

3.2 Eall with pronoun 

In contrast to the 620 occurrences of the quantifier and a full NP, the quantifier 

occurs less frequently with a pronoun: 139 examples were found. Among them, 

102 contain nominative eall and a pronoun, and the remaining 37 contain accusative 

eall and a pronoun. The examples in (12) and (13) involve nominative eall and 

pronouns; (14) and (15) involve accusative eall and pronouns. 

(12) nominative eall and pronoun following it (27 exx.) 

a. Ealle we cumað to anre ylde. on þam gemænelicum æriste; 

all we come to one age on the common resurrection 

“We shall all come to one age at the common resurrection,” 

(ÆCHom I 220.114)


b. Ealle ge me æswiciað. on ðissere anre nihte; 

all ye me offend on this one night 

“Ye shall all be offended with me on this one night.” (ÆCHom II 139.69) 

(13) nominative eall and pronoun preceding it (75 exx.) 

a. 7 hi ealle anmodlice ræddon þæt ealle his gesetnyssa 

and they all unanimously resolved that all his decrees 

aydlode wæron; 

annulled were 

“and they all unanimously resolved that all his decrees should be annulled” 

(ÆCHom I 207.32) 

b. Ða astrehton hi ealle hi æt his fotum biddende þæt he þæt 

then stretched they all them at his feet praying that he that 

behat mid weorcum gefylde; 

promise with works fulfilled 

“Then they all stretched themselves at his feet, praying that he would fulfill 

that promise by works.” (ÆCHom II 282.89) 

(14) accusative eall and pronoun following it (1 ex.) 

ac wentst abuton þæt ðu ealne hine geseo; 

but turn about that thou all it see 

“but turnest it about, that thou mayest see it all” (ÆCHom I 341.172) 

(15) accusative eall and pronoun preceding it (36 exx.) 

a. 7 he us ealle gebletsað 7 gehalgað 

and he us all blesses and hallows 

“and who blesses and hallows us all” (ÆCHom I 328.75) 

b. ne þeahhwæðere we ne magon hi ealle gereccan. 

neg yet we neg may them all reckon 

“yet can we not reckon them all” (ÆCHom II 9.215) 

c. and unscrydde hine ealne. 

and unclothed him all 

“and unclothed himself entirely” (ÆCHom II 93.51) 

The distribution of the quantifier eall and pronoun is summarized in the following 

table: 

Table 2. Distribution of eall and pronoun 

Q-PRO PRO-Q Total 

Nominative 27 (26.5%) 75 (73.5%) 102 (100%) 

Accusative 1 (2.7%) 36 (97.3%) 37 (100%) 

Total 28 (20.1%) 111 (79.9%) 139 (100%) 

As for word order, comparing Tables 1 and 2, two interesting contrasts can 

be pointed out. First, full NPs follow the quantifier much more frequently than


pronouns, regardless of the quantifier case. Only one to two percent exhibit the 

‘full-NP-quantifier’ order. Second, nominative eall can either precede or follow a 

pronoun whereas accusative eall cannot precede a pronoun with the exception of 

one case (cf. (14)). 7 

3.3 Floating quantifier eall 

So far we have seen examples in which the quantifier is adjacent to a full NP 

or a pronoun. This section shows examples in which the quantifier floats from 

an element it modifies. 58 examples of floating quantifier eall were found. 

Among them, nominative eall is found in 49 examples (84.5%) and nine examples 

(15.5%) contain accusative eall. Examples of each type are given in (16) 

and (17). 

(16) nominative floating quantifier (49 exx.) 

a. Gelyfst ðu þæt we sceolon ealle arisan mid urum lichaman on 

believe thou that we shall all arise with our bodies on 

domes dæge togeanes criste. 

doom’s day towards Christ 

“Believest thou that we shall all arise with our bodies on doom’s day before 

Christ?” (ÆCHom II 27. 281) 

b. and ðeah hi ne magon beon ealle gegaderode; 

and though they neg may be all gathered 

“and though they may not all be gathered” (ÆCHom II 14.77) 

c. Næron hi swa þeah ealle endemes ungeleaffulle: 

not-were they however all equally unbelieving 

“They were not, however, all equally unbelieving” (ÆCHom I 235.102) 

d. þi we sceolon ealle beon on gode gebroþru. 

therefore we should all be on God brothers 

“therefore should we all be brothers in God” (ÆCHom I 327. 47) 

e. and hi ða eodon ealle gewæpnode. and mid leohtfatum to ðam 

and they then went all armed and with torches to the 

lifigendum drihtne; 

living lord 

“and they then went all armed and with torches to the Living Lord” 

(ÆCHom II 140.80) 

7. As pointed out by a reviewer, this one exception may be a mistake of scribal origin. Actually, 

in the manuscripts B, H, U, and V, the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order was employed instead of the 

‘quantifier-pronoun’ order in (14): hine al in B and hyne ealne in H, U, and V (Clemoes 1997: 

341). If the ‘quantifier-pronoun’ order in (14) were a scriber’s mistake, the contrast between 

nominative and accusative eall would be clearer.


(17) accusative floating quantifier (9 exx.) 

a. god hi gesceop ealle gode. 

God them created all good 

“God created them all good” (ÆCHom I 179.27) 

b. 7 crist hi gebrincð ealle to anre eowde, on ðam ecan life; 

and Christ them brings all to one fold in the eternal life 

“and Christ will bring them all to one fold in eternal life” 

(ÆCHom I 316.86) 

c. Hwa mæg æfre. ealle gereccan. þa mihtigan tacna. ðises 

who may ever all relate the mighty miracles of this 

halgan weres. 

holy man 

“Who may ever relate all the mighty miracles of this holy man?” 

(ÆCHom II 90.304) 

d. and he ealle gefæstnode heora fet to eorðan 

and he all fastened their feet to earth 

“and he fastened all their feet to the earth” (ÆCHom II 292:156) 

e. and his æhta him ealle forgeald be twyfealdum; 

and his possessions him all repaid by twofold 

“and repaid him all his possessions by twofold” (ÆCHom II 266.198) 

The distribution of the floating quantifier eall is summarized in Table 3. 

Table 3. Distribution of floating quantifier 

Nominative Accusative Total 

49 (84.5%) 9 (15.5%) 58 (100%) 

3.4 Other cases 

There is another type of quantifier which was not dealt with in the previous 

sections: the pronominal use of eall. The examples are given in (18) and (19). 

(18) pronominal quantifier 

a. 7 on þinre bec ealle sind awritene; 

and in thy book all are written 

“and in thy book all are written” (ÆCHom I 481. 174) 

b. Hwæt ða ealle samod blissodon on godes herungum. swa micclum 

what then all together rejoiced in God’s praises so greatly 

“All then together rejoiced with praises to God so greatly” 

(ÆCHom II 16.166)


(19) quantifier followed by relative clause 

a. Hwæt ða ealle þa ðe þæt gehyrdon miclum þæs wundrodon; 

what then all who that heard greatly that wondered 

“Now all who heard that wondered greatly thereat” (ÆCHom I 197.202) 

b. 7 he hatað ealle þa ðe unrihtwisnysse wyrcað. 

and he hates all who unrighteousness work 

“and he hates all those who work unrighteousness” (ÆCHom I 237.176) 

In (18) the quantifier is used by itself, and in (19) it is followed by the relative 

clause. This type of quantifier is excluded from the following discussion, simply 

because there is no NP or pronoun which is modified by the quantifier. 

3.5 Summary 

Section 3 can be summarized in Table 4. 

Table 4. Distribution of nominative and accusative quantifier eall 

Q-NP NP-Q Q-PRO PRO-Q Floating Others Total 

Nominative 234 3 27 75 49 32 420 

Accusative 377 6 1 36 9 22 451 

Total 611 9 28 111 58 54 871 

The findings found from this table are as follows: 

i. The quantifier eall almost always precedes a full NP whether it is nominative 

or accusative. 

ii. The quantifier eall can either precede or follow a nominative pronoun, but 

always follows an accusative pronoun. 

iii. The quantifier floating from a nominative, or a subject, is more frequent than 

that floating from an accusative, or an object (84.5% vs. 15.5%). 

The following section discusses the low frequency of the ‘full-NP-quantifier’ 

order and the high frequency of the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order, and shows that 

the contrast in frequency between the two word orders can be attributed to the 

difference in the position the quantifier occupies within the quantifier phrase. It 

is also shown that some accusative floating quantifiers are followed by predicative 

complements.


4. Syntactic position of quantifier eall 

4.1 Quantifier Phrase 

This section discusses the syntactic position where the quantifier eall can occur. We 

will examine the NP internal position of the quantifier eall. As already seen in Section 3, 

eall almost always precedes the noun phrase it modifies whether it is nominative or 

accusative. On the basis of this fact, the structure in (20) can be assumed: 8 

(20) QP 

Q 

eall 

NP 

In (20) the quantifier is the head of Quantifier Phrase (QP) and selects an NP as its 

complement. From this structure, the ‘full-NP-quantifier’ order can be derived by 

adjoining NP to QP. This is illustrated in (21). 

(21) a. QP 

Q 

NP 

eall Q 

t 

This operation is theoretically possible, but if the target of adjunction is an argument, 

it is prohibited (cf. Chomsky 1986 & Bošcović 1997, among others). The idea behind 

this prohibition is that adjunction to arguments interferes with theta-role assignment. 

Here we also assume that adjunction can be applied to the structure acyclically 

(cf. Bošcović 2004 & Stepanov 2001). The conditions on adjunction are summed 

up in (22). They can account for the ungrammatical sentence in (23). 

(22) Conditions on adjunction 

a. Adjunction to arguments interferes with theta-role assignment. 

b. Adjunction can be applied to the structure acyclically. 

8. In what follows no distinction between NP and DP is made for the reason of simplicity. For 

the functional projection DP see Abney (1987) among others. Also see Giusti (1991) for the 

validity of the structure of (20). 

b. 

NP 

QP 

eall 

QP

(23) * Mary hates the students all. 


The students all is derived by adjoining the student to the QP headed by all. Since 

this operation takes place in the complement of VP, which is a theta position, it interferes 

with theta-role assignment, rendering the sentence ungrammatical. Given 

this, let us now consider example (11a), repeated here as (24). 

(24) Hwæt ða siððan se sigefæsta cempa. þone eard ealne. 

thereupon the victorious champion the country all 

emlice dælde. betwux twelf mægðum. þæs æðelan mancynnes. 

equally divided between twelf tribes of the noble race 

“Thereupon the victorious champion equally divided all the country among the 

twelve tribes of the noble race” (ÆCHom II 122.409) 

In (24) the quantified object þone eard ealne “all the country” is considered to be 

derived through the operation illustrated in (21). If this object were in the complement 

of the VP headed by dælde “divided”, as in (23), the sentence would be 

ungrammatical. However, it should be noted here that in (24) the adverb emlice 

“equally” intervenes between the object þone eard ealne “all the country” and the 

verb dælde “divided”. Assuming that this adverb is adjoined to the VP, the quantified 

object may be raised out of the VP. The derivation takes place as follows: 

(25) a. [ VP emlice [ VP [ QP ealne þone eard ] dælde ]] 

b. [ QP ealne þone eard ] [ VP emlice [ VP t dælde]] 

c. [ QP [ NP þone eard ] [ QP ealne t ]] [ VP emlice [ VP t dælde ]] 

In (25b) the quantified object ealne þone eard is raised out of the VP headed by dælde, 

and then the NP þone eard is adjoined to the QP acyclically within the QP in (25c). 

In the other examples with accusative NPs and the quantifier, no adverbs intervene 

between the quantified objects and the verbs. These examples provide no 

clear evidence that an object exists outside the VP. But, if the object remains in the 

complement of VP, the sentence will be ruled out as a violation of the conditions in 

(22). This may have resulted in the low frequency of the ‘full-NP-quantifier’ order 

in the data. 9 

Compared with the ‘full-NP-quantifier’ order, the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order 

is more frequent, as described in Section 3 (1.5% vs. 80.0%). This can be accounted 

9. In order to show what position the object occupies in sentences like (11b), however, a more 

detailed study will be needed. This is left open for future research.


for by assuming that the pronoun is adjoined not to the maximal projection, QP, 

but to the head, Q, as in (26). 

(26) a. 

Q 

QP 

NP 

eall pronoun 

pronoun eall 

t 

Unlike adjunction to maximal projections described in (21), adjunction to heads is 

possible even in theta positions, because head-adjunction does not interfere with 

theta-role assignment. The head-adjunction in (26) may be driven by the clitic 

property of pronouns (cf. Van Kemenade 1987; Koopman 1990 & Pintzuk 1996, 

among others). The fact that the pronoun precedes the quantifier more frequently 

than the full NP can be attributed to this property of pronouns. 

4.2 Floating quantifier 

In the previous section, it was argued that while the full NP cannot be adjoined to the 

quantifier phrase in the theta position, the pronoun can be adjoined to the head of the 

QP in the same position. This section first discusses the nominative floating quantifier 

and then turns to the accusative floating quantifier. The relevant examples of the 

nominative floating quantifier are repeated here in (27) for convenience. 

(27) nominative floating quantifier 

a. Gelyfst ðu þæt we sceolon ealle arisan mid urum lichaman on 

believe thou that we shall all arise with our bodies on 

domes dæge togeanes criste. 

doom’s day towards Christ 

“Believest thou that we shall all arise with our bodies on doom’s day before 

Christ?” (ÆCHom II 27.281) 

b. and ðeah hi ne magon beon ealle gegaderode; 

and though they neg may be all gathered 

“and though they may not all be gathered” (ÆCHom II 14.77) 

c. Næron hi swa þeah ealle endemes ungeleaffulle: 

not-were they however all equally unbelieving 

“They were not, however, all equally unbelieving” 

(ÆCHom I 235.102) 

d. þi we sceolon ealle beon on gode gebroþru. 

therefore we should all be on God brothers 

“therefore should we all be brothers in God” (ÆCHom I 327.47) 

b. 

Q 

QP 

NP


e. and hi ða eodon ealle gewæpnode. and mid leohtfatum to ðam 

and they then went all armed and with torches to the 

lifigendum drihtne; 

living lord 

“and they then went all armed and with torches to the Living Lord” 

(ÆCHom II 140.80) 

In sentence (27a) the quantifier occurs before the non-finite verb arisan “arise”. 

This preverbal position corresponds to the position where the subject is basegenerated. 

This is because in OE the subject of unaccusative verbs like arisan 

“arise” is base-generated before the verbs (i.e., the complement of VP). Similarly, 

the quantifier in (27b) occurs before the non-finite verb gegaderode “gathered”. 

This surface word order is the same as that in (27a), but they are different in that 

the quantifier in (27b) agrees with the verbal predicate. Under Yanagi’s (1999) 

assumption that agreement is licensed through the Spec-Head configuration 

(cf. Chomsky 1993 & 1995), it can be said that the quantifier in (27b) moves up 

from the complement of VP to a higher specifier position, as illustrated in (28). 10 

It can also be argued that the quantifier in (27c) is raised to a higher specifier 

position for the same reason. 

(28) a. [ VP [ QP ealle ] gegaderode ] 

b. [ XP [ QP ealle ] [ X’ [ VP t QP t V ] gegaderode ] ] 

On the other hand, the quantifier in (27d) occurs not before the nominal 

predicate gebroþru “brothers”, but before the non-finite verb beon “be”. Given that 

the subject is base-generated in the pre-predicate position, eall in (27d) also moves 

up to a higher position, in this case, the specifier position of the VP headed by 

beon “be”. This is illustrated in (29). 

(29) a. [ VP beon [ XP [ QP ealle ] in gode gebroþru ] 

b. [ VP [ QP ealle ] beon [ XP tQP in gode gebroþru ] ] 

Here we can conclude that the OE quantifier eall, just like the PDE quantifier all, 

marks the intermediate subject positions. 

Next we consider the sentence in (27e). Unlike the quantifier in the other examples 

in (27), the quantifier in (27e) occupies the postverbal position. Under the 

10. In (28) and (29) the positions of the pronouns modified by eall are ignored for reasons of 

simplicity.


general assumption of subject movement, subjects cannot move to a postverbal 

position unless they are base-generated postverbally. As mentioned above, OE is 

an OV language, and subjects of unaccusative verbs like gan “go” are assumed to 

be base-generated before the verbs. Thus, it could be assumed that the quantifier 

eall in (27e) is associated with the secondary predicate gewæpnode “armed”. The 

structure of (27e) would be (30). 

(30) hii ða [ VP t i eodon ] [ VP [ QP ealle PRO i ] gewæpnode ] 

Now let us turn to the accusative floating quantifier. The relevant examples are 

repeated here in (31). 

(31) accusative floating quantifier 

a. god hi gesceop ealle gode. 

God them created all good 

“God created them all good” (ÆCHom I 179.27) 

b. 7 crist hi gebrincð ealle to anre eowde, on ðam ecan life; 

and Christ them brings all to one fold in the eternal life 

“and Christ will bring them all to one fold in eternal life” 

(ÆCHom I 316.86) 

c. Hwa mæg æfre. ealle gereccan. þa mihtigan tacna. ðises 

who may ever all relate the mighty miracles of this 

halgan weres. 

holy man 

“Who may ever relate all the mighty miracles of this holy man?” 

(ÆCHom II 90.304) 

d. and his æhta him ealle forgeald be twyfealdum; 

and his possessions him all repaid by twofold 

“and repaid him all his possessions by twofold” (ÆCHom II 266.198) 

In (31a) and (31b) the accusative quantifier follows the finite verbs gesceop “created” 

and gebrincð “brings”, respectively. What is important here is that the quantifier is 

followed by the predicative complements, just like the PDE examples in (6). In 

(31c), the quantifier precedes the non-finite verb gereccan “relate”. Since an object 

is base-generated before a verb, it can be assumed that the object moves rightward 

and is adjoined to the VP. This movement does not violate the conditions in (22): 

VP is not an argument. In contrast, sentence (31d) involves leftward movement of 

the object. If the target of this operation were QP in the theta position, the sentence 

would be ruled out. However, the presence of the pronoun between the quantifier 

and the moved element indicates that the object his æhta “his possessions” is not 

adjoined to the QP, but to a higher projection.

5. Concluding remarks 


It has been shown in this paper, through a study of the corpus of Ælfric’s Catholic 

Homilies, that the OE quantifier eall shares the following distributional properties 

with the PDE quantifier all: (i) eall can float from a nominative, or subject, noun 

phrase it modifies; (ii) eall can float from an accusative, or object, noun phrase, 

that is followed by a predicative complement; and (iii) the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ 

order is more frequent than the ‘quantifier-pronoun’ order. It was also argued that 

the quantifier eall is base-generated as the head of a QP and selects an NP as its 

complement. The ‘full-NP-quantifier’ order can be derived by adjoining the NP to 

the QP. However, this operation is not applied to an NP in the argument position, 

due to the ban on adjunction to arguments. Unlike NPs, pronouns are adjoined 

to the head of a QP, yielding the ‘pronoun-quantifier’ order. The head-adjunction 

may be driven by the clitic property of pronouns. If so, there remains a question: 

why is the ‘quantifier-pronoun’ order observed though it is less frequent than the 

‘pronoun-quantifier’ order? This is left open for future research. 

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On the post-finite misagreement 

phenomenon in Late Middle English 

Richard Ingham 

UCE Birmingham 

Kleanthes K. Grohmann 

University of Cyprus 

Early Modern English shows some incidence of misagreement between a singular 

verb and a plural subject. A corpus of 15th century London chronicles was searched 

in order to investigate the origins of this phenomenon, and whether it should be 

handled in structural terms. It was found that misagreement almost always arose 

with a postfinite subject, and co-occurred in texts allowing null impersonal subjects. 

It is analysed as agreement with a singular expletive subject, overt or null, existing 

as an option alongside the option of regular number agreement. A preverbal 

subject contained no expletive element, hence number agreement was regular. The 

structural position of the postverbal subject was found to be irrelevant: three postfinite 

subject configurations were identified, in all of which agreement was optional. 

It is further noted that an increase in the phenomenon occurred during the 15th 

century for which a dialect contact explanation is proposed. 


This study considers the status of singular finite verbs with post-finite subjects in 

Late Middle and Early Modern English, focussing on cases of misagreement between 

the finite verb and a following subject. Examples from mid-15th to early 17th century 

sources (Ingham 2006a) are given below, first with expletive there-subjects (1), and 

then without (2): 

(1) a. Ther is labouryd many menys to intytill the Kyng in his good. 

Paston (1459) 

b. Ther is grete spies layd here. Paston (?1463) 

c. Ther is lately comyn hider twoo ambassadours from themprour out of spayn. 

Cromwell 58, 17 (1537) 

(2) a. In like wyse standyth Sir TT’s neybours to himward. Paston (1450) 

b. The xiiij day of May was the sam men cared [carried] to Westmynster hall. 

Machyn, Diary 234:19 (1560) 

c. Down goes the pots. Beaumont-Fletcher, Monsieur Thomas IV, 2

126 Richard Ingham & Kleanthes K. Grohmann 

The loss of the Middle English verb-second tendency with nominal subjects 

(Haeberli 2002) meant that by the end of the medieval period and thereafter, 

post-verbal subjects are no longer as common as before. However, as shown by 

Warner (2006), inversion is still frequently found in the early modern period in 

the context of passives and unaccusative clauses, i.e. those where the verb lacks an 

external argument in its lexical structure (Levin & Rappaport 1995) Seeking to 

obtain a sizable body of data allowing us to analyse possible factors involved in the 

phenomenon of post-finite misagreement (henceforth, PFM), we have identified 

about 400 passive and unaccusative contexts from 15th-century London chronicles. 

These texts often thematise time and place adverbials in passive clauses, and thus 

favour potential contexts for PFM. Examples are given below for there-subjects (3) 

as well as unexpressed (empty or null) subjects (4): 

(3) a. And ther was new grotes and pensse made. Lamb. 80 (1465) 

b. This yere after alhalontyde there was proclamacions made in London. 

Gough 163 (1469) 

(4) a. And vpon Saterday next folowyng was their hedes set vpon London Brigge. 

Vitell 216 (1497) 

b. And the xx day of Janyver was certayne poyntys of armys done in Smethefylde. 

Greg. 184 (1441) 

Although little if any discussion of the PFM phenomenon features in the recent 

historical linguistic literature, 1 it is evident that the data presented in (1)–(4) 

relate fairly directly to significant issues of current concern. They may be taken to 

reflect a vernacular tendency towards using was for were, running counter to what 

was to become the norm in standard English (Nevalainen 2006 & Wright 2000). It is 

known that London was often active in new developments, as population change, not 

least the influx of Northern speakers, induced shifts in the sociolinguistic mix. Since 

Northern English extended the use of the third person singular -s inflexion beyond 

that of Southern varieties, it is natural to wonder, as Nevalainen (2006) does, whether 

the extension of was to plural subject contexts can be seen as part of the same trend. 

Alternatively, one might opt for a psycholinguistic explanation, and see 

the co-occurrence of misagreement with post-finite subjects as a language 

processing issue: perhaps the grammatical number of the nominal subject has 

not yet been processed at the point where the verb is produced. This and a sociolinguistic 

account are not mutually exclusive, of course: it could well be envisaged 

1. Visser (1963: 72–30) notes examples of both pre- and post-finite misagreement; the former 

type appears to be rare until the 16th century, whereas the latter is quite widely attested in Old 

and Middle English as well as in the Early Modern period.

On the post-finite misagreement phenomenon 127 

that PFM was a vernacular trait just because it represented the natural unmonitored 

performance of speakers, and that the impact of growing standardisation on the 

written textual record had the effect of expunging PFM as writers paid more 

attention to norms. 

Finally, we might consider a formal syntactic account of the PFM phenomenon, 

such that agreement fails in certain types of structure, as has been proposed, 

among others, for Celtic (cf. Borsley 2006) and Arabic (Mohammad 1989). Furthermore, 

it is known that agreement inflexions in Old English were often reduced 

in inverted clauses (van Gelderen 1997), especially in the 2nd person, e.g.: 

(5) For hwon ahenge þu mec? Exeter Book, Christ 1.1487 

why hang you me 

‘Why did you hang me?’ 

It could be that the pattern illustrated in (1)–(4) above is a late survival of the Old 

English structure. If this line of investigation is followed, questions of subject type 

and position will be relevant, as well as the presence or absence of expletive there, 

and perhaps information structure characteristics of clauses. 

The goal of this paper is thus to clarify the status of subject-verb misagreement 

in Late Middle English, in terms of the level of analysis at which it should 

be addressed: Should it be called a vernacular trait? Does it reflect a processing 

phenomenon, or can we see it as structurally determined? 

The article is laid out as follows. In Section 2 we present the results of our 

analysis of the London Chronicle plural subject data. We then try a number of avenues 

offering potential solutions to the problem in Section 3, going on to propose 

what we think best accounts for the nature and timing of the PFM phenomenon 

in Section 4. Section 5 briefly summarises our main points. 

2. Data 

2.1 Sources 

Data were drawn from eight 15th-century London chronicles analyzed for full 

nominal plural subjects in pre- or post-finite position in clauses with a finite form 

of be (copula or auxiliary). Co-ordinate subjects were discarded, as these could 

take singular verb forms in Old French or Latin (Legge & Holdsworth 1934), potential 

sources of influence on educated speakers at this time. The London chronicles 

seem to have been compiled in English between 1430 and 1480 (Flenley 1911). 

One that was begun in the 1440s (Vitellius) was continued into the first few years 

of the 16th century. Their authors were citizens of London of the merchant class,


mayors, aldermen, etc. The texts may thus be expected to reflect the language styles 

of prosperous and educated speakers, who were not usually language professionals 

in the sense that clerical scribes of lawyers would have been. 

The period covered by the content of these chronicles typically goes far back into 

English history, along the lines of the Brut chronicle (Brie 1906), and their entries 

for years prior to about 1430 were presumably adapted from pre-existing materials, 

possibly originally written in Anglo-Norman or Latin. Some residual use of the -en 

plural inflection is observed in the chronicles, especially in the entries prior to 1450, 

but not sufficiently regularly to be considered a valid measure of agreement with the 

subject. We therefore looked for verbal forms where singular versus plural agreement 

contrasts continued to be robustly observed into the Early Modern period, that is, 

with be and have. In practice, post-verbal subjects with have were not found in this 

corpus but be, especially as a passive auxiliary, was very well represented throughout. 

This no doubt reflected the discourse preferences of the chroniclers, who were much 

taken up with public events in which participants underwent experiences, often unpleasant 

ones such as hanging, beheading and the like – this was after all the time of 

the Wars of the Roses and the early Tudor monarchy. Thus most of the data featuring 

post-finite subjects were found to consist of passive clauses, often with an initial 

adverbial stating the date or location of the event. The highly frequent use of clauses 

with topicalised adverbials and passive inversion, though discoursally not typical of 

English usage as a whole, offered an excellent field in which to explore the nature of 

the post-finite misagreement phenomenon. 

2.2 Results 

Table 1 summarises the frequency of singular and plural forms of copula be with 

plural subjects in the 15th century chronicles investigated. As can be seen, cases 

of post-finite misagreement were found to represent nearly 31% of plural subject 

clauses in the London chronicles (N = 55), whereas pre-finite subject misagreement 

(N = 2) was below 1%. 2 

The other point to note here is that PFM sharply increases in frequency during 

the 15th century. Up to 1450, it is rather uncommon; but then, in the later 15th 

century, PFM actually becomes more common than post-finite agreement. 

2. The key for the abbreviated chronicle names used in Table 1 (and the examples throughout 

the text) can be found in the list of primary sources (before the References); for cited examples, 

the date of the entry follows the source in parentheses (where not specified, the chronicle 

entry date is given within single quotes). ‘VFin’ in Table 1 refers to ‘finite verb’ (distinguished as 

‘singular’ or ‘plural’).

2.3 Observations 


Table 1. Frequency of singular and plural be with plural subjects in 15th century chronicles 

Pre-finite plural subject Post-finite plural subject 

VFin VFin VFin VFin 

Source Date range3 pl sg T# pl sg T# 

Jul. –1432 24 0 24 9 1 10 

Bradf. –1440 20 0 20 20 1 21 

Cleop. –1443 15 0 15 3 5 8 

Bale –1450 8 0 8 12 1 13 

Vitell. –1450 10 0 10 3 0 3 

Lamb. 306 –1450 16 0 16 12 4 16 

Greg. –1451 48 0 48 39 5 44 

Gough 1451–1470 6 0 6 1 4 5 

Lamb. 306 1451–1465 4 0 4 3 8 11 

Vitell. 1451–1503 73 2 75 21 26 47 

TOTAL 224 2 226 123 55 178 

0.9% 30.9% 

PFM occurs in three syntactic contexts. In one, a nominal subject may stand 

between the finite and non-finite verb, as in the following examples: 

(6) a. And ther whas many take of them. Cleop. 140 (1436) 

b. This yere was dyverse of the castelles in the northe yolden a yene to Kynge 

Edwarde. Lamb. 78 (c.1462) 

c. And the said nyghte was secret meanes made vnto my lord Chambereyn. 

Vitell. 214 (1497) 

Since the subject is embraciated (i.e., enclosed) between the finite and non-finite 

verbs, we shall refer to this as the ‘embraciated subject’ type. 

Alternatively, the nominal subject may stand after the non-finite verb: 

(7) a. And at that same distresse whas takyn all Lahire horsses, a vij corseryrs and 

all his pages. Cleop. 140 (1436) 

c. And anon ther was sent certayn aldermen and comynes for to … 

Lamb. 73 (1460) 

d. … before whom was arayned the fore named viij prisoners for lyf and deth. 

Vitell. 228 (1499) 

We shall borrow the expression ‘late subjects’ from Warner (2006) to refer to 

this type. 

3. Where no initial date is given, this is because the chronicle begins in ancient times.


Finally, the subject may occur in absolute clause-final position and be separated 

from the non-finite verb by an adjunct. Relevant data are provided in (8): 

(8) a. … and ther whas hangyd round abowt him all his instrumentes wich were 

take with him. Cleop. 148 (1441) 

b. There was redde among theym certeyne articles and poyntys that … 

Gough 161 (1461) 

c. Also in Aprill was set vpon the pillery in Cornhill ij men for forging of false 

lettirs. Vitell. 205 (1495) 

We shall refer to this type as ‘extraposed subjects’, noting that they typically involve 

heavy subject constituents. 

On the basis of the above classification, it is interesting to note that PFM 

increases across time in embraciated and late subject contexts only, as seen 

in Table 2 (for occurrences up to 1450) and Table 3 (for the period from 1451 

to 1503): 

Table 2. Clauses with auxiliaries in Bale, Bradf., Cleop., Greg., Jul., Lamb., Vitell. up to 1450 

Embraciated Total 

was 

Late subject 

2 were 37 39 

was 

Extraposition 

5 were 25 30 

was 10 were 9 19 

Total 17 (19.3%) 71 (80.7%) 88 

Table 3. Clauses with auxiliaries in Gough, Lamb., Vitell. chronicles 1451–1503 

Embraciated Total 

was 

Late subject 

16 were 8 24 

was 

Extraposition 

14 were 6 20 

was 6 were 9 15 

Total 36 (61.0%) 23 (39.0%) 59 

Why there was no increase in PFM in extraposed subject contexts between the two 

periods is an interesting issue, to which we return below. Admittedly, the numbers 

are relatively small, but the sharp increase in the other two contexts is very striking 

and seems to us unlikely to be simply an artefact of small numbers.


Our next observation drawn from an examination of the data is that PFM cooccurs 

with impersonal there-subjects (in all three structural types), and also in 

clauses without there, following an initial adverbial: 

(9) a. And on the same day was made xvij knyghtis of the Bathe. 

Lamb. p. 64 (1444) 

b. … and the said nyghte was secret meanes made vnto my lord Chambereyn. 

Vitell p. 214 (1497) 

(10) a. And anon ther was sent certayn aldermen and comynes for to … 

Lamb. p. 73 (1460) 

b. This yere after alhalontyde there was proclamacions made in london by the 

kingis commanndement. Gough p.163 (1469) 

The two constructions, with and without there, seem to have been in free variation. 

This situation appears reminiscent of another variation we observed in these texts 

between overt and null impersonal subjects with clausal complement-taking verbs 

following an initial adverbial. The grammatical subject was often impersonal it, e.g.: 

(11) a. Whanne this was done hit was decreed by the seyde Arbitrours that … 

Jul. 94 (‘1426’) 

b. Fyrst hit is accordyd that Syr Gy Butler … Greg. 122 (‘1419’) 

c. And this yere it was ordeyned that the sonday shold be hold. 

Vitell. 156 (1443) 

Alternatively, the grammatical subject position was left null, here marked Ø: 

(12) a. And that yere Ø was grauntyde unto the kyng that every person … 

Greg. 90 (‘1377’) 

b. In this same yere Ø whas cryed that all men that wold aventure eny corn … 

Cleop. 152 (1443) 

c. In this yere Ø was ordeyned by a common counseill that … 

Vitell. 187 (1475) 

It may therefore be that the availability of a null structural subject option is related in 

some way to the PFM phenomenon. This is a theme to which we shall return below. 

3. Discussion 

Differing lines of explanation have already been suggested in Section 1. We begin 

with the possibility that the PFM phenomenon can be related to the persistence 

of an archaic syntactic structure, such as the Old English mis-agreement pattern 

shown above in (5). Whatever the explanation for Old English ‘reduced inflection’ 

may be, however, the structural configuration in which it appeared is not easily


adapted to 15th century PFM. In (5), an interrogative clause, the verb precedes a 

pronominal subject. In generative syntactic analyses this is taken to indicate that 

the verb has moved to a higher position than the one it occupies in the corresponding 

declarative clause structure. That higher domain is normally designated 

Complementizer Phrase (CP) in accounts of Middle English syntax (e.g., Fischer 

et al. 2000). But PFM does not seem to involve movement of the inflected verb into 

the CP domain. Clauses with impersonal there-subjects preceding the finite verb 

also show PFM, e.g.: 

(13) a. This yere after alhalontyde there was proclamacions made in london by the 

kingis commanndement. Gough 163 (1469) 

b. And ther was new grotes and pensse made. Lamb. 80 (1465) 

Now, existential there in Middle English occupied the normal Spec TP subject 

position of a declarative clause (Williams 2000 & Ingham 2001), so the finite verb 

remains in T. Therefore passive clauses with inverted subjects, including PFM cases, 

must have a different structure from the Old English examples of van Gelderen 

(1997), e.g., (5), in which the postposed subject indicates that the verb has moved 

out of TP. Consequently, we do not believe that the PFM phenomenon can be seen 

as relatable to a structural property of Old English. 

Still in terms of prior factors that might have shaped the PFM phenomenon, 

it is worth considering the possibility of French contact influence. This is a plausible 

direction in which to seek an explanation of the findings reported here, 

because French had been a language of record prior to English, and several French 

chronicles dating from the 14th century are extant in which events are recorded 

in terms that could well have served as a model for the London chroniclers, cf. 

(14a) and (14b). 

(14) a. Et le lundi proschain apres la tiffanie sistrent justic. a le guildhall pur faire 

la deliveraunce. French Chron. Lond. 15, 22 

b. And on the Monday next after the Epithanie the justyces setene at the 

Yeldhalle to make deliveraunce. Chron. Lond. Ms Harley 28, 19 

In this particular case, admittedly, the Late Middle English example has used the 

plural verb form setene ‘sit’ corresponding to the plural verb form sistrent ‘sit’ in 

French. Still, it is known that in Old French verbs could appear in the singular 

form when followed by a co-ordinate plural subject (Legge & Holdsworth 1934). 

This pattern could conceivably have favoured a singular verb with a post-finite 

plural subject, the PFM phenomenon of our investigation. Accordingly, following 

an earlier investigation of Anglo-French chronicles conducted by one of the present 

authors (Ingham 2006b), we examined all plural subjects standing after a finite 

verb in the 14th century French Chronicles of London (Aungier 1844). However, of


the 31 such cases identified in this text, all showed a plural verb form, as exemplified 

in (15): 

(15) a. En cele an furent deux Romeins occys en Westchepe. Chron. Lond. 1, 3 

‘In this year two Romans were killed in Westcheap.’ 

b. A cele houre furent les Escoces entrez en Stannowe Park. 

Chron. Lond. 60, 3 

‘At this time the Scots had entered Stanhope Park.’ 

It therefore seems implausible to suppose that the PFM phenomenon can be 

attributed to contact with French. 

Let us now move on to considering whether PFM should be seen as an early 

appearance of a vernacular trait, namely was for were. In this connection, Nevalainen 

(2006) has raised the question whether there was an association between was for were 

and the Northern Subject Rule. In the Northern Subject Rule, a singular -s inflection 

is in most contexts used with a plural subject (cf. Ihalainen 1994). It is true that our 

data precede the time when London forms displayed any known Northern influence 

(cf. Schendl 1994), but nevertheless the increase in PFM in the later period we studied 

indicates that we are dealing with an innovation, and vernacular trends, particularly 

under the influence of Northern speakers, might have been heading in the direction 

of favouring was for were. The problem here is the positional asymmetry overwhelmingly 

attested in our data. Vernacular Early Modern English that makes widespread 

use of non-standard forms – for example, George Fox’s Journal (Penney 1911) – shows 

frequent use of was for were with plural subjects in pre-finite position too: 

(16) As wee was goinge alongst ye streets. Fox, Journal (1694) 

It is difficult to see why London chronicle writers, if they were content to use putative 

vernacular verbal agreement forms, should have so carefully avoided them in 

pre-finite subject contexts. Accordingly, we do not believe that a sociolinguistic 

account couched simply in terms of morphological variation can be sustained. 

A further possibility is that the PFM phenomenon was a language processing 

matter: it might be supposed that, while planning the sentence, the number feature 

on the subject has not yet been determined at the point where the finite auxiliary 

is produced. This is not to our knowledge a notion that has any empirical support 

from psycholinguistic research, but there may be some merit in considering a processing 

account, especially since the commonest use of was for were in the pre-1451 

data is in extraposed position, where the subject stood furthest from the finite verb, 

hence, in online terms, was produced appreciably later than the finite verb was. 

However, this runs into the problem that it does not explain why our data show no 

effect of distance from the finite verb after 1450. Since part of the phenomenon to 

be explained is the sharp increase in PFM in the later 15th century in other contexts, 

but not in extraposition, a processing account does not seem particularly helpful.


An attractive possibility would be to appeal to a structural account which 

handles the asymmetry by postulating that PFM occurs when the subject is not 

in its canonical structural position. Although such an analysis would be able to 

handle the quasi-obligatoriness of agreement when the subject is in its canonical 

pre-finite position, it runs into the problem that agreement is still possible when 

the verb is post-finite, in particular in any of the three post-finite positions identified 

above. It is therefore false to say that, once the subject is out of its canonical position, 

agreement fails, perhaps defaulting to a singular form. Accordingly, we reject the 

notion of a morphological account by which was is a default form. 

The fundamental problem is to explain the variability of agreement, in any 

post-finite position. Since the PFM phenomenon alternates with plural agreement 

in texts apparently written by the same individual, we are not dealing with intrasocietal 

variation by social class or region, it seems. We come back therefore to the 

position that PFM is an apparent free variant within an idiolect, which may indeed 

support the notion of an incoming vernacular feature (Nevalainen 2006), yet at 

the same time it is syntactically conditioned. What is thus needed is a syntactic account 

which comports with the vernacular status of the feature. Simply postulating 

alternative lexical realisations of be [+ past, +3pl] as was or were will plainly make 

the wrong predictions for the data we have here. To account for the alternative of 

using was for were only if the subject is post-finite we require a more fine-grained 

analysis of the structures and of grammatical properties of the elements that fill 

them. In the next section we attempt to provide such an account. 

4. Analysis 

We pursue an approach whereby the configurations with was and with were have 

slightly different formal analyses underpinning the ‘vernacular’ and ‘standard’ usages. 

These analyses turn on differing properties of the expletive element (there). 

We argue that the ‘vernacular’ option was to make the verb agree with a singular 

feature on the expletive subject. In fact this is still the vernacular pattern in nonstandard 

present-day English, which commonly has a singular verb form with plural 

associate subjects. Consider (17) for illustration: 

(17) % There’s three people outside. 

We have found informally that even speakers who do not regularly use non-standard 

forms find such utterances marginally acceptable (as indicated by the percentage 

mark) – as opposed to the ungrammatical counterpart *Three people’s outside – and 

believe they produce such examples themselves. 

It was shown above that PFM is not plausibly an archaic residue of the agreement 

reduction seen in Old English. However, there was one facet of the data


exhibiting the PFM phenomenon that should be considered an archaism: the persistence 

of the possibility of a null expletive subject with passive and unaccusative 

clauses having an initial adverbial. The alternation between a null expletive and 

an overt expletive there-subject had been a feature of the language long before the 

15th century. 

The Old English example (18a) and its re-working in an Early Middle 

English transliteration (18b) together show an alternation between a null and a 

there-expletive: 4 

(18) a. Þa wæron gegaderode binnan ðære byrig Hierusalem eawfeste weras of 

ælcere ðeode. Ælfr Hom I (Thorpe 314, 11) 

b. Þa weren þer igedered widhinne þere buruh of ierusalem trowfeste men of 

elchere þeode. Lamb Hom IX 89, 28 

‘Then there were gathered within the city of Jerusalem true men of every 

nation.’ 

The there-expletive in (18b) was not an innovation of Early Middle English. 

Already in Old English we find existential sentences with expletive there (19a) and 

without (19b): 

(19) a. Þonne synd þær þry porticas emb þa ciricean utan geworht. BHom 125 

‘Then there are three gates around the church.’ 

b. Þonne syndon on þyssum Simone twa speda. BHom 179 

‘Then there are in this Simon two powers.’ 

Existential clauses with an initial adverbial PP tended not to have an overt expletive 

in Old English and Early Middle English, as can be seen in the following data: 

(20) a. On þam æfteran dæge biþ gehyred mycel stefn on heofenum fyrdweorodes 

getrymnesse. BHom 91, 34 

‘On the next day there shall be heard in the heavens a great sound of the 

arraying of armies.’ 

b. On þære tide wæs sum oðer witega on Iudea-lande. 

Ælfr I Thorpe 570, 32 

‘At this time there was another prophet in the land of Judah.’ 

c. On þis niht beð fowuer niht weaches. Trin Hom 39, 33 

‘In this night there are four watches.’ 

The obligatory insertion of an overt expletive subject took a long time to be adopted. 

There is a 14th century revision of Ancrene Riwle (AR), known as Ancrene 

4. We take it that þer is not a locative expression in (18b), given the specification of place in 

the post-verbal PP wiðinne þere buruh of ierusalem. Note that this phrase is not in apposition to 

þer, so an interpretation ‘there within the city of Jerusalem’ is unlikely.


Wisse (AW), and probably executed in the third quarter of the 14th century, which 

provides interesting evidence of the gradual nature of the change. After an initial 

quantified nominal, expletive subjects now tended to become overt where they 

were left unexpressed (‘null expletive subject’) in the original: 

(21) a. And vi enchesuns beoþ. AR (M) 232 

b. Sex enchesuns þer beþ. AW (M) 232 

‘There are six reasons.’ 

(22) a. Moni cunne riwle boeð. AR (M) 232 

b. Many dyvers reules þere ben. AW (M) 232 

‘There are many different rules.’ 

However, existential clauses with initial PP adjuncts remain without an overt 

expletive in AW, as shown with three examples in (23)–(25): 

(23) a. To þe inre is neod wisdome AR (M) 180 

‘To the inner there is a need for wisdom.’ 

b. To þe utter temptaciouns is need patience AW (M) 180 

‘To the outer there is a need for patience.’ 

(24) a. & in everichon beoð vif ver. AR (M) 36 

b. In vchone of þise psalmes ben fyve verses. AW (M) 36 

‘(and) in each one there are five verses.’ 

(25) a. Vor iðisse wildernesse beoð monie vuele bestes. AR (M) 198 

‘For in this desert there are many evil beasts.’ 

b. In þis waie … ben yuel bestes many. AW (M) 198 

‘In this way … there are many evil beasts.’ 

The absence of an expletive after an adverbial PP remains noticeable in Trevisa’s 

Polychronicon, written in the 1380s, from which the following two instances 

are taken: 

(26) a. Aboute þat tyme in Gasquen was a woman departed and todeled vram the 

nauel opward. Trevisa, Polychronicon MET 52, 4 

‘About that time in Gascony a woman was cut apart from the navel up.’ 

b. In þes Henry hys time was so gret strif in þe cherche of Rome. 

Trevisa, Polychronicon MET 136, 104 

‘In this Henry’s time there was such great conflict in the church of Rome.’ 

Thus the context in which we are arguing that a null expletive remained in Late 

Middle English – certainly as concerns the London Chronicles – is the one which 

exhibits a clear lag in developing an obligatory use of an overt expletive in the 14th 

century. The London Chronicles show that the null expletive subject option with 

initial adverbials continued into the late 15th century.


According to our analysis of the London Chronicles data, we are now in a position 

to provide a structural account of how the PFM phenomenon arose. It took the 

form of an optional agreement with a singular expletive subject, overt or null, existing 

as an option alongside the option of regular number agreement between the finite 

verb and the subject left in the VP. Crucially, it was not available when the subject 

preceded the verb, since this structure contained no expletive element. In keeping 

with other sociolinguistic phenomena such as negative concord (Labov 1972), PFM 

was not categorical but alternated with the ‘standard’ plural agreement pattern. 5 

It is interesting to consider the PFM phenomenon in terms of how language 

change arises as a modification of speakers’ internalised grammars under the pressure 

of external shifts in their language experience (see e.g., Lightfoot 2006). The 

data patterns testify to the acquisition of speaker grammars that freely allowed 

PFM but not misagreement when subjects preceded the verb. This may have come 

about when London speakers heard was for were, possibly as a result of the influx 

of speakers of other varieties during the 15th century, but rather than simply 

positing this as an across-the-board default morphological property, they gave a 

structural analysis to the input they observed. This would be favoured if the primary 

linguistic data to which they were exposed contained plenty of evidence for 

such a structural analysis. Indeed, Nevalainen (2006), who used a large sample 

of English correspondence beginning at around the right time for our purposes 

(1420), notes that was for were was particularly frequent in the context of expletive 

there sentences. Although it is highly unlikely that the passive clauses with initial 

adverbials studied in this paper would have formed a significant proportion of the 

primary linguistic data of language acquisition, expletive there-sentences, on the 

other hand, are likely to have been relatively common, thus permitting a structural 

cue to be established in which an expletive was marked for singular number. 

When this vernacular trait is combined with the persistence of residual null 

expletives, we get the result that we see in the chronicles data: verbs optionally 

agree with expletives, and in this genre expletives may be null as well as overt, 

hence the PFM phenomenon occurs with and without expletive there. The scenario 

found in these texts is thus an intriguing combination of an archaism and an 

innovation. The structural position of the passive subject is irrelevant to the form 

of agreement, as we would expect if it is indeed the properties of the expletive preverbal 

constituent that are at issue. Thus the passive subject standing in any of the 

three post-finite configurations we identified (embraciated, late, and extraposed) 

may agree or not agree with the verb. Since the PFM phenomenon is independent 

5. We use this term somewhat anachronistically, meaning the form that was to become the 

norm in the later standardisation process.


of the position of the passive subject, we would expect that pre-modern and early 

modern English varieties in which PFM is not found would exhibit the same range 

of passive subject possibilities as we found in the London chronicles. However, 

this, as well as other aspects of the topic, must be left for further research. 

5. Conclusion 

The goal of this paper was to present findings from an investigation of subject-verb 

misagreement we have identified in Late Middle English, namely a finite singular 

auxiliary form with a plural post-finite subject found in expletive passive constructions 

in Late Middle English (mid to late 15th century). It occurs not only in clauses 

containing an overt expletive subject (there), but also in those with no overt expletive. 

We then sought to understand why the PFM phenomenon arose when it did, 

and what level of linguistic analysis seems most appropriate. The notion of was as 

a morphological default form of were was rejected as constituting no more than a 

re-description of the phenomenon in question, rather than offering an explanatory 

account. Our conclusion is that both the sociolinguistic dimension, in particular 

the presence of vernacular influence, and also a structural analysis of clauses having 

post-finite subjects need to be covered. We have therefore made the assumption 

that PFM reflected a formal property of the grammar of speakers represented by the 

authors of the London chronicles, but was sensitive to the sociolinguistic context in 

which they operated. It has been proposed here that an increase in the use of was 

for were by London speakers in the 15th century – possibly as a result of the dialectal 

mix known to have been a feature of the capital in that period – became analysed by 

learners of this grammar as a structural cue. A structure was posited in which not 

only the overt expletive there, but also the by now archaic null expletive, was variably 

assigned a singular number feature. PFM consisted of agreement between the finite 

verb form and that element. To that extent London chronicle writers, even when 

using an archaism, nevertheless reflected the vernacular that they witnessed. 

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the Sermones Catholici or Homilies of Ælfric, ed. Benjamin Thorpe (2 vols.). London, 

1844–6. 

‘AR’: Ancren Riwle, ed. and tr. by James Morton from Ms. Nero A. xiv, Vol, 57. London: Camden 

Soc., 1852 (De la More Press reprint, 1905). 

‘AW’: Ancrene Wisse: The English Text of the Ancrene Riwle, ed. by Arne Zettersten from Magd. 

Coll. Cambs Ms. Pepys 2498, EETS OS 274. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976.


‘Bale’: “Bale’s Chronicle”, in Six Town Chronicles of England, ed. by Ralph Flenley. Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1911. 

‘Beaumont-Fletcher’: The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, ed. by Alfred R. Glover 

& Arnold Waller. London, 1906. 

‘BHom’: The Blickling Homilies of the Tenth Century: From the Marquis of Lothian’s Unique MS. 

A.D. 971 — N. Trübner & Co., OS no. 63, Early English Text Society, London, 1880. 

‘Bradf.’: “MS Bradford 32D86/42”, in The London Chronicles of the 15th Century: A Revolution in 

English Writing, ed. by Mary-Rose McLaren, Cambs.: Brewer, 2002, 154–226. 

‘Cleop.’: “Cleopatra ms. C IV”, in Chronicles of London, ed. by Charles L. Kingsford. Oxford: 

Oxford University Press, 1905. 

‘Cromwell’: The Life and Letters of Thomas Cromwell, ed. by Roger B. Merriman (2 vols.). Oxford: 


‘Exeter Book’: The Exeter Book, ed. by George P. Krapp & Eliott Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Poetic 

Records 3. New York: Columbia University Press, 1905. 

‘Gough’: “Gough London”, in Six Town Chronicles of England, ed. by Ralph Flenley. Oxford: 


‘Greg.’: The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the 15th Century, ed. by James Gairdner. 

London: Camden Soc., 1876. 

‘Hom.’: “Lambeth Homilies”, in Old English Homilies I (= EETS OS 29 & 34), ed. by Richard 

Morris. New York, 1969. 

‘Jul.’: “Julius BII 1386–1432”, in Chronicles of London, ed. by Charles L. Kingsford. Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1905. 

‘Lamb.’: “A Short English Chronicle in Lambeth ms. 306”, in Three 15th Century Chronicles, ed. by 

James Gairdner. London: Camden Soc., 1880. 

‘Machyn’: The Diary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, from A.D. 1550 to 

A.D. 1563, ed. by John Gough Nichols. London: Camden Society 42, 1848. 

‘Paston’: Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. by Norman Davis. Oxford: Clarendon 

Press, 1971. 

‘Trevisa’: “Trevisa, John”, in Ranulphus Higden: John Trevisa’s Translation of the Polychronicon of 

Ranulph Higden, Book VI. Ed. based on British Library MS Cotton Tiberius D. VII, ed. by 

Ronald Waldron. Heidelberg: Winter, 2004. 

‘Trin. Hom’: Old English Homilies of the Twelfth Century. Second Series, ed. by Richard Morris. 

Early English Text Society, O.S. 53. London, 1873. 

‘Vitell.’: “Vitellius A XVI, 1439–1503”, in Chronicles of London, ed. by Charles L. Kingsford. Oxford: 


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Syntactic dialectal variation in Middle 

English 1 

Cristina Suárez-Gómez 

Universitat de les Illes Balears 

ME is widely known as “par excellence, the dialectal phase of English” (Strang 

1970: 224). It is therefore not at all surprising that the linguistic differences 

among dialects in ME have long attracted the attention of scholars. It is generally 

assumed that northern dialects innovate mainly due to Scandinavian influence 

as opposed to southern dialects, which maintain the tradition. The aim of my 

study is to test whether this tendency is also reflected in relativization, both in 

the system of relativizers used and in the position adopted by the relative clause. 

My study shows that the system of relativizers inherited from OE, with deictic 

relativizers, and the tendency towards extraposition typical of ME are associated 

with southern dialects, while the North shows a simplified system of relativizers 

as well as a marked tendency for relative clauses to be intraposed. The data for 

the present study have been drawn from The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: 

Diachronic and Dialectal. 


The fact that research into English historical dialectology has focused almost 

exclusively on Middle English comes as no surprise given that Strang hailed 

this period as “par excellence, the dialectal phase of English” (1970: 224), and 

for Milroy it “exhibited the greatest diversity in written language of any period 

before or since” (1992: 156). Indeed, for Milroy “the label ‘Middle English’ 

does not refer to a coherent entity, but to a complex series of divergent, rapidly 

changing and intertwining varieties restrospectively seen as transitional 

1. I am grateful to the Autonomous Government of Galicia (grant no. PGIDIT05PXIC20401PN), 

and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the European Regional Development 

Fund (grant no. HUM2004–00940/FILO) for generous financial support. Thanks are also due to 

Prof Teresa Fanego, Dr Elena Seoane and Dr Belén Méndez for valuable comments on an earlier 

version of this chapter.

142 Cristina Suárez-Gómez 

between ‘Old English’ and ‘Modern English’ ” (1992: 157). This diversity was 

less obvious in both Old English and Early Modern English. In Old English, 

this was due to the importance of West-Saxon, spoken in the southern part 

of England (with the exception of the Southeastern part which had its own 

Kentish dialect), as West-Saxon became the dialectal variety used in most available 

prose texts. Other dialects are recorded in a few sparse documents, mainly 

glosses of Latin texts: The Lindisfarne Gospels gloss and the Durham Ritual, 

written in the Northumbrian dialect; The Rushworth Gospels and the Vespasian 

Psalter, written in the Mercian dialect. 2 There were also some poems (Cædmon’s 

Hymn) and riddles, but because of their intrinsic nature these provide little information 

on syntax. As for Early Modern English, most written evidence is in 

the ‘standard’ variety used in the London area, which thus leaves us with Middle 

English as the period within the historical dialectology of the English language 

that disposes of most comparable texts. 

Studies of Middle English have disclosed major differences between northern 

(comprising the North, West and East-Midlands) and southern (including 

the South and Kentish) dialectal areas. In this North-South divide, northern dialects 

are considered linguistically more advanced than southern ones, which are 

deemed more traditional or conservative. It is generally assumed that innovation 

in the northern dialects (inheritors of Old English Northumbrian and Mercian) 

stems from eighth and ninth century Scandinavian invasions, while the southern 

dialects (inheritors of West-Saxon and Kentish), especially the Southwestern, 

continue the linguistic tradition. According to Milroy (1992: 181), “it is tempting, 

therefore, to suggest that a history of relatively strong contacts with Danes and (to 

a lesser extent) Normans may be implicated here, and that traditional forms survived 

where these contacts were less strong” (Milroy 1992: 181). 

Such linguistic differences lie basically at the level of lexis, phonology and 

spelling and, to a lesser extent, at the level of grammar. The aim of this chapter 

is to test whether evidence allows us to discuss different dialects from a syntactic 

perspective paying attention to processes of relativization, both as regards 

the paradigm of relativizers and the position adopted by the relative clause 

within the main clause. Taking into account the fact that southern dialects are 

more conservative than their northern counterparts, the underlying hypothesis 

would be that the system of relativizers inherited from Old English and the 

tendency towards extraposition typical of Old English, will be more frequent 

in southern dialects. Non-southern dialects would show a more innovative 

2. The dialect classification has been made following the corresponding COCOA headers of 

The Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal.


system of relativizers, with a marked tendency for relative clauses to be intraposed 

rather than extraposed, which is also an innovative trait in the English Language. 

2. Description of the Corpus 

The data for the present study have been drawn from The Helsinki Corpus of English 

Texts: Diachronic and Dialectal. Only prose texts from the M1 period of The Helsinki 

Corpus have been included in the analysis, which corresponds to early Middle 

English and comprises texts written between 1150 and 1250. The inclusion of additional 

subperiods would have added a further dimension to the task of analysis 

and interpretation, that is, the dimension of time or chronology and might, therefore, 

have biased the results obtained and the conclusions arrived at on dialectal 

variation; thus, the changes observed would be attributed to both dialectal and 

chronological differences. This subperiod of early English has also been chosen 

in order to make comparisons with the situation in late Old English, a period 

whose descriptive syntax on relativization and relativizers is based on the standard 

variety. Furthermore, the position of the relative clause is not informative 

after early Middle English onwards, as the process of clausal incorporation was 

highly operative in late Old English and less so in early Middle English, following 

the parataxis-to-hypotaxis hypothesis (see O’Neil 1976; Hopper & Traugott 2003: 

chapter 7; Suárez-Gómez 2006: 51–75). 

Table 1 illustrates the distribution of the data used in this research: 

Table 1. Description of the corpus 3 

Dialect Text Nr of words Nr of tokens 

West-Midlands Ancrene Wisse 9,320 139 

Hali Meidhad 8,820 142 

Sawles Warde 3,820 64 

Lambeth Homilies 9,900 172 

East-Midlands Trinity Homilies 5,070 121 

Vices and Virtues 10,230 289 

South-West Bodley Homilies 5,880 87 

The Holy Rood Tree 6,920 117 

South-East Vespasian Homilies 5,880 47 

Total 65,840 1,178 

3. No texts from the northern dialect are available in this sub-period of The Helsinki Corpus. 

Therefore, the South will comprise both Southwestern and Southeastern dialects, and the North 

both East and West-Midlands dialects.


The corpus contains ca. 65,000 words and has rendered 1,178 examples of relative 

clauses. The texts submitted to analysis belong to the following dialects: West- 

Midlands, East-Midlands, Southwestern and Southeastern. The overall number of 

tokens is dialectally classified as follows: 517 tokens belong to the West-Midlands 

dialect; 410 to the East-Midlands; 204 to the Southwestern dialect and only 47 to the 

Southeastern one. Since sample sizes vary with respect to dialect, not only in terms of 

the number of relative clauses, but also in terms of the number of words, normalized 

frequencies were used in the analysis in order to correct the unbalanced distribution 

of words per dialect. Frequencies have been normalized per 10,000 words. 

3. Syntactic dialectology in Middle English 

Five major dialectal areas exist in the Middle English period, which are the direct 

inheritors of those corresponding to Old English (see Milroy 1992: 172): 

– Northern (descendant of Old English Northumbrian); 

– East-Midland (descendant of Old English Mercian); 

– West-Midland (descendant of Old English Mercian); 

– Southwestern, also referred to as Southern (descendant of Old English 

West-Saxon); 

– Southeastern, or Kentish (descendant of Old English Kentish). 

Middle English dialectology has been a favourite topic of research, and a whole 

bundle of distinctive features characterizing the different dialects has been recognized. 

Such distinctive features are mainly concerned with spelling and phonology, 

lexicon and morphology. In fact, most available regional indicators pertain 

to any of these three levels of the language. Although five main dialects are distinguished 

in Middle English, the most revealing regional indicators group them into 

two macro-dialects: (i) Northern, which comprises the inheritors of Old English 

Northumbrian and Mercian, namely, Middle English Northern, East-Midland, and 

West-Midland; and (ii) Southern, which comprises the descendants of Old English 

West-Saxon and Kentish, namely Middle English Southwestern and Southeastern 

(or Kentish), a classification which will be adopted in this chapter. 

Studies on Middle English dialectology provide comprehensive lists of regional 

indicators (Milroy 1992: 174–180; Fernández Cuesta & Rodríguez Ledesma 

2004), which lend support to the above mentioned North-South divide. As already 

mentioned, most of these indicators affect phonology and orthography, lexis and, 

less frequently, but still very revealing, morphology. A common tendency is to divide 

the dialectal areas into two: the North, displaying earlier innovations, and the


South, being more conservative, keeping the linguistic features of Old English and 

only displaying the innovative traces later. West-Saxon, the better known variety 

of Old English, is taken as the historical dialect of comparison and all innovative 

and conservative traces are determined with respect to this model. 

Unfortunately, fewer regional indicators have been gathered in the field 

of syntax. Although little is known about its contribution to Middle English 

dialectology, one may assume that, in a situation of language contact, grammatical 

differences would also be observed at the level of syntax, 4 and that this 

neglected field of study probably had an important part to play. In other words, we 

should expect a state-of-affairs of differentiation (with respect to West-Saxon) in 

those dialects which may have been influenced by language contact situations, and 

a state-of-affairs of similarity (also with respect to West-Saxon) in those dialects 

outside such language contact situations. 

To the best of my knowledge, the only corpus study conducted so far on historical 

dialectology at the level of syntax is about word-order patterns in Middle English and, 

more precisely, the way in which the different dialects of Middle English implement 

the verb-second constraint. In the South, the Middle English verb-second constraint 

behaves as it had in OE, that is, as a variant of the IP-V2 5 type (like modern Yiddish 

and Icelandic), since movement of the finite verb to the second position of the clause 

is observed both in main and subordinate clauses (Kroch and Taylor 1997, 2000; 

Kroch, Taylor & Ringe 2000). In the North, however, the verb-second constraint is 

of the CP-V2 6 type, as in modern mainland Scandinavian, German or Dutch, in the 

sense that movement of the finite verb to the second position of the clause is only 

allowed in main clauses. Kroch, Taylor and Ringe hypothesize that such a difference 

in the implementation of the verb-second constraint is a consequence of contactinduced 

simplification in the verbal agreement paradigm of the northern dialect. 

Regarding relativization, some sparse notes are found in Kivimaa (1966: 

129–134), but these have not been supported by numbers. She observed that 

there are in fact traces of variation in the use of relativizers in Early Middle 

4. A similar process is observed in pidgin languages, whose grammatical specifications are 

in many cases determined after a process of language contact (Holmes 2001: 81, 83). See for 

instance the development of relativizers in Tok Pisin, from the deictic marker ia to a function 

word (Romaine 1984). 

5. IP-V2 = inflectional phrase, verb second language. In Government and Binding theory IP 

refers to a maximal projection and represents the position to which the verb moves in IP-V2 

languages. 

6. CP-V2 = complementizer phrase, verb second language. In Government and Binding CP 

refers to the largest unit of grammatical analysis and represents the position to which the verb 

moves in CP-V2 languages.


English from dialect to dialect. With respect to the declined relativizers of Old 

English (se/seo/þæt), Kivimaa observes that they can still be found in the South 

and East Midlands in the twelfth century. They are however very sparingly used 

in the West-Midlands. This finding is very surprising, for it is generally agreed that 

the East-Midlands is among the linguistically advanced areas (in comparison 

with the South), and therefore, declined relativizers are expected to recede earlier 

in the less conservative areas than in the more advanced ones. Compound relativizers 

(seþe/seoþe/þætþe) are very quickly levelled out and can only be found in the 

South-West Midlands texts and sparingly in Kent, that is, in the most conservative 

linguistic areas. As for wh-relativizers, these occur very occasionally all throughout 

this period according to Kivimaa, but she does not provide any information 

concerning the dialectal distribution of these relativizers, which in the early Middle 

English period were just beginning to make their first timid appearance. 

Concerning invariable relativizers, Kivimaa notices that invariable þe disappears 

first in the North and the East-Midlands. Around 1200, this relativizer was 

almost extinct also in Kent and, at this time, only survives in the Southwest. The 

distribution of this relativizer supports the characterization of the South as a conservative 

dialect, and of the North and Midlands, as advanced areas. Relativizer þat, 

as an invariable word, is more frequently found where þe is receding. Therefore, 

from the previous conclusion, it can be gathered that it is favoured in the North and 

the East-Midlands, the areas where þe disappeared first. 

My intention in the corpus analysis is to compare my results with the observations 

gathered by Kivimaa and, ultimately, to find out whether the North-South 

divide observed at the level of spelling and phonology, lexicon, and morphology is 

also operative in processes of relativization, both in the selection and distribution 

of relativizers and in the position adopted by the relative clause with respect to the 

main clause, whether they are extraposed, intraposed or left-dislocated. 

4. Relativization strategies 

4.1 Description 

Three main relativization strategies have been available throughout the history of 

the English language, 7 which allows us to establish a formal distinction into the 

following types of relative clauses in Present-day English: 

7. See Keenan (1985: 146 –155) and Givón (1993: 124 –127) for a complete classification of 

relativization strategies.


− Wh-relatives (illustrating the pronominal relativization strategy), introduced 

by a form of the paradigm of the pronominal relativizers, as in: 

(1) The person [ RC with whom I usually go to exotic countries] is a box of surprises. 

− That relatives (illustrating the invariable relativization strategy), introduced 

by an invariable complementizer: 

(2) The class [ RC that I have enjoyed most] was about relative clauses in early 

English. 

− Zero or unintroduced relatives (illustrating the gap relativization strategy): 

(3) The song [ RC Ø I was thinking about] suddenly started to play in my favourite 

station. 

The same three relativization strategies were present in Old English (Traugott 

1992: 224–228 and Fischer et al. 2000: 58–61). These are: 

• Pronominal relativization strategy, represented by se (4) and seþe (5) relative 

clauses: 

(4) Eower Fæder [ RC se on heofenum is], wat hwæs eow 

Your Father Rel in heaven is knew what your 

þearf biþ 

necessity is 

“Your Father who is in heaven knows what is necessary for you’.” 

[Q O2/3 IR HOM BLICK 6: 103] 

(5) Ða fif bec [ RC on ðam ðe is Godes æ] 

the five books in Rel is God’s law 

“the five books in which God´s law is found’.” [Q O3 IR RELT LWSTAN 1: 10] 

The relative pronoun is moved to the front of the relative clause irrespective of the 

syntactic function it plays (subject in (4) or complement of a pied-piped preposition 

in (5)). It agrees in gender and number with the antecedent it resumes, and its case 

depends on the syntactic function it realizes in the relative clause. 

• Invariable relativization strategy, represented by þe and þat relative clauses, as 

the following examples illustrate: 

(6) Forþon þære burge nama [ RC þe is nemmed 

Because the city name Rel is called 

Gerusalem] is gereht sibbe gesyhþ 

Jesuralem means of-peace sight 

“For the name of the city which is called Jerusalem signifies ‘sight of peace.’’’ 

[Q O2/3 IR HOM BLICK 6: 25]


(7) se þridda sinoð wæs eft, [ RC þæt wæs twa 

the third synod was again Rel was two hund 

bisceopa], under þam gingran þeodosige. 

hundred bishops under the young Theodosius 

“The third synod, which had two hundred bishops, was celebrated again under 

the young Theodosius.’ [Q O3 IR RELT LWSTAN 1: 59] 

• Gap relativization strategy, represented by zero relative clauses, as in (8): 

(8) & on somnunge wæs monn [ RC Ø hæfde ðone 

& in congregation was man Rel had the 

dioul unclæne]. 

soul unclean 

“There was a man in the congregation who had the soul unclean.” 

[Q O3 XX NEWT LIND 4.33] 

Relativizer zero existed in Old English, but such relative clauses were very uncommon. 

In most cases the relativized item functions as subject. 

Middle English keeps the same three-fold formal distinction of relative clauses. In 

fact, Middle English displays the same relativizers as West-Saxon: invariable relativizers 

þe and þat; relativizer zero; and, finally, pronominal relativizers, represented by 

the demonstrative elements se and seþe. To these relativizers, it is necessary to add the 

wh- pronominal set that emerged in this period (Fischer 1992: 199), illustrated in (9): 

(9) And him behoten ðat an scolde cumen of his 

and him promised that one should come from his 

kenne [ RC ðurh hwam all mankenn scolde bien 

family through rel all mankind should be 

iblesced] 

blessed 

“And it was promised to him that one should not come from this family through 

whom all manking should be blessed.” [Q M1 IR RELT VICES1 3: 109] 

The most important differences between Old and Middle English lie in the distribution 

and frequency of each relativization strategy, which are the object of study 

in the following section. 

4.2 Distribution 

Relative clauses introduced by the invariable relativizer þe are by far the most frequently 

used in late Old English, as illustrated in Table 2 (see Suárez Gómez 2004: 216), 

introducing almost 80 per cent of the relative clauses of this period. Clauses introduced 

by pronominal relativizers, either simple or compound, represent the second most 

frequent group of relative clauses, with much less frequency than þe relative clauses 

(18.7 per cent). In this period there are only a few sporadic instances of þat used


invariantly (2 per cent). In sum, the situation found in late Old English is that of one 

clear favourite relativizer (invariable þe), a decline in the use of pronominal relativizers 

(se and seþe) and a very timid presence of invariable þat. 

Regarding the distribution of relativizers in early Middle English, Table 2 reveals 

that while invariable þe remains the favourite relativizer, it has undergone a significant 

reduction in frequency, compared to its position in late Old English, from 79 per cent 

to 66.2 per cent. By contrast, invariable þat, sparingly used in late Old English, shows 

a striking increase in frequency from late Old English to early Middle English from 

2 per cent to 30 per cent. Pronominal relativizers decline sharply after Old English 

from 18.7 per cent to 3 per cent, almost verging on ‘danger of extinction’. Finally, 

the results from Table 3 also reveal the first appearance of a new set of pronominal 

relativizers in the English language, represented by wh-words as adnominal relativizers. 

This function was non-existent in late Old English, and still infrequent in this 

early period, but already present in the English language. 

Table 2. Distribution of relativizers in late Old (adapted from Suárez Gómez 2004: 216) 

and Middle English 8 

Late Old English Þe 526 (79.3%) 

Se and seþe 124 (18.7%) 

Þat 13 (2%) 

Total 663 

Early Middle English Þe 780 (66.2%) 

Þat 354 (30%) 

Se and seþe 36 (3%) 

Wh- 8 (0.8%) 

Total 1,178 

Table 3. Distribution of relativizers according to dialect in Middle English 

East-Midlands West-Midlands South Kent Total 

Þe 347 (226.8) 238 (74.7) 165 (128.9) 30 (51) 780 

Þat 57 (37.2) 265 (83.2) 26 (20.3) 6 (10.2) 354 

Se/seþe 2 (1.3) 10 (3.1) 13 (10.1) 11 (18.7) 36 

Wh- 4 (2.6) 4 (1.3) – – 8 

Total 410 517 204 47 1,178 

8. Zero relativizers have not been included in the analysis of relativizers because of the low 

number of examples. Only 8 instances of zero relative clauses have been found in the corpus 

under analysis.


For the purposes of this study, more revealing information is provided in 

Table 3, which contains the distribution of relativizers in early Middle English 

according to the dialectal area in which they appear. This table includes raw numbers 

and normalized frequencies per ten thousand words. The four dialectal areas 

represent the classification displayed in The Helsinki Corpus. 

Invariable þe, the most commonly used relativizer in late Old English and in 

early Middle English, gained preference in the linguistically conservative areas of 

the South and Kent. More surprisingly, it also became the relativizer of choice in 

the East-Midlands, showing an even higher frequency than in late Old English. 

This contradicts Kivimaa (1966), who observed that this relativizer first levelled 

out in this dialectal area (and the North). Taking into account the fact that the 

southern dialect is the direct inheritor of the West-Saxon dialect of Old English, 

the predominance of þe in the South and Kent is only to be expected, given that it 

is a representative of a conservative dialect. What is much harder to account for is 

its continued high frequency in the East-Midlands, a linguistically advanced area, 

where one would accordingly expect integration and innovations rather than the 

retention of earlier traditions. 

A very different siuation prevailed in the West-Midlands where the invariable 

þat, which although present, was very rarely used in late Old English (see Table 2), 

became the preferred invariable relativizer. This situation deserves special attention 

because here the frequency of invariable þat is even greater than that of invariable 

þe (94.8 vs 63.7 respectively), and thus constitutes an innovative trace with respect 

to late Old English. This distribution confirms Kivimaa’s observation that þat is 

more frequent where þe disappears first, but contradicts her conclusions in that 

þat is not favoured in the East-Midlands. 

Regarding Old English pronominal relativizers (se and seþe), the numbers lend 

support to Kivimaa’s conclusions. My results show that Old English pronominal 

relativizers are in decline and almost in ‘danger of extinction’, especially in the East- 

and West-Midlands (3.1 and 1.3 occurrences per ten thousand words respectively). 

Surprisingly, they appear more frequently in the generally most conservative area 

linguistically speaking, namely Kent (18.7), in which they are even more frequent 

than the innovative þat. 

Finally, the dialectal distribution shows that the new pronominal relativizers 

represented by wh-words which were introduced into the English language in this 

period (cf. Table 2), are only present in the Midlands, both East and West, which 

are precisely those dialects in which the frequency of pronominal relativizers inherited 

from Old English (se and seþe) decreased earlier. This substitution effect 

seems to have acted as a compensation strategy, so as not to leave a functional 

gap vacant, a phenomemon which would agree with one of Maxwell’s diachronic


generalizations, whereby “two strategies in a given language tend to complement 

each other; as one advances, the other recedes” (Maxwell 1982: 150). Adapted to 

this context in particular, members of a relativization strategy – in this case se/seþe 

and wh- – complement each other: as se/seþe recede, wh- advances. The same effect 

can easily be applied to the substitution of invariable þe by þat, especially in 

the case of the West-Midlands, where invariable þat seems to be substituting the 

decreasing þe, and it already outnumbers it (Suárez-Gómez, forthcoming). 

5. Position of the relative clause 

5.1 Description 

One important aspect of variation in Old English relative clauses is the position 

that the relative clause occupies with respect to the main clause. There seems 

to be agreement that Old English syntax was characteristically paratactic, and 

the number of subordinate structures arose after the reinterpretation and subsequent 

reanalysis of originally paratactic structures (see Hopper and Traugott 

2003: chapter 7). In fact, a number of strategies were available in Old English 

to avoid embedded relative clauses within the main clause. The most relevant 

strategies are the extraposition of the relative clause towards the end of the 

main clause, or by moving the relative clause to the front by a rule of copying the 

antecedent (Carkeet 1976: 45). Through this strategy, the antecedent (normally the 

subject) and the relative clause are topicalized, and resumed again by means of 

a copy pronoun (cases of left-dislocation), so that the subject is not separated 

from the main verb. This parataxis-to-hypotaxis hypothesis is also reflected 

in the evolution of the position that the relative clause adopts with respect 

to the main clause. In Present-day English, relative clauses tend to follow the 

antecedent they modify, irrespective of the function this realizes in the main 

clause. Therefore, if the antecedent functions as subject, the relative clause will 

most likely be embedded, as in (10), and if the antecedent functions as direct 

object, the relative clause will not be embedded, as in (11). 

(10) The house [ RC that I rent] has amazing views. 

(11) I rent a house [ RC that has amazing views]. 

In earlier English, and especially in Old and early Middle English (O’Neil 1976), 

constructions such as (10) were available, but rarer than in Present-day English. In 

fact, there was a series of strategies available in these early periods of the English 

language which avoided embedding. The most common alternative strategies were


either to extrapose the relative clause, or to left-dislocate the antecedent and the 

relative clause A three-fold classification regarding the position of the relative 

clause in Old English is summarized below (O’Neil 1976; Hopper & Traugott 2003: 

chapter 7; Suárez-Gómez 2006: 39– 42): 

• Extraposed relative clauses, in which the relative clause is separated from the 

antecedent it resumes and moved to the end of the main clause, as the following 

example illustrates: 

(12) We sceolon urne Hælend i gladian mid 

we must our Saviour gratify with 

sumre godnysse, [ RC se i ðe æfre wile us 

certain goodness Rel ever wants us 

mannum mildsian] 

to men show mercy 

“We must gratify our Saviour with certain goodness, who always wants us to 

show mercy to men.” [Q O3 IR HOM AELFR15: 47] 

• Left-dislocated relative clauses, in which a relative clause is displaced to the front 

of the main clause, together with the antecedent it resumes. The antecedent is 

then repeated in the main clause, as below in (13): 

(13) Ac se i [ RC þe (i) god onginneþ and on 

but he Rel good begins and in 

þon þurhwunaþ oþ ende of his lifes], se 

this way continues until end of his life this 

bið hal geworden. 

is hale been 

“But he who begins good and continues therein until the end of his life shall 

be saved.” [Q O2/3 IR HOM BLICK2: 139] 

In example (13), the relative clause þe god onginneþ and on þon þurhwunaþ oþ 

ende of his lifes is moved to the front of the main clause preceded by the antecedent 

se. This antecedent is then copied (‘copy-pronoun’) and functions as the 

subject of the main clause. 

• Intraposed relative clauses, in which the relative clause and the antecedent are 

together, and the relative clause is embedded within the main clause, as in (14): 

(14) Eower Fæder i [ RC se i on heofenum is], wat 

your Father Rel in heaven is knew 

hwæs eow þearf biþ 

what your necessity is 

“Your Father who is in heaven knows what is necessary for you.” 

[Q O2/3 IR HOM BLICK2: 103]

5.2 Distribution 


Before dealing with the results of my analysis, I would like to point out that, in order 

to analyze position, many examples were filtered out, leaving only those which 

can potentially show variation in position. In fact most of the selected tokens are 

examples in which the relativized item is the subject, as in example (4) above, or a 

topicalized complement, as wið wifa earfoðnyssum in example (15). 

(15) Wið wifa i earfoðnyssum [ RC þe (i) on heora 

against women pain Rel in their 

inwerdlicum stowum earfeþu þrowiað], foxes 

internal places trouble suffer of-foxes 

leoþu & his smeoru mid ealdon ele & 

joint & his grease with old oil & 

mid tyrwan wyrc him to sealfe do on 

with tar work him to unguent do on 

wifa stowe. 

of-women places 

“Against the pain of women who had trouble on their internal parts, mix tar 

with old oil and foxes’ joints until it becomes an unguent and put it on those 

female parts’.” [Q O2/3 IS HANDM QUADR 234] 

By contrast, examples such as (8) and (9) had to be excluded from the count of relative 

clause position. Although the antecedent of example (8) functions as subject, 

it resorts to Subject-Verb inversion, so as not to separate the antecedent from the 

relativized item (sum mon and se) thus avoiding embedding. In instances similar 

to (9), also left out of the count, the antecedent functioning as prepositional object 

of the main verb appears in final position of the main clause, leaving no alternative 

position for the relative clause. The exclusion of such examples explains the reduced 

number of examples in the following tables in comparison with previous ones. 

The results from the position in late Old English and early Middle English are 

included in Table 4: 

Table 4. Distribution of position in late Old English (Suárez-Gómez 2006: 80) and early 

Middle English 

Late Old English Extraposition 105 (30.3) 

Left-Dislocation 81 (23.3) 

Intraposition 57 (16.4) 

Total 243 

Early Middle English Extraposition 97 (14.7) 

Left-Dislocation 56 (8.5) 

Intraposition 106 (16.1) 

Total 259


The results shown in Table 4 confirm the tendency for relative clauses to be 

non-intraposed (or non-embedded) in Late Old English, either by resorting to extraposition 

or left-dislocation, but especially to the former, which is the preferred 

position adopted by relative clauses with respect to the main clause. However, the 

total count reveals intraposition as the preferred option in early Middle English, 

over both extraposition and left-dislocation. 

In terms of dialects, the distribution of the position of the relative clause has 

rendered the results included in Table 5: 

Table 5. Distribution of position according to dialect in Middle English 

The results in Table 5 reveal that extraposition – the favourite position in late 

Old English – is retained as the favourite alternative in the dialectal variety of 

Kent and the South. By contrast, intraposition becomes the favourite option in 

the East- and West-Midlands dialects, especially, in the former. The increase in 

intraposition in both these linguistically innovative areas is of utmost importance 

since it helps confirm the results obtained regarding the distribution of relativizers. 

6. Conclusions 

East-Midlands West-Midlands South Kent Total 

Extraposition 30 (19.6) 35 (11) 21 (16.4) 11 (18.7) 97 

Left-Dislocation 20 (13.1) 21 (6.6) 15 (11.7) – 56 

Intraposition 43 (28.1) 49 (15.4) 11 (8.6) 3 (5.1) 106 

TOTAL 93 105 47 14 259 

In this chapter I have analyzed the distribution of relativizers and the position 

that the relative clause occupies with respect to the main clause in order to ascertain 

whether the North-South divide attested in Middle English for some levels of 

analysis such as morphology, phonology and lexis, also holds true at the syntactic 

level. My analysis of an early Middle English corpus shows that, regarding the 

paradigm of relativizers, the innovative invariable þat gains in prominence and 

preference over the traditional and archaic þe in both the West- and East-Midland 

in comparison with its distribution in late Old English. As regards the paradigm 

of the pronominal relativizers, wh- words start to be used first in the most innovative 

areas, which happen to be the same areas that had earlier ceased to use the 

Old English pronominal relativizers se and seþe. The South manifests itself as the 

most conservative area, showing a very similar distribution to late Old English: 

pronominal se and seþe relativizers are still used with some frequency and the only 

available invariable relativizer with some productivity is þe.


Regarding the position occupied by the relative clause, it has been observed 

that the less-preferred structural technique of Old English, namely intraposition, 

becomes the preferred form in the East- and the West-Midlands in early Middle 

English, the most advanced areas. By contrast, the dialects from the South, both 

Southwestern and Kent, avoid the use of embedded structures and instead favour 

extraposition and also, in the Southwest, left-dislocation. 

The analysis of the distribution of relativizers and the position adopted by the 

relative clause with respect to the main clause provides relevant evidence of geographical 

variation in early Middle English, agreeing with the evidence provided 

at other linguistic levels, as is the case of orthography and pronunciation, lexis and 

morphology. The evidence seems to suggest that more advanced dialects (such 

as those in the East- and West-Midlands) innovate earlier than less advanced or 

more conservative dialects (Southwestern and Kentish), and thus confirm the 

North-South divide. 

References 

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Dialectology ed. by Marina Dossena & Roger Lass, 287–308. Bern: Peter Lang. 

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Hopper, Paul & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge 


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of the emergence of the pleonastic þat. (Commentations Humanarum Litterarum 39, 1). 

Helsinki: Societas Scientarum Fennica. 

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variation and language contact. Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change ed. by Ans van 

Kemenade & Nigel Vincent, 297–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

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Syntax. Models and Mechanims ed. by Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas & Antony Warner, 

132–163. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

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A Case Study in Language Contact and Language Change. Textual Parameters in


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Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. 

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vol. II, 1066–1476 ed. by Norman Blake, 156–206. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

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Beginnings to 1066 ed. by Richard Hogg, 168–229. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Particles as grammaticalized complex 

predicates 

Bettelou Los 

Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen 

This paper argues that English phrasal verbs represent a grammaticalization, 

from Phrase to Head, of a complex predicate construction. Predicates and the 

particles of phrasal verbs share a number of striking quirks: syntactically, both 

may appear with “unselected objects” and, semantically, both may form idioms of 

which the meaning cannot be predicted from its separate parts. Particles cannot 

be analyzed as predicates synchronically, however, because they allow two word 

orders: V – NP – particle and V – particle – NP, whereas predicates only allow the 

first of these, and not the second; furthermore, the particle appears to “bleach” 

much more easily than predicates, probably because the prototypical predicates, 

adjectives, express properties, whereas particles (prepositions) express paths. 

EModE marks a significant point in the development of the particle verb system 

in that the verbs participating in the combination are no longer restricted to 

‘light’ verbs but include deadjectival and denominal verbs, unergatives, and 

‘manner-of-motion’ verbs. 


This paper investigates the origins of English phrasal verbs. These verbs consist 

of a verb and an adverbial or prepositional element traditionally referred to as 

a particle. The observation that particles share many characteristics with complex 

predicates has a long history in the literature from at least the early fifties 

onwards (Anthony 1953: 86). It has been observed, for instance, that the two 

orders famously exhibited by phrasal verbs, V – NP – Particle (as in (1a)), and 

V – Particle – NP (as in (1b)), are also found with complex predicates (cf. (1c) 

with (1a), and (1d) with (1b)). 

(1) a. He threw the remains of his dinner away. 

b. He threw away the remains of his dinner. 

c. He threw the documents in the dustbin. 

d. *He threw in the dustbin the documents.

158 Bettelou Los 

e. He threw all the documents containing incriminating evidence in the 

dustbin. 

f. He threw in the dustbin all the documents containing incriminating 

evidence. 

The fact that the particle away derives from the Prepostitional Phrase on weg and 

was therefore of the same category as the predicate in the dustbin further supports 

a diachronic link, as we will discuss in the next section. The main difference 

between the particle and predicate constructions in (1) is the fact that the second 

order, V – Predicate – NP, as in (1d), is a marked one, and most probably the result 

of extraposition of the NP. Biber et al. (1999: 930) note that (1c) is the regular order 

(“by far the most common option”), and we will refer to this order as the ‘predicate 

order’. Biber et al. conclude that the other order, as in (1d and 1f), is triggered 

by considerations of end-weight; note that (1f), with its long NP, is acceptable, 

whereas (1d) is not. In the case of particles, however, it is the V – Particle – NP 

order that is the most frequent one. We will refer to this order as the ‘particle 

order’, and alternations such as (1a)–(1b), where end-weight is not a trigger, as 

‘particle syntax’. Biber et al. note that there is no single factor that governs the 

selection of one particular order over the other: end-weight is one, but there are 

others. They note that the ‘particle order’ is linked with a high degree of idiomaticity 

of the combination, as in (2a), whereas the ‘predicate order’ tends to occur 

primarily with particles with literal, spatial meanings, as in (2b) (both examples 

from Biber et al. 1999: 933): 

(2) a. Now carry out the instructions. (Fiction) 

b. The Germans carried the corpse out. (Fiction) 

They note that in (2b) “the result of the action is that ‘the corpse is out’, while it 

certainly is not true that ‘the instructions are out’ as a result of the action in idiomatic 

[(1a)]” (Biber et al. 1999: 933). Such resultative meanings are typical of predicates, 

as we will see below, which explains the tendency for such spatial particles to 

have ‘predicate’ orders. I will argue in this chapter that these, and other similarities 

between particles and predicates point to a diachronic relationship. The ‘particle 

order’ of (1b) is a morphosyntactic sign that the predicate has grammaticalized: 

from a phrase (XP), it has become a head (X 0 ), allowing incorporation into the 

verb so that verb and particle express a single verbal action and function as a single 

lexeme. ‘Particle syntax’ is not restricted to particle verb combinations but may 

include V + AP and V + PP combinations as illustrated in (3) (see also Fraser 1965: 

82ff, Bolinger 1971: 37ff, Quirk et al. 1985: 734, 1167; Claridge 2000: 66–70, 153 

& Denison 1981: 36–37). The items in (4), once PPs, now appear to be adverbs or 

adjectives. Such a lexicalisation from phrase to head of the predicate shows that 

the complex predicate construction is grammaticalizing.


(3) a. break/blow/blast/cut/fling/push/rake/whisk open, cut/stop short, bleach 

white, blow/keep/make/sift clear, put straight, let/set free, think fit, cast/let/ 

pry/shake/wrestle loose, strip naked etc. 

b. bring to light, put in execution, take in hand, call to mind, call in question, 

take into consideration etc. 

(4) carry aloft (< on loft), set alight (< on light), take apart (< on part), put awry 

(< on wry), carry around (< on round), keep asunder (< on sunder), set afoot 

(< on foot), etc. 

The arguments advanced against identifying particles as grammaticalized predicates 

focus on the failure of many particles (most notoriously up) to function as independent 

predicates (He phoned me up versus *I am up), the lack of telicity in many cases 

(though telicity would be expected if particles were grammaticalized predicates, 

which are as a rule resultative), and the failure of constituency tests and topicalization. 

I will argue in this chapter that these same quirks are exhibited by predicates. 

Resultative complex predicates show various degrees of productivity, transparency 

and idiosyncrasy which mirror those of particle verbs, and easily acquire idiomatic 

meanings that only work in combination with specific verbs: cf. drink NP under the 

table versus *he is under the table (Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004). 

If the similarity in behaviour of predicates and particles can be taken as a 

pointer to a shared diachronic origin, it is all the more interesting that clear signs 

of this affinity between the two do not emerge until EModE. The affinity can be 

traced into OE, but then only with prefixes, which were still productive in that 

stage of the language, and not with particles. 

2. Particles and predicates 

2.1 Origin of particles 

Bolinger (1971: 18) provides this list of particles: 

(5) aback, about, above, across, after, again, aground, ahead, along, alongside, aloud, 

apart, around, aside, askew, astray, astride, atop, asunder, athwart, away, back, 

before, behind, below, between, by, down, forth, forward, home, in, off, on, out, 

over, past, round, through, to, together, under, underground, underneath, up. 

The great majority represent grammaticalized (or better, lexicalized) prepositional 

phrases. 1 Underground is a clear example, but there are many others: away 

from onweg, down from adown > ofdune. Others are homophonous with PE 

1. For a discussion of the relationship between grammaticalization and lexicalization, see e.g., 

Brinton (2002).


prepositions (by, in, off, on, over, through, to, under, up) so they are probably prepositional 

in origin, but have lost their NP complement. A popular synchronic view 

is to label particles ‘intransitive prepositions’ (Emonds 1976) or to say that their 

NP-complement has become ‘defocused’ and remains implicit for that reason 

(McIntyre 2004), or to talk about ‘reduced prepositional phrases’ (Lipka 1972: 17); 

examples are (6a–d), from Lipka (1972: 17): 

(6) a. He put the kettle on [the fire] 

b. He took the ring off [his finger] 

c. He ran up [the stairs] 

d. She took the book out [of the pocket] 

Some of these items are possibly more adverbial than prepositional (especially 

out), and this has been remarked on many times in the literature (e.g., Sroka 

1972 who distinguishes ‘adverbs’, ‘prepositions’ and ‘adverb-prepositions’). Fraser 

(1965) & Fairclough (1965) use ‘particle’ precisely because it is difficult to draw a 

clear line (see also Lipka 1972: 19). The problem of classification in a way reflects 

the status of the preposition, or broader, the adposition, as a syntactic category. Is 

it a lexical or functional category, is it analogous with V? V and P can both assign 

case, whereas N and A cannot; and classifications like intransitive/transitive can 

be argued to apply not only to V but also to P. Prepositions are said to express case 

realisations (Emonds 1985) and as such to appear in the extended projection of 

N rather than in a projection of their own. Adpositions and morphological case 

would then be expressions of the same functional category. 2 

A third group seems definitely adverbial in origin, but even here we find a trace 

of a preposition: forth, forward, out; possibly also home (= homeward). Finally, past 

and round are in origin a past participle and an adjective, respectively. If particles 

originate in a syntactic construction as complex predicates, this explains why they 

are mainly of the categories P and A: 3 they are in origin predicates (PP and AP are 

typically predicate categories) but have grammaticalized (after having lexicalized, in 

the case of some PPs) into particles and prefixes. 

2.2 Can particles be analysed as predicates? 

The examples in (7) list some PDE instances of complex predicates collected by 

Rappaport Hovav & Levin (2001). 

(7) a. Last night, the dog poked me [ PRED awake] every hour to go outside 

(The Toronto Sun, 27 Nov. 1994, p. 6) 

2. See also Asbury (2005) for a discussion of Hungarian, where the often-assumed dichotomy of 

adpositions-are-free and case-suffixes-are-bound is not as clearcut as in many other languages. 

. P(articiples) are a special case of A(djectives).


b. Sudse cooked them all [ PRED into a premature death] with her wild food. 

(P. Chute. 1987. Castine. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, p. 78) 

c. She might employ it [her body] as a weapon – fall forward and flatten 

me [ PRED wafer-thin]. 

(Delia Ephron. 2000. Big City Eyes, New York: Bantam, p. 92) 

At an abstract level, there is a subject-predicate relationship between the accusative 

object and the complex predicate or object complement, i.e., between me 

and awake, them and a premature death, and me and wafer-thin. A simplified representation 

is the structure in (8), with an Agreement Phrase, with the empty head 

Agr mediating between the object as the subject of the Agreement Phrase and its 

adjectival predicate: 

(8) VP 

V AgrP 

NP 

me 

Agr' 

Agr AP 

awake 

Note that the NP me (the object) receives its thematic role from the predicate in 

this representation, and has accusative case not because that case is assigned by 

the verb but because the NP is the subject of the Agreement Phrase and accusative 

is the default case for subjects in verbless or non-finite constructions. This means 

that it is the predicate that licenses the object and not the verb, and this accounts 

for the phenomenon of ‘unselected’ objects, i.e., cases where the verb on its own, 

without the predicate, could not appear with the object (more about this phenomenon 

in the next section). 

The failure of most particles to function as a predicate in a copular construction 

is often noted in the literature, e.g., Zeller (1999): *he is up/it is up (cf. phone 

John up/eat up all the food etc.), but many predicates similarly fail to appear 

straightforwardly in a copular construction; cf. the variability of (9a–f), rewriting 

the predicates of (7) and (13) below as copular constructions: 

(9) a. I am awake. 

b. *They were into a premature death. 

c. I am wafer-thin. 

d. *The pub is dry. 

e. *The daylights were out of the campers. 

f. The dust is out of the sofa.


The non-acceptability of these predicates in copular constructions does not in 

itself, however, constitute a counterargument to an analysis along the lines of (8) 

for predicates, in which the predicate selects the object. McIntyre (2001) provides 

a number of other meanings that are “idiosyncratically restricted to a particular 

structural environment”: the malefactive use of on in my cat died on me, my 

car broke down on me is not possible as a postnominal modifier (*an accident on 

me). Goldberg & Jackendoff (2004: 560–562, and references cited there)) provide 

many more examples (e.g., under the table in drink NP under the table), and set 

out in detail the idiosyncrasy of other predicates, particularly the choice of PP 

or AP: stab/bat/put/batter/frighten/crush/scare/burn NP to death versus *dead, but 

he sang himself hoarse versus *to hoarseness or he ate himself sick versus *to sickness; 

and he sang himself to exhaustion versus *exhausted. Note that even semantically 

transparent, relatively non-idiomaticized predicates like into shape and to 

death cannot function as independent predicates: *he is into shape, he is to death. 

McIntyre (2004: 546) points out that directional PPs and continuous state-of-change 

comparatives (i.e., inherently eventive PPs/APs) are incompatible with copulas 

although they uncontroversially predicate over NPs: *I am to the station/colder and 

colder versus I walked to the station/I got colder and colder. He concludes that the 

copula is untrustworthy as a test for complex predicates (McIntyre 2004: 547), and 

we conclude that it does not constitute counterevidence to our claim that there is 

a diachronic relationship between predicates and particles. 

The reason that (7) is less likely to be the correct analysis for verb-particle constructions 

is the fact that particles have undergone grammaticalization and have 

started to form a single unit with the verb. The order in (1b), the ‘particle order’, 

appears to require a morphological analysis in which particle and verb form a unit, 

in its most extreme form along the lines of (10): 

(10) VP 

Vmax NP 

Vmin particle 

An analysis as in (10) can account for formations like get-at-able and knockerupper, 

but is, in this most extreme form, ultimately untenable without special 

stipulations because verbal inflectional endings still attach to V min and not to 

V max (= the V + particle compound). Blom (2005: 104) notes that the combination 

of the properties compositionality, conventionality, and productivity, all strikingly 

present in particle verbs, is in fact very reminiscent of word formation, especially 

in derivation. Particles are much like derivational morphemes in that it is possible 

to see patterns, but these patterns or rules do not apply with strict regularity


but show idiosyncracies of various kinds (see Riehemann 1998 for German 

bar-derivation). Particles could be described as free derivational morphemes. 

Particles, then, show evidence in Modern English both of being phrasal (as in 

(9)) and of being heads (as in (10)). They are fascinating as a field of study precisely 

because they seem to straddle the no-man’s land between syntax and morphology: 

separable, but in combination input to word formation processes. A unitary analysis 

that generates both orders (1a) and (1b) and still makes intuitive sense is almost 

impossible (see Elenbaas 2007 for a proposal, and for discussion). 

The ‘particle order’ as in (1b) precludes a predicate analysis along the lines of 

(8) as the only option for particle-verbs, but does not preclude a complex predicate 

origin of the construction, with the ‘particle syntax’ the result of grammaticalization. 

We will discuss the parallels between particles and predicates in the next 

sections. 

2. Predicate quirks 

2. .1 Unselected objects 

Lipka (1972: 197–212) lists the various meanings of phrasal verbs with out and up, 

of which (11) and (12) represent a selection, and notes that “[s]ince the particle 

is omitted for reasons of brevity, it is readily apparent that many collocations 

which are possible with the V[erb]P[article]C[ombination] are excluded for the 

simplex verb” (1972: 215): the object cannot in many cases be selected by the 

verb on its own. 

(11) with out: cause + be + / + apparent/ 

blurt (secret), bring (meaning of a passage/young lady, book), dig (book), 

dope (specifications), drag (reason), draw (scarf), ferret (secret), figure 

(problem), find (sb/sth – Deleted), fish (coin), flush (dollars/tax evaders), 

hunt (old diary, hat), haul (old essay), jerk (fish, pistol), lay (cold meal, 

evening clothes), nose (rat, trail/scandal, evidence), point (pictures, the 

man/mistake/that …), puzzle (sth), rake (scandal), reckon (how much 

we will need), root (truffles/possessions), rout (bottle), scare (partridge), 

search (friend/insincerity), seek (sb, place, book, keymen, enemy bombers), 

smell (sb, witch/secret, opposition), smoke (intentions), sound (sb), 

spell (views), spy (secrets/land), track (development), trot (horse/knowledge, 

excuse), whip (knife, wallet), worm (secret). (Lipka 1972: 200) 

(12) with up: cause + be + / + apparent/ 

Call (scenes from childhood), conjure (spirits, visions of the past), cough 

(sth), dig (statue), fetch (anecdotes), hunt (old records, references, quotations), 

look (fast train), plow (arrowheads/secrets), raise (prophet), rake


(diary/scandal, old quarrels, past), reckon (bill), root (sb), scare (game), 

scout (clients), (dog) scratch (bone), show (fraud, ignorance/rogue, impostor), 

turn (facts in an encyclopedia). (Lipka 1972: 206–207) 

The same phenomenon of the unselected object is seen in complex predication: 

cases in which V + predicate select a different set of objects than V would 

do on its own. An example is (7b) above: them does not have the same thematic 

relationship to cook as the objects have that cook selects outside of a resultative 

construction: a meal etc. Other examples are presented in (13): 

(13) a. They drank the pub dry (Spencer & Zaretskaya 1998). 

b. The bears frightened the daylights out of the campers (McIntyre 2001: 144) 

c. I beat the dust out of the sofa (McIntyre 2001: 144) 

d. He worked his fingers to the bone. 

2. .2 Idiomaticity 

The idiomaticity of phrasal verbs, and their very variable degrees of transparency 

and productivity, is often noted in the literature (e.g., Lüdeling 2001; see also the 

findings in Biber et al. 1999: 412–413). What is less well known is that they share 

these features with complex predicates: pry and come will only combine with 

complex predicates that mean something like ‘apart,’ drive will only combine with 

complex predicates denoting “negative and extreme mental states” (Goldberg & 

Jackendoff 2004: 559): 

(14) a. He pried it apart/open/loose/free/*flat/*straight 

b. It came apart/open/loose/free/*flat/*straight 

(Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004: 559) 

(15) a. He drove her crazy/nuts/bananas/to desperation/to drink/up the wall/ 

meshuga/ frantic 

b. *He drove her happy/sick/silly/clean/calm/thin/sober 


2. . Telicity 

Another insight from Goldberg & Jackendoff ’s (2004) article is that resultative 

complex predicates need not be telic. They distinguish four types of complex predicate 

(538, 540): 

(16) a. Noncausative property resultative (e.g., The pond froze solid) 

Syntax: NP 1 V AP/PP 2 

Semantics: X 1 BECOME Y 2 

MEANS: [verbal subevent] 

b. Causative property resultative (e.g., Willy watered the plants flat) 

Syntax: NP 1 V NP 2 AP 3 

Semantics: X 1 CAUSE [Y 2 BECOME Z 3 ] 

MEANS: [verbal subevent, here: Willy watered the plants]


c. Noncausative path resultative (e.g., The ball rolled down the hill) 

Syntax: NP 1 GO Path 2 

Semantics: X 1 GO Path 2 

MEANS: [verbal subevent] 

d. Causative path resultative (e.g., Bill rolled the ball down the hill) 

Syntax: NP 1 V NP 2 PP 3 

Semantics: X 1 CAUSE [Y 2 GO Path 3 ] 

MEANS: [verbal subevent, here: Bill rolled the ball] 

Although only the two causative types of (16b) and (16d) would traditionally be 

termed complex predicates, they are clearly related to their noncausative counterparts 

(16a) and (16c). 4 The types that grammaticalize, however, are the paths 

(c–d), expressed by prepositions, rather than the properties (solid, flat) expressed 

by adjectives. 

Goldberg & Jackendoff (2004) demonstrate that the aspect and/or aktionsart 

of the complex predicate is determined by that of the causative subevent, which in 

turn hinges on whether the predicate sets up an endpoint to the event or not. As 

there are predicates that do not set up an endpoint, resultatives are not necessarily 

always telic; cf. John went along the river, where along the river expresses a path 

without a specific endpoint (2004: 543). This means that there are also stative and 

atelic resultatives, and, after grammaticalization, stative and atelic particle-verb 

combinations (e.g., look on, float by etc.). The fact that there are particles that are 

not resultative does not argue against a predicate origin: complex predicates do 

not need to be resultative either. Prototypical predicates and particles, however, 

are resultative. 

Farrell (2005: 118) notes that “[t]he resultative V-DP-Adj construction 

appears to have the same basic structure as the V-DP-P construction. The key difference 

is that only the latter typically has a compound-verb paraphrase (i.e., turn 

on the lights as well as turn the lights on)”, – i.e., the difference between the ‘particle 

order’ as in (1a) above, and the predicate order as in (1b). That difference is, however, 

crucial. If some aspects of particle verbs can be said to have been inherited 

from their predicate origins, their grammaticalization has led to them being different 

in other respects, most importantly in the ‘particle order’, bleached meanings 

and the fact that they make reference to a very abstract ‘Path’, the precise semantics 

of which are filled in pragmatically. We will discuss this in the next section. 

4. See also Lipka’s semantic types of phrasal verbs where the CAUSE types are usually matched 

by a BECOME type. To take an example, the BECOME counterpart of (11) consists of verbs like 

(sun/news, truth/daughter in photograph) come out, (news) filter out, (anger) flame out, (news) 

leak out, (moon/ancient belief) peep out (Lipka 1972: 197–198).


. Grammaticalization 

.1 Path predicates grammaticalize 

One aspect in which particles do differ from predicates, and which must be of 

primary importance in charting the grammaticalization process they have undergone, 

is the fact that particles show extensive semantic bleaching compared 

to predicates. Consider the following Lexical Conceptual Structure as typical 

of (resultative) predicates (from Spencer & Zaretskaya 1998, in turn based on 

Jackendoff 1990), with (17) illustrating a predicate construction as in (7a): 

(17) [CAUSE [ACT (x)], BECOME [W(y)]], by [V(x)] 

(18) [CAUSE [ACT (the dog)], BECOME [awake(me)]], by [poking(the dog)] 

The by-phrase in this notation equals the verbal subevent in Goldberg & Jackendoff 

’s (2004) notation above (in (15)), and particle verbs fit into this means or 

manner phrase with varying degrees of acceptability, in a large part depending on 

the verb (for non-causative verbs, e.g., unaccusatives, the LCS needs to be pruned 

somewhat (cf. (16a)–(16c) above)). If we classify the verbs that occur in particleverb 

combinations in terms of whether they make the best fit in an LCS like (16) 

or (17), we find that verbs expressing manner make the best fit: 

(19) i. transitives 

ii. unergatives: chop, knock, laugh, sing, work 

iii. ‘Manner of motion’ unaccusatives: run, lope, sprint, dash, rush, hurry, 

scurry, scramble (Slobin 2005: 316) 

iv. denominal verbs, derived from the instrument used in causing the object 

y to reach the state W: boot out, bowl over, branch out, brick up, buckle up, 

elbow out, fork out, hand over, pan out, patch up 

v. deadjectival/ denominal verbs constituting a conversion of the state W 

itself: back off/away, brazen out, cheer up, clear up/out/off/away, crack up, 

free up, gloss over, open up/out, parcel out, pretty up, round up/off 5 

vi. ‘Light’ verbs: 

a. transitive: get, keep, let, make, place, put, set 

b. unaccusative: come, go 

Many transitives that express some activity like cooking and poking in (7) fit nonproblematically 

in the manner slot, and the same goes for the intransitive unergatives, 

in (ii). 

(20) a. He chopped the tree down 

b. [CAUSE [ACT (he)], BECOME [down (tree)]], by [chopping(he)] 

5. Conversions as in (iv) and (v) are a much-noted phenomenon with particle-verbs; see e.g., 

Lipka (1972: 98–114).


Manner-of-motion verbs in (iii) make good fits, too (in the non-causative pruned 

version of the LCS). The denominal verbs in (iv) specify manner too, but do not 

have an independent existence outside the particle verb combination, and they fit 

the LCS less well for that reason (e.g., (21)): 

(21) a. They elbowed me out 

b. [CAUSE [ACT (They)], BECOME [out (me)]], by [elbowing(They)] 

When the verb does not specify manner, but is a conversion of the state W itself 

(the verbs in (v)) or a ‘light’ verb, as in (vi), they do not fit the LCS. The fact that 

specifying manner is apparently important for a good fit is interesting, as the 

manner-of-motion verbs in (iii) and the denominal verbs in (iv) are only robustly 

attested from EModE onwards, as we will see in section 4.3. 

The point to note is that the less than perfect fit of some of these particle 

verbs also comes to the fore when these same verbs appear with genuine syntactic 

predicates, and is due to the contribution of the verb rather than to that 

of particle or predicate. What is different between particles and predicates is the 

degree of explicitness of W. The particle appears to be bleached to a degree that 

does not seem possible with genuine predicates. Adjectives, expressing properties, 

are less likely to bleach; but paths, with or without endpoints, may do 

so very easily. There is a clear link here with productivity: spatial resultatives 

appear to be totally productive in that any spatial PP that can be construed as 

a path can be used as a complex predicate (Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004: 558); 

APs such as free (of NP), clear (of NP), apart, open and shut, i.e., exactly the set 

of APs that may grammaticalize (see (3a)), are also fairly freely productive and 

are argued to be interpreted as “spatial being open configurations with some 

force-dynamic overtones” (Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004: 558). They do not only 

represent a property but a spatial configuration “affording free passage between 

the interior and exterior of the object” (Goldberg & Jackendoff 2004: 559). This 

insight, then, allows us to postulate the generalization that only path-predicates 

will grammaticalize. 

.2 The defocused complement of Prt 

Paths leave much more room for pragmatic interpretation than properties, and 

part of the grammaticalization process is the fact that the complement of the preposition 

becomes, in McIntyre’s (2004) words, ‘defocused’: in he took the ring off, the 

object can be pragmatically reconstructed with ease given our knowledge of rings 

and fingers; in other cases, the exact identification or reconstruction of the ground 

is either unimportant or infelicitous (cf. also the examples in (6) above): 

(22) a. She took a newspaper in (= into the house). 

b. She threw the remains of the dinner out (= out of the house).


c. Bill pushed Harry along (= along the trail) 


d. Wait Long by the River and the Bodies of Your Enemies Will Float By 

(= by one’s position; title of CD album by The Drones) 

This phenomenon could be interpreted as loss of argument structure, on a par 

with the loss of argument structure we observe in the grammaticalization of verbs 

into auxiliaries. There is, however, a caveat here in that prepositions may not have 

a syntactic argument at an earlier stage but were located in the specifier of an NP in 

the local cases (instrumental, ablative, locative). They developed into prepositions 

only later (Vincent 1999): 

(23) KP 

Spec K' 

K NP 

Spec 

adposition 

N 

N' 

Particles may well have split off from prepositions when the latter were still in 

the ‘adposition’ stage, and may never have had proper syntactic arguments – they 

were associated with a particular NP by virtue of occupying its specifier position. 

Particles like down, out, off and up may have acquired their prepositional use only 

recently: down is originally a PP that grammaticalized to a head, while OE ut and 

up do not show clear prepositional uses but are usually followed by prepositional 

phrases. 6 What is clear is that the defocusing of the object allows the particle to be 

analysed as a Head rather than a Phrase, a typical grammaticalization effect. 

Because the syntactic status of some of these NP complements of path-Ps is 

unclear, I will refer to this NP as the ground, a semantic rather than syntactic term, 

and to the object NP of the particle verb combination as the figure, following Svenonius 

(2003), after Talmy (1978). In a sentence like he took the ring off his finger, 

then, the ring is the figure and his finger is the ground of the particle off. 

(25) he took the ring off his finger 

figure prt ground 

(24) PP 

Spec P' 

P 

preposition 

NP 

Spec N' 

6. Eg. in examples like Hi eodon up to þære dune (Num. 14: 40), He eode ut on ðæt land (Gen. 

24, 63). Ut and up in such phrases are either adverbs in the spec of a PP or heads themselves 

postmodified or complemented by a PP. See Elenbaas (2007) for a discussion. 

N


In particle verbs that result from a grammaticalization process of complex predicates, 

it is the figure that becomes the fully affected object of the particle verb 

combination; that figure traverses the path expressed by the particle. 

. Grounds as fully affected objects 

In addition to the figure of the path becoming the object, there is another pattern 

in which it is the ground that surfaces as the object of the particle verb combination. 

An example is (26), which was discussed by Denison (2004) as an example 

of reanalysis: the preposition increasingly attaches itself to the verb, and its former 

complement (the ground) becomes the object of the particle verb combination. 

(26) My car ran over a bottle (lying in the road) 

a. [ VP ran intr [ PP over [ NP a bottle]]] 

b. [ VP ran trans [ part over] [ NP a bottle]] (Denison 2004: 18) 

It is another resultative predicate pattern, with its unaccusative verb conforming to 

the LCS in (16c), Goldberg and Jackendoff ’s noncausative path resultative. My car 

is here the figure, and starts out initially as the object of the verb (because the verb 

is an unaccusative). 7 The earliest literature on particle verbs mention the phenomenon 

of object transfer (‘Subjektvertauschung’, ‘Objektvertauschung’: Hundsnurscher 

1968: 124ff quoted in Lipka 1972: 94). Compare the object of the first and 

second of the following pairs, of which the first one is the figure of the particle, but 

the second one is the ground: water runs or pours out of the bucket, we brush the 

lint off a coat, rinse the dirt off the plates. 

(27) a. das Wasser läuft aus/der Eimer läuft aus (Lipka 1972: 94) 

the water runs out/the bucket runs out 

b. John poured out the water/John poured out the bucket (McIntyre 2001) 

c. Clear out mud (from a river)/clear out a river (by removing mud) 

(Lipka 1972: 94) 

d. Brush the lint off/brush the coat off (Farrell 2004: 110) 

e. Het vuil afspoelen/ de borden afspoelen (Blom 2005: 190) 

the dirt off-rinse the plates off-rinse 

‘rinse off the dirt’ ‘rinse off the plates’ 

Synchronic similarities point to an affinity between particles and predicates. Could 

they point to a diachronic relationship? We will now look at the situation in earlier 

English. 

7. The causative variant would be I ran my car over a bottle.


4. Earlier English 

4.1 Evidence for grammaticalization 

OE particle verbs generally fit the resultative semantics of predicates, even more 

so than their PE counterparts because they are almost invariably transparent combinations 

of (transitive and unaccusative) verbs and particles, as in the following 

examples (both from Elenbaas 2007): 

(28) þæt hi hine ut sceoldon wurpan (coeust, LS 8 (Eust) 168.173) 

that they him out should throw 

‘that they should throw him out’ 

(29) & ærn swa feor up swa næfre ær ne dyde 

(ChronE (Plummer) 1014.28.1906) 

and ran as far up as never before not did 

‘and ran up as far as he never did before’ 

Of all the verb groups listed in (19) only those in (vi) ‘light’ verbs, both transitive 

and unaccusative, occur robustly with particles in OE. Notably absent are the denominal 

or deadjectival conversions, and the finer-grained ‘manner-of-motion’ 

like run, jog, lope, sprint, dash, rush, hurry, scurry, scramble (Slobin 2005: 316). We 

will see that they only start to appear in EModE (Section 4.3). 

Saying anything definite about the grammaticalization process is not easy. If 

we interpret particles that are heads rather than phrases as the result of grammaticalization, 

we could try to find evidence that they are exclusively phrases in OE 

and become heads only later on. Example (29) with up being premodified by swa 

feor ‘so far’ shows that OE particles certainly allow a phrasal analysis, but it cannot 

be established on the available data that they are exclusively phrasal. Even for PDE, 

most analyses acknowledge that particles can be heads and phrases (as evidenced 

by the fact that they often allow premodification by elements like just and right 

in the ‘predicate order’ but not in the ‘particle order’). Evidence of verb raising 

clusters, where we might adduce head status if the particle is found adjacent to 

its verb (i.e., orders like þæt hi hine sceoldon ut wurpan, cf. (28) above), cannot be 

conclusive because of the possibility of Verb Projection Raising in OE. The only 

firm evidence for grammaticalization of predicate phrases into heads comes from 

the EModE examples of PPs like those in (3b) grammaticalizing. Claridge (2000: 

138–140; 158) has some examples in her EModE corpus of the NP in these grammaticalizing 

PPs still occurring with some degree of premodification: take NP into 

[your most grave and wise] consideration. 

If the order of (1b) with the verb and the particle adjacent can be analysed as a 

grammaticalized order in PE (with the particle as a head), can we perhaps deduce 

anything from the occurrence of this order? The grammaticalized ‘particle order’ 

is already the most frequent order in the first subperiod of the Middle English part


of the Helsinki Corpus, and becomes even more frequent in the subsequent ones 

(Elenbaas 2007: 260). Biber et al. (1999: 932) report that with full noun phrases, 

the ‘particle order’ in written registers occurs in over 90% of all cases; in conversation, 

the rate is much lower (about 60%), although it is still the most frequent 

order. There are many other factors governing the selection of the ‘particle’ or 

‘predicate order’, including focus (see also Dehé 2002), end-weight (extraposition 

of heavy objects) and idiomaticity (as was discussed in Section 1 above), whereas 

the extraposition of genuine syntactic predicates (as in (1d)) appears to be governed 

by only one factor, namely end-weight (Biber et al. 1999: 931). In all, the 

word order findings appear to tally with the hypothesis that the (1b) order is the 

result of grammaticalization. The fact that particle verb combinations with e.g., up 

and ut are invariably transparent and spatial in OE (e.g., Denison 1985 & Elenbaas 

2007), then, probably means that they are phrases rather than heads. 8 

4.2 No predicate quirks in OE and ME? 

A typical ‘quirk’ of particles and predicates that we discussed in section 2.3.1 was 

that of the ‘unselected object’, a very creative use of the resultative construction 

that we saw in (13a–c) where the particle-verb or predicate-verb combination 

occurs with an object that could not occur with the verb on its own. No cases of unselected 

objects in OE were found, but this is not surprising in view of the fact that 

for languages without native speakers we cannot rely on our intuitions of which 

objects verbs typically take and which objects are unselected, as we did in the case 

of (13a–c) where we know that the objects are unselected because you can’t drink 

pubs, frighten daylights, or beat dust. To identify unequivocal unselected objects 

in a dead language like OE we have to rely on unergative (i.e., truly intransitive) 

verbs that cannot take any object on their own (as PDE work in (13d), which, 

though unergative, occurs with an object when there is a particle or predicate present: 

he worked out a solution, he worked his fingers to the bone). Unfortunately, OE 

particles seem to occur exclusively with unaccusative and transitive verbs, as we 

saw in the previous section, and I was not able to identify any cases of particles and 

objects occurring with unergative verbs. Unselected objects, then, are not a feature 

of OE particle verbs, but, interestingly, they are not a feature of genuine syntactic 

predicates in OE either – these, too, occur, as far as I have been able to establish, 

8. Non-spatial uses are found with e.g., forth, but here the particle is an event-modifier, and 

does not conform to either the LCS in (17) or those in (16): 

(i) Peter cnucode forð oð þæt hi hine inn leton 

(Hml. Th. i. 396, 34; Wlfst. 222 33) 

Peter knocked forth until they him in let 

‘Peter kept on knocking until they let him in’ 

For such event-modifiers, see McIntyre (2001) & Los (2004).


mainly with ‘light’ verbs (the OE counterparts of PDE come, get, go, keep, let, make, 

place, put, set – see Section 3.1 above). 9 In (30) we have the light verb gedon ‘do’: 

(30) þu ne miht ænne locc gedon hwitne oððe blacne (Mt (WSCp) 5: 36) 

Lat. non potes unum capillum album facere aut nigrum 

‘you cannot turn one hair white or black’ 

A search of typical unergatives (the OE counterparts of verbs like dream, laugh, 

sing and work) did not bring up any combinations with predicates. Neither predicates 

nor particles, then, are used as creatively as they are in PDE. 

Nor does ME yield much evidence of unergative verbs with either a complex 

predicate or a particle; neither the Middle English part of the Helsinki Corpus, the 

Middle English Dictionary or the OED offer any examples under unergatives like 

dream, laugh, sing and work, apart from variations on the idiom laugh NP to scorn 

(to hokere, to bismare, til/at/into hething), and the instance in (31) from the OED 

and the MED: 10 

(31) þey haue an herbe … þat makeþ men laughe hem selue to deþ 

(Trevisa Higden (Rolls) I. 305) 

We do get instances like (32), but they are probably postpositional rather than true 

particle-verbs: 

(32) ofte he hire loh to (a1225 (?a1200) Lay. Brut 18542) 

often he her laughed to 

‘he often laughed at her’ 11 

9. Non-light verbs are rarer, but they do exist; e.g., (i), with formian ‘scour’: 

(i) formige man þone pytt clæne (Conf 3.1.1, 4.56) 

scour one the well cleane 

‘scour the well clean, scour out the well’ 

10. Verbs like sing and work have of course not been dealt with yet in the MED. 

11. Example (32) is probably the same construction as the OE example of (i): 

(i) þa englas cwædon him to (Gen 19.17) 

the angels spoke him to 

‘The angels spoke to him’ 

Structures like (32) and (i) are very reminiscent of complex verbs in Modern Dutch and German 

that appear to be postpositions rather than the result of grammaticalized complex predicates. 

German examples that ultimately derive from the same pattern are what Blom (2005) has 

termed “postpositional particle verbs” like anstarren ‘stare at’, and zulachen ‘smile at’. As German 

has preserved its case endings, we can tell from the dative case of the objects of these verbs 

that they are the complement of the postposition rather than the object of the particle-verb 

combination.


The phenomenon of unselected objects can be found, but in the prefixed verb in 

OE, not in the particle verb. Prefixes represent an older layer of grammaticalization, 

very much akin to the later particle system (see also Claridge 2000: 87), in 

which the grammaticalized element has become a bound morpheme, inseparable 

from the verb. It has ‘frozen’ in preverbal rather than postverbal position because 

early Germanic was an OV-language which at that stage probably did not have 

the verb-second operation that separate particle and verb in OE, Modern Dutch 

and Modern German. This allowed the grammaticalization process to proceed to 

its logical conclusion: the predicate and verb became a single lexical item (van 

Kemenade & Los 2003). These verbal prefixes have long been recognized as 

‘transitivizing’ and even changing the case of the object. Compare for instance 

hliehhan ‘laugh’ which is an unergative verb but may occur with the object that 

is laughed at in the genitive, as in (33), with behliehhan ‘deride’ (lit. ‘be-laugh’) 

which is a fully transitive verb with its object in the accusative (as in (34)). 

(33) ðonne we hliehað gligmonna unnyttes cræftes. (CP 34.231.4) 

when we laugh jesters-gen useless tricks 

‘when we laugh at the useless tricks of jesters’ 

(34) Huru, ic swiðe ne þearf hinsiþ behlehhan (Guthlac 87: 1356–1357) 

Indeed, I much not want departure-acc deride 

‘Indeed, I do not want to laugh at his death’ 

If we assume that the prefix be- was once the predicate of an Agreement Phrase in 

a structure like (8), with its subject (which later became the object of the prefixed 

verb) in the specifier, this subject would have had accusative case (the default case 

of subjects of verbless or non-finite constructions). This case is not mediated by 

the verb but by the predicate. The transitivizing effect of these prefixes, then, is an 

inheritance from their predicate origins. Deadjectival and denominal verbs, as in 

(21), which often do not have a simplex, are also a feature of prefixed verbs (van 

Kemenade and Los 2003), though not of OE or ME particle verbs. 

We must conclude that predicate and particle quirks are not much in evidence 

in OE and ME. The first blossomings of both appear to date from the EModE 

period. 

4. Particle verbs in EModE 

Historical studies on particle-verb combinations in English seem to agree that the 

PDE situation with respect to particle verb combinations is reached in the EModE 

period, with the 16th and 17th centuries representing a high point in their development 

(e.g., Brinton 1988; for phrasal verbs in Shakespeare, see Castillo 1994; see 

also Claridge 2000: 96–98 and the studies cited there). A marked difference with 

OE and ME is the appearance of other groups of verbs than transitives or ‘light’


verbs (e.g., groups (i) and (vi) listed in (19). In (35) and (36) we have EModE 

examples of denominal verbs and in (37) an example of a deadjectival verb: 

(35) Goe, sayes hee; trusse up your trinkets and be gone. The cooke, seeing no remedy, 

departed. (Helsinki Corpus: Robert Armin, A nest of Ninnies, p. 14, 1608) 

(36) There was in the time of Will Sommers another artificiall foole, or jester, in 

the court, whose subtiltie heapt up wealth by gifts giuen him, for which Will 

Sommers could neuer abide him 

(Helsinki Corpus: Richard Madox’s diary, p. 47, 1582) 

(37) At 12 the east wynd began to fresh up which caused us to way upon the eb, 

but before we wer passed a lege yt faynted and we wer fayn to cast Anchor. 

(Helsinki Corpus: Richard Madox’s diary, p. 135, 1582) 

Other examples of such verbs appearing in combination with the particle up in the 

EModE part of the Helsinki Corpus were: 

(38) clitch up, clap up, sprout up, reckon up, block up, treasure up, burble up, nuzzle 

up (‘indulged’), prune up, knit up (‘joined together in friendship’), mould up, 

dry up, rip up (‘?think up’), dress up, work up, seal up, pluck up, clamber up. 

Chronologically, then, there is a difference between the appearance of sets (vi) of 

the list in (19) (‘light’ verbs like the transitives set, turn, make, let etc.) and unaccusatives 

that can be described as ‘core’ motion verbs like rise, come, go etc. and the 

other sets. Set (vi) has appeared in particle-verb combinations since OE. The other 

sets, (i)–(v) – most notably manner of motion verbs like clamber, trip, wander, 

unergatives like work, sing, laugh, play, and denominal/deadjectival verbs – are 

very rarely found in OE in a particle verb combination, if at all, and they are the 

ones that exhibit the predicate quirks to the greatest advantage: unselected objects, 

verbs that are only attested in the particle-verb combination but have no independent 

existence, denominal and deadjectival verbs, idiomatic combinations. I 

have split these verbs up into 2 groups: Category 1 comprises set (vi), the set that 

has been attested with particles from the earliest period, whereas Category 2 comprises 

sets (i–v) that only start to appear robustly with particles in EModE. If we 

look at occurrences with the particle up in the EModE part of the Helsinki Corpus, 

we find both categories well represented in all three periods, although the share of 

Category 2 verbs goes up slightly (29.6% of the total in E1, 30% in E2 and 32.3% 

in E3). There is an increase in the overall numbers, too (Figure 1). 

The denominal and deadjectival verbs of Category 2 were found in travel writings, 

diaries, plays, autobiographies and in one text on education, which seems to 

indicate that they are more prominent in informal genres; the size of the corpora 

are too small, however, to say anything definite. Biber et al. (1999: 407–413) focus 

primarily on the verbs and particles that have the highest frequencies, and

120 

100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

Cat.1 Cat.2 

Figure 1. Category 1 and Category 2 verbs with the particle up. 


are therefore almost exclusively Category 1 verbs, 12 so that these tentative register 

findings for EModE cannot be compared to the PDE situation. 

With respect to predicates the findings were consistent with the earlier situation 

in OE and ME: there were very few genuine syntactic predicates with verbs 

other than light verbs (turn, make etc.); I was unable to find any examples of the 

more adventurous complex predicates as discussed in Goldberg & Jackendoff 

(2004), or Rappaport Hovav & Levin (2001) (see (7) above). Whether it is the size 

of the corpus (with over 900,000 words about twice the size of the EModE part of 

the Helsinki Corpus), or the authorship (a creative writer taking a syntactic construction 

to extremes), the situation is very different in Shakespeare’s plays. Imaginative 

examples of various constructions abound. 13 A search for the usual suspects 

(the unergative intransitive verbs dream, laugh, sing, work) immediately turns up 

genuine syntactic predicates with unergatives like the ones in (39): 

(39) CLEOPATRA· 

That time, – O times! – 

I laugh’d him out of patience; and that night 

I laugh’d him into patience; and next morn, 

Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed; 

Then put my tires and mantles on him, whilst 

I wore his sword Philippan. (Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra, Act II, Sc. v). 

12. The particle-verbs shut up, carry out, pick up and point out are the only Category 2 verb combinations 

in their list of the phrasal verbs with the highest frequency (Biber et al. 1999: 410). 

1 . Example (i), for instance, is an instance of the way-construction (Goldberg 1995): 

(i) REGAN 

Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell his way to Dover. (Shakespeare, King Lear, 

Act III, Sc. vii) 

E1 

E2 

E3


It seems, then, that the more striking parallels between predicates and particles 

that can be gleaned from Goldberg & Jackendoff (2004), particularly the phenomenon 

of the unselected object, are only in evidence from EModE onwards. Lipka 

(1972) states that not all languages that have particle verb combinations have deadjectival 

and denominal verbs; some, like Japanese, only have deverbal verbs, and 

OE seems similar in having only verbs that are attested as verbs independently, 

i.e., also as a ‘simplex’; it is one of the peculiarities of PE (and the modern West- 

Germanic languages in general) that many particle verbs have no simplex (e.g., 

peter out, brazen out, pretty up and many others). It looks as if English was more 

like Japanese in this respect in earlier times, as it is not until EModE that we start 

to find unergatives, manner of motion verbs, denominal and deadjectival verbs in 

any large numbers. 

Talmy (1985) has proposed a binary typology along the dimension path- 

expressions. There are, he claims, verb-framed languages and satellite-framed 

languages; the former describes paths by a ‘path’ verb like exit while the latter 

describes paths by an element associated with the verb, like a particle or prefix; 

this explains why some languages have particle or prefix verbs and others do 

not. Slobin (2005, 2006) argues that satellite-framed languages typically have 

many more types of manner verbs than verb-framed languages, and that there 

may well be a diachronic dimension: because ‘manner’ is so easily encoded in 

these languages, there is “over time – a predisposition to attend to this domain” 

(Slobin 2005: 316). The more fine-grained the distinctions become, the more 

learners are geared to making these fine distinctions, which ultimately leads to 

impressive lists for, say, “types of rapid bipedal motion” like run, jog, lope, sprint, 

dash, rush, hurry, scurry, scramble etc. (Slobin 2005: 316). A count of innovative 

manner of motion verbs per century, based on the OED, seems to show an 

increase from 1500 onwards, but such results are difficult to interpret correctly 

because English was so intensely relexified (see Slobin 2006: 72). Manner of motion 

verbs are a good fit in an LCS like (17), and lead to expressive particle-verbs; 

they may account to some degree for the marked difference between the ME and 

the EModE periods. Although the origin of the rising popularity of the other 

Category 2 verbs seems less clear, many of them also encode ‘manner’, as we 

discussed in Section 3.1, and are consequently good fits in the LCS. It is this that 

may hold the key to their appearance in EModE. 

5. Conclusion 

The semantic and syntactic similarities of complex predicates and particles point 

to a common origin, with particles having grammaticalized from phrase to head.


The order V – prt – NP shows this grammaticalization most clearly. The most 

striking quirks of the complex predicate construction, as observed by Goldberg 

and Jackendoff, i.e., unselected objects and idiomaticity (fixed combinations of 

verb and predicate), are also shared by particle verbs. The conclusion that these 

shared quirks are similarly the result of shared diachronic origins is problematic 

because they appear late, in EModE, both in particle verbs as in complex predicates. 

EModE seems to mark a significant point in the development of the particle 

verb system in that the verbs participating in the combination are no longer restricted 

to ‘light’ verbs but include deadjectival and denominal verbs, unergatives, 

and ‘manner-of-motion’ verbs. 

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part ii 

Early and Late Modern English

Adverb-marking patterns in Earlier Modern 

English coordinate constructions 

Amanda Pounder 

In addition to the common pattern of X-ly and Y-ly in the coordination of 

adverbs, minority patterns such as X and Y-ly have also been observed in Early 

Modern and Modern English texts. While the pattern is thought typical of 

seventeenth- and eighteenth-century texts, examples can be found in current 

English as well. This paper explores the question of whether the choice between 

the patterns is due to aesthetic criteria such as eurythmy, the maintenance of 

symmetry, or a desire to avoid repetition. It concludes that all three may play a 

role. After considering the theoretical alternatives of paradigmatic selection and 

morphological ellipsis in the analysis of the choice of the non-suffixed adverb in 

coordinate constructions, it seems that both strategies are available to English 

speakers. The morphological ellipsis strategy aligns English with a variety of other 

languages which use zero morphology in similar constructions. 


The history of the marking of deadjectival adverbs in the English language is very 

much still obscured by the interplay between written text and the spoken medium. 

For example, it is hardly likely that the zero-form of the derived adverb as verbal 

modifier (as in He handled that situation excellent) is a recent innovation, yet it appears 

only very rarely in texts of any kind appearing before the twentieth century 

(cf. e.g., Nevalainen 1994, 1997 & Pounder 2001, 2004). It would seem, further, that 

a restriction of the zero-adverb in written text predates the period normally associated 

with intense prescriptive pressure (Pounder 2007). It seems safe to propose 

that the zero-form has long been typical of the spoken language, whether socially 

stigmatized or not, or restricted to informal registers or not. Occasional occurrences 

of the zero adverb in Early Modern English and Late Modern English texts 

hint at a possible preferential selection of the zero adverb in a particular syntactic 

context, namely in conjunction with another adverb. The present paper attempts 

to account for such a preference with reference to both the word-formation system 

1. I thank all referees for their helpful comments. The research on which this paper was based was 

supported by the University of Calgary and the Universität Konstanz, for which I am very grateful.

184 Amanda Pounder 

of English and cross-linguistic patterns of “suspended” morphology in coordinate 

constructions. With respect to the latter, some languages allow or prefer morphological 

marking on an element of just one conjunct, where there are parallel elements 

in the other conjuncts, as in Turkish noun inflection (1). 

(1) a. ev-ler-de ve dükkan-lar-da 

house-pl-loc and shop-pl-loc 

‘in houses and shops’ 

b. ev ve dükkan-lar-da 

house- and shop-pl-loc 

‘in houses and shops’ (based on Kabak 2007: 335) 

Closer to linguistic home, one can observe this phenomenon in English compounding 

and derivation, as shown in (2). 

(2) a. we can’t choose between socio- and psycholinguistics 

b. a heart- and soulless organization 

The paper will conclude that where in Early or Late Modern English structures 

such as (3) occur, they can be similarly motivated. 

(3) My soul, I resign into the hands of my Almighty Creator, whose tender mercies are 

over all His works who hateth nothing that He hath made and to the Justice and 

Wisdom of whose dispensation I willing and cheerfully submit (Mason 1792) 

Whether these zero adverbs can and should be analyzed the same way as the 

Turkish inflection or English word-formation examples, however, is another 

question. The chapter will suggest that while both a paradigmatic selection analysis 

(Pounder 2004) and a suspended affixation analysis (Kabak 2007) could be applied, 

the systemic availability of the zero-derived adverb makes the former theoretically 

preferable. However, the available data shows that there are some cases in which a 

suspended affixation or morphological ellipsis analysis must be invoked. 

Section 2 of the paper will review the historically available options for deadjectival 

adverb formation, while Section 3 will focus on the available patterns 

of morphological marking of derived adverbs in coordinate constructions in 

Early and Late Modern English. The chronological focus is placed on English 

from about 1600 to about 1800, although excursions are made in both directions 

where relevant. The data is selected from the sources listed in the References 

section; the investigation is based on the corpora and works listed there in their 

entirety, as well as many additional literary and non-literary texts which provided 

no examples of adverbs in coordination at all or none of the minority types 

outlined in Sections 2 and 3. In the subsequent sections, our attention turns to 

the theoretical issues of how to interpret the use of zero forms in coordinate 

constructions in English adverb-formation (Section 4) and what relation it bears

Adverb-marking in coordinate constructions 185 

to the phenomenon of zero morphology in coordinate constructions in other 

languages (Section 5). 

2. Structural types in English deadjectival adverb formation 

The historical development of deadjectival adverb formation in English has been 

outlined in e.g., Nevalainen (1994, 1997) and Pounder (2001). If we restrict ourselves 

to conversion and derivation, considering e.g., -wise to be a serial compounding 

element and thus ignoring it, then this development involves the relative 

prominence of two alternatives: conversion as in QUICK ADJ → QUICK ADV , 

originally the reflex of suffixation by -e, and derivation by means of the suffix -ly. 

We will call the conversion product a “zero adverb” for the sake of convenience, 

without any implication that suffixation of a zero-affix is involved. There have 

been, throughout Early Modern and Modern English, restrictions of various sorts 

on both conversion and ly-suffixation, outlined in e.g., Pounder (2001), and both 

lexical and systemic preferences. One very clear and consistent preference is for 

ly-suffixation in written texts of all types (Nevalainen 1994, 1997); presumably, use 

of conversion in at least some registers of spoken English has been consistently 

healthy. The following outlines the syntactic contexts in which zero adverbs as well 

as ly-suffixations may be found in Early Modern and Late Modern English. 

To begin with, sentence adverbs are generally ly-suffixed, with some exceptions, 

notably sure as in this example from play dialogue (4): 

(4) She won’t tell my wife sure, I’m ruined if she does … (Carroll 1700) 

Given that the zero postverbal modifier is generally associated with the spoken 

mode and informal registers in Present-day English, we do not expect to see it 

in recent written texts, and indeed, it is rare in texts of any type in Early or Late 

Modern English. However, it is occasionally found with verbs such as write, speak, 

behave, an example of which is shown in (5). Otherwise, the ly-adverb occurs. 

(5) To write English anything tollerable, the distinct sound of each Syllable is most 

carefully to be attended to? [sic] (Saxon 1737: 20) 

Until the nineteenth century, the most favourable syntactic context for the zero 

adverb in written texts is that of the adverbial or adjectival modifier, as shown in (6), 

where we see both alternatives in one text. In this context as well, the ly-adverbs 

are much more frequent in texts. 

(6) a. She seemed extream careful … 

b. … and so withdrew extreamly touched with her way … (Aulnoy 1708: 114)


(7) shows the zero adverb as a modifier of an adverb; this is the context in which 

eighteenth- and nineteenth-century grammarians urge the avoidance of two lyadverbs 

in sequence (e.g., Sedger 1798: 71; Lennie 1815 3 : 76), as here the potential 

hugely nobly, remarking on the negative aesthetics of the repeated affix: 

(7) … the Captain would by all means have me up to his cabin; and there treated me 

huge nobly, giving me a barrel of pickled oysters (Pepys diary 4/21–22/1660) 

In (8), on the other hand, the sequence of two ly-adverbs, as in shockingly badly, is 

avoided in the choosing of a zero adverb for the second one. 

(8) … he came and drew my tooth, but shockingly bad indeed, he broke away a great 

piece of my gum (Woodforde 1775) 

Finally, we find the zero adverb in coordinate constructions, where two adverbs or 

adverb phrases are conjoined. The various possibilities are shown in (9). 

(9) a. And I confess it is very highly and basely done of him. 

(Pepys diary Vol III: 249, 11/4/1662) 

b. … and I fell to writing of it very neatly, and it was very handsome and 

concisely done. 2 (Pepys diary Vol. III: 138, 7/16/1662) 

c. … that they behave themselves dutifully and obedient (J. Evelyn 1704) 

d. … talked exceedingly civil and obliging (Woodforde 1777) 

In (9a), we see the coordinate structure which at all times throughout Early Modern 

English, Late Modern English, and Present-day English is by far the best represented, 

the others all being very rarely encountered: two ly-suffixed adverbs, which 

we may generalize as the type X-ly and Y-ly. 3 (9b) shows, by the same writer, 

what appears to be the next most frequently-occurring pattern, 4 namely one in 

which the adverb in the first conjunct is the product of a conversion process, while 

the adverb in the second conjunct is the product of ly-suffixation, the type here 

2. It is conceivable, though in my opinion unlikely, based on the context, that the diarist intended 

[it is handsome] and [it is concisely done]. I have endeavoured in this paper to select 

examples in which ambiguity of this sort is minimal. 

. Note that AND stands for any conjunction, in principle; most examples here in fact use and, 

but but and or also occur. 

4. No attempt to calculate statistical frequencies was made in this investigation. Ly-adverbs 

so vastly outnumber zero adverbs in coordination contexts as to make statistical comparison 

meaningless; most writers do not use zero adverbs at all in this context, and if they do use 

them, the frequency will still be extremely low. Given the rarity of zero adverbs in coordination 

contexts, it is not meaningful to use statistics to compare the minority patterns. I have found no 

example where one writer uses more than one minority pattern in a given type. Therefore, references 

to frequency in this paper are impressionistic. It is to be hoped that more attestations will 

be found, so that a meaningful statistical description can be made.


being represented as X and Y-ly. In X-ly and Y, the type represented by (9c), it is 

now the second adverb that has the zero form and the first that is suffixed. Finally, 

in a context similar to that found in (5) and (9c), we find in (9d) the type X and 

Y, where the adverbs in both conjuncts are of the zero or conversion form. It is 

the syntactic context found in (9) that will form the focus of the chapter from this 

point on; the following section will discuss the alternatives of adverb formationtype 

in more detail. 

. Patterns of adverbial coordination in Early and Late Modern English 

.1 X-ly and Y-ly 

As stated in Section 2, when two adverbs or adverb phrases are conjoined in written 

text, they are most likely to follow the formation pattern X-ly and Y-ly. This is 

true throughout the Modern period; examples typical of usage from the sixteenth 

to the eighteenth century follow in (10). 

(10) a. And both roundlye and frankley they goe to worke … 

b. 

(Leicester 12/31/1585) 

From hence it is that Dutch Merchants Wives frequently, when their 

Husbands are abroad in Trade, or any other business, order and govern their 

Trades as diligently and discreetly as if they were at home (Coke 1670) 

c. …the different Species and Sizes of Buggs, as well as one correctly 

and finely magnified. (Southall 1730) 

The coordination of ly-adverbs is a salient feature of some formal text types, such 

as the legal or religious text. In trial proceedings, for example, this type of adverb 

coordination appears formulaically in the statement of accusation, as in (11), as 

well as in other portrayals of the accused’s conduct. Similarly, the oath required of 

the recruit (12) contains such a structure. 

(11) Nicholas Throckmorton Knighte, hold vp thy hande, Thou art before this 

time indited of High Treason, &c. that thou then and there didst falsly and 

traiterously, &c. conspire and imagine the Death of the Queenes Majestie … 

And it please you, my Lords, I doubt not to proue euidently and manifestly, that 

Throckmorton is worthely and rightly indicted and araigned of these Treasons … 

(Throckmorton 1554) 

(12) I swear or affirm (as the case may be) to be true to the UNITED STATES OF 

AMERICA, and to serve them honestly and faithfully against all their enemies 

or opposers whatsoever; and to observe and obey the Orders of the Continental 

Congress and the Orders of the General, and officers set over me by them. 

(Recruit 1776)


It is likely that in such contexts, the symmetry of form provided by the conjoined 

ly-adverbs provides a certain emphatic quality to the utterance reported or text, 

just as the coordinate structure itself is a beloved emphatic device whose appeal is 

presumably symmetry: see some examples in (13) with conjoined nouns. 

(13) But by cause then we wer sent for to come to th’emperor commissionars, 

and our Lettres wer redy written contenyng a longe discurse and declaration off 

many mattres … th’emperor entendeth to resigne the Empire unto your Grace, 

and to obten your Election by hys procurement and sollicitinge off the Electors 

therunto … your Grace hath also shewyd so largely your bounteousnes and 

liberalite anenst me that I ougth mo to desire the incresement and augmentation 

off your Graces honor … (Tunstall 1517) 

This symmetry of form might indeed be one motivation for the appeal of the 

type X-ly and Y-ly in other text types as well; this idea is supported by Görlach 

(2004: 104), who claims that symmetry, along with rhythm, does play a role in the 

choice between alternative structures. 

.2 X and Y-ly 

The pattern X and Y-ly as in (9b) and examples to follow is mentioned by Knorrek 

(1938: 103) as an “occasional pattern” in the seventeenth century. She provides the 

examples in (14), all from literary sources. 

(14) a. … and then he faithfully and boldly supplieth it, yet seasonable and discreetly 

by taking aside the lord or lady (Herbert) 

b. … nor I to sell my honour, by living poor and sparingly (Shirley) 

c. … for though the satisfaction may be somewhat Drowsy … it strikes smooth 

and gently upon the sense (Collier) 

To these can be added examples from non-fiction (15) and personal writing (16): 

(15) … and he says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely (Walton 1676) 

(16) That I am charged, and that deep and widely, with great offence … (Butler 1697) 

It is not apparent that this pattern favours any particular text type. It is found in 

texts written prior to the seventeenth century as well, and is attested into the nineteenth 

century; no obvious dynamics are observable, due to the true occasionality 

of use. (17) presents additional examples in chronological order. In all cases, the 

writers also use the type X-ly and Y-ly, as indicated previously. 

(17) a. I have nought trespassed ageyn noon of these iii, God knowith; and yet I am 

foule and noysyngly vexed with hem to my gret unease, and al for my lordes 

and frendes (William Paston 3/1/1426)


b. …if he could were a gowne and a tipet cumlie, and haue hys crowne shorne 

faire and roundlie … (Ascham 1570) 

c. …but Natheles he would the point should be lesse & more fauorably handled, 

not euen fully plain & directly, but that the matter should be touched a slope 

craftely (More 1513) 

d. …Therefore whensoeuer your words will not make a smooth dactil, ye must 

alter them or their situations … or if the word be polysillable to deuide him, 

and to make him serue by peeces, that he could not do whole and entierly. 

(Puttenham 1589) 

e. And thus by maister Edward Diar, vehement swift & passionatly. 

(Puttenham 1589) 

f. … and many times this Silver Lace is not onely slightly and deceitfully made 

… and the silk false and deceitfully dyed, which makes the Lace turne black 

and tarnish (Violet 1661) 

g. That the Coronation Oath makes the King; which is a most gross as well as 

dangerous Mistake; the King being as perfect and compleatly King before his 

Coronation as after (Apology 1684) 

Some of the examples in (17), such as (f), appear ambiguous, possibly allowing 

an interpretation adj and adv adj, whereby the item in the first conjunct is an 

adjective rather than a deadjectival adverb. Given the context, however, an adverb 

interpretation does seem more likely; highly ambiguous sentences were omitted 

from this study. In some cases, such as (17c), it may be that the writer chose a zero 

form in order to avoid three ly-adverbs in sequence; however, there are many other 

instances in texts of sequences of several ly-adverbs. In addition, such a motivation 

would not account for the very similar (17e). We shall return in Section 3 to 

the question of motivation for the choice of this structural type, but it may be that 

just as the repetition of -ly was felt to be unpleasing in immediate sequence, it may 

have been felt to be unpleasing or at least redundant in coordinate structures. This 

principle, if it was indeed operative, would of course have been in direct conflict 

with the symmetry principle suggested in Section 2.1. 

. X-ly and Y 

The structure type X-ly and Y has, as far as I know, gone unnoticed in the literature, 

unlike the previous type. In the example in (18), one might suspect an attempt 

to achieve a pleasing symmetry, in that the preceding coordinate structure 

wel and ornately is rhythmically almost the mirror-image. 

(18) And by and by somewhat louder, he rehersed them the same matter againe 

in other order and other wordes, so wel and ornately, & natheles so euidently 

and plaine (More 1513)


The type is attested in texts at least as far back as the fifteenth century, into Early 

Modern English, and well into the eighteenth century; examples follow in (19), 

arranged in chronological order. 

(19) a. Therfor the seyd Mair and Aldirmen, considering how such worthy persones 

as the same knyght is, thurgh such falsnes in tyme comyng myght lightly and 

causeles renne in sclaundre … (Keteringham 1418) 

b. … and then cam rydyng maister Clarensshuws with ys target, with ys garter, 

and ys sword, gorgyusly and ryche, … (Machyn 7/26/15–) 

c. When you angle for Chevin, Roach, or Dace, with the fly, you must not 

move your fly swiftly; when you see the fish coming towards it……draw the 

fly slowly, and not directly upon him, … for, should you move it nimbly and 

quick, they will not, being fish of slow motion, follow as the Trout will. 

(Venables 1662) 

d. Excesse in Apparell & chargeable dresses are got into the country, especially 

among woemen: men go decently & playne enough. (Browne 8/22/1680) 

e. Everything was done decently, handsome and well (Woodforde, 1771) 

In some of these examples, such as (19c), we see zero adverbs, e.g., QUICK, that 

are more frequent than many others. However, ly-adverbs were also available and 

are likewise attested, so while these zero adverbs are perhaps more likely than 

others to be chosen in any context, there is still a choice being made here. The 

motivation for choosing a zero adverb in the final conjunct is likely the same as in 

the preceding type (Section 2.2); moreover, the adverbial category is clearly established 

in the first conjunct, and the zero adverb is actually less ambiguous for that 

reason than when it appears in the first conjunct, as we saw above. 

.4 X and Y 

The structural type X and Y would be expected to be characteristic of texts closer 

to the oral mode; it is relatively frequent in Woodforde, and appears with the verbs 

mentioned in Section 2 as likely partners for zero adverbs, such as BEHAVE. The 

type is illustrated in (20); (20c) shows that ly-adverbs may modify BEHAVE also. 

(20) a. his Lordship behaved exceedingly handsome and free (Woodforde 1774) 

b. The Professor Dr. Bentham behaved very polite and exceedingly civil 

to us indeed. (Woodforde 1775) 

c. They behaved very respectively towards me. (Woodforde 1768) 

We will not consider this type further in this paper. 

In this section, we have seen that, given two coordinated adverbs or adverb 

phrases, every possible combination of formation type is actually attested in Early 

Modern and Late Modern English written texts. There is one very strong majority 

type, X-ly and Y-ly, and the three minority patterns occur very rarely in text


types of any kind. The rarity of occurrence of these minority types prevents any 

clear picture of dynamic development being formed at this time. In the following 

section, we will consider possible analyses of the alternative types, focusing on the 

non-symmetric types, X and Y-ly and X-ly and Y. 

4. Asymmetric coordination of derived adverbs in (Early) 

Modern English 

4.1 Status of asymmetric formation patterns in coordination 

The occurrence of the two asymmetric patterns of formation type in adverbial 

coordination being so rare across periods and text types, it is difficult indeed to 

determine what their status might be, beyond, as stated, that these are definitely 

minority types in the written mode at least. It is also not obvious what the chronological 

path of development might be, as the types are found in (late) Middle 

English and attested into the Early Modern period (and see below), without any 

discernible trends at this point. It is worth remembering that adverbial coordination, 

outside of legal texts and other formal genres, is itself rare, and (deadjectival) 

adverbs are themselves quite rare; where space is at a premium, such as in private 

correspondence and diaries, they may be lacking altogether. Based on the study 

of a large number and broad range of texts, we can at least state some possible 

hypotheses regarding the status of asymmetric adverbial coordination. Firstly, it is 

possible that the minority patterns are so rare that they do not constitute part of 

the norm for speakers/writers at any time; this would mean that each time that an 

asymmetric structure is produced, it is the result of the spontaneous application 

of a non-language-specific principle (see 4.2, 4.3). Secondly, it is possible that the 

minority patterns constitute rare reflections of a pattern typical of the oral mode, 

just as we presume that zero adverbs were much more common in speech than in 

writing, based on current frequencies in each mode. As will be suggested below, 

the motivations for the pattern would be the same as under the first hypothesis 

in any case. However, unless an as yet undiscovered treasure-trove of attestations 

awaits that would add substance to what has been established so far, there is nothing 

concrete that would support one hypothesis over the other at this time. 

It is perhaps instructive to consider, in support of the first hypothesis, the case 

of Present-day English. It would be generally agreed that the normal pattern in 

Present-day English for adverbial conjunction would be that resulting from the 

lexical preference for each adverb in the conjunct in question, that is, that there 

would be no expectation that adverbs in coordination would behave any differently 

from their single habits. However, a brief Internet search brings up possibly 

startling results: while, again, the majority pattern is clearly X-ly and Y-ly, the


minority asymmetric pattern X and Y-ly does occur also. Examples such as (21) 

are not infrequent; here we may interpret the structure as ly-affixation to the phrase 

plain and simple. 

(21) a. Plain & simply he called you an idiot! 

Intelligence 10/27/06 http://www.zdnet.com/ 

b. Writing Plain and Simply 

http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-wcag-teamb/2006May/0037.html 

c. Plain and Simply Put … (11/3/2006) 

http://news.com.com/5208-1028-0.html 

To this native speaker ear, at least, ?plainly and simply is indeed jarring. (21) indicates 

that there may be a difference between the natural, frequent coordination of 

a pair of adverbs (cf. Wälchli 2005), and a more arbitrary collocation of a pair, as 

in the examples in (22). 

(22) a. A good analogy would be that of flying a small airplane, if the controls 

are handled smooth and gently the plane moves in a smooth and easy 

manner … http://www.physicaltherapy.org/macy2/ 

b. Accelerate as smooth and gently as possible, trying to stay below 

1800 rpm’s. http://www.hybridcars.com/gas-saving-tips/maximizing- 

mileage-ford-escape-hybrid.html 

c. The best photojournalists try to work quiet and discreetly. People act more 

like themselves when they are unaware that they are being photographed. 

http://www.richardrooks.com/ 

d. A J2ME application that allows to read last news on your mobile phone from 

your preferred site, simple and directly 

http://www.symbiangear.com/product.html 

e. Both models capture flies, mosquitoes, and other insects, silent and discreetly 

using pheremone impregnated glue pads. 

http://www.mosquito-zapper.com/glueboard_flytraps. htm 

f. First and foremost, I thank our Entrepreneurship Program Coordinator, 

Grace Tan (USF MBA candidate 2007 and deans fellow) who worked 

tireless and cheerfully for months preparing the logistics for the event. 

http://www.usfca.edu/sobam/nvc/bpc/ 

g. Even though she was already serving as our Society’s treasurer last year, 

Marie willing and cheerfully assumed the responsibility for the Newsletter 

when that position became vacant. (11/11/2006) 

www.geocities.com/mcgstx/Newsletter.pdf 

h. … didn’t I willing and cheerfully let them interview me? 

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/mlx/slip.php?Item=609 

The examples in (22) suggest that asymmetric coordination of adverbs may occasionally 

occur in spite of there not being a structural norm providing for it in 

Present-day English. This in turn suggests that, pending further evidence, there


may never have been such a norm in earlier stages either and that all incidences of 

asymmetric coordination, with the possible exception of affixation to a phrase as 

in (21), are not norm-driven either. 

The formal analysis of asymmetric coordination of adverbs is treated in the 

following subsections. 

4.2 Choice of formation type in adverbial coordination: 

Paradigmatic selection 

One way of approaching the production of an adverbial coordination structure 

is by proposing that, in each conjunct, one member of a derivational paradigm 

consisting of two branches (Figure 1), one corresponding to the conversion option 

and one corresponding to the option of ly-suffixation, is selected over the other: 

this is “paradigmatic selection”. 

Xadj 

X→X 

X+ly 

where X, a lexical stem 

Figure 1. The Derivational Paradigm in Deadjectival Adverb Formation. 

The selection process is subject to lexical, phonological, morphological, semantic, 

pragmatic, and syntactic constraints (cf. also Pounder 2004); in addition to 

those holding when a derived adverb appears singly, the process can take account 

of the fact that the syntactic context includes another derived adverb, and can take 

its formal structure into account likewise. In addition to determining that this 

other adverb may be “scheduled” to undergo the affixation alternative, its prosodic 

properties may be assessed. Schlüter (2002) suggests that in adjective phrases 

with an adverb modifier, the zero member of the derivational paradigm tends to 

be selected where a desirable metrical pattern would thereby be produced, i.e., a 

rhythmic alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables. Thus for example exceeding 

pretty would be a preferred combination, while extreme clear, with a “stress 

clash” of a sequence of two stressed syllables, would be much less so. If we apply 

this principle to coordinate constructions, we can see that in most of the examples 

above, either an ideal rhythm is achieved by choosing a zero adverb for the first 

conjunct (e.g., (14b) poor and sparingly, (14c) smooth and gently, (15) clean and 

purely, (16) deep and widely), or, in some cases, at least the number of unstressed 

syllables is reduced by this choice (e.g., (9b) handsome and concisely, (17e) whole 

and entierly, (17h) perfect and compleatly). In the first case, of course, the base


adjective in the first conjunct is monosyllabic and the adverb in the second conjunct 

has initial stress, while in the second case, the base adjective has more than 

one syllable and/or the adverb in the second conjunct has stress on some other syllable 

than the first: this is a situation that will be very frequently encountered. Just 

as there are many examples running counter to the tendency Schlüter observes 

(e.g., (6a) extream careful), there are examples in which the choice of a zero adverb 

in the first conjunct does not affect rhythm, that is, the rhythmic pattern is the 

same as in the majority structure (e.g., (14a) seasonable and discreetly). Rhythmic 

considerations do not appear to discourage the choice of the majority pattern 

(e.g., (17g) slightly and deceitfully, (10b) diligently and discreetly), and in the case 

of the zero adverb in the second conjunct, as illustrated in Section 3.3., they do not 

seem to be applicable. While rhythmic considerations may favour the minority 

pattern X and Y-ly, they cannot constitute the only motivation, therefore. One 

would expect rhythm to be a greater concern in the oral mode, although there is 

of course less time for evaluation and revision there. Although we have no direct 

evidence of this, it is possible that the desire for pleasing rhythmic patterns encourages 

the use of the pattern X and Y-ly in speech. 

While we can concede that the selection of the minority pattern X and Y-ly 

may be partially motivated by a preference for rhythmic alternation, it is necessary 

to look for other factors that are likely to play a role. Relatively high lexical 

frequency of the zero adverb can predispose it to appearing in coordination as well 

(e.g., quick, plain, as in (19e) and (17d), (18) respectively). It may also be that the 

aesthetic value of rhythmic symmetry, where both adverbs have the same number 

of syllables and the same stress pattern, and/or of structural symmetry, where both 

adverbs are of the same morphological structure, is at least as high as that placed 

on rhythmic alternation. 

4. Choice of formation type in adverbial coordination: 

Morphological brachylogy/ellipsis 

Another theoretical approach to form types in adverbial coordination structures 

involves the concept of morphological ellipsis or “brachylogy”. The latter term 

refers generally to economy through omission under identity or, more specifically, 

the non-realization of morphological material where it can be recuperated 

through the syntactic context. Regarding the two asymmetric adverbial coordination 

structures, we would consider that the adverb marking by means of the 

-ly suffix in the left or right conjunct “has scope over” the coordinate structure; 

by some structure-sharing mechanism, the suffix is shared by both conjuncts. In 

other words, the zero adverb is only apparently a conversion; rather, it is in fact 

a morphologically incomplete form, namely a stem with a “gapped” suffix. (An 

alternative understanding of the non-realization of a ly-suffix is that of deletion of


the ly-suffix in one conjunct where it occurs in the other conjunct; this interpretation 

has the same result.) In (23), for example, anticipating the ly-adverb to come, 

the choice is made not to suffix handsome-, the -ly on concisely then fulfilling the 

adverbial marking function for both. 

(23(=9b)) and I fell to writing of it very neatly, and it was very handsome and 

concisely done. 

The general motivation for morphological brachylogy is the same as for paradigmatic 

selection of the zero adverb referring to syntactic context: the goal is to 

avoid identity or repetition (again, this directly conflicts with the motivation for 

formal symmetry as in the majority pattern). In the next subsection, we will consider 

the question of which provides a more appropriate analysis in the case of 

(Early) Modern English. 

4.4 Paradigmatic selection vs. morphological brachylogy: 

Does it have to be either/or? 

While both phenomena, paradigmatic selection of a zero formation and morphological 

brachylogy, are available cross-linguistically, it is not clear at first glance 

which is operative in the case of (Early) Modern English adverbial coordination. 

For one thing, paradigmatic selection is available in the system: there are two 

choices of formation-type within derivation, outside of coordination structures, 

and it seems reasonable to claim that a decision as to what formation process to 

follow is made in the normal case. Pounder (2004, 2007) proposes that paradigmatic 

selection be the preferred analysis where this is so, that is, where a zero-form 

is an acceptable systemic option. The justification for this is an aesthetic one: the 

more economical account makes use of just one mechanism where possible, and 

the zero-forms must be generatable in any event. However, it seems clear from the 

data that morphological brachylogy must also be operative in some cases. 

To establish that morphological brachylogy can be invoked in (Early) Modern 

English, we must consider the syntactic context in which the coordination of adverbs 

occurs more closely. Section 2 outlines the contexts in which zero adverbs 

may occur; what goes unmentioned there is the contexts in which zero adverbs 

may not occur. With very few exceptions (LONG ADV is one), zero adverbs may 

not occur in the position before the lexical verb, particularly not before the finite 

verb, and this has been in vigour throughout Modern English: I ran fast, Julie sings 

loud/loudly but *I fast ran, *Julie loud sings. We should expect, then, that in preverbal 

position, the only formation type appearing in adverbial coordination will be 

X + ly. Some examples seem to support this, for example (24): 

(24 (=14a)) …and then he faithfully and boldly supplieth it, yet seasonable and 

discreetly by taking aside the lord or lady


Here, the preverbal adverbs have the -ly suffix, while the second coordination 

structure, following the verb, allows the zero form in the first conjunct. However, 

we also find examples in which a minority pattern containing a zero adverb is 

found in preverbal position, as in (25). 

(25) a. (=19a) Therfor the seyd Mair and Aldirmen, … thurgh such falsnes in tyme 

comyng myght lightly and causeles renne in sclaundre … 

b. (=3) … I willing and cheerfully submit 

*might causeless ADV run and *I willing ADV submit are not grammatical at any point 

in Modern English. The adverbs in question should therefore not be available under 

paradigmatic selection. Some of the Present-day English examples of adverbial 

coordination, too, show zero adverbs preverbally, given in (26). 

(26) a. (=22e) Both models capture flies, mosquitoes, and other insects, silent and 

discreetly using pheromone impregnated glue pads. 

b. (=22g) Even though she was already serving as our Society’s treasurer last 

year, Marie willing and cheerfully assumed the responsibility for the 

Newsletter when that position became vacant. 

c. (=22h) didn’t I willing and cheerfully let them interview me? 

Here again, the corresponding expressions with one zero adverb are not grammatical: 

*Marie willing assumed the responsibility, *didn’t I willing let them interview 

me?, and then with a participial construction, *silent using pheremone-impregnated 

glue pads. These facts point to morphological brachylogy/ellipsis being used at 

least some of the time. 

It is conceivable that the paradigmatic selection option would be more likely 

where the lexical frequency of zero-adverb is high, or in an informal register where 

the conversion option might be more likely to be taken advantage of generally, but 

that in other cases, brachylogy is invoked. At least for Modern English, it is not 

only paradigmatic selection of a zero form that is a systemic possibility: morphological 

brachylogy also plays a role in the word-formation system. That is, brachylogy 

is available for compounds and to some extent in derivational morphology, as 

in (27), so it could be suggested that it is used here likewise. 

(27 = (2)) a. we can’t choose between socio- and psycholinguistics 

b. a heart- and soulless organization 

However, I have not as yet been able to establish that brachylogy was common in Early 

Modern English; still, it seems to be available for adverbial coordination. Should one 

then move completely to the other side and assume brachylogy in all cases? I think 

not, for as already pointed out, paradigmatic selection will be needed in any event. 

In the following section, we will place the phenomenon of asymmetric coordination 

of adverbs against a background of asymmetric form in other languages.

5. Cross-linguistic context 


Both paradigmatic selection of a systemically legitimate zero form and morphological 

brachylogy are attested in other languages (Pounder 2007). In the deadjectival 

adverb domain, asymmetric patterns similar to those discussed here are found in 

Romance. (28) illustrates examples from older Italian: 

(28) a. co’i suoi denari alta e riccamente rimaritar-la 

with his money high- and rich-adv remarry her 

‘with his money grandly and richly remarry her’ 

(Grazzini, La gelosia, from Migliorini 1952: 377; see also Rohlfs 1954: 129) 

b. privata e pubblicamente 

private- and public-adv 

‘privately and publicly’ 

(Lombardelli, lettera sulla Gerusalemme, from Migliorini 1952: 377) 

Here, a brachylogy analysis seems appropriate, as the fragments alta and privata, 

while legitimate word-forms in Italian, are not appropriate word-level options in 

this syntactic context (for example, the zero-adverb in the (28a) would be alto). 

In Modern Spanish (29), we find a similar phenomenon, whereby the asymmetric 

construction is in fact the majority type in the standard written language 

(but apparently rare in speech) (Butt and Benjamin 2000 3 : 413). In most cases, 

the fragment does not correspond to a legitimate word-level option, as in Older 

Italian, so again, a brachylogy analysis is the only one possible here. 

(29) se lo dije sincera y llanamente … lo que 

I told him sincere- and plain-adv … that which 

tradicional y ridiculamente se ha considerado un comportamiento 

traditional- and ridiculous-adv has been considered feminine 

femenino. 

behaviour 

‘I told him sincerely and plainly … what has traditionally and ridiculously been 

considered feminine behaviour’ (Butt and Benjamin 2000 3 : 413) 

While the cross-linguistically preferred direction in paradigmatic selection of a 

zero form and morphological brachylogy is full or suffixed form in the final conjunct, 

zero or stem form in the initial conjunct(s), this is not the only possibility, as we have 

seen in English asymmetric adverbial coordination (cf. Section 3.3). Similarly in 

Provençal/Modern Catalan, we find that the standard direction is right-to-left (30), 

the reverse of Spanish; here, one assumes, the category is established in the first 

conjunct and a marking on the second conjunct is considered superfluous. 

(30) francamen e corteza 

frank-adv and courteous- 

‘frankly and courteously’ (Migliorini 1952: 375)


While it is true that -mente and its various Romance reflexes have an autonomous 

word, later a compounding element, as its origin, it now functions as a suffix (contra 

Zagona 1990). It may be that a syntactic ellipsis structure was once responsible 

for the formal asymmetry, but for later and modern speakers, it is morphological 

ellipsis/brachylogy that is applied here. It is interesting that it is in adverbial coordination 

that formal asymmetry obtains, where brachylogy is not a highly salient 

device elsewhere in Romance. One reason why this is a rather favourable context 

for brachylogy to occur is that the range of formation-type alternatives is smaller 

than elsewhere in derivation; in English and Romance, there is generally one, possibly 

two, derivational suffix(es) in the adverb-formation domain. Therefore, the 

likelihood that given any pair of adjective bases, a -ly or a -mente suffix can be supplied 

to fill the apparent gap is extremely high, if not absolute. This would not be 

the case for many other derivational and inflectional functions. 

Formal predictability is a strong factor elsewhere as a facilitator for morphological 

brachylogy. In German adjective inflection and comparative/superlative 

formation, the suffixes responsible are invariant, and in Earlier Modern German, 

we find that brachylogy is possible here, as shown in (31). 

(31) das … schön= und kost-bar-st-e Bau=Werck 

the.neut beautiful- and cost-suff-superl-neut.nom building 

‘the most beautiful and delightful building’ (Abraham a Sancta Clara 1709: 49) 

Here, two superlative adjectives are conjoined. The first appears as a bare stem 

(and its fragmentary status is marked in the printed text with a hyphen), while 

the second bears both the superlative suffix -st and the adjectival concord suffix 

-e that would otherwise also appear on the first adjective (das … schönste und 

kostbarste Bauwerck). To interpret the structure correctly, the hearer/reader must 

listen for the intonation indicating continuation or note the hyphen, wait for the 

appropriate morphology to be supplied, and then reconstitute the fragment of the 

first conjunct. This job would be made more difficult if, as well, he had to reconstitute 

formally different morphological material. In the Turkish example presented 

in Section 1, repeated here as (32), we have a similar case. 

(32 (=1)) a. ev-ler-de ve dükkan-lar-da 

house-pl-loc and shop-pl-loc 


b. ev ve dükkan-lar-da 

house- and shop-pl-loc 


The plural and case suffixes are invariant (predictable allomorphy is permitted, as 

the example shows) in Turkish, and morphological brachylogy, called “suspended 

affixation” by Turkologists, is the norm in inflection in both spoken and written


modes, with restrictions as described in Kabak (2007). In derivation, where there 

is presumably a range of choices of suffix in many cases, morphological brachylogy 

does not occur. 

It therefore seems that while it is less elegant to include morphological brachylogy 

amongst the operative strategies in English adverb-formation, given that paradigmatic 

selection must also be recognized, it is necessary to do so. However, the 

fact that it is a common strategy in various languages of the world and the fact that 

it fits in well with instances of brachylogy observed elsewhere bolster its appeal. 

6. Conclusion 

In the coordination of adverbs in all periods of Modern English, there is one 

strongly dominant pattern, X-ly and Y-ly. The minority patterns X and Y-ly and 

X-ly and Y are rare in written texts of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, and 

while they are not recognized as standard, apparently do still occasionally occur 

as shown by Internet search. Given the steadily low rate of occurrence in texts, it 

has not yet been possible to discern any clear trends in use in the Early and Late 

Modern periods, the span of focus in this chapter. It is possible that considerations 

of symmetry are strongly dominant over the desire to avoid repetition of the -ly 

suffix, which has often been suggested for sequences of adverbs or adverbial modifiers 

of adjectives and adverbs in which the zero form of the modifying adverb 

appears. It seems likely that rhythmic considerations play a role in promoting at 

least the pattern X and Y-ly, and so we would expect this asymmetric pattern to 

be a common feature of spoken English. Early Modern and Late Modern texts are 

unfortunately not particularly revealing of patterns of adverbial usage in the spoken 

language, so that this cannot be confirmed. It was shown that both paradigmatic 

selection and morphological brachylogy are available strategies for English 

speakers in producing asymmetric formal patterns in adverbial coordination, the 

former provided for by the systemic availability of conversion in adverb-formation 

and the latter as a common strategy universally. 

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Probus 2: 1–30.

’Tis he, ’tis she, ’tis me, ’tis – 

I don’t know who … 

Cleft and identificational constructions 

in 16th to 18th century English plays 

Claudia Lange & Ursula Schaefer 

Technische Universität Dresden 

It is generally assumed that the construction It is me emerged in the 16th 

century as the more colloquial alternative to It is I. In this paper, we focus on the 

structure and distribution of two constructions featuring It is I/me, namely cleft 

constructions (ClCs) and identificational copular clauses (IdCCs) in plays from 

1600 to 1800. Surprisingly, it turns out that it is I or rather ‘tis I is the general 

rule; the very limited occurrences of me in the relevant constructions are either 

licensed by the syntactic context in ClCs or by referential conditions in IdCCs. 

We further provide evidence for the assumption that IdCCs are historically 

prior to ClCs, which in turn are not fully grammaticalized in the period under 

discussion since they do not unambiguously display the biclausal structure which 

is a defining property of clefts. 


The quotation in our title is from Holcroft’s 1785 translation of Beaumarchais’ 1784 

Le Mariage de Figaro. In the French original the equivalent reads: “On se débat, c’est 

vous, c’est lui, c’est moi, c’est toi, non, ce n’est pas nous; eh! mais qui donc?” Holcroft 

does not directly translate Beaumarchais – as he rarely does – but mirrors the 

rhythm suggested by c’est moi, c’est toi in the English rhyming series ’Tis he, ’tis she, 

’tis me. His choice of pronoun forms – the first two English forms are in subject case 

while the first person form is in object case – nicely illustrates an area of English 

usage which has been fiercely contested by prescriptive grammarians ever since the 

tradition came into existence, namely the ‘pronoun problem’: the choice between 

subjective and objective case for personal pronouns in specific syntactic contexts. 

Visser (1963: 241–243) provides an impressive array of comments on it is I/me, 

starting with Ben Jonson in 1640 who simply states the Latin-derived rule that 

the subject pronoun and the complement in a copular clause should receive the

204 Claudia Lange & Ursula Schaefer 

nominative case. 1 It has also frequently been noted that Priestley stood out among 

the 18th–century prescriptivists (Leonard 1929: 186; Wolf 2005: 175) in advocating 

custom rather than strict adherence to artificial rules which were designed to graft 

the structure of Latin onto English. Consequently, Priestley’s stance on the vexed it is 

I/me-question is quoted in all discussions on the subject as evidence for actual usage 

in the 18th century (cf. Leonard 1929: 186; Visser 1963: 241 and Rissanen 1999: 261): 

All our grammarians say, that the nominative cases of pronouns ought to follow 

the verb substantive as well as precede it, and the example of some of our best 

writers would lead us to make a contrary rule; or at least, leave us at liberty to 

adopt which we liked best. (Priestley 1762: 47) 

In Present Day English (PDE), we encounter “a considerable amount of variation 

and instability within the [pronoun] system” (Huddleston and Pullum 2002: 459), 

but the clear complementary distribution between I and me with I at the very formal 

side and me – and, for that matter him, her, us and them – for ‘everyday usage’, is 

generally retained. As Quirk et al. put it: 

In the main, formal English follows the normative grammatical tradition which 

associates the subjective pronouns with the nominative case of pronouns in inflectional 

languages such as Latin, and the objective case with the oblique cases 

[in such languages]. (1985: 337) 

However, despite the sheer bulk of work that is dedicated to arguing for or against 

it is me, there is precious little information on the actual origin of the construction. 

The received wisdom on the first appearance of it is me in English comes from 

Visser, who states that 

In the last decade of the sixteenth century the construction […] appears for the 

first time in print, [. . .] and remains in use in the subsequent periods with ever increasing 

frequency. [. . .] As to the stratum of diction to which this usage belongs 

(literary? colloquial? vulgar?) in the first centuries of its occurrence, it is difficult 

to form an opinion. (1963/73: 239) 

In the following, we will attempt to elucidate Visser’s observation. We will focus 

on the wavering between subject and object forms in two different constructions: in 

PDE, this personal pronoun alternation occurs in ‘identificational copular clauses’ 

(IdCCs), as Ball (1991) calls the construction 

(1) it is I/me 

and which Hatcher (1948) called ‘formulas of identification’. Moreover, we find the 

alternation in cleft constructions (ClCs) with a ‘specificational’ subject, such as: 

(2) it is I/me that should apologize 

1. Visser (1963/73: 241) incorrectly gives the date 1637 for Ben Jonson’s English Grammar.

or with a ‘specificational’ object: 

(3) it is I/me you saw on the balcony last night 

Cleft and identificational constructions 205 

IdCCs are attested from Old English (OE) onwards since we luckily find this typical 

interactional formula in biblical translations, e.g., 

(4) But he saith vnto them, It is I, be not afraid. (John VI.20, Authorized Version 1611) 

ClCs, with their biclausal structure, are a syntactic device to express focus, and 

their development in a language is intertwined with the fixing of word order. 

Hence ClCs of the form it is X who did it only emerge in the 13th century according 

to Ball (1991), who has written the only historical study of ClCs in English. 

If we assume that the Early Modern English (EModE) expression it is me was 

as colloquial in the late 16th-century when it putatively emerged as it is in the 

present, then we would expect to find it in texts and genres that are less prone to 

standardization and more open to variation, that is, in “texts with potential dialect 

features (entertainment and private writings; written by men of middle ranks, or 

by women)” (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1993: 68). This quote from the 

compilers of the Helsinki Corpus already indicates helpful parameters of variation 

to be investigated in any study of it is I/me. The chronological structure of the 

Helsinki Corpus also provides a convenient frame to study the diffusion of change 

in the EModE period since it is further subdivided into three subperiods with 

respect to incipient standardization of the language (see Table 1). 

Table 1. The EModE period of the Helsinki Corpus: A quantitative overview 

(Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 1993: 54) 

Subperiod Words % 

EModE1 1500–1570 

“before the acceleration of changes” 190,160 34.5 

EModE2 1570–1640 

“period of their culmination” 189,800 34.5 

EModE3 1640–1710 

“eventual stabilization of the state of affairs” 171,040 31.0 

Total 551,000 100 

For our purpose, however, the Helsinki Corpus proved disappointing: we 

found exactly two examples for it is I, both from the New Testament in different 

versions (Tyndale’s Bible from 1534 and the Authorized Version from 1611, cf. 

ex. (4) above). Apart from that, there is one further example of ’tis I (in the play 

The Relapse (1696) by Sir John Vanbrugh), but no instances of it is me/’tis me. 

As a result, we decided to focus on plays as the genre which provides ample opportunities 

for using it is I/me. This ‘speech-based register’ in the sense of Biber


and Finegan (1992: 689) proliferates in the EModE period and is well represented 

in the searchable Chadwyck-Healey English Drama Database (ChHEDD), which 

contains 1,224 plays from the period under discussion. It has to be kept in mind, 

however, that the ChHEDD is not a balanced corpus in any strict sense of the word, 

nor is it possible to give anything other than absolute figures for the occurrences 

of it is I/me. 

A first search within the time frame given by the Helsinki Corpus subperiods for 

EModE was again disappointing: we found no examples for it is me and its variants 

in EModE 1 and just three examples in EModE 2; it is only from EModE 3 onwards 

that we have more than a handful of examples for it is me. We therefore extended 

our search to include the period from 1600 to 1800, which is represented in the 

ChHEDD by 1,784 plays. It seems, then, that the expression it is me was not established, 

or even available in sufficient quantity, at the time when the “stabilization of 

the state of affairs” supposedly took place. The actual figures for occurrences of it is 

me and related constructions are given in Table 2 below. 

Table 2. ClCs and IdCCs in the ChHEDD, 1600–1800 

Construction 

Total no of 

examples. IdCC 

subject 

ClC, 

Ø rel. 

subject 

ClC, 

+ rel. 

Σ 

subject 

ClCs 

object 

ClC, 

Ø rel. 

it is I 49 20 8 21 29 – – 

’twas I 323 81 110 128 238 1 3 

’tis I 627 303 212 108 320 3 1 

it is not I 11 1 3 7 10 – – 

’tis not I 13 9 – 4 4 – – 

is it I 9 1 – 7 7 – 1 

Σ 1,032 415 333 275 608 4 5 

object 

ClC, 

+ rel. 

it is me/it’s me 11 5 – 3 3 

it is not me 7 5 – – – 2 – 

’tis not me 7 4 – – – 2 1 

’twas not me 1 1 – – – – – 

not me/be me 2 19 14 – – – 4 1 

’tis me 37 13 – – – 21 3 

’twas me 15 3 – – – 12 – 

it was me 3 2 – – – 1 – 

is it me 4 – – – – 2 2 

Σ 104 47 – – – 36 10 

2. This category comprises tokens where the dummy subject it is/’tis is omitted (e.g., why 

not me?) and subjunctives or other modal expressions (e.g., if it be not me, that must be me 

(cf. example 21)).


The most conspicuous observation to be made is already quite unexpected: it 

is I/’tis I/’twas I etc. vastly outnumber their counterparts with me: 1,032 tokens 

against 104, that is, only 9.15% of all relevant tokens contain an object pronoun. If 

we focus on the most frequent construction, namely ’tis I, then the ratio becomes 

even more unbalanced: there are 627 tokens of ’tis I and 37 tokens of ’tis me (5.9% 

of the overall count for ’tis I/me). The default expression throughout the EModE 

period and beyond in plays is ’tis I etc., regardless of the rank, position or provenance 

of either the actual speaker in the play or its author. According to Peitsara, 

contracted ’tis emerges in speech-based registers in EModE and “holds its ground 

until around 1800 as the established form” (2004: 90). 

Considering these data, it seems that the 18th-century grammarians who 

spent so much time and energy on condemning the alleged burgeoning of it is 

me were fighting a rather unnecessary battle, and our initial expectation as to 

the development of ClCs and IdCCs is reversed: it is me seems to be too rare 

to be considered a suppressed colloquial form that is then gaining ground in 

speech-based registers. 

Returning to the most frequent relevant construction – ’tis I – we find that 

the tokens are almost evenly distributed over the two main categories IdCC and 

ClC – in this case, subject ClCs as in (5) below, where the clefted constituent is the 

subject of the following relative clause: 

(5) But Sir, ’tis I alone am criminal, 

And ’twas I, 

Justly I thought provok’d him to this hazard. 

’Tis I was rude, impatient, insolent, 

Did like a mad man animate his anger, 

Not like a generous enemy. 

(Aphra Behn, The Forc’d Marriage (1671), ChHDD) 

Subject ClCs such as these, without an overt relative pronoun to introduce the 

second part of the ClC, are also more frequent than subject ClCs with relative 

pronouns – and this is not tied to prose vs. verse plays, as one might expect by 

looking at the example. The situation is slightly different with ’twas I and the more 

conservative, uncontracted form it is I, but the relativizer-less ClCs still make up 

a substantial proportion of all subject ClC tokens. Note that this is a syntactic innovation 

that is gaining considerable momentum: Ball has stated explicitly that 

Late Middle English (LME) “is the period in which the wh-pronouns and the zerocomplementizer 

(ø) first appear in the it-cleft” (1991: 295): out of 92 tokens in her 

LME corpus for subject ClCs, Ball has 81 instances with that as complementizer 

and only five with the zero option. 

Turning to ’tis me and related expressions, we do not find a single subject ClC, but 

object ClCs instead – in that respect, ’tis me and ’tis I are almost in complementary


distribution, with only nine object ClCs out of 1,032 instances of ’tis I etc. One exceptional 

example for a subject ClC featuring it is me comes from Sir George Etherege’s 

play The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a Tub (1664): 

(6) Dufoy: ’Tis ver couragious ting to breaké de head of your 

Serviteur, is it noté? Begar you vil never keepé 

De good Serviteur, had no me love you ver vel. . . . 

Sir Fred: I know thou lov’st me. 

Dufoy: And darefore you do beaté me, is dat de raison? 

Sir Fred: Prethee forbear; I am sorry for’t. 

Dufoy: Ver good satisfaction! Begar it is me dat am 

Sorrié for’t. 

Sir Fred: Well, well. 

(Sir George Etherege, The Comical Revenge; or, 

Love in a Tub (1664); ChHEDD) 

Here Dufoy – “a saucy impertinent French-man, servant to Sir Frederick”, as the 

stage directions say – addresses his master, Sir Frederick Frollick, and complains 

bitterly in his pronounced French accent for being hit over the head by his own 

master the night before: 

(7) Dufoy: De matré! de matré is easie to be perceive; 

Dis Bedlamé, Mad-cape, diable de matré, vas 

Drunké de last night, and vor no reason, but dat 

Me did advisé him go to bed, begar he did 

Striké, breaké my headé, Jernie. 

(Sir George Etherege, The Comical Revenge; or, 

Love in a Tub (1664); ChHEDD) 

Obviously, one important shibboleth in Dufoy’s ‘stage French’ is the consistent 

use of me as subject pronoun; we therefore do not count this token of it is me as 

a ‘natural’ example and have not included it in Table 2 above. Another instance 

where French forms play a role concerns an IdCC: 

(8) Sir Ja: Why do you laugh? 

Y. Wild: Ha, ha, ha! It was me. 

Sir Ja: You! 

Pap: You, Sir! 

Y. Wild: Moi . . . me. (Samuel Foote, The Lyar (1764); ChHEDD) 

In this scene from Samuel Foote’s The Lyar, Young Wilding, a former Oxford student 

now ready to hit the town together with his bilingual French servant Papillion, is in 

conversation with Sir James Elliot and is trying to impress him. What these examples 

show is that there certainly was an awareness of French as well as attitudes towards 

the language which could be exploited on the stage, but they do not suffice to explain 

it is me by claiming that me and the other object case pronouns in this position


were calques of the French tonic forms of the pronouns. This is ruled out for the 

simple reason that the object pronouns in subject complement position creep in at 

a time when the direct language contact between English and French was long over 

(cf. Ball 1991: 280 & Visser 1963: 244), and it would be highly unlikely to assume that 

parodies of French on stage could have a bearing on the English pronoun system. 

Generally, in all the me-variants under consideration (except where negation 

is involved), object ClCs outnumber IdCCs, for example: 

(9) For him you tremble, and ’tis me you fear. 

(Abel Boyer, Achilles (1700); ChHEDD) 

Now, explaining me in object ClCs is not a difficult task: the object pronoun me is 

topicalized to clause-initial position for emphasis: 

(10) [‘tis] mei you fear __i The majority of it is me-tokens in the database is then accounted for: they occur 

in object ClCs and are therefore determined by the syntactic context. Unlike PDE, 

where pronoun variation in ClCs is a matter of style (formal vs. informal), the 

decisive factor in EModE is the syntactic context alone (subject vs. object ClC). 

With the further development of the ClC, it is I came to be used in formal styles 

for object ClCs as well. 

We will return to identificational it is me below. The next section will be concerned 

with some general observations on the structure of the ClCs in our data. 

2. The structure of EModE pronoun-focus it-ClCs 

As said above, the prescriptive excitement over it is I/me is not matched by a 

similar abundance of studies tracing the origin of the construction, and neither 

has the recent interest in focus, information structure and ClCs (cf. Smits 1989, 

Lambrecht 1994, 2001; Bosch & van der Sandt 1999; Kiss 1999, Rebushi & Tuller 

1999) been extended to the development of ClCs in the history of English. Our 

data seem to suggest that, at least in the speech-based register ‘plays’ up to 1800, 

the structure of the ClC has yet to emerge. 

The defining property of ClCs is that they “express a simple proposition via 

biclausal syntax”, as Lambrecht (2001: 466) put it. More precisely, 

A CLEFT CONSTRUCTION (CC) is a complex sentence structure consisting 

of a matrix clause headed by a copula and a relative or relative-like clause whose 

relativized argument is coindexed with the predicative argument of the copula. 

Taken together, the matrix and the relative express a logically simple proposition, 

which can also be expressed in the form of a single clause without a change in 

truth conditions. (Lambrecht 2001: 467)


The exact syntactic status of the relative clause in the ClC is far from settled, 3 but 

need not concern us here. We would like to argue that a significant proportion 

of our examples does not display biclausal structure. In Lambrecht (2001), an alternative 

analysis is referred to: it is is simply a focus marker preceding its focus. 

A pronoun-focus subject ClC would then be ambiguous between two different 

structural interpretations: 

(11) a. [’tis I] [Ø am to blame] 

b. [’tis] [I am to blame] 

In (11a), the biclausal syntax that is generally taken as the defining characteristic 

of PDE ClCs is represented. The contracted form ’tis for it is introduces the 

focus phrase, the relative pronoun is omitted in the relative clause. The structure in 

(11b), however, expresses a different assumption with regard to the overall structure 

and the function of ’tis: “’tis” is a focus marker preceding its focus “I”, the 

subject of the following clause “I am to blame”. This analysis can easily be extended 

to object ClCs. In 

(12) [’tis] [me she hates __] 

’tis is again the focus marker, and the object pronoun me is topicalized. 

Our data strongly support the second analysis. For tokens with contracted 

’tis, subject ClCs with zero-relative outnumber those with a relative pronoun 

(212 vs 108). 4 We would then like to suggest that the prototypical pronoun-focus 

it-ClC in plays from 1600 to 1800 is of the second kind. Consider this example 

from Henry VIII: 5 

(13) This Candle burnes not cleere, ’tis I must snuffe it, 

Then out it goes. (Shakespeare, Henry VIII, act III, sc. 2; OTA ll. 1953f.) 

Taking ’tis as the focus marker for the clause is much more convincing than assuming 

a biclausal structure where the relative pronoun has been omitted. Most of 

3. Cf. for example Ball (1994), Gundel (1977). We also adopt the convention to use ‘relative 

pronoun’, ‘relativizer’ and ‘complementizer’ interchangeably for the form introducing the second 

clausal element of a cleft construction; this should not be taken as a commitment to the categorical 

status of this element. For a discussion of the applicability of the terms ‘relative pronoun’ and 

‘complementizer’ with respect to clefts see Tagliamonte, Smith and Lawrence (2005: 95–97). 

4. The case of ‘twas (110 vs. 128 tokens) is, as noted above, clearly different and calls for a more 

differentiated analysis in which we shall not engage here. We thank an anonymous referee for 

pointing this necessity out to us. 

5. We take the quotes from Shakespeare’s plays from the electronically searchable edition of 

the 1623 Folio provided by the Oxford Text Archive (OTA).


our examples for object ClCs also occur without relative pronoun (40 vs 15), as in 

this example with double focus marker: 

(14) No, no, Sir, I am the Thorn that galls him; ’tis me, ’tis me he hates; 

(Colley Cibber, The Non-Juror (1718); ChHEDD) 

Support for this analysis comes from the agreement pattern in the following relative 

clause: in all except a handful of examples with an overt relative pronoun, the 

verb agrees with the first person pronoun and not with the relativizer, e.g., 

(15) The Tempter, or the Tempted, who sins most? ha? 

Not she: nor doth she tempt: but it is I, 

That, lying by the Violet in the Sunne, 

Doe as the Carrion do’s, not as the flowre, 

(Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, act II, sc. 2; OTA ll. 927–930) 

One further piece of evidence concerns the overall development of relative marking 

in EModE. Beal has pointed out that, with respect to relativization patterns, 

“the position in 1600 appears to be one of maximal variability, with that, zero and 

all wh-relatives available” (Beal 2004: 75). In ClCs, on the other hand, the tendency 

to omit the relative pronoun altogether was even more pronounced than in relative 

clauses generally (Ball 1994: 185), a fact that is indicative of the monoclausal ClC 

structure sketched above. 6 

This preference for zero relative pronouns in ClCs is still very much alive in 

contemporary dialects of British English, as Herrmann (2005:62–70) has shown. 

She has classified ClCs as “topicalization structures” which occupy one end of her 

“continuum of relative clauses” (2005: 62), with the “relative clause proper” being at 

the other end. This scale is highly relevant for the distribution of zero relativizers: 

In dialectal speech, the constraint on zero subject relative clauses is overridden 

the more a clause type moves away from the modification of an antecedental 

noun phrase (‘relative clause proper’) toward the topicalization of a noun phrase 

(topicalization structures). [… Zero subject relative clauses] occur with increasing 

ease (in a given dialect or idiolect), as one goes […] to clear topicalization 

clauses like clefts and all-pseudo-clefts, while they are very scarce in pure modification 

structures (‘relative clauses proper’). (Herrmann 2005: 67) 

6. Ball’s figures from her corpus study of ‘Relative pronouns in it-clefts’ (1994) may serve as 

a first approximation: for the 17th century, she counts 18% zero-complementizers in clefts and 

none in restrictive relative clauses with a personal subject. In our data, there are 333 subject 

ClCs without and 275 with a relative pronoun. The fact that 55% of all ClCs in our corpus have 

no overt relative pronoun, three times as many as in Ball’s corpus, is probably also due to the 

genre which reflects “colloquial spoken discourse” (Ball 1994: 185) and has favoured the zero 

option throughout.


There are, however, some objections that might be raised against our analysis 

and which should be followed up in further research on this curiously under- 

researched topic. The first concerns the lack of positional variability: unlike focus 

markers which precede or follow their focus regardless of its position in the sentence, 

’tis is restricted to sentence-initial position (cf. König 1991). *She hates ’tis 

me rather than ’tis me she hates is ungrammatical, the focus marker ’tis can only 

occur when the focus is topicalized to sentence-initial position. The source items 

of ’tis (dummy subject it and a form of the copula be) then constrain its positional 

variability. This leads to another objection: focus particles, as the name suggests, 

are typically uninflected, but the copula be gives rise to forms such as ’tis, ’twas, 

’twere etc. There is, however, a precedent for inflected focus markers in English: 

the intensifiers myself, herself, yourselves etc., which came into being when the 

original OE intensifier sylf fused with a stressed form of the personal pronoun 

in early ME (cf. Lange 2007), whereas reflexivity continued to be expressed by 

the bare personal pronoun. The new compound forms only became obligatory as 

reflexive pronouns in EModE (cf. Peitsara 1997). 

Despite these objections, which are based on the cross-linguistically attested 

behaviour of focus particles in general, we would like to stick to our hypothesis as 

indicated above. We think that the form of the ClC is changing in the period and 

the text type we are discussing, especially it-ClCs with the first person pronoun 

as focus: it is or ’tis, which is non-referential and semantically empty anyway, is 

reinterpreted as a focus marker. The ‘monoclausal’ ClC without relative pronoun 

lingers on in colloquial PDE, but has otherwise been erased from the language by 

the efforts of 18th-century prescriptive grammarians. The object me-ClCs are fully 

‘grammatical’ from the prescriptive point of view, and subject ClCs with me, as in 

it was me who/that did it, have (as our corpus shows) yet to emerge on the scene. It 

may be that it is me in IdCCs (found in 47 cases in our corpus, compared with 415 

with I) was already quite common in the spoken language, and that it took some 

time before this usage spread to subject ClCs. Indirect evidence for this comes 

again from the grammarian Joseph Priestley: 

When the word if begins a sentence, it seems pretty clear, that no person, whose 

attention to artificial rules did not put a sensible [i.e., noticeable] restraint upon 

his language, would ever use the nominative case after the verb to be. Who would 

not say, If it be me, rather than If it be I? (Priestley 1786: 104) 

3. The relation between IdCCs and ClCs 

In the first section of our chapter we discussed the EModE occurrence of it is I/me 

both in IdCCs and in it-ClCs in order to see whether we could find any traces that


point towards the present day register distribution of these forms. Subsequently 

we narrowed the scope on the structure of it-ClCs. At this point we need to turn to 

the question whether IdCCs and it-ClCs are ‘genetically’ related. 

When raising the question at which point pronouns “began to be used as the 

focus of an it-cleft”, Ball refers to the medieval history of the IdCC, “for the crucial 

syntactic environment is the same: that is, what is essential is the ability of the pronoun 

to appear as complement of be” (1991: 276). Lambrecht, who treats ClCs on 

a cross-linguistic level, at first sight seems more definite about the issue: 

In the case of clefts, the ancestor is the copular subject-predicate construction, 

whose available parts are now used by the grammar for a special purpose, that of 

focus-marking an argument of another proposition. (2001: 472) 

Hence Lambrecht seems to claim the historical precedence of the IdCC. 

In their recent Cambridge Grammar of the English Language Huddleston 

and Pullum have resumed interpreting IdCCs as it-clefts with an omitted relative 

clause; the relative clause can be omitted “if it is recoverable from the prior 

context” (2002: 1417). This has been an alluring explanation for many IdCCs as 

indeed such a relative clause is easy to recover for a number of examples we looked 

into. Thus we have, for instance, found two examples in Shakespeare’s As You Like 

It where – at the beginning of a scene – an IdCC serves as answer to a question 

which in turn is a ClC: 

(16) Jaq: Which is he that killed the Deare? 

Lord. Sir, it was I. 

(Shakespeare, As You Like It, act IV, sc. 2; OTA, l. 2128f.) 

(17) Cel: Are you his brother? 

Ros: Was‘t you he rescu’d? 

Cel: Was’t you that did so oft contriue to kill him? 

Oli: ’Twas I: but ’tis not I: I doe not shame 

To tell you what I was, since my conuersion 

So sweetly tastes, being the thing I am. 

(Shakespeare, As You Like It, act IV, sc. 3; OTA, l. 2287–2290) 

The ‘complete ClC’ would then be it was I that killed the Deare and ’twas I (’tis not I) 

that did so oft contriue to kill him. 

Things are not that obvious when the IdCC is the answer to a question which 

itself is not a ClC. Cf. for instance 

(18) Bul: What shrill-voic’d Suppliant, makes this eager cry? 

Dut: A woman, and thine Aunt great King ’tis I. 

Speake with me, pitty me, open the dore, . . . 

(Shakespeare, Richard II, act V, sc. 3; OTA, l. 2575–77)


Here the ‘omitted’ relative clause could be it is I who make(s) the eager cry. Yet – here’s 

the stumbling block: where the surface structure makes it obvious, Shakespeare’s 

it-ClCs more often than not show the present tense verb of the relative clause in 

‘not-third-person’ inflection. In the previous section we attributed this finding to 

the fact that ’tis was a focus marker rather than a clause in its own right. If, as 

we suppose, the biclausal structure of the ClC was not yet grammaticalized in 

EModE, the question as to how the verb in the ‘relative clause’ would be inflected 

would be a moot one to begin with, but which we cannot answer at the moment 

from lack of evidence. 

Finally, let us look into an example from Shakespeare’s Richard III which does 

not provide the ‘omitted’ relative clause in the immediate linguistic context: 

(19) King: Who’s there? 

Rat.: Ratcliffe, my Lord, ’tis I: the early Village Cock 

Hath twice done salutation to the Morne, 

(Shakespeare, Richard III, act V, sc. 3; OTA, l. 3671–73) 

There is no difficulty in thinking of such a relative clause as it is I who / that is there. 

And, as a matter of fact, the pragmatic situation in this example is exactly the one 

in which we find today IdCCs of the kind it is I/it is me – and so is the one from 

ex. (18). While in the latter a door separates the two characters, no such obstacle 

separates the king from Ratcliffe. 7 However, when Ratcliffe enters Richard’s tent on 

Bosworth Field the king has just been musing about “tomorrow’s vengeance on the 

head of Richard”, and might have difficulties in reorienting. 

Now, when does one use the IdCC it is I/me today? A likely context is, for 

instance, the beginning of a telephone call. When Jill Smith calls somebody she 

knows scarcely or not at all, she will usually identify herself as “Hello, this is Jill 

Smith (calling)”, while in other instances a simple “Hi, it’s me” would probably do, 

provided that Jill can count on the fact that the person answering the phone could 

easily recognize her voice. 

In terms of the concept of ‘truncated it-clefts’ as suggested by Huddleston and 

Pullum (2002: 1417) one could interpret the telephone it’s I/me as the answer to an 

inferred question of the sort “Who may be calling?” asked – usually in thought, we 

would suppose – by the person whose number Jill has dialled, when first hearing 

the phone ringing. The more old-fashioned identification “Hello, this is Jill Smith 

calling” would then witness to (a) answering an inferred question and (b) some 

kind of abridged version of the ClC “It/This is Jill Smith who is calling”. 

In our plays we find a somewhat reverse situation where eavesdropping 

characters speak to themselves – or, for that matter, in asides. Our first example is 

7. Cf. Hatcher (1948: 1085f.) for similar remarks.


a passage from Twelfth Night in which Sir Andrew Aguecheek overhears Malvolio 

who rehearses how he would ask Sir Toby Belch for Olivia’s hand: 

(20) Mal: Besides you waste the treasure of your time, with a foolish knight. 

And: That’s mee I warrant you. 

Mal: One sir Andrew. 

And: I knew ’twas I, for many do call mee foole. 

(Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, act II, sc. 5; OTA, ll. 1091–95) 

To begin with, the identificational that’s mee is technically no IdCC as the that is 

not empty, while the ’t- from ’twas I certainly is. However, here the interpretation 

as a “truncated it-cleft” only functions with great difficulty. Nothing in the preceding 

text lends itself to provide for the omitted relative clause. 

Things are obviously different with the following example from Aphra Behn’s 

The Lucky Chance where another worried character makes remarks aside: 

(21) Sir Feeb: Hum, who’s here? My Gentlewoman – she’s monstrous kind of the 

sudden. But whom is’t meant to? [Aside. 

Let: Give me your hand, my Love, my Life, my All – Alas! where are you? 

Sir Feeb: Hum – no, no, this is not to me – I am jilted, cozen’d, cuckolded, and 

so forth. – [Groping, she takes hold of Sir Feeb. 

Let: Oh, are you here? indeed you frighted me with your Silence – here, 

take these Jewels, and let us haste away. 

Sir Feeb: Hum – are you thereabouts, Mistress? was I sent away with a Sham- 

Plot for this! – She cannot mean it to me. [Aside. 

Let: Will you not speak? – will you not answer me? – do you repent already? 

– before Enjoyment are you cold and false? 

Sir Feeb: Hum, before Enjoyment – that must be me. Before Injoyment – Ay, ay, 

’tis I – I see a little Prolonging a Woman’s Joy, sets an Edge upon her 

Appetite. [Merrily. 

Let: What means my Dear? shall we not haste away? 

Sir Feeb: Haste away! there ’tis again – No – ’tis not me she means: what, at your 

Tricks and Intrigues already? – Yes, yes, I am destin’d a Cuckold – 

Let: Say, am I not your Wife? can you deny me? 

Sir Feeb: Wife! adod, ’tis I she means – ’tis I she means – [Merrily 

(Aphra Behn, The Lucky Chance (1687); ChHEDD) 

Sir Feeble’s “that must be me” parallels Sir Andrew Aguecheek’s “that’s mee” as that is 

referential. Yet, when Sir Feeble turns to “’tis not me she means” and “’tis I she means” 

we have a clear object-ClC in the first instance and in the second instance one that 

looks like an object ClC but has the pronoun in the matrix clause in subject case. 8 

8. Object ClCs with mean in the relative clause (and me in the matrix clause) are very frequent 

in our corpus.


Although we are still a far cry from really being able to generalize, our last examples 

point towards what might, on further scrutiny, turn out as a complementary 

pattern: both characters use me as predicate when the subject is referential, i.e., 

not empty, but the subject form in that position when the subject is it, that is, in a 

‘proper’ IdCC. That or this in the examples from Shakespeare and Aphra Behn are 

semantically filled by explicit recourse to an immediately preceding noun phrase 

(a foolish knight (Shakespeare), my Love, my Life (Behn)) that is coreferential with 

the person who is musing aside. In the wake of Huddleston and Pullum we might 

speculate here about an underlying thought of the sort ‘when he refers to a foolish 

knight he might mean me’ or ‘when she refers to my love, my life she must mean 

me’. The example from Aphra Behn in a way supports this speculation as Sir Feeble 

soon afterwards states in resignation: “’tis not me she means”. Unfortunately he 

seemingly breaks the pattern as he readily falls into “’tis I she means”. – Or does he? 

Let us reconsider the passage from Behn. At the beginning of the scene Sir 

Feeble wonders: “whom is’t meant to?”. The it here refers to Leticia’s friendly behaviour, 

hence mean here may be paraphrased as “to intend (a remark, allusion, etc.) to 

have a particular reference”. 9 Soon he is convinced that “She cannot mean it to me” 

and few lines later reinforces this with “this is not to me”. Next comes “that must 

be me”, which we have already discussed, immediately followed by “ ’tis I”. When 

the verb mean is taken up again it comes in the ‘regular’ object-ClC “ ’tis not me she 

means”. The repeated “’tis I she means – ’tis I she means” which, as the stage direction 

says, is supposed to be uttered “merrily”, is the culmination point of this scene. Here 

the subject case pronoun obviously serves emphatically to express Sir Feeble’s insight 

that Leticia is directing her actions and words really to no other man but to him. 

This last finding seems to run counter to the usual classification of the subject 

case pronoun as ‘unstressed’ and the object case pronoun as ‘stressed’ (e.g., Visser 

1963/73: 244). Wales (1996: 19), however, has shown that the pronoun paradigm 

generally displays “ ‘instability’ of the subjective/objective case system”, such that 

all subject and object forms may occur “reversed in function” in “some dialect of 

English around the world.” (ibid.) Moreover the use of I is grammatically unusual 

here as it is the predicate in the matrix clause of an object ClC – if that is the structure 

here to begin with. Here the immediate situational and linguistic context may 

help to assess this unusual contruction. First of all: the ‘running gag’ in this scene 

is Sir Feeble’s doubt as to how he should pragmatically interpret Leticia’s words and 

deeds. Are they directed toward him? Is there coreferentiality between “my Love, 

my Life, my All”, for whom she calls, and himself? Does us in her urging “let us 

haste away” include him or somebody else? Only when Leticia refers to herself as 

9. OED s.v. vb. mean 1 (e.).


“your [i.e., Sir Feeble’s] wife” is he convinced that he has been meant throughout. 

Hence the culmination in “ ’tis I she means – ’tis I she means”. We therefore suggest 

interpreting ’tis I in these two instances as IdCCs, though superficially it takes part 

in an object ClC which would demand the object pronoun in predicate position. 10 

It might be objected that while before we tried to make up ‘omitted’ relative 

clauses in order to interpret IdCCs as “truncated it-clefts”, here we are doing the reverse, 

by denying that the verb in the overt relative clause assigns case to the predicate 

pronoun. Yet, before we try to substantiate our analysis we should come back to the 

example from Twelfth Night (ex. 20). Remember that when Sir Andrew Aguecheek 

first expresses the suspicion that Malvolio might be speaking about him, he does so 

by saying “That’s me, I warrant you”. Immediately after that Malvolio specifies his 

reference to “a foolish knight” by “One sir Andrew”. Again: the character gains certainty 

that the person referred to previously is actually identical with him. 

Hatcher’s very illuminating article (dating back almost 60 years (1948)) in 

which she treats the development from ce suis je to c’est moi might help to explain 

the switches to the identificational ’tis I in the two scenes we have just looked into. 

In view of the development in French, Hatcher observes that ce est il (‘this is he’) 

has a “truly climactic effect” when it is used to express this insight that “ ‘the person 

present and the person just named are one and the same’ ” (1948: 1081). Unfortunately 

Hatcher does not discuss the same ‘climactic effect’ for the first person. Yet 

this is exactly what the two scenes from Shakespeare and Aphra Behn are all about. 

For Sir Andrew Aguecheek this “fusion of two potentially independent identities” 

(1948: 1081) is facilitated as his name is explicitly mentioned. Sir Feeble, in his 

turn, has to take a more complicated way of bringing about this fusion thanks to 

his wife’s semi-rhetorical question: “am I not your Wife?”. 

Now, does all this get us any closer to answering the question as to how IdCCs 

and it-ClC are correlated? And, what is more, if we find an answer beyond the 

sheer surface observation that the two are made up of the same building blocks, 

would this help us better to understand the rise of object case pronouns in predicate 

position? Let us see where we have got so far. 

From the examples we have discussed in this chapter it should have become obvious 

that the suggestion to interpret some (if not all) independent copular clauses as 

‘truncated it-clefts’ (Huddleston and Pullum 2002) is only moderately helpful. Though 

the retrieval of the ‘omitted’ relative clause was relatively unproblematic in our exs. 

(16) to (19), the putatively ‘omitted’ relative clause for ex. (19) was reconstructed in a 

10. The difference between this example and ex. 14 (“No, no, Sir, I am the Thorn that galls 

him; ’tis me, ’tis me he hates”) is that in Behn the ’tis I in the repeated “ ’tis I she means” expresses 

a sudden insight on the speaker’s side, while in ex. (14) the repeated ’tis me corrects a 

mistake on the addressee’s side.


way that also could provide for the somewhat ‘unnatural’ situation of the beginning 

of a telephone call. Finally, in ex. (20) any ‘omitted’ relative clause that we might make 

up to complement the IdCC would be sheer speculation as there is no lexical – not to 

speak of syntactical – support whatsoever in the linguistic context. Ex. (21), in turn, 

has, for one thing, both an isolated IdCC and what looks like two object ClCs, one 

with the object pronoun predicate (as we would expect), and one with the subject 

pronoun predicate. As has just been indicated: Sir Feeble and Sir Andrew cognitively 

move, as it were, from being the ‘object’ of reference (albeit in focus) of the person 

overheard to the ‘subject(-complement)’ position where the identification prevails. 

We have, of course, grouped our examples in the present section in such a way 

that the ‘omitted’ relative clause becomes increasingly harder to retrieve. At the one 

end of the scale we have this ‘omitted’ relative clause spelled out in the utterance immediately 

preceding the IdCC (ex. 16 and 17), at the other end we have a completely 

‘isolated’ it is I. The latter “identifies out of nothingness”, as Hatcher has it (1948: 

1084). In view of this it seems increasingly hard to abide by the claim of Huddleston 

and Pullum (2002: 1417) that IdCCs are in fact ‘truncated it-clefts’. We would rather 

suggest that in specific situations with specific (linguistic) contexts IdCCs may be extended 

into it-ClCs, while in others this is impossible. In historical terms this could 

translate into postulating that the IdCC was anterior to and then coexistent with 

the it-ClC. If there is – from some point which still needs to be specified – indeed 

a ‘routinized‘ form of self-identification with the formula ’tis I which then may be 

extended into an it-ClC, we see ‘Emergent Grammar’ at work, in which 

[. . .] forms of language are [. . .] embedded in formulaic constructions that are 

basically prefabricated but repeated with local variations in a way that Bolinger 

called “syntactic diffusion,” one variation splitting off and founding a new familiy 

of constructions. (Hopper 1998: 195; our emphasis) 

With the rise of pronouns in predicate position it is/’tis I seems to have become 

‘formulaic’, and hence by way of a ‘splitting off ’ was able to found a ‘new family of 

constructions’ – the it-ClC. 

A side-product of the analysis of our examples in this part of our chapter 

might be that – other than in an object ClC – me in predicate position might be the 

rule in copular constructions where the subject of the matrix clause is not empty. 

The two examples we have presented here are, of course, not sufficient evidence 

to claim this to be a rule. As we have been primarily searching our corpora for it 

is/it was x constructions and their contracted (and negated) variants, a number 

of copular constructions with referential this/that as subject and a pronoun in 

predicate position may have escaped us. We do, however, strongly surmise that 

referentiality/emptiness of the matrix subject may have an influence on the shape 

of the predicate pronoun in this early stage.


In any event, the discussion of findings from 17th and 18th-century plays 

which we have presented in this section of our paper should have illustrated 

that – for one thing – the correlation between IdCCs and ClCs might indeed 

be translated into an historical sequence. Moreover, we believe we have found 

a means of attempting to explain the rise of object pronouns in predicate position 

by indicating that these are tied to referential conditions. 

4. Conclusions 

Let us begin our brief concluding section with yet another quote from an 18thcentury 

grammarian, this time from John Burn who was Priestley’s contemporary. 

In his Practical Grammar he states: 

The substantive verb am or be admits a nominative before it and after it, False 

syntax: ‘It is me’, ‘It was them that bought the goods, and it was me that bought for 

them’. (Burn 1786: 85) 

If this reflects real usage of the predicative first person pronoun, then these constructions 

too were affected by a tendency that we have witnessed in the plays: 

there we do indeed find alternating use of subject and object pronoun in the identificational 

use, sometimes even with the same character and within a few lines. 

However, we have not found a single felicitous instance with me in a subject ClC. 

This does not, of course, mean that speakers did not produce such constructions. 

But here we enter uncertain territory. In terms of frequency we may, however, 

infer that self-identification – as well as pronominal identification of another 

person – was pragmatically a frequent matter. Then what of focussing by clefting? 

To begin with: was this a strategy in oral communication? Our data at least 

suggest this, although it would take a much more thorough quantitative analysis to 

get closer to an adequate answer. 

What is basically at stake is the question as to how ‘oral’ it-ClCs really were. 

All we know for sure is that they were established to some extent in LME and that 

today they are largely restricted to expository written prose (Biber et al. 1999: 961). 

What happened in the meantime is still open for further research. Until the results 

of this research we probably have to stick with Figaro in Holcroft’s wording: ’Tis 

he, ’tis she, ’tis me ’tis – I don’t know who . . . 11 

11. We thank Derek Britton very much for checking our English. Moreover we thank the 

referees and editors of this volume for their valuable comments during the revision process 

of this paper.


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Emotion verbs with to-infinitive 

complements 

From specific to general predication 

Thomas Egan 

Hedmark University College 

This paper traces the evolution of to-infinitive complement constructions with the 

emotion matrix verbs like, love, hate and prefer over the past two hundred years. 

It proposes that when the matrix verb is not preceded by a modal auxiliary these 

constructions should be analysed in Present-day English as encoding general 

rather than specific predications. In Late Modern English, on the other hand, 

these same constructions were widely used to encode specific predications. Using 

data from the BNC and the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, the chapter 

demonstrates how these constructions have become increasingly restricted to 

encoding general predications over the past two hundred years. This development 

is related to the parallel expansion of -ing complement constructions and of toinfinitive 

complement constructions with modalised matrix verbs. 


This study traces the evolution of non-finite verbal complement constructions 

with the emotion matrix verbs like, love, hate and prefer, over the past two hundred 

years. In particular, it shows that the construction type with a non-modalised 

matrix verb and a to-infinitive complement (as in ‘I like to swim’) is becoming 

more specialised in the sense that it is being increasingly restricted to encoding 

general rather than specific predications. Two of the matrix verbs investigated, 

like and love, encode a positive attitude on the part of the matrix verb subject; one, 

hate, a negative attitude; and the fourth, prefer, a comparative attitude. The reason 

for restricting the discussion to just four verbs is the relative paucity of examples 

of constructions containing other comparable emotion matrix verbs in historical 

corpora. In Section 2, I introduce the constructions under investigation and 

contrast to-infinitive complement constructions with non-modalised matrix verbs 

1. By ‘comparable emotion verbs’ I mean verbs that encode same-time predications by means 

of gerund complement clauses. Excluded are thus forward-looking verbs like want, wish, fear 

and dread, the complements of which are always located in the projected future, irrespective of 

complement form.

224 Thomas Egan 

with to-infinitive constructions with modalised matrix verbs and constructions 

with gerunds. 2 Section 3 contains an overview of the distribution of all three constructions 

over the last three hundred years and Section 4 details of the use of the 

construction with a non-modalised matrix verb and a to-infinitive complement 

to encode specific and general predications in the last two hundred years. Finally, 

Section 5 contains a summary and conclusion. 

2. The non-finite complements of emotion verbs in Present-day English 

All four verbs discussed in this paper occur in three non-finite construction types, 

each of which typically (or prototypically) locates the complement predication in 

a different ontological domain. 3 In the first place, they all occur with a modalised 

matrix verb and a to-infinitive complement. In this construction the complement 

is normally situated in the projected future, i.e., posterior to the time of the matrix 

verb. ( )–(4), all taken from the BNC, illustrate this construction type with the 

four matrix verbs. 

( ) Ultimately, she would like to work in film, behind the camera. 

(BNC CGB 786) 

(2) Paula says that she would love to have children but hasn’t yet found the right 

man to have children with. (BNC K3P 69) 

(3) I wouldn’t mind losing my stuff but I’d hate to lose my films. 

(4) ‘I’d prefer to fly there, and rent a villa,’ she said. 

(BNC APC 748) 

(BNC CKB 429) 

In ( ) the realisation of the wishes of the subject would lead to her working in the 

film industry. If this occurs, and, of course, nothing is certain where the future 

is concerned, it will be after the time of the utterance. As the Cambridge Grammar 

puts it, the ‘would like to-infinitive’ construction “projects into the future 

and resembles a verb of wanting” (Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 242). Similarly 

the ‘would love to-infinitive’ construction also projects into the future and also it, 

too, resembles a verb of wanting. In this case the degree of the wanting is merely 

2. The vast majority of the modals in question in Late Modern and Present-day English are 

would, should or ’d. Note that in this paper I use an expression like ‘would like to’ as shorthand 

for ‘modal verb + like to’. 

. They also occur in a non-finite construction with an object predicative in the form of a past 

participle, as in ‘I like my humour served up intelligently and well presented’ (BNC BNS 458). 

This construction is not considered in this paper.

Emotion verbs with to-infinitive complements 225 

stronger. The opposite is the case with the ‘would hate to-infinitive’ construction. 

This resembles a verb of not-wanting. 4 Thus the last thing the subject in (3) 

would like to experience is the loss of his or her films. The construction in (4) also 

encodes wanting: to be specific it encodes wanting the situation encoded in the 

complement clause more than some explicit or implicit alternative(s). 

When, on the other hand, these four verbs occur with gerunds, they locate the 

complement predication, which may be either serial (recurrent) or one-off, in the 

extended present. (5)–(8) illustrate these same-time predications. 

(5) A letter from your Aunt Emily told us how much 

she likes having you and how accomplished you are becoming. 

(BNC H8X 203) 

(6) She loves gossiping with friends over lunch, he would rather 

be alone with his thoughts. (BNC CBC 044 ) 

(7) ‘In my experience’, she mimicked, ‘men hate hanging around 

while women shop.’ (BNC HHA 2446) 

(8) ‘Some women prefer seeing make [sic] gynaecologists because 

they find them more authoritative.’ (BNC G2V 972) 

As was pointed out by Kiparsky and Kiparsky ( 97 ), matrix verbs like these 

are factive when they occur with gerund complements. In each case the subject 

engages in the activity encoded in the complement predication on one or more 

occasions, and this participation evokes simultaneous pleasure or displeasure as 

the case may be. Thus in (6) the subject in question does gossip, and when she does 

so this activity affords her a great deal of pleasure. Similarly, in (7) the subjects do 

hang around but in this case the activity affords them displeasure. 

The third type of construction containing these matrix verbs consists of 

to-infinitive complements following non-modalised matrix verbs. These are 

illustrated by (9)–( 2). 

(9) He always liked to tell me things about my lover that my lover 

kept from me. (BNC FAT 2835) 

( 0) Is there a certain time when you always love to sit down with a 

relaxing drink and something to eat? (BNC AD0 563) 

4. In addition to being situated in the projected future the complement situation in the ‘would 

hate to’ construction may also be located in irrealis proper. It may even be counter-factual, as in 

“I would hate to be in the royal family” (BNC KSS 459). Both ‘would prefer to’ and ‘would love 

to’ may occasionally be employed to encode propositions like these.


( ) However, no money was to be spent on florists’ bouquets or 

wreaths, and in any case we’d both always hated to see flowers 

wired and thrust into stiff, unnatural arrangements. (BNC CES 5 3) 

( 2) I always prefer to pay all my bills by cheque or by hand. (BNC BNL 53) 

There is no consensus in the literature about how to specify the meaning of utterances 

like (9)–( 2). Duffley ( 992, 2006), for instance, ascribes to them a ‘future’ 

sense. Huddleston and Pullum (2002) maintain that they evoke the idea of (repeated) 

change. De Smet and Cuyckens (2005), writing about the matrix verbs like 

and love, argue that these encode a network of meanings including habituality and 

enjoyment. Carter and McCarthy (2006) write: 

Hate, like, love and prefer can be followed by either -ing or a to-infinitive. 

The difference in meaning is often not great, but -ing emphasises the action or 

event in itself, while the infinitive places the emphasis more on the results of the 

action or event. (Carter and McCarthy 2006: 5 5) 

I propose that constructions like these with non-modalised matrix verbs and 

to-infinitive complements should be analysed as encoding what Langacker ( 999) 

calls general validity predications. He characterises these as follows: 

The situation they describe may hold for either a bounded or an unbounded span 

of time, i.e., their validity has a temporal scope. An indefinite, potentially openended 

set of instances of the basic event type can occur within that scope. General 

validity predications do not however profile these instances, but rather the higher-order 

relationship (of genericity/habituality) that they constitute or manifest. 

(Langacker 999: 249–250) 

This characterisation seems to encapsulate neatly the sense of such tokens as 

(9)–( 2). General validity predications are higher order predications. As such 

they do not encode the actual realisation of the complement situation. However, 

they are often accompanied by an adverbial indicating the likely occasion of its 

realisation. For instance, all four tokens (9)–( 2) contain the adverb always. This 

indicates that the complement situations are likely to be realised on all suitable occasions. 

In (9), for instance, the exchange of information may be presumed to take 

place during intimate conversations between the two parties concerned. And in 

( 0) the speaker questions the addressee about the possible existence of this sort 

of occasion. A variety of adverbials may be used to encode the likely occasions 

of realisation of general validity predications. ( 3)–( 6), for instance, contain 

(underlined) ‘time-when’ adverbials. 

( 3) And when the flat’s not in use for entertaining clients I like to 

make it available to all my employees. (BNC H8S 333)


( 4) When we are hungry we love to eat bread. (BNC HS7 263) 

( 5) Jannie instinctively hid her cigarette behind her back when the 

kitchen door opened; John hated to see her smoking while she 

cooked. (BNC G 2 2) 

( 6) I like to wake up to a cup of Assam, a very robust tea, or a 

strong blend of African and Indian teas of the type that makes a 

good English breakfast blend; in the evening I prefer to drink 

Keemun or Lapsang Souchong. (BNC ABB 727) 

In examples ( 3)–( 6) the likely occasions of realisation are all encoded explicitly. 

There are also many cases in which the times when the actions encoded by the 

to-infinitives are likely to be realised are implicit. In such cases our rule of thumb 

as language users, our working hypothesis, is that they are likely to be realised, or 

in the case of hate not realised, on appropriate occasions. We must make use of the 

context or of our world knowledge to identify the sort of occasion that is meant in 

any particular instance. ( 7)–(20) are cases in point. 

( 7) Relatives hated to see a sheet over the faces of their loved 

ones. (BNC JYB 472) 

( 8) There is very little connection now between our people and 

you Europeans. We prefer to take our husbands from among 

each other. (BNC CJD 94) 

( 9) Harry loves to talk about his gardening exploits. (BNC ACY 85 ) 

(20) And nowadays coaches had lavatories and armchairs and dear 

little hostesses whom Laura liked to induce to tell her their life 

stories. (BNC CMJ 00 ) 

Our interpretation of what constitutes suitable occasions is naturally informed by 

our encyclopaedic knowledge of the event types in question. Even without access 

to the context, we know that the situation in ( 7) is likely to take place in a mortuary, 

the situation in ( 8) on the occasion of choosing a marriage partner, and the 

situations in ( 9)–(20) whenever the subjects in question can find a willing ear. 

The point is that, unlike the construction with gerund complements exemplified 

in (5)–(8), none of these tokens encode the actual realisation of the complement 

situations. Rather, they all encode a higher order predication of the likelihood of 

their being realised in the appropriate circumstances. 

There is no doubt that non-modalised emotion matrix verbs with to-infinitive 

complements in Present-day English typically encode general predications (see 

Figure and Duffley 2006: 77). However, they do not invariably do so, or at least 

three of them, the exception being love, do not always do so. (2 )–(23) exemplify 

some exceptions.


100 

80 

60 

40 

20 

0 

hate like love prefer 

specic 

general 

Figure 1. Non-modalised to-infinitive constructions with matrix verbs hate, like, love and 

prefer: Ratio of general to specific predications (data: BNC W ). 

(2 ) I don’t like to say this but there’s a society in Glasgow buying 

tickets for The children for pantomime. (BNC J8B 523) 

(22) I hate to say this guys but lets compare the Irish with the 

English squads for tomorrow. (BNC J G 509) 

(23) They didn’t tell Martinho what the situation was for a while, 

and then they preferred to get me to break it to him. (BNC H9N 2079) 

In all three of these examples the complement situation encodes a specific situation 

that is located in the projected future. To be more exact, it is situated in 

the near projected future. Note that this construction does not overlap in sense 

with the gerund construction which always locates the complement situation as a 

one-off or recurrent event in the extended present. 

We have already noted that the ‘love to-infinitive’ construction does not appear 

to be used with this sort of forward-looking meaning. What of the other 

three constructions: how often are they so used? Figure contains percentages 

for all four non-modalised to-infinitive constructions, based on samples of ,000 

tokens of each of the four matrix verbs downloaded at random from the written 

imaginative sub-corpus of the BNC. The tokens containing non-finite complements 

were extracted from these samples. The written imaginative sub-corpus was 

chosen in order to facilitate comparison with the Corpus of Late Modern English 

Texts, which contains a preponderance of literary texts. The percentages in Figure 

are based on 70 tokens of non-modalised ‘hate to-infinitive’, 06 tokens of nonmodalised 

‘like to-infinitive’, 33 tokens of non-modalised ‘love to-infinitive’ and 

286 tokens of non-modalised ‘prefer to-infinitive’. 

As can be seen in Figure , ‘hate to’ is the construction that occurs most frequently 

with a specific as opposed to a general sense. 5 Almost half of the specific 

5. In terms of actual tokens there is little difference between total numbers for ‘like to’ and ‘hate 

to’ with specific complements, as may be seen by comparing Figure with Figures 2 and 4.


complement predicates in the ‘hate to’ construction encode acts of communication 

as in (22). One typically hates to say, admit or mention something, and then 

proceeds to do just that! The same types of complement predicate are even more 

frequent with negated ‘like to’, as in (2 ). The only other context in which ‘like to’ 

occurs in Present-day English with a specific complement is in if-suggestions, as 

in (24). Negatives and suggestions also account for a third of the tokens of specific 

‘prefer to’, but in its case we also find affirmative matrix verbs in the simple past as 

in (23), in the present as in (25) and as a participle as in (26). 

(24) And if you like to check yours now just okay. (BNC KLW 3 6) 

(25) If I have any further requests, I prefer to make them to him personally. 

(BNC GW2 68) 

(26) He refused the offer of any sword, preferring to use the blade 

he had forged with his own hands. (BNC CM 2238) 

Note that all these tokens ((2 )–(26)) encode forward-looking predications. In 

Section 4 we will see that these constructions were not restricted to specific predication 

in the projected future in Late Modern English. But before we do so, we 

will look at the overall incidence of the non-modalised to-infinitive constructions 

compared to their modalised and -ing counterparts over the last 300 years. 

. The historical development of all three construction types 

Although the topic proper of this paper is the use of to-infinitive complement 

constructions after non-modalised emotion verbs to encode general and specific 

predications, the increased tendency to use these constructions to encode the former 

type of predication must be seen in the context of the distribution of the other 

two constructions introduced in Section 2. Both of these prototypically encode 

specific predications in Present-day English: the modalised to-infinitive construction 

encodes a specific predication in the projected future (‘I’d like to go now’), the 

-ing construction encodes a specific predication in the extended present (‘I like 

walking around town’). We begin with like. Figure 2 contains data for the three like 

constructions per 00,000 words in two sub-corpora of the Corpus of Late Modern 

English Texts ( 7 0–80, 780– 850, see De Smet and Cuyckens 2005), the 

Corpus of Early Twentieth Century Texts (containing some three million words 

from texts published between 9 and 922, written by authors born in the 880s 

and compiled especially for this study) and the Written Imaginative sub-corpus 

of the BNC. The reason for compiling the CETCT rather than using CLMET 

850– 920 as a source of data for the period between 850 and the time of the 

BNC was the hypothesis, later confirmed, that changes were taking place in the

2 0 Thomas Egan 

16,00 

14,00 

12,00 

10,00 

8,00 

6,00 

4,00 

2,00 

0,00 

1710–1780 1780–1850 1911–1922 BNC WI 

like to 

d like to 

like-ing 

Figure 2. Tokens per 00,000 words of three constructions containing the matrix verb like in 

four corpora. 

distribution of ‘like to’ around the turn of the century that do not show up clearly 

in the data in CLMET. 

As can be seen in Figure 2, all three like constructions were infrequent before 

the end of the eighteenth century. Although the non-modalised ‘like to’ construction, 

at least, was current in the ME period (there is an example in the OED from 

350), it was comparatively infrequent in Early Modern English. This rarity is presumably 

related to the widespread use of the ‘were like to’ and ‘had like to’ constructions 

during this period. At any rate these two constructions went into rapid 

decline in the nineteenth century, the same period which witnessed the expansion 

of both ‘like to’ complement constructions. Note that while the non-modalised 

construction has remained fairly stable in incidence over the last two hundred 

years, there is an increase in the modalised construction of over 40% between the 

second and third periods. For the sake of convenience I will refer to this period, 

not strictly accurately, as the latter half of the nineteenth century. The -ing construction 

increases steadily over the whole period studied. 6 

Figure 3 contains data on the development of the three love constructions. 

There are two points in which the development of love, shown in Figure 3, resembles 

that of like and which are relevant to the discussion to come in Section 4. One is 

the expansion of the modalised construction in the latter half of the nineteenth 

6. One should note that there is a general increase in the use of the lexeme would of approx. 

0% from CLMET 780– 850 to CETCT. This increase in itself cannot account for the much 

larger increase in the incidence of modalised forms of the matrix verb in the case of the four 

verbs that are the subject of this paper.

2,50 

2,00 

1,50 

1,00 

0,50 

0,00 

1710–1780 1780–1850 1911–1922 BNC WI 

Emotion verbs with to-infinitive complements 2 1 

love to 

d love to 

love-ing 

Figure 3. Tokens per 00,000 words of three constructions containing the matrix verb love in 

four corpora. 

century, the other the slight expansion of the -ing construction in the twentieth. 

While the non-modalised to-infinitive construction with like remains fairly stable 

in incidence throughout the twentieth century, in the case of love it suffers a sharp 

decline. 

Corresponding data for the three hate constructions are contained in Figure 4. 

The development of hate is parallel to that of both like and love in the two areas 

most pertinent to the argument in this chapter: the ‘would hate to’ construction 

increases in the latter half of the nineteenth century as does the -ing construction 

which continues to increase in the twentieth. There is a decrease in the incidence 

of the modalised construction in the twentieth century. 

Data for the prefer constructions are given in Figure 5. The data for prefer 

differ from the other three constructions in respect of one of the two factors of 

most relevance to the topic of this chapter. While there is a growth in the incidence 

of the modalised construction in the latter half of the nineteenth century, 

there is actually a slight decrease in the incidence of the -ing construction over 

the last 00 years. This development, however, must be seen against the background 

of the fact that the -ing form was the first non-finite complementiser to 

be used with this matrix verb. It was only in the second half of the nineteenth 

century that the other two constructions became more commonplace. 

Let us summarise the contents of Figures 2–5. In the case of all four matrix 

verbs, the construction that prototypically encodes specific events in the projected 

future in Present-day English, the modalised matrix verb + to-infinitive construction 

became more widespread in the second half of the nineteenth century. In 

the case of three of them the construction that prototypically encodes same-time 

specific events, the -ing construction, became more widespread in the twentieth 

century. In the next section we will see that there was a statistically significant


1,20 

1,00 

0,80 

0,60 

0,40 

0,20 

0,00 

1710–1780 1780–1850 1911–1922 BNC WI 

hate to 

d hate to 

hate-ing 

Figure 4. Tokens per 00,000 words of three constructions containing the matrix verb hate in 

four corpora. 

1,80 

1,60 

1,40 

1,20 

1,00 

0,80 

0,60 

0,40 

0,20 

0,00 

1710–1780 1780–1850 1911–1922 BNC WI 

prefer to 

d prefer to 

prefer-ing 

Figure 5. Tokens per 00,000 words of three constructions containing the matrix verb prefer 

in four corpora. 

decrease in the tendency of two of the four non-modalised to-infinitive constructions 

to encode specific predications in the same periods. 

4. General and specific predication with a non-modalised matrix verb 

Figure 6 contains details (from 780 to the present) of the percentages of nonmodalised 

to-infinitive constructions containing the four matrix verbs and 

constructions which (as we have seen in Section 2) typically encode general predications. 

The period from 7 0– 780 is omitted from consideration in this section 

as there is so little data for two of the verbs, like and prefer, from this period. In the

100 

90 

80 

70 

60 

50 

40 

30 

20 

10 

0 

prefer like hate love 


Figure 6. Percentage of general predications with four non-modalised matrix verbs from Late 

Modern to Present-day English 

case of love the change in numbers is barely perceptible in the figure. As for hate, 

there is hardly any change between the first two periods and the change from the 

second to the third period is not significant at the level of p = 0.05. In the case of 

prefer the increase in the use of the construction from CETCT to BNC WI to encode 

general predications is significant at the level of p = 0.005. In the case of like, 

both stages in the increase are significant at this level. 

The discussion below will be limited to like and prefer constructions displaying 

statistically significant change in the periods in question. To begin with like, 

there are two uses of non-modalised ‘like to’ in CLMET that are not represented 

in the BNC, or indeed in other corpora of Present-day English, such as FLOB and 

FROWN. 7 The first of these is the use of ‘like to’ to encode same-time predications. 

(27)–(30) are cases in point. 

(27) ‘‘Oh no,’’ wept the young lady; ‘‘you wished me away 

because you knew I liked to be there!’’ (Brontë, Wuthering Heights) 

(28) Thereupon I could have kissed her as a sort of tribute, liking to 

be appreciated. (Blackmore, Lorna Doone) 

(29) I wonder his brother likes to sit there, so late at night—on this 

night too. (Dickens, Barnaby Rudge) 

1780-1850 

1911-1922 

BNC WI 

7. Although the construction illustrated in (27)–(29) is no longer current in English, one can 

still encounter it in the literature. Hamawand’s (2002: 9) example “She likes to join the club” is 

a case in point.


Deprived of their co-texts, it might appear that (27)–(29) could in fact encode 

general validity predications but a closer investigation shows this not to be the 

case. (30) is an extended version of (27). 

(30) ‘‘How can you say I am harsh, you naughty fondling?’’ cried 

the mistress, amazed at the unreasonable assertion. ‘‘You are 

surely losing your reason. When have I been harsh, tell me?’’ 

‘‘Yesterday,’’ sobbed Isabella, ‘‘and now!’’ 

‘‘Yesterday!’’ said her sister-in-law. ‘‘On what occasion?’’ 

‘‘In our walk along the moor. You told me to ramble where I pleased, 

while you sauntered on with Mr. Heathcliff!’’ 

‘‘And that’s your notion of harshness?’’ said Catherine, 

laughing. ‘‘It was no hint that your company was superfluous. 

We didn’t care whether you kept with us or not. I merely 

thought Heathcliff ’s talk would have nothing entertaining for 

your ears.’’ 

‘‘Oh no,’’ wept the young lady; ‘‘you wished me away 

because you knew I liked to be there!’’ (Brontë, Wuthering Heights) 

There can be no doubt that when Isabella in (30) says I liked to be there she is referring 

to the specific occasion of the walk on the moors the previous day. Similarly in 

(28) the subject expresses his gratification at having been praised on the particular 

occasion in question. In (29) the adverbial on this night too allows us to infer the 

specificity of the predication. 

The predication in (30) could be felicitously encoded in Present-day English 

by ‘like -ing’. This would be less likely in (28) because of the so-called ‘double-ing 

constraint’ (see Ross 972). As for (29), another possible interpretation is that it 

is a forward-looking predication, with like meaning ‘choose’. This use of like to 

encode an act of choosing is also instantiated in (3 )–(34), all of which clearly 

encode forward-looking predications. 

(3 ) Anne said she would not meddle with them, and that she would 

wait till her brother liked to count them. (Edgeworth, The Parent’s Assistant) 

(32) The usher walked slowly round the down with such boys as 

liked to accompany him. (Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays.) 

(33) “Any day you like to come and dine with me, I’ll give you as 

good a bottle of wine as you’ll get in London.” 

(Galsworthy, The Man of Property) 

(34) I want you to give me a few minutes of your attention in private, at 

any time and place you like to appoint. (Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall) 

While all four examples (3 )–(34) could be paraphrased using choose, the 

predications in (33) and (34), though not (3 ) and (32), may be expressed in


Present-day English by means of ‘would like to’. As mentioned in Section 2, the 

only contexts in which such forward-looking predications with non-modalised 

like as those in (3 )–(34) survive in Present-day English are in if-suggestions and 

negatives. In the case of the former, the modalised construction is in the process 

of superseding the non-modalised one. Figure 7 gives details of the development 

over two hundred years of all if-clauses containing modalised ‘like to’ and 

non-modalised ‘like to’. 

Figure 7 shows the steady retreat of ‘if x like to’ in the face of the spread of ‘if x 

would like to’. Today we only find specific if-clauses with non-modalised like used 

to encode suggestions, and even when so used, they are in direct competition with 

the modalised variety, as may be seen in (35)–(40). 

(35) So if you like to write that one down. (BNC FMH 679) 

(36) Right so if you’d like to label that triangle. (BNC FMJ 85) 

(37) If you like to look back at the cathedral office in an hour, I’ll 

see it’s ready for you. (BNC HA2 2 8 ) 

(38) If you’d like to come back to my office we can discuss it there,’ 

he said, looking at Fairham. (BNC G0 966) 

(39) If you like to get on I’ll fetch my horse. (BNC A0R 2245) 

(40) If you’d like to go into the next room, please. (BNC F77 523) 

It is difficult to discern any substantive semantic or pragmatic differences between 

the pairs of tokens with modalised and non-modalised matrix verbs 

in (35)–(40). The development of these two forms over the last two hundred 

years appears to be an example of drift in the classic sense of Sapir ( 92 ), with 

100 

90 

80 

70 

60 

50 

40 

30 

20 

10 

0 

1780–1850 1911–1922 BNC 

if – modal like 

if + modal like 

Figure 7. The percentage of ‘if x like to’ versus ‘if x would like to’ in three corpora.


the ‘would like to’ form gradually, but inexorably, replacing its non-modalised 

‘like to’ counterpart. 

The other context in which the non-modalised ‘like to’ construction is found 

with specific complements in Present-day English is when the matrix verb is negated. 

Although there has been an increase in the occurrence of general validity 

predications in this context in the last two centuries, this increase is not statistically 

significant. The fact that the non-modalised ‘hate to’ construction is still employed 

with a similar meaning may be a factor influencing the resilience of ‘don’t 

like to’ used in this sense in Present-day English. 

The second matrix verb to exhibit a statistically significant increase in the 

use of the non-modalised construction to encode general validity predications is 

prefer. Recall that prefer differs from the other three verbs in that it occurred with 

an -ing complement before it began to be used with a to-infinitive complement. 

In the nineteenth century it was the only emotion verb to regularly encode general 

validity predications by means of -ing rather than to-infinitive complements. 

(4 )–(43) are cases where one would expect to find to-infinitive complements in 

Present-day English. 

(4 ) Mr and Mrs Murray generally thought it sufficient to show 

themselves at church once in the course of the day; but 

frequently the children preferred going a second time to 

wandering about the grounds all the day with nothing to do. 

(Brontë, Agnes Gray) 

(42) They departed early in the morning before any one else was 

down, except myself, and just as I was leaving my room, Lord 

Lowborough was descending to take his place in the carriage 

where his lady was already ensconced; and Arthur (or Mr. 

Huntingdon as I prefer calling him, for the other is my child’s 

name) had the gratuitous insolence to come out in his dressinggown 

to bid his ‘friend’ good bye. (Brontë, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall ) 

(43) They generally prefer running against the wind; yet at the first 

start they expand their wings, and like a vessel make all sail. 

(Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle) 

A third of the -ing complements of prefer in the CLMET 780– 850 are of this 

type. There are some general validity predications encoded by ‘prefer -ing’ complements 

in the BNC, as evidenced by (44) and (45). However, a search of the BNC 

as a whole for prefer preceded by generally, normally or usually yielded 23 tokens 

containing non-finite complements, of which the only two -ing complements


were (44) and (45). 8 The other 2 contained to-infinitive complements, as in 

(46) and (47). 9 

(44) Corral generally prefers buying from commercial galleries rather than auction 

houses and she often consults the artists about the works the Museum intends 

to buy. (BNC EBS 707) 

(45) Macho man usually prefers talking to his own sex because it’s 

safer, and he’s more interested in proving he’s as ‘male’ as his 

peer group than in entering a relationship which requires an 

ability to give, to love, to be tender. (BNC H83 939) 

(46) They had noticed that females of both types generally prefer to 

mate with a quadrimaculata male, if given a choice. (BNC GU8 76) 

(47) The children could take early dinner, but they usually 

preferred to eat with us in one of the dining rooms. (BNC AMW 457) 

Thus prefer has come to resemble the other three verbs with respect to the encoding 

of general validity predications by means of the to-infinitive form. This form 

may also be employed on occasion to encode specific predications in the projected 

future. When so used, it often seems difficult to find any tangible difference in 

meaning between utterances with a modalised and non-modalised matrix verb. 

(48)–(53) may serve to illustrate this point. 

(48) ‘I shall be at Trebyan for a while.’ ‘I’ll drop you off there, sir.’ 

‘No, I prefer to walk.’ (BNC GWB 2955) 

(49) ‘Do you want to go and sit down some place?’ Maggie asked. 

‘No, I’d prefer to keep walking.’ (BNC AN7 2262) 

(50) ‘But I prefer to see you safely to your flat. (BNC JXS 3848) 

(5 ) ‘Yes, but I’d prefer to come with you. (BNC GUS 309) 

(52) ‘So, are you going to climb on board or do you prefer to stay 

here in the water? (BNC JXT 643) 

(53) ‘We’re fully booked for this evening, sir. Oh, just a moment . . . 

I do have one seat left in the stalls. Or would you prefer to try 

your luck up in the Gallery?’ (BNC KAT 3) 

8. It may be of interest to note in this connection that there are no instances of these three adverbs 

directly preceding ‘enjoy -ing’ or ‘dislike -ing’ in the BNC, which is in line with what one would expect 

if these constructions prototypically encode either one-off or recurrent actuated situations. 

9. However, one should enter the proviso here that ‘prefer to’ is almost ten times more common 

than ‘prefer -ing’.


One may perhaps still discern a greater degree of hesitation on the part of the 

speaker in the first person expressions in (49) and (5 ) than in (48) and (50). The 

modalised variant may perhaps be interpreted as exerting less pressure on the addressee 

to respect the wishes of the speaker. On the other hand, what was originally 

the more diffident form may be in the process of becoming the unmarked 

or default mode of expression, as is the case with ‘if you’d like to’ discussed above, 

in which case the connotation of diffidence is likely to be reduced in time. The 

example with the second person subject in (52) seems rather more stilted, at least 

to my ears, than the one with the modal in (53). (52) is the only one of eleven 

tokens of ‘do you prefer to’ in the BNC to encode a forward-looking rather than 

a general validity predication (there are fifteen tokens of forward-looking ‘would 

you prefer to’). To sum up, prefer seems to be moving in the same direction as like 

and love with same-time situations being typically encoded by -ing complements, 

situations in the projected future being typically encoded by modalised matrix 

verbs followed by to-infinitive complements, and situations of general validity 

being encoded by non-modalised matrix verbs and to-infinitive complements. 

5. Conclusion 

In this paper we have seen that the four verbs like, love, hate and prefer typically 

encode general validity predications when the matrix verb is not modalised and 

is followed by a to-infinitive clause. The same verbs are typically used to encode 

situations in the projected future when the matrix verb is modalised, and sametime 

(either one-off or recurrent) situations when the matrix verb is followed by 

an -ing clause. As recently as Late Modern English, however, the constructions 

with the non-modalised matrix verb and the to-infinitive were used to encode 

specific predications, both same-time and forward-looking. The former of these 

two usages appears to have been lost. Instead, this sort of predication may now be 

encoded in -ing clauses, which, as was shown in Section 3, have been expanding 

steadily with these verbs, with the exception of prefer, over the last two hundred 

years. The function of encoding forward-looking predications has been increasingly 

assumed by the construction with a modalised matrix verb and to-infinitive 

clause, a construction that experienced a steady expansion in the latter half of the 

nineteenth century. Three of the verbs, like, hate and prefer, may still, nevertheless, 

encode specific forward-looking predications when non-modalised and followed 

by a to-infinitive. In the case of like this form of predication is limited to negatives 

and if-suggestions. 

The data investigated in this chapter indicate that there has been a drift towards 

a greater degree of form-function isomorphism in this area of non-finite 

complementation in English than was the case as recently as 50 years ago. In fact,


looking at data for all matrix verbs followed by a to-infinitive, it is clear that in Late 

Modern English to-infinitive complement constructions could be used to encode 

situations located prior to the time of the matrix verb and situations occurring at 

the same time as the matrix verb. Neither of these functions is carried out by the 

to-infinitive construction in Present-day English. Fanego ( 996) points out that 

the backward-looking construction containing verbs such as remember followed 

by a perfect infinitive is “no longer acceptable today, but was in use in Modern 

English [. . .] and can even be found in texts dating back to the middle of the twentieth 

century” (Fanego 996: 75). The evidence of the present paper points to a 

similar direction of change in the case of same-time predications with the four 

verbs under study. In both these cases the function formerly served by to-infinitive 

complements has been assumed by -ing complement constructions. In Present-day 

English the to-infinitive in complement constructions serves just three functions. It 

is now restricted to the encoding of predications in the projected-future, judgements 

(opinions) on the part of the subject, and general validity predications. 

References 

Primary 

BNC: British National Corpus (200 ). Oxford: Oxford University Computing Services. 

CLMET: see De Smet, Hendrik and Hubert Cuyckens (2005). 

CETCT: The works contained in CETCT were all downloaded from Project Gutenberg. They are 

listed here with the dates of birth of the authors and dates of publication. 

Christie, Agatha (b. 890). The Mysterious Affair at Styles ( 920). 

Colum, Padraic (b. 88 ). The King of Ireland’s Son (1916), The Adventures of Odysseus and the 

Tales of Troy (1918), The Golden Fleece and the Heroes who lived before Achilles ( 92 ). 

Dalton, Hugh (b. 887). With British Guns in Italy ( 9 9). 

Dell, Ethel M. (b. 887). The Way of an Eagle ( 9 ), The Knave of Diamonds ( 9 2), The Bars 

of Iron ( 9 6). 

Ervine, St. John (b. 883). The Foolish Lovers ( 920). 

Joyce, James (b. 882). Dubliners ( 9 4), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ( 9 6). 

Keynes, J.M. (b. 883). The Economic Consequences of the Peace ( 920). 

Lawrence, D.H. (b. 885). Sons and Lovers ( 9 3), Women in Love ( 920). 

Lofting, Hugh (b. 886). Doctor Doolittle ( 920), Voyages of Doctor Doolittle ( 922). 

MacKenzie, Compton (b. 883). The Altar Steps ( 922). 

O’Kelly, Seumas (b. 88 ). Waysiders ( 9 8). 

Peet, T. Eric (b. 882). Rough Stone Monuments and Their Builders ( 9 2). 

Ransome, Arthur (b. 884). Old Peter’s Russian Tales ( 9 6), Six weeks in Russia in 1919 ( 9 9), 

The Crisis in Russia ( 920). 

Rawlinson, A.E.J. (b. 884). Religious Reality ( 9 8). 

Redgrove, H. Stanley (b. 887). Bygone Beliefs ( 9 9). 

Rohmer, Sax (b. 883). The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu ( 9 3), The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu 

( 9 6), The Quest of the Sacred Slipper ( 9 9).


Stephens, James (b. 882). The Crock of Gold ( 9 2), The Insurrection in Dublin ( 9 6), Irish 

Fairy Tales ( 920). 

Swinnerton, Frank (b. 884). Nocturnes ( 9 7). 

Toynbee, Arnold J. (b. 889). Turkey, A Past and a Future ( 9 7). 

Walpole, Hugh (b. 884). Jeremy ( 9 9), The Secret City ( 9 9). 

Williams, Valentine (b. 883). The Man with the Clubfoot ( 9 8), Okewood of the Secret Service 

( 9 9), The Yellow Streak ( 922). 

Wodehouse, P.G. (b. 88 ). My Man Jeeves ( 9 9), Three Men and a Maid ( 92 ), Right Ho, 

Jeeves ( 922). 

Woolf, Virginia (b. 884). The Voyage Out ( 9 5), Night and Day ( 9 9), Jacob’s Room ( 922). 

Wren, Percival, Ch. (b. 885). Snake and Sword ( 9 4), Driftwood Spars ( 9 6). 

Yates, Dornford (b. 885). The Brother of Daphne ( 9 4), Berry and Co. ( 920). 

Secondary 

Carter, Ronald & Michael McCarthy. 2006. Cambridge grammar of English: a comprehensive 

guide: spoken and written English grammar and use. Cambridge: Cambridge University 

Press. 

De Smet, Hendrik & Hubert Cuyckens. 2005. Pragmatic Strengthening and the Meaning of 

Complement Constructions. Journal of English Linguistics 33: : 3–34. 

Duffley, Patrick J. 992. The English Infinitive. London: Longman. 

Duffley, Patrick J. 2006. The English gerund-participle: a comparison with the infinitive. 

New York: Peter Lang. 

Fanego, Teresa. 996. On the historical development of English retrospective verbs. Neuphilologische 

Mitteilungen 97: 7 –79. 

Hamawand, Z. 2002. Atemporal complement clauses in English: a cognitive grammar analysis. 

München: LINCOM Europa. 

Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English 

Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Kiparsky, Paul & Carol Kiparsky. 97 . Fact. Semantics: an interdisciplinary reader in philosophy, 

linguistics and psychology ed. by Danny Steinberg & L.A. Jakobovits, 345–369. Cambridge: 


Langacker, Ronald. 999. Grammar and conceptualisation. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 

Ross, John R. 972. Double-ing. Linguistic Inquiry 3( ): 6 –86. 

Sapir, Edward. 92 . Language: an introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace 

and Company.

Subjective progressives in seventeenth 

and eighteenth century English 

Secondary grammaticalization as a process 

of objectification 


Freie Universität Berlin 

The aim of the study is to analyse the subjective uses of the progressive in 7th 

and 8th century English, i.e., uses of the progressives as expressions of speaker 

attitude. After an overview of the Old and Middle English meanings of the 

progressive, I discuss the three different types of subjective progressives found 

in the 7th and 8th century data from ARCHER-2 (A Representative Corpus 

of Historical English Registers 2). In this context, I discuss some methodological 

issues, as formal criteria have proved insufficiently reliable for the distinction of 

subjective uses (cf. Killie 2004). I then look at the relation between subjective and 

other meanings of the progressive. In the 7th and 8th centuries, the aspectual 

function of the progressive grammaticalizes, which leads to changing relative 

frequencies between subjective and objective uses. The paper ends with some 

suggestions about general tendencies in the relation between grammaticalization 

and subjectification and objectification. 


The use of progressives in other than purely aspectual functions has often been 

noted, both in studies on present-day use and in diachronic surveys. Although 

a recognition of the capacity of the progressive to convey emotional involvement 

is by no means new, 2 in recent years there has been noticeable particular 

interest in the evolution and characteristics of such uses (cf. e.g., Wright 994; 

1. I would like to thank the anonymous referees of the proceedings as well as the participants 

of the 4 ICEHL in Bergamo, in particular Elke Gehweiler, Stefan Thim and Ilse Wischer, for 

their valuable suggestions. Furthermore, I would like to thank the Nafög commitee for the grant 

received for a research project on the development of the English progressive. 

. For an overview of early references to subjective uses of the English progressive, see Storms 

( 964), who provides a summary of various accounts from Onions ( 904) to his days.

4 Svenja Kranich 

Fitzmaurice 2004a, 2004b & Killie 2004; Smitterberg 2004, 2005). This can be seen 

as related to the general interest in processes of subjectification and their relation 

to grammaticalization processes (cf. e.g., Traugott 995 & Traugott/Dasher 2002), a 

relation which is not as straightforward as it has sometimes been understood to be. 

In this paper, I will pursue a twofold aim: on the one hand, I wish to study the 

particular subjective functions of the English progressive, considering such questions 

as how these subjective functions can be distinguished from the aspectual 

functions, which different types of subjective progressives we find, and how and 

with which frequency they are used in seventeenth and eighteenth century English. 

On the other hand, I wish to add to the general discussion of how grammaticalization 

and subjectification are typically related. 

Before going into any detail, it seems desirable to provide some definitions, 

since there is no perfect agreement as to the use of the terminology. I shall use the 

term ‘grammaticalization’ in a general sense to refer “to the steps whereby particular 

items become more grammatical through time” (Hopper/Traugott 2003: 2). Especially 

in the context of the relation to subjectification processes, it is important to 

further distinguish between primary and secondary grammaticalization, following 

Traugott’s (forthc.) latest account: primary grammaticalization refers to the process 

by which a lexical item or items first become(s) grammaticalized, while secondary 

grammaticalization refers to developments by which already grammaticalized 

items or constructions become more grammatical. Subjectification – the process 

by which “[m]eanings […] become increasingly based in the speaker’s subjective 

belief state/attitude toward the situation” (Traugott 990: 500) – typically accompanies 

only the former process, or even precedes it (Traugott forthc.). Subjectification 

in this sense is to be understood as a type of semantic change and not, as the term 

sometimes seems to be understood, as a type of grammaticalization. 

The focus of this paper is on a period where one can witness the secondary 

grammaticalization of the progressive, i.e., the gradual fixation of its aspectual 

function. In this paper I would like to take further Traugott’s view that secondary 

grammaticalization is not typically accompanied by subjectification. I will argue 

that secondary grammaticalization generally rather leads to more objective meanings. 

This will be referred to by the term ‘objectification’, which accordingly can be 

defined as a process by which items/constructions become less available for the 

expression of the speaker’s belief state/attitudes toward a proposition. 

I will now examine how this general hypothesis is borne out by the development 

of the English progressive. To get a better idea of the general direction of 

the development, I will first present a very brief summary of the development of 

the meaning of the progressive from Old English (OE) to Early Modern English 

(EModE). Following that, I shall present a categorization of types of subjective 

progressives and discuss some problems connected to distinguishing them from

Subjective progressives in 7th and 8th century English 43 

objective (i.e., aspectual) uses of the progressive. The evidence from the relevant 

section of ARCHER-2 (A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers 2) 

will then be analysed. For the present purpose, I have analysed the seventeenth 

and eighteenth century data of the corpus, i.e., a subsection of 57 ,887 words. 3 

The evidence from this corpus study will provide a clear picture of the general 

development of subjectification and/or objectification of the progressive in its 

development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. 

. Subjective and objective meanings of the progressive 

from Old English to Modern English 

Progressives generally seem to be used for two reasons in OE: they either highlight 

the imperfective character of a situation or “function [...] as an index of the speaker’s 

emotional attitude toward the propositional content expressed” (Hübler 998: 63). 

Hübler offers a number of examples of OE progressives where the progressive may 

be understood to underline the ‘remarkableness’ of an event (Hübler 998: 70), 

such as in Wæs he Mellitus mid lichoman untrymnesse mid fotadle swiðe gehefigad 

... he glaedlice all eorðlic þing wæs oferhleapende ... “Mellitus suffered severely 

from bodily infirmity ... , but still, ..., he surmounted with alacrity all earthly 

obstacles ...” (Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, 6, 30: example and translation from 

Hübler 998: 69). Although there can be little doubt that the progressive had subjective 

meanings in OE, it is problematic to consider the subjective function as its 

core function. Hübler’s ( 998: 86–89) argumentation in favour of this view is not 

convincing. He recognizes the fact that OE progressives were also used to express 

time-frame but claims that these uses are distributionally different from the progressives 

expressing speaker attachment, which he understands as the main function 

of the progressive in OE. But a brief look at OE instances, e.g., those adduced 

in Nickel ( 966), shows that aspectual and attitudinal meanings actually coincide 

in a number of examples. Nickel expresses the contrary position to Hübler: he 

believes that a subjective element may be observed in individual examples, but 

that this is by no means a systematic function (Nickel 966: 237). According to 

him, there is rather a strong indication that imperfectivity was the distinguishing 

3. ARCHER-2 altogether includes nearly 2.5 million words of British and American English, 

covering different text types from the timespan 600– 999. The corpus was accessed in June 

2005 at the University of Heidelberg. At the time, the American English part of the corpus 

only covered later periods, so that the data used for the present study only consists of British 

English.


feature of the majority of the situations expressed by predicates containing the 

progressive in OE (cf. Nickel 966: 238–259). One may opt for an intermediate 

position and consider the progressive to have a ‘double core meaning’ (i.e., aspectual 

and attitudinal meaning), as Rydén ( 997) does. 4 

The combination of the progressive with always-type adverbials (henceforth 

ALWAYS) 5 occurs frequently, both in subjective and objective meanings. In regard 

to the former meaning, ALWAYS refers to a time-span perceived to be of remarkable 

or even excessive length by the speaker; in regard to the latter, the adverb 

refers to a situation that objectively holds at all times. 

In Middle English (ME), apart from a drop in frequency, the progressive is 

used more or less as in OE: it often refers to imperfective events and is commonly 

used “to describe in a vivid and emphatic way” (Mustanoja 960: 594). It also still 

regularly co-occurs with ALWAYS (cf. Scheffer 975 2 8–220 for evidence of this 

and other similarities between the use of the progressive in OE and ME). In EModE 

the progressive continues to be available for both aspectual and attitudinal functions, 

but a change becomes noticeable in regard to its aspectual use: while in OE 

and ME the progressive is used for imperfective situations in general, in EModE 

the trend becomes clear that it is more and more restricted to progressive situations, 

i.e., situations which are both imperfective and dynamic and hence most 

often of limited duration (since dynamic events require an input of energy, which 

is normally not endlessly supplied). This has the consequence that now ALWAYS, 

when combined with the progressive, rarely has the objective meaning ‘at all times 

possible’, as we shall see clearly in the following discussion of this type. 

3. The three types of subjective progressives in Early 

and Late Modern English 

Apart from this type of subjective progressive, the combination of progressive + 

ALWAYS (type ), we can distinguish two more types of subjective progressives, 

namely subjective progressives without ALWAYS (type 2) and the interpretative 

progressive (type 3), i.e., the use of the progressive to signal that a more basic 

4. One should underline, however, that it is impossible to find a ‘panchronic core meaning’ for 

the progressive from OE to PDE, double or otherwise, as Rydén ( 997) endeavoured to, since 

the construction underwent decisive changes in regard to its functions from OE to ModE. 

. This means adverbials referring to the concept expressed by always, perpetually, forever 

and similar adverbs and adverbial phrases such as day and night, all the time. In OE among 

the adverbs most commonly occurring with the progressive are for instance simle, æfre, aa 

(cf. Nickel 966: passim).


observed behaviour is commented upon or interpreted by the speaker (cf. Ljung 

980: 70f.). Examples of all of these can be found in the period under consideration 

here. 6 Examples from the seventeenth and eighteenth century data in ARCHER-2 

include: 

( ) Ay, ay, you are always suspecting me, when Heaven knows I am 

such a poor constant Fool, I never so much as dream of any man 

but my own dear Fubby (archerii\ 650–99.bre\ 697pix.d ) 

Type : Subjective progressives with ALWAYS 

(2) If you have a good estate, every covetous rogue is longing 

for it. (archerii\ 650–99.bre\ 680otwa.d ) 

Type 2: Subjective progressives without ALWAYS 

(3) HARRY. Why, it is possible you may yet receive a valentine. 

SOPHIA. Nay, now, but don’t you go to think that I am asking for one; 

(archer\ 750–99.bre\ 792holc.d3) 

Type 3: Interpretative progressives 

The first two types are evidently old and can already be found in OE. 7 Type 3 

seems to be younger: it is sparse in the seventeenth and eighteenth century data from 

ARCHER-2, but becomes more common in the nineteenth century, as Smitterberg’s 

analysis of data from CONCE shows (cf. Smitterberg 2005: 227–24 ). 

. Smitterberg (2005) makes a similar distinction in his treatment of what he terms ‘not-solely 

aspectual’ progressives. His criteria for distinguishing these subjective progressives from objective, 

aspectual progressives are, however, different from mine as will become apparent in the 

following section, particularly in my discussion of type 2. My choice to call these progressives 

‘subjective’, rather than ‘not-solely aspectual’ is based on the fact that in a number of cases these 

progressives do not carry the aspectual meaning normally associated with the progressive at 

all. Particularly in regard to interpretative progressives, type 3, the situation expressed in the 

predicate containing the progressive is often perfective, cf. e.g., the present-day example I am 

not speaking to you, where the situation cannot possibly be viewed as in progress because then 

this sentence could never be truthfully uttered (cf. Ljung 980: 76). 

. An example of an OE subjective progressive without ALWAYS was already presented in the 

preceding section; a subjective progressive with ALWAYS from OE can be found in the following 

instance adduced by Goedsche ( 932: 474): þa gehældan hiene þa apostole Petrus & Johannes, 

cwiþ seo boc, þæt he up astode & ongunne hliapettan, mied þæm apostolum in þæt temple eode aa 

wæs gongende hleapende & Dryghten herigende, “then the apostles Peter and John healed him, 

and the book says that he stood up and began to leap, went with the apostles into the temple, 

and was forever going leaping & praising the lord”, where the event of the ‘going leaping’ is very 

remarkable, since the person performing it is a leper. Furthermore, the adverb aa must be interpreted 

as a hyperbole, not as objectively refering to ‘all the time, at all moments possible’.


It is not easy to distinguish between aspectual and subjective progressives. 

The first, general criterion I have applied to identify the latter is that the progressive 

must serve as an expression of the speaker’s subjective belief state/attitude 

toward the proposition, and that this should be reasonably understood as the main 

motivation for the use of the progressive, unlike in the following example: 

(4) for the troops are all mouldering in their winter quarters. 

(archerii\ 650–99.bre\ 667temp.x 37) 

Here, the speaker clearly has a certain attitude toward the proposition, but 

this is expressed by lexical choice (mouldering), while the use of the progressive is 

rather motivated by the fact that the event is viewed as in progress. Thus, if one can 

assume that a progressive would have been used regardless of a possible speaker 

involvement, the use will not be counted as subjective. 

3.1 Type : Subjective progressive with ALWAYS 

Type is characterized by this general criterion as well as by the use of an alwaystype 

adverbial. Since EModE times, the use of ALWAYS increasingly “signposts 

the construction as operating modally” (Wright 994: 478). As limited duration is 

strongly implied by the progressive since EModE, there is a clash when it is combined 

with ALWAYS: temporally limited events are not always ongoing – at least 

not in the objective sense of ‘at all times possible’. This is not to say that a combination 

of progressive + ALWAYS in ModE 8 can never refer to an objectively always 

ongoing, dynamic event. We can see that this is possible in the PDE example The 

universe is forever expanding. This example is taken from Ljung ( 980: 28) who 

explains that 

it is part of our knowledge of the world that events progress [...] [and that] 

this progression from beginning to end does not take very long. Because of this, 

it is natural to associate all dynamic constructions with temporariness. However, 

it is also part of our knowledge that the progression from beginning to end may 

sometimes take very long, and it is not inconceivable that there are events which 

go on for ever. (Ljung 980: 28) 

Thus, limited duration is not part of the meaning of the progressive, but it is likely 

to be associated with it. The presence of an adverbial of the always-type in ModE is, 

then, a good indication that we are looking at a subjective progressive (the adverb 

. The term ModE is used here to refer to the English language from the EModE period 

onwards, including present-day use.


being used hyperbolically in these cases), but we must still always check that the 

adverb does not refer to something objectively ongoing at all moments in time. 9 

3. Type 2: Subjective progressive without ALWAYS 

Type 2 proves much more difficult, since no such easily recognizable criterion can 

be found. Formal criteria have been proposed for this type in Wright ( 994), 0 

which Smitterberg (2005), although more critical, used with some modification 

in his analysis. Killie (2004) has already drawn attention to the problem of using 

such formal criteria. In her study of subjective uses of the progressive in EModE, 

she chose to concentrate on combinations with always, as these are less prone to 

ambiguity. However, in order to get a complete picture, it is necessary to include 

also subjective progressives without ALWAYS, because it is intuitively clear that in 

such examples as (2) the use of the progressive is motivated by a desire to express 

a subjective attitude. But we clearly need an appropriate method of distinguishing 

these uses from aspectual progressives. 

The formal criteria used by Smitterberg in his study of the nineteenth century 

uses of the progressive are the following: 

. Tense: The progressive occurs in the present, no perfect or modal 

auxiliaries. 

2. Clause: The progressive occurs in a main rather than subordinate 

clause. 

3. Person: It is used with a first- or second-person subject. 

4. Situation type: The progressive is part of a stative situation. 

(cf. Smitterberg 2005: 22 ) 

Smitterberg (2005: 220) counted all progressives which fulfil at least three of these 

four criteria as subjective. We would like to find whether this promises good results. 

The first problem one may note is that one could think of aspectual rather than 

subjective uses of the progressive where all of these formal criteria are still satisfied, 

as e.g., in (4) (if one allows the interpretation of [moulder in their winter quarters] 

. The semantics of progressive + ALWAYS combinations has been discussed in greater detail 

elsewhere (Kranich 2007b). 

10. Wright ( 994: 472) based her choice of formal criteria on Biber’s ( 988) and Biber and 

Finegan’s ( 989) findings about features that generally tend to occur often in involved speechproduction. 

(‘Involved’ refers here to the personal involvement of the speaker/writer in the subject 

matter of the text, as opposed to ‘detached’.) One should, however, note that these features 

were meant to characterize whole text types, and not as indication of the subjective or objective 

meaning of a specific form.


as stative). A much greater risk, however, lies in the fact that one seems to miss out 

on a great number of progressives which intuitively seem to require a subjective 

interpretation and which do not allow an aspectual, progressive reading, e.g.: 

(5) if you will needs be tutoring, go teach your Daughter how to behave herself 

(archerii\ 650–99.bre\ 67 cary.d 54) 

An analysis was made on a subsection of the corpus, namely the subperiod 

650– 699, where I have checked all the progressives I had analysed as subjective 

with regard to the presence of the supposed formal markers. 2 The following 

results were obtained: 

. Tense: 0 out of 9 progressives are in the present tense. 

2. Clause: 0 out of 9 progressives occur in a main clause. 3 

3. Person: 4 out of 9 progressives occur with a first- or second- 

person subject. 

4. Situation type: 2 out of 9 progressives occur in a stative situation type. 

None of the progressives in this subperiod of the corpus actually fulfils all of 

the formal criteria. Nevertheless, they are best interpreted as giving expression to 

speaker attitude. Further examples of type 2 from this subperiod include: 

(6) if you have a handsome wife, every smooth-faced coxcomb will be combing and 

cocking at her (archerii\ 650–99.bre\ 680otwa.d 27) 

(7) I’m glad she’s to be lock’d up, – for had any Gentlemen come to see me, she’s 

so pert, her Tongue would have been running. 

(archerii\ 650–99.bre\ 697pix.d 44) 

(8) these Letters from my Wife, must serve to draw the Woodcocks Bonavent and 

Squeezewit in, and since they must be leaping, they shall find it is unsafe to venture 

in my Pasture. (archerii\ 650–99.bre\ 693powe.d 67) 

In regard to (5)–(8) one can note that a combination of modal + progressive 

frequently produces a subjective reading, quite contrary to criterion ). However, 

one can clearly not go as far as using the combination with a modal as a criterion, 

11. The subjective progressives found in this subperiod can be seen as representative for the 

entire period under consideration. 

1 . One non-finite example was excluded, since not all of the formal criteria could be applied. 

Otherwise, all subjective progressives of the subperiod were taken into account, not just those 

classified as belonging to type 2, because the formal criteria proposed by Wright ( 994) were 

meant to characterise subjective progressives in general. 

13. Note that these 0 progressives are not the same ones as those fulfilling criterion (Tense).


since we also find type 2 progressives without modals, as in (2). The cooccurrence 

of subjective progressive with modals should rather be viewed in the light of a 

more general criterion, namely that subjective elements tend to cluster: speakers 

who wish to express a certain attitude toward a proposition generally seem to do 

so by using more than one linguistic marker. This is the criterion I applied in my 

classification of this type of subjective progressive, so that my analysis is based 

on evidence from the cotext, i.e., on the presence of other devices available for 

expressing emotions in close vicinity to the progressive. 4 Apart from the use of 

modals, which clearly also express speaker-attitude based meanings, such devices 

include subjective markers such as interjections, lexical metaphorizations 5 and 

connotation-loaded lexemes (cf. also Hübler 998: 3). 6 

3.3 Type 3: Interpretative progressives 

The interpretative function of the progressive has not been recognized until rather 

recently, which has led to the assumption that the function as such is also of very 

recent date. 7 In my data, interpretative progressives occur from the earliest subperiod 

onwards, i.e., since the early seventeenth century, although they are not 

nearly as common as in later centuries. The interpretative progressive is characterized 

by the fact that “all the sentences consist of two parts, A and B[…]. The 

A part expresses [or consists of] the observed behaviour, the B part sums up or 

interprets this behaviour“ (Ljung 980: 70f.). One can notice that “it is the clause 

with the simple form […] which gives the more fundamental description, i.e., the 

14. In his analysis of this type of subjective progressive, Smitterberg (2005: 225f.) also checked 

the near context of the progressive for expressions of emotion. However, he applied this criterion 

only to the limited set of progressives which fulfilled three out of the four formal criteria – a 

procedure which will clearly yield a more limited number of instances and, in my view, miss out 

on a number of progressives best analysed as subjective. 

1 . The importance of metaphorical uses of the lexical verb has also been noted in this context 

by Fitzmaurice (2004a: 34). 

1 . Hübler ( 998) provides a helpful list of linguistic devices available for the expression of 

speaker-attitude, but he ends up going somewhat too far in his analysis of different grammatical 

constructions which he claims to have subjective functions, giving excessive importance to 

the subjective element in grammar, as e.g., in his claim that the subjective meaning is the core 

function of the OE progressive. 

1 . Buyssens ( 968: 36– 56) seems to be the first to have treated this function systematically. 

His claim, though, that no scholar before him had noticed this function is not tenable, since 

Charleston ( 955: 276) already recognized that a common use in PDE is that of “equating one 

action in the unexpanded form with another in the expanded form, the expanded form being in 

some way an interpretation of the action expressed in the unexpanded form”.


description which is nearer to the merely physical and is less dependent on wider 

circumstances” (König 980: 280), as is evident from the following examples: 

(9) A they dooe moste nimbly bestur themselvs 

B as if they were dancing the Hey. (=interpretation of A) 

(archerii\ 600–49.bre\ 634butl.p0b 43) 

( 0) A they wished him success, and prayed for him 

B as if he had been going to execution. 

(archer\ 750–99.bre\ 778reev.f3) 

Obviously, it would not be impossible to use a simple form in these contexts. 

However, it seems clear that in PDE the progressive is the preferred form in such 

uses (cf. König 980), and this seems to be a trend which is slowly starting in the 

period under consideration here. 

It is not necessary for two sentences to be present. If there are, the conjunction 

as if, as in the two examples above, often supports the interpretative meaning 

of the progressive, introducing a comparison which serves to elucidate the 

more basic description. But the role of the more basic A-part may also be some 

activity in the communicative situation that all participants are immediately aware 

of – often, this will be a speech act, as in (3) Nay, now, but don’t you go to think that 

I am asking for one, where the speaker rejects an interpretation that she assumes 

her interlocutor may have. 8 Such uses generally are not possible with a mere simple 

form of the verb. Rather, if a progressive is not chosen, one needs to express 

the interpretative function differently, e.g., by lexical choice or by a modal element 

(e.g., I wouldn’t ever ask for one). 

4. Objective progressives 

In order to evaluate the changing distribution of the subjective and objective 

meanings of the progressive in the data, it is necessary to relate very briefly which 

objective functions were distinguished. The function of the progressive is clearly 

a highly controversial topic. The idea that the progressive is a marker of aspect 

is, however, widely accepted, although whether it marks the general imperfective 

or only the progressive viewpoint is debated (cf. e.g., Hirtle 967; Goosens 994; 

Smith 997: 7 – 74). I have found both uses in the data and shall thus differentiate 

between the general imperfective (abbreviated ‘Imp.’ in the table) and the 

progressive function (abbreviated ‘Progr.’) of the progressive form. The former is 

1 . It has thus been noted by Girard (2002) that it is often verbs of saying that occur in this 

function in present-day English.


understood to be an aspectual marker which views the situation expressed by the 

predicate as having begun and not yet finished at topic time. 9 Progressive aspect 

is understood as a specific subtype of this general imperfective category which 

further qualifies the situation as being viewed dynamically, i.e., as in progress 

(cf. Bybee, Perkins & Pagliuca 994: 26f.). Another controversial aspect of this 

topic which, as it is not the focus of the present paper, I will only briefly touch 

upon in this context are the particular progressive + perfect effects (such as 

absence of result, focus on concomitant effects, cf. König 995: 62f.). 20 These 

meanings should be understood as being pragmatically rather than semantically 

determined, that is, as being induceable from the combination of the meanings of 

progressive and perfect where, however, the context only can offer clues about the 

actuation of one of the possible meanings. For the present purpose, I have grouped 

all of these pragmatic effects together. The important criterion for this chapter is 

only whether the progressive carries its aspectual meaning (which it clearly does 

when the product of the combination with the perfect are such effects as absence 

of result, cf. König 995: 63) or whether its function is rather subjective, as it is in 

the following example of an interpretative progressive in the perfect: 

( ) the Insect stood upon the inwards bulbous Part, and beat upon the outward Coat, 

as if it had been working it off as it went (archer\ 700–49.bre\ 724fair.s2 5 ) 

Quite similar to ( 0), this sentence in the past perfect progressive offers a more 

speaker-based view of the event described neutrally in the preceding sentence, using 

a comparison, while none of the typical effects of the combination of perfect 

and progressive in aspectual use – such as focus on duration, focus on recency, concomitant 

effects and absence of result – can be observed. In contrast, the following 

example can be classified as an objective/aspectual use of a perfect progressive: 

( 2) I was call’d out to see it [an odd apparition in the sky], by the Servants, who had 

been looking at it about half a quarter of an Hour 

(archer\ 700–49.bre\ 720perc.s2) 

Here, we have the typical focus on duration, made explicit by the adverbial (about 

half a quarter of an hour), and furthermore the situation described by the predicate 

is either still in progress at topic time or only recently stopped. 

1 . The term topic time goes back to Klein ( 994: 3) and refers to the time for which a claim is 

made about the situation expressed by the predicate. 

0. Understanding these meanings as pragmatically determined is preferred here, since 

attempts to analyse the perfect progressive in a strict formal semantic framework do not seem to 

be able to account for all characteristics of actual use (cf. Klein 994 and the criticism provided 

by Lucko 994).


. Subjective and objective progressives in the seventeenth 

and eighteenth century data of ARCHER-2 

The data from ARCHER-2 from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 2 clearly 

show a changing distribution of subjective and objective progressives, as shown in 

Table : 

Table 1. Objective and subjective uses of the progressive in the 7th and 8th century 

data from ARCHER-2 

Total 

Objective Subjective (per 

Progr. Obj. Subj. 100,000 

Time Imp. Progr. + perf. total Type Type 2 Type 3 total words) 

600– 649 6 – 7 2 3 2 7 24 

70.8% 29.2% (37.0) 

650– 699 3 75 4 82 6 2 2 20 02 

80.4% 9.6% (62.7) 

700– 749 – 2 0 22 5 2 2 9 4 

86.5% 3.5% (82.5) 

750– 799 5 5 67 4 3 8 75 

95.4% 4.6% ( 0 .0) 

It is evident from table that the objective functions are on a steady increase in 

the time-span under consideration, while the subjective uses decrease in relative 

frequency (even as the total frequency of all progressives is increasing). This can 

clearly be linked to the grammaticalization process the progressive is undergoing 

at that time. 

1. The subperiod 600– 649 was still under construction when I had the opportunity to 

access the corpus at the University of Heidelberg in June 2005. It includes only texts from two 

different text types, namely drama and fiction, while the other half-centuries taken into account 

here include eight different text types (apart from drama and fiction, these are news, journals, 

medical texts, science, religious texts and private letters), and it also includes a smaller number 

of words (64,92 words, while the other half centuries all have round about 70,000). Therefore, 

the results concerning the first half century will have to be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, 

I have included this time-span, since the numbers are still suggestive. Whether this halfcentury 

is included or not does not change anything about the general trend that appears clearly 

with or without its inclusion.


. The relation between subjectification/objectification 

and grammaticalization 

The reason why we find that objectification rather than subjectification accompanies 

the grammaticalization of the progressive in seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury 

English can be found in the fact that the progressive is undergoing a 

secondary grammaticalization process – a process through which a construction 

becomes more clearly grammatical, e.g., as its functions become a more fixed part 

of grammar. If we look at the preceding development of the form, we find that most 

scholars agree that the progressive had a peripheral status in grammar from OE 

up to EModE – it could be used for the expression of aspectual meaning, but was not 

obligatory in any context, and the choice was rather determined by idiosyncratic 

taste and questions of style. Now, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, it 

gradually becomes a part of the English tense-aspect system. In the nineteenth 

century this development will proceed further, as visible in a further considerable 

rise in frequency (cf. Arnaud 983, 998) and in such new developments as 

a formally marked passive (cf. Pratt & Denison 2000; Hundt 2004). But already in 

the eighteenth century the trend is very clear: in Table , we can see a steady rise 

in frequency and a clear change in the distributions of the objective and subjective 

functions. Over ninety percent of progressives in the second half of the eighteenth 

century are used to express aspectual meaning: in other words, the aspectual function 

clearly becomes the main one. 

The increase in the use of the form for aspectual functions, associated with 

the greater fixation of the grammatical meaning, necessarily lead to a decrease in 

the subjective functions of the construction, because, as the aspectual meaning 

becomes more fixed, the construction ceases to be available for the expression of 

speaker attitude in certain contexts. 22 This is obvious in PDE: if I must say I am 

working right now, because *I work right now would be ungrammatical, then I can 

obviously no longer invest the progressive in such contexts with any subjective 

shades of meaning. For an element to be available for the expression of speaker 

attitude, the speaker has to be free to choose whether or not to use it (cf. Hübler 

998: 5), so as soon as an element or construction has become an obligatory element 

of grammar, its meaning cannot become enriched any more by inferences 

that can produce subjective meaning. The present study of one particular secondary 

grammaticalization process may look like a slender empirical basis to support 

the general claim that secondary grammaticalization typically is accompanied by 

. The decline is both relative (from 29% to 5% of all progressives) and absolute (from 

instances per 00,000 words to 5).


a decrease or loss of subjective meanings, by objectification – but the one seems a 

logical consequence of the other. Furthermore, studies of other secondary grammaticalization 

processes show similar tendencies (Kranich 2007a). In Kranich 

(2007a), the grammaticalization of progressive constructions in the Romance 

languages was studied, and a similar tendency could be observed: subjective meanings 

are evidenced early on (when the constructions just emerge), but when the 

constructions acquire more clearly grammatical functions in secondary grammaticalization, 

such meanings get lost or become uncommon. 23 The reason behind 

such a general tendency is quite clear: in the course of secondary grammaticalization 

processes, elements or constructions acquire more fixed, more grammatical 

meanings, eventually often acquiring obligatory status. In these obligatory uses, 

they can be expected to lose the ability of expressing speaker attitude, thus overall 

tending toward the more objective as they become more grammatical. 

Source of data 

ARCHER-2, A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers 2. 990– 993/2002. Compiled 

under the supervision of Douglas Biber and Edward Finegan at Northern Arizona University, 

University of Southern California, University of Freiburg, University of Helsinki, 

Uppsala University and University of Heidelberg. 

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Arnaud, René. 998. The development of the progressive in 9th century English: A quantitative 

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Biber, Douglas. 988. Variation across speech and writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

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at the workshop What’s new about grammaticalization?, Freie Universität Berlin, May 2007. 

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Index of subjects, terms & languages 

Note: This index does not claim to be exhaustive. For instance, too familiar subjects 

with no special relevance to the discussion have been omitted. 

A 

adjunction 109, 118, 120, 123 

adposition 160, 168 

adverbs 3, 4, 6, 8–10, 12, 13, 

15, 119 

adverbs, derived 3, 8, 29, 38, 

70, 89, 98, 106, 109, 118, 

119, 123, 163, 183, 184, 186, 

190, 191, 193, 203 

affixation 184, 192, 193 

affixation, suspended 184, 198 

agreement phrase 161, 173 

Alfredian model of ‘good’ 

Anglo-Saxon 39 

analogical extension 25, 39, 

41, 46 

anaphoric reference 3, 4, 11, 

60, 95 

Anglian dialect 26–9 

aspectual distinctions 32, 33 

asymmetry 133, 134, 198 

auxiliary of the passive 25 

B 

Becuman 23, 25–7, 29, 35–46 

brachylogy, morphological 

194–199 

C 

clause types 49, 53, 55, 56, 65 

cleft constructions 203, 204, 

209, 210 

collocation 23, 41, 42, 45, 163, 

192 

complement constructions 223, 

229, 230, 239 

complex predicates 157–179 

Construction Grammar 23, 

29, 30 

conversion 166, 167, 170, 185–7, 

193, 94, 196, 199 

complement constructions 223, 

229, 230, 239 

complex predicates 157, 159, 

160–5, 169, 175–7 

conditions on adjunction 118 

coordinate clauses 49,–65 

coordination 56, 60, 64, 183, 

184, 187, 191–99 

copula 52, 54, 55, 61, 63, 85, 127, 

128, 209, 212 

copula-constructions 23–26, 

29, 30, 33–9, 42, 44, 46 

D 

deadjectival verb 174, 176 

denominal verbs 157, 166, 167, 

173, 176, 177 

derivational paradigm 193 

dialect 26–30, 105, 106, 129, 

138, 205, 211, 216 

dialectal variation 141–156 

discourse 3, 4, 7, 8, 10–20, 56, 

128, 211 

discourse partitioners 3, 8 

discourse strategies 3, 4 

E 

eall 109–18, 121–23 

Early Middle English (eME) 6, 

23, 27, 50, 55, 135, 143, 149, 

150, 151, 153–55 

Early Modern English 

(EModE) 75, 76, 78, 79, 

84, 86, 125, 126, 128, 133, 

138, 142, 183, 185, 190, 191, 

195, 196, 205, 230, 242 

ellipsis 183, 184, 194, 196, 198 

ellipsis, morphological 183, 

184, 194, 196, 198 

eighteenth-century English 253 

Emergent Grammar 218 

emotion matrix verbs 223, 227 

English 1, 3, 4, 6–8, 10–12, 15, 

19, 20, 49–52, 54, 55, 57, 

60–2, 65–7, 69–2, 74–9, 

81–7, 109, 111, 125–8, 131–8, 

141–55, 203–6, 209, 211–3, 

216, 219 

emancipation 42, 46 

existential verbs 49, 52, 53, 

55–8, 61 

extraposed relative clauses 152 

extraposition 133, 141, 142, 151, 

154, 155 

F 

floating quantifier 110, 111, 115, 

116, 120, 122 

focalized progressive 69, 70, 

72, 75, 86 

focus 8–10, 12, 13, 15, 50, 62, 63, 

72, 75, 203–05, 207, 209, 

210, 212, 213, 218 

focus marker 210–12, 214 

frame construction 72, 76, 78, 

79, 86 

French 69, 127, 132, 133, 203, 

208, 209, 217 

functional perspective 49, 50, 65 

G 

gap relativization strategy 147 

generalized linear mixed effect 

model 18 

general validity predications 226, 

234, 236–39

258 Index of subjects, terms & languages 

grammaticalization 73, 79, 

84, 86 

Gregory’s Dialogue 28 

ground 207 

H 

head-adjunction 120, 123 

high-level construction 29, 32 

high-level schemas 32 

historical dialectology 141, 

142, 145 

I 

identificational copular 

clauses 203, 204 

imperfectivity 73, 74 

information content 49, 63, 65 

-ing construction 229–31 

interpretative progressive 244, 

249, 251 

intransitive predication constructions 

45 

intraposed relative clause 152 

intraposition 154, 155 

invariable relativization strategy 

147 

it-cleft 207, 211, 213, 214, 215, 

217, 218 

L 

Late Middle English (LME) 

207 

Late Modern English (LModE) 

181–7, 190, 199, 223, 224, 

228, 229, 233, 239, 244 

Late Old English (LOE) 54, 103, 

104, 143, 148–50, 153, 154 

left-dislocated relative 

clauses 152 

left-dislocation 59, 151, 154, 155 

lexeme-independent constructional 

copula network 33 

Lexical Conceptual Structure 

166 

locative hypothesis 70, 84 

locative progressive 74 

low-level constructions 29 

M 

manner of motion verbs 174, 

176 

marker of the future 35 

Middle English (ME) 1, 6, 23, 

26, 27, 38, 42, 49, 50, 52, 

55, 65–7, 69, 71, 72, 75, 76, 

78, 79, 81–4, 86, 87, 103, 

104, 125, 127, 132, 135, 136, 

138, 141–6, 148–51, 153–55, 

170, 172, 191, 205, 207, 239, 

241, 244 

Midlands dialect 143, 144, 146, 

149, 150, 154, 155 

modalised construction 230, 

231, 235, 236 

morphological 13, 89, 92–4, 

100, 133, 134, 137, 138, 183, 

184, 193–9 

N 

network of constructions 25, 30 

non-agentivity 32 

non-volitionality 32 

non-coordinate clauses 49, 51, 

53–64 

North-South divide 142, 144, 

146, 154, 155 

Northern (English) 126, 133, 

141–5 

O 

object pronoun 12, 207, 209, 

210, 217, 218, 219 

object transfer 169 

objectification 241–3, 253, 254 

Old English (OE) 110, 205 

Old English poetry 27, 39 

Ormulum 28 

P 

paradigm 16, 19, 142, 145, 147, 

154, 216 

paradigm, derivational 193 

paradigmatic selection 183, 

184, 193, 195–7, 199 

parataxis-to-hypotaxis 

hypothesis 143, 151 

participle 69 

particle 8, 11, 15, 19 

passive construction 42–4, 

46, 138 

passive participle 24, 32, 35 

passive participle construction 

24 

paths 73 

perfect participle 

construction 24 

personal pronouns 4, 5, 7, 

94, 203 

phrasal verbs 157, 163–5, 173, 175 

prefixes 159, 166, 173 

preposition 69, 71, 147 

prepositional passive 43 

prescriptive grammarians 203, 

212 

present-day English 109, 134 

presupposition 10, 14, 72 

PROG imperfective drift 69, 

70, 73, 75, 78, 85, 86 

progressive 69–86 

pronominal relativization 

strategy 147 

Q 

quantifier phrase 117, 120 

quantitative analysis 3, 4, 16, 219 

R 

relative clause 11, 117, 141–3, 

146, 147, 151–55, 207, 210, 

211, 213–5, 217, 218 

relative marking 211 

relativization 141–3, 145–8, 

151, 211 

relativizer 146, 148–50, 154, 

207, 210, 211 

resultatives 165, 167 

rhythm 203 

Romance 71, 74, 75 

S 

satellite-framed languages 176 

schematic construction 165, 

167 

se, seo, þæt 10, 11, 13, 93–5, 

101, 146 

semantic bleaching 166 

seventeenth-century 

English 241, 242, 253 

Southern dialect 27, 141, 142, 150 

specific predication 229, 232 

speech-based registers 207 

standardization 205 

stative progressive 75, 80–86 

structural reanalysis 42 

subjective progressive 246, 247 

subject pronoun 12, 203, 208, 218 

subjectification 241–243

SVX pattern 55, 62, 63 

symmetry 183, 188, 189, 194, 

195, 199 

syntactic cliticization 5 

T 

telicity 159, 164 

thematic role 161 

time stability 44–46 

time-stable predicate 42, 46 

time-unstable predicate 42, 

44–5 

to-infinitive 223–9, 231, 232, 

236–39 

topic function 43 

topicalization 211 

topicalizing strategy 43 

transitive construction 35, 45 

truncated it-clefts 214, 217, 218 

U 

unaccusative 121, 122, 126, 135 

unergative verbs 171–3 

‘unselected’ objects 157, 161, 

163, 164, 171, 173, 174, 

176, 77 

V 

verb-framed languages 176 

verb-medial 49, 51, 58, 62, 65 

verb-second 49, 51, 58, 62, 

126, 145 

verb distribution 49, 62, 65 

verbs with complement 49, 52, 

55, 57–9, 60–2 

verbs without complement 49, 

52, 53 

verb types 49, 51, 53, 54, 58, 60, 

64, 65, 81 

W 

weak demonstratives 10 

word order 3–5, 8, 12, 49–51, 

53, 54, 57–9, 60–3, 65, 114, 

121, 205 

West-Germanic 8, 176 

Index of subjects, terms & languages 259 

West Saxon 26, 80, 142, 144, 

145, 148, 150 

wh-relativizer 146 

word order 3, 5, 8, 12, 43, 49, 

50–55, 57–63, 65, 102, 114, 

117, 121, 145, 157, 171, 205 

X 

XVS (pattern) 49, 55, 56, 58, 

61, 65 

XSV (pattern) 49, 50, 55, 61, 62 

Y 

YCOE: The York-Toronto- 

Helsinki Parsed Corpus of 

Old English Prose 6, 16, 

18, 27, 111 

Z 

zero morphology 183, 185 

zero relative clauses 147–9, 

210, 211

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282 Prieto, Pilar, Joan MasCaró and Maria-Josep solé (eds.): Segmental and prosodic issues in 

Romance phonology. 2007. xvi, 262 pp. 

281 VerMeerBerGen, Myriam, lorraine leeson and onno CrasBorn (eds.): Simultaneity in Signed 

Languages. Form and function. 2007. viii, 360 pp. (incl. CD-Rom). 

280 hewson, John and Vit BuBeniK: From Case to Adposition. The development of configurational syntax 

in Indo-European languages. 2006. xxx, 420 pp.

279 neDerGaarD thoMsen, ole (ed.): Competing Models of Linguistic Change. Evolution and beyond. 

2006. vi, 344 pp. 

278 DoetJes, Jenny and Paz González (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2004. Selected 

papers from ‘Going Romance’, Leiden, 9–11 December 2004. 2006. viii, 320 pp. 

277 helasVuo, Marja-liisa and lyle CaMPBell (eds.): Grammar from the Human Perspective. Case, 

space and person in Finnish. 2006. x, 280 pp. 

276 Montreuil, Jean-Pierre y. (ed.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. II: Phonetics, 

Phonology and Dialectology. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages 

(LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. x, 213 pp. 

275 nishiDa, Chiyo and Jean-Pierre y. Montreuil (eds.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. 

I: Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on 

Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. xiv, 288 pp. 

274 Gess, randall s. and Deborah arteaGa (eds.): Historical Romance Linguistics. Retrospective and 

perspectives. 2006. viii, 393 pp. 

273 FilPPula, Markku, Juhani KleMola, Marjatta PalanDer and esa Penttilä (eds.): Dialects 

Across Borders. Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology 

(Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002. 2005. xii, 291 pp. 

272 Gess, randall s. and edward J. ruBin (eds.): Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Romance 

Linguistics. Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Salt Lake 

City, March 2004. 2005. viii, 367 pp. 

271 Branner, David Prager (ed.): The Chinese Rime Tables. Linguistic philosophy and historicalcomparative 

phonology. 2006. viii, 358 pp. 

270 Geerts, twan, ivo van GinneKen and haike JaCoBs (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic 

Theory 2003. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2003, Nijmegen, 20–22 November. 2005. viii, 369 pp. 

269 harGus, sharon and Keren riCe (eds.): Athabaskan Prosody. 2005. xii, 432 pp. 

268 CraVens, Thomas D. (ed.): Variation and Reconstruction. 2006. viii, 223 pp. 

267 alhawary, Mohammad t. and elabbas BenMaMoun (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics 

XVII–XVIII. Papers from the seventeenth and eighteenth annual symposia on Arabic linguistics. Volume 

XVII–XVIII: Alexandria, 2003 and Norman, Oklahoma 2004. 2005. xvi, 315 pp. 

266 BouDelaa, sami (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XVI. Papers from the sixteenth annual 

symposium on Arabic linguistics, Cambridge, March 2002. 2006. xii, 181 pp. 

265 CorniPs, leonie and Karen P. CorriGan (eds.): Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and 

the Social. 2005. vi, 312 pp. 

264 Dressler, wolfgang u., Dieter KastoVsKy, oskar e. PFeiFFer and Franz rainer (eds.): 

Morphology and its demarcations. Selected papers from the 11th Morphology meeting, Vienna, February 

2004. With the assistance of Francesco Gardani and Markus A. Pöchtrager. 2005. xiv, 320 pp. 

263 BranCo, antónio, tony Mcenery and ruslan MitKoV (eds.): Anaphora Processing. Linguistic, 

cognitive and computational modelling. 2005. x, 449 pp. 

262 VaJDa, edward J. (ed.): Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia. 2004. x, 275 pp. 

261 Kay, Christian J. and Jeremy J. sMith (eds.): Categorization in the History of English. 2004. viii, 268 pp. 

260 niColoV, nicolas, Kalina BontCheVa, Galia anGeloVa and ruslan MitKoV (eds.): Recent 

Advances in Natural Language Processing III. Selected papers from RANLP 2003. 2004. xii, 402 pp. 

259 Carr, Philip, Jacques DuranD and Colin J. ewen (eds.): Headhood, Elements, Specification and 

Contrastivity. Phonological papers in honour of John Anderson. 2005. xxviii, 405 pp. 

258 auGer, Julie, J. Clancy CleMents and Barbara VanCe (eds.): Contemporary Approaches to 

Romance Linguistics. Selected Papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), 

Bloomington, Indiana, April 2003. With the assistance of Rachel T. Anderson. 2004. viii, 404 pp. 

257 FortesCue, Michael, eva skafte Jensen, Jens erik MoGensen and lene sChøsler (eds.): 

Historical Linguistics 2003. Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical 

Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003. 2005. x, 312 pp. 

256 BoK-BenneMa, reineke, Bart holleBranDse, Brigitte KaMPers-Manhe and Petra 

sleeMan (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, 

Groningen, 28–30 November 2002. 2004. viii, 273 pp. 

255 Meulen, alice ter and werner aBrahaM (eds.): The Composition of Meaning. From lexeme to 

discourse. 2004. vi, 232 pp. 

254 BalDi, Philip and Pietro u. Dini (eds.): Studies in Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics. In honor of 

William R. Schmalstieg. 2004. xlvi, 302 pp. 

253 CaFFarel, alice, J.r. Martin and Christian M.i.M. Matthiessen (eds.): Language Typology. A 

functional perspective. 2004. xiv, 702 pp.

252 Kay, Christian J., Carole houGh and irené wothersPoon (eds.): New Perspectives on English 

Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume II: Lexis and 

Transmission. 2004. xii, 273 pp. 

251 Kay, Christian J., simon horoBin and Jeremy J. sMith (eds.): New Perspectives on English 

Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume I: Syntax and 

Morphology. 2004. x, 264 pp. 

250 Jensen, John t.: Principles of Generative Phonology. An introduction. 2004. xii, 324 pp. 

249 Bowern, Claire and harold KoCh (eds.): Australian Languages. Classification and the comparative 

method. 2004. xii, 377 pp. (incl. CD-Rom). 

248 weiGanD, edda (ed.): Emotion in Dialogic Interaction. Advances in the complex. 2004. xii, 284 pp. 

247 ParKinson, Dilworth B. and samira Farwaneh (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XV. Papers 

from the Fifteenth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Salt Lake City 2001. 2003. x, 214 pp. 

246 holisKy, Dee ann and Kevin tuite (eds.): Current Trends in Caucasian, East European and Inner 

Asian Linguistics. Papers in honor of Howard I. Aronson. 2003. xxviii, 426 pp. 

245 Quer, Josep, Jan sChroten, Mauro sCorretti, Petra sleeMan and els VerheuGD (eds.): 

Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001. Selected papers from 'Going Romance', Amsterdam, 6–8 

December 2001. 2003. viii, 355 pp. 

244 Pérez-leroux, ana teresa and yves roBerGe (eds.): Romance Linguistics. Theory and Acquisition. 

Selected papers from the 32nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Toronto, April 2002. 

2003. viii, 388 pp. 

243 CuyCKens, hubert, Thomas BerG, rené DirVen and Klaus-uwe Panther (eds.): Motivation in 

Language. Studies in honor of Günter Radden. 2003. xxvi, 403 pp. 

242 seuren, Pieter a.M. and Gerard KeMPen (eds.): Verb Constructions in German and Dutch. 2003. 

vi, 316 pp. 

241 leCarMe, Jacqueline (ed.): Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II. Selected papers from the Fifth 

Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Paris, 2000. 2003. viii, 550 pp. 

240 Janse, Mark and sijmen tol (eds.): Language Death and Language Maintenance. Theoretical, practical 

and descriptive approaches. With the assistance of Vincent Hendriks. 2003. xviii, 244 pp. 

239 anDersen, henning (ed.): Language Contacts in Prehistory. Studies in Stratigraphy. Papers from the 

Workshop on Linguistic Stratigraphy and Prehistory at the Fifteenth International Conference on Historical 

Linguistics, Melbourne, 17 August 2001. 2003. viii, 292 pp. 

238 núñez-CeDeño, rafael, luis lóPez and richard CaMeron (eds.): A Romance Perspective on 

Language Knowledge and Use. Selected papers from the 31st Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages 

(LSRL), Chicago, 19–22 April 2001. 2003. xvi, 386 pp. 

237 BlaKe, Barry J. and Kate BurriDGe (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2001. Selected papers from the 15th 

International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13–17 August 2001. Editorial assistance Jo 

Taylor. 2003. x, 444 pp. 

236 siMon-VanDenBerGen, anne-Marie, Miriam taVerniers and louise J. raVelli (eds.): 

Grammatical Metaphor. Views from systemic functional linguistics. 2003. vi, 453 pp. 

235 linn, andrew r. and nicola MclellanD (eds.): Standardization. Studies from the Germanic languages. 

2002. xii, 258 pp. 

234 weiJer, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van heuVen and harry van der hulst (eds.): The Phonological 

Spectrum. Volume II: Suprasegmental structure. 2003. x, 264 pp. 

233 weiJer, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van heuVen and harry van der hulst (eds.): The Phonological 

Spectrum. Volume I: Segmental structure. 2003. x, 308 pp. 

232 BeyssaDe, Claire, reineke BoK-BenneMa, Frank DriJKoninGen and Paola MonaChesi 

(eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2000. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2000, 

Utrecht, 30 November–2 December. 2002. viii, 354 pp. 

231 CraVens, Thomas D.: Comparative Historical Dialectology. Italo-Romance clues to Ibero-Romance 

sound change. 2002. xii, 163 pp. 

230 ParKinson, Dilworth B. and elabbas BenMaMoun (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. 

Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XIII-XIV: Stanford, 1999 and Berkeley, 

California 2000. 2002. xiv, 250 pp. 

229 neVin, Bruce e. and stephen B. Johnson (eds.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and 

information into the 21st century. Volume 2: Mathematics and computability of language. 2002. xx, 312 pp. 

228 neVin, Bruce e. (ed.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and information into the 21st century. 

Volume 1: Philosophy of science, syntax and semantics. 2002. xxxvi, 323 pp. 

227 FaVa, elisabetta (ed.): Clinical Linguistics. Theory and applications in speech pathology and therapy. 2002. 

xxiv, 353 pp.

226 leVin, saul: Semitic and Indo-European. Volume II: Comparative morphology, syntax and phonetics. 

2002. xviii, 592 pp. 

225 shahin, Kimary n.: Postvelar Harmony. 2003. viii, 344 pp. 

224 FaneGo, teresa, Belén MénDez-naya and elena seoane (eds.): Sounds, Words, Texts and Change. 

Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000. Volume 2. 2002. x, 310 pp. 

223 FaneGo, teresa, Javier Pérez-Guerra and María José lóPez-Couso (eds.): English Historical 

Syntax and Morphology. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000. 

Volume 1. 2002. x, 306 pp. 

222 hersChensohn, Julia, enrique Mallén and Karen zaGona (eds.): Features and Interfaces in 

Romance. Essays in honor of Heles Contreras. 2001. xiv, 302 pp. 

221 D’hulst, yves, Johan rooryCK and Jan sChroten (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic 

Theory 1999. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 1999, Leiden, 9–11 December 1999. 2001. viii, 406 pp. 

220 satterFielD, teresa, Christina tortora and Diana Cresti (eds.): Current Issues in Romance 

Languages. Selected papers from the 29th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Ann 

Arbor, 8–11 April 1999. 2002. viii, 412 pp. 

219 anDersen, henning (ed.): Actualization. Linguistic Change in Progress. Papers from a workshop held 

at the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C., 14 August 1999. 2001. 

vii, 250 pp. 

218 BenDJaBallah, sabrina, wolfgang u. Dressler, oskar e. PFeiFFer and Maria D. VoeiKoVa 

(eds.): Morphology 2000. Selected papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, 24–28 February 2000. 

2002. viii, 317 pp. 

217 wiltshire, Caroline r. and Joaquim CaMPs (eds.): Romance Phonology and Variation. Selected 

papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February 2000. 

2002. xii, 238 pp. 

216 CaMPs, Joaquim and Caroline r. wiltshire (eds.): Romance Syntax, Semantics and L2 Acquisition. 

Selected papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February 

2000. 2001. xii, 246 pp. 

215 Brinton, laurel J. (ed.): Historical Linguistics 1999. Selected papers from the 14th International 

Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999. 2001. xii, 398 pp. 

214 weiGanD, edda and Marcelo DasCal (eds.): Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction. 2001. 

viii, 303 pp. 

213 sorniCola, rosanna, erich PoPPe and ariel shisha-haleVy (eds.): Stability, Variation and 

Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time. With the assistance of Paola Como. 2000. xxxii, 323 pp. 

212 rePetti, lori (ed.): Phonological Theory and the Dialects of Italy. 2000. x, 301 pp. 

211 elšíK, Viktor and yaron Matras (eds.): Grammatical Relations in Romani. The Noun Phrase. with a 

Foreword by Frans Plank (Universität Konstanz). 2000. x, 244 pp. 

210 DworKin, steven n. and Dieter wanner (eds.): New Approaches to Old Problems. Issues in Romance 

historical linguistics. 2000. xiv, 235 pp. 

209 KinG, ruth: The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing. A Prince Edward Island French case study. 

2000. xvi, 241 pp. 

208 roBinson, orrin w.: Whose German? The ach/ich alternation and related phenomena in ‘standard’ and 

‘colloquial’. 2001. xii, 178 pp. 

207 sanz, Montserrat: Events and Predication. A new approach to syntactic processing in English and 

Spanish. 2000. xiv, 219 pp. 

206 FawCett, robin P.: A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics. 2000. xxiv, 360 pp. 

205 DirVen, rené, roslyn M. FranK and Cornelia ilie (eds.): Language and Ideology. Volume 2: 

descriptive cognitive approaches. 2001. vi, 264 pp. 

204 DirVen, rené, Bruce hawKins and esra sanDiKCioGlu (eds.): Language and Ideology. Volume 1: 

theoretical cognitive approaches. 2001. vi, 301 pp. 

203 norriCK, neal r.: Conversational Narrative. Storytelling in everyday talk. 2000. xiv, 233 pp. 

202 leCarMe, Jacqueline, Jean lowenstaMM and ur shlonsKy (eds.): Research in Afroasiatic 

Grammar. Papers from the Third conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Sophia Antipolis, 1996. 2000. 

vi, 386 pp. 

201 Dressler, wolfgang u., oskar e. PFeiFFer, Markus a. PöChtraGer and John r. rennison 

(eds.): Morphological Analysis in Comparison. 2000. x, 261 pp. 

200 anttila, raimo: Greek and Indo-European Etymology in Action. Proto-Indo-European *aǵ-. 2000. 

xii, 314 pp. 

199 Pütz, Martin and Marjolijn h. VersPoor (eds.): Explorations in Linguistic Relativity. 2000. 

xvi, 369 pp.

198 nieMeier, susanne and rené DirVen (eds.): Evidence for Linguistic Relativity. 2000. xxii, 240 pp. 

197 CooPMans, Peter, Martin eVeraert and Jane GriMshaw (eds.): Lexical Specification and 

Insertion. 2000. xviii, 476 pp. 

196 hannahs, s.J. and Mike DaVenPort (eds.): Issues in Phonological Structure. Papers from an 

International Workshop. 1999. xii, 268 pp. 

195 herrinG, susan C., Pieter van reenen and lene sChøsler (eds.): Textual Parameters in Older 

Languages. 2001. x, 448 pp. 

194 ColeMan, Julie and Christian J. Kay (eds.): Lexicology, Semantics and Lexicography. Selected papers 

from the Fourth G. L. Brook Symposium, Manchester, August 1998. 2000. xiv, 257 pp. 

193 KlausenBurGer, Jurgen: Grammaticalization. Studies in Latin and Romance morphosyntax. 2000. 

xiv, 184 pp. 

192 alexanDroVa, Galina M. and olga arnauDoVa (eds.): The Minimalist Parameter. Selected papers 

from the Open Linguistics Forum, Ottawa, 21–23 March 1997. 2001. x, 360 pp. 

191 sihler, andrew l.: Language History. An introduction. 2000. xvi, 298 pp. 

190 BenMaMoun, elabbas (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on 

Arabic Linguistics. Volume XII: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 1998. 1999. viii, 204 pp. 

189 niColoV, nicolas and ruslan MitKoV (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing II. 

Selected papers from RANLP ’97. 2000. xi, 422 pp. 

188 siMMons, richard Vanness: Chinese Dialect Classification. A comparative approach to Harngjou, Old 

Jintarn, and Common Northern Wu. 1999. xviii, 317 pp. 

187 FranCo, Jon a., alazne lanDa and Juan Martín (eds.): Grammatical Analyses in Basque and 

Romance Linguistics. Papers in honor of Mario Saltarelli. 1999. viii, 306 pp. 

186 MišesKa toMić, olga and Milorad raDoVanoVić (eds.): History and Perspectives of Language 

Study. Papers in honor of Ranko Bugarski. 2000. xxii, 314 pp. 

185 authier, Jean-Marc, Barbara e. BulloCK and lisa a. reeD (eds.): Formal Perspectives on Romance 

Linguistics. Selected papers from the 28th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXVIII), 

University Park, 16–19 April 1998. 1999. xii, 334 pp. 

184 saGart, laurent: The Roots of Old Chinese. 1999. xii, 272 pp. 

183 Contini-MoraVa, ellen and yishai toBin (eds.): Between Grammar and Lexicon. 2000. 

xxxii, 365 pp. 

182 Kenesei, istván (ed.): Crossing Boundaries. Advances in the theory of Central and Eastern European 

languages. 1999. viii, 302 pp. 

181 MohaMMaD, Mohammad a.: Word Order, Agreement and Pronominalization in Standard and 

Palestinian Arabic. 2000. xvi, 197 pp. 

180 Mereu, lunella (ed.): Boundaries of Morphology and Syntax. 1999. viii, 314 pp. 

179 rini, Joel: Exploring the Role of Morphology in the Evolution of Spanish. 1999. xvi, 187 pp. 

178 Foolen, ad and Frederike van der leeK (eds.): Constructions in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers 

from the Fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. 2000. xvi, 338 pp. 

177 CuyCKens, hubert and Britta e. zawaDa (eds.): Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers 

from the International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. 2001. xxviii, 296 pp. 

176 Van hoeK, Karen, andrej a. KiBriK and leo noorDMan (eds.): Discourse Studies in Cognitive 

Linguistics. Selected papers from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, July 

1997. 1999. vi, 187 pp. 

175 GiBBs, Jr., raymond w. and Gerard J. steen (eds.): Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers 

from the 5th International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Amsterdam, 1997. 1999. viii, 226 pp. 

174 hall, t. alan and ursula Kleinhenz (eds.): Studies on the Phonological Word. 1999. viii, 298 pp. 

173 treViño, esthela and José leMa (eds.): Semantic Issues in Romance Syntax. 1999. viii, 309 pp. 

172 DiMitroVa-VulChanoVa, Mila and lars hellan (eds.): Topics in South Slavic Syntax and 

Semantics. 1999. xxviii, 263 pp. 

171 weiGanD, edda (ed.): Contrastive Lexical Semantics. 1998. x, 270 pp. 

170 laMB, sydney M.: Pathways of the Brain. The neurocognitive basis of language. 1999. xii, 418 pp. 

169 GhaDessy, Mohsen (ed.): Text and Context in Functional Linguistics. 1999. xviii, 340 pp. 

168 ratCliFFe, robert r.: The “Broken” Plural Problem in Arabic and Comparative Semitic. Allomorphy and 

analogy in non-concatenative morphology. 1998. xii, 261 pp. 

167 BenMaMoun, elabbas, Mushira eiD and niloofar haeri (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. 

Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XI: Atlanta, Georgia, 1997. 1998. 

viii, 231 pp. 

166 leMMens, Maarten: Lexical Perspectives on Transitivity and Ergativity. Causative constructions in 

English. 1998. xii, 268 pp.

165 BuBeniK, Vit: A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhraṃśa). 1998. xxiv, 265 pp. 

164 sChMiD, Monika s., Jennifer r. austin and Dieter stein (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1997. Selected 

papers from the 13th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Düsseldorf, 10–17 August 1997. 

1998. x, 409 pp. 

163 loCKwooD, David G., Peter h. Fries and James e. CoPelanD (eds.): Functional Approaches to 

Language, Culture and Cognition. Papers in honor of Sydney M. Lamb. 2000. xxxiv, 656 pp. 

162 hoGG, richard M. and linda van BerGen (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1995. Volume 2: Germanic 

linguistics.. Selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Manchester, 

August 1995. 1998. x, 365 pp. 

161 sMith, John Charles and Delia Bentley (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1995. Volume 1: General issues 

and non-Germanic Languages.. Selected papers from the 12th International Conference on Historical 

Linguistics, Manchester, August 1995. 2000. xii, 438 pp. 

160 sChweGler, armin, Bernard tranel and Myriam uriBe-etxeBarria (eds.): Romance 

Linguistics: Theoretical Perspectives. Selected papers from the 27th Linguistic Symposium on Romance 

Languages (LSRL XXVII), Irvine, 20–22 February, 1997. 1998. vi, 349 pp. + index. 

159 JosePh, Brian D., Geoffrey C. horroCKs and irene PhiliPPaKi-warBurton (eds.): Themes in 

Greek Linguistics II. 1998. x, 335 pp. 

158 sánChez-MaCarro, antonia and ronald Carter (eds.): Linguistic Choice across Genres. Variation 

in spoken and written English. 1998. viii, 338 pp. 

157 leMa, José and esthela treViño (eds.): Theoretical Analyses on Romance Languages. Selected papers 

from the 26th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXVI), Mexico City, 28–30 March, 

1996. 1998. viii, 380 pp. 

156 Matras, yaron, Peter BaKKer and hristo KyuChuKoV (eds.): The Typology and Dialectology of 

Romani. 1997. xxxii, 223 pp. 

155 ForGet, Danielle, Paul hirsChBühler, France Martineau and María luisa riVero (eds.): 

Negation and Polarity. Syntax and semantics. Selected papers from the colloquium Negation: Syntax and 

Semantics. Ottawa, 11–13 May 1995. 1997. viii, 367 pp. 

154 siMon-VanDenBerGen, anne-Marie, Kristin DaViDse and Dirk noël (eds.): Reconnecting 

Language. Morphology and Syntax in Functional Perspectives. 1997. xiii, 339 pp. 

153 eiD, Mushira and robert r. ratCliFFe (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the 

Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume X: Salt Lake City, 1996. 1997. vii, 296 pp. 

152 hiraGa, Masako K., Chris sinha and sherman wilCox (eds.): Cultural, Psychological and 

Typological Issues in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers of the bi-annual ICLA meeting in Albuquerque, 

July 1995. 1999. viii, 338 pp. 

151 lieBert, wolf-andreas, Gisela reDeKer and linda r. wauGh (eds.): Discourse and Perspective in 

Cognitive Linguistics. 1997. xiv, 270 pp. 

150 VersPoor, Marjolijn h., Kee Dong lee and eve sweetser (eds.): Lexical and Syntactical 

Constructions and the Construction of Meaning. Proceedings of the Bi-annual ICLA meeting in 

Albuquerque, July 1995. 1997. xii, 454 pp. 

149 hall, t. alan: The Phonology of Coronals. 1997. x, 176 pp. 

148 wolF, George and nigel loVe (eds.): Linguistics Inside Out. Roy Harris and his critics. 1997. 

xxviii, 344 pp. 

147 hewson, John: The Cognitive System of the French Verb. 1997. xii, 187 pp. 

146 hinsKens, Frans, roeland van hout and w. leo wetzels (eds.): Variation, Change, and 

Phonological Theory. 1997. x, 314 pp. 

145 hewson, John and Vit BuBeniK: Tense and Aspect in Indo-European Languages. Theory, typology, 

diachrony. 1997. xii, 403 pp. 

144 sinGh, rajendra (ed.): Trubetzkoy's Orphan. Proceedings of the Montréal Roundtable on 

“Morphonology: contemporary responses” (Montréal, October 1994). In collaboration with Richard 

Desrochers. 1996. xiv, 363 pp. 

143 athanasiaDou, angeliki and rené DirVen (eds.): On Conditionals Again. 1997. viii, 418 pp. 

142 salMons, Joseph C. and Brian D. JosePh (eds.): Nostratic. Sifting the Evidence. 1998. vi, 293 pp. 

141 eiD, Mushira and Dilworth B. ParKinson (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the 

Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume IX: Washington D.C., 1995. 1996. xiii, 249 pp. 

140 BlaCK, James r. and Virginia MotaPanyane (eds.): Clitics, Pronouns and Movement. 1997. 375 pp. 

139 BlaCK, James r. and Virginia MotaPanyane (eds.): Microparametric Syntax and Dialect Variation. 

1996. xviii, 269 pp. 

138 saCKMann, robin and Monika BuDDe (eds.): Theoretical Linguistics and Grammatical Description. 

Papers in honour of Hans-Heinrich Lieb. 1996. x, 375 pp.

137 liPPi-Green, rosina l. and Joseph C. salMons (eds.): Germanic Linguistics. Syntactic and 

diachronic. 1996. viii, 192 pp. 

136 MitKoV, ruslan and nicolas niColoV (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing. 

Selected Papers from RANLP ’95. 1997. xii, 472 pp. 

135 Britton, Derek (ed.): English Historical Linguistics 1994. Papers from the 8th International Conference 

on English Historical Linguistics (8 ICEHL, Edinburgh, 19–23 September 1994). 1996. viii, 403 pp. 

134 eiD, Mushira (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic 

Linguistics. Volume VIII: Amherst, Massachusetts 1994. 1996. vii, 261 pp. 

133 zaGona, Karen (ed.): Grammatical Theory and Romance Languages. Selected papers from the 25th 

Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL XXV) Seattle, 2–4 March 1995. 1996. vi, 330 pp. 

132 hersChensohn, Julia: Case Suspension and Binary Complement Structure in French. 1996. xi, 200 pp. 

131 hualDe, José ignacio, Joseba a. laKarra and r.l. trasK (eds.): Towards a History of the Basque 

Language. 1996. 365 pp. 


Linguistics. Volume VII: Austin, Texas 1993. 1995. vii, 192 pp. 

129 leVin, saul: Semitic and Indo-European. Volume I: The Principal Etymologies. With observations on 

Afro-Asiatic. 1995. xxii, 514 pp. 

128 Guy, Gregory r., Crawford FeaGin, Deborah sChiFFrin and John BauGh (eds.): Towards a 

Social Science of Language. Papers in honor of William Labov. Volume 2: Social interaction and discourse 

structures. 1997. xviii, 358 pp. 

127 Guy, Gregory r., Crawford FeaGin, Deborah sChiFFrin and John BauGh (eds.): Towards a Social 

Science of Language. Papers in honor of William Labov. Volume 1: Variation and change in language and 

society. 1996. xviii, 436 pp. 

126 Matras, yaron (ed.): Romani in Contact. The history, structure and sociology of a language. 1995. 

xvii, 208 pp. 

125 sinGh, rajendra (ed.): Towards a Critical Sociolinguistics. 1996. xiii, 342 pp. 

124 anDersen, henning (ed.): Historical Linguistics 1993. Selected papers from the 11th International 

Conference on Historical Linguistics, Los Angeles, 16–20 August 1993. 1995. x, 460 pp. 

123 aMastae, Jon, Grant GooDall, M. MontalBetti and M. Phinney (eds.): Contemporary 

Research in Romance Linguistics. Papers from the XXII Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, El 

Paso/Juárez, February 22–24, 1992. 1995. viii, 381 pp. 

122 sMith, John Charles and Martin MaiDen (eds.): Linguistic Theory and the Romance Languages. 1995. 

xiii, 240 pp. 

121 hasan, ruqaiya, Carmel Cloran and David G. Butt (eds.): Functional Descriptions. Theory in 

practice. 1996. xxxvi, 381 pp. 

120 stonhaM, John t.: Combinatorial Morphology. 1994. xii, 206 pp. 

119 liPPi-Green, rosina l.: Language Ideology and Language Change in Early Modern German. A 

sociolinguistic study of the consonantal system of Nuremberg. 1994. xiv, 150 pp. 

118 hasan, ruqaiya and Peter h. Fries (eds.): On Subject and Theme. A discourse functional perspective. 

1995. xii, 414 pp. 

117 PhiliPPaKi-warBurton, irene, Katerina niColaiDis and Maria siFianou (eds.): Themes in 

Greek Linguistics. Papers from the First International Conference on Greek Linguistics, Reading, September 

1993. 1994. xviii, 534 pp. 

116 Miller, D. Gary: Ancient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge. 1994. xvi, 139 pp. 

115 eiD, Mushira, Vicente Cantarino and Keith walters (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. 

Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. VolumeVI: Columbus, Ohio 1992. 1994. 

viii, 238 pp. 

114 eGli, urs, Peter e. Pause, Christoph sChwarze, arnim von steChow and Götz wienolD 

(eds.): Lexical Knowledge in the Organization of Language. 1995. xiv, 367 pp. 

113 Moreno FernánDez, Francisco, Miguel Fuster and Juan Jose CalVo (eds.): English Historical 

Linguistics 1992. Papers from the 7th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Valencia, 

22–26 September 1992. 1994. viii, 388 pp. 

112 Culioli, antoine: Cognition and Representation in Linguistic Theory. Texts selected, edited and 

introduced by Michel Liddle. Translated with the assistance of John T. Stonham. 1995. x, 161 pp. 

111 toBin, yishai: Invariance, Markedness and Distinctive Feature Analysis. A contrastive study of sign 

systems in English and Hebrew. 1994. xxii, 406 pp. 

110 siMone, raffaele (ed.): Iconicity in Language. 1995. xii, 315 pp. 

109 PaGliuCa, william (ed.): Perspectives on Grammaticalization. 1994. xx, 306 pp.

108 lieB, hans-heinrich: Linguistic Variables. Towards a unified theory of linguistic variation. 1993. 

xiv, 261 pp. 

107 Marle, Jaap van (ed.): Historical Linguistics 1991. Papers from the 10th International Conference on 

Historical Linguistics, Amsterdam, August 12–16, 1991. 1993. xviii, 395 pp. 

106 aertsen, henk and robert J. JeFFers (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1989. Papers from the 9th 

International Conference on Historical Linguistics, New Brunswick, 14–18 August 1989. 1993. xviii, 538 pp. 

105 hualDe, José ignacio and Jon ortiz de urBina (eds.): Generative Studies in Basque Linguistics. 1993. 

vi, 334 pp. 

104 KurzoVá, helena: From Indo-European to Latin. The evolution of a morphosyntactic type. 1993. 

xiv, 259 pp. 

103 ashBy, william J., Marianne Mithun and Giorgio Perissinotto (eds.): Linguistic Perspectives on 

Romance Languages. Selected Papers from the XXI Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Santa 

Barbara, February 21–24, 1991. 1993. xxii, 404 pp. 

102 DaVis, Philip w. (ed.): Alternative Linguistics. Descriptive and theoretical modes. 1996. vii, 325 pp. 

101 eiD, Mushira and Clive holes (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual 

Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume V: Ann Arbor, Michigan 1991. 1993. viii, 347 pp. 

100 MuFwene, salikoko s. and lioba Moshi (eds.): Topics in African Linguistics. Papers from the XXI 

Annual Conference on African Linguistics, University of Georgia, April 1990. 1993. x, 304 pp. 

99 Jensen, John t.: English Phonology. 1993. x, 251 pp. 

98 eiD, Mushira and Gregory K. iVerson (eds.): Principles and Prediction. The analysis of natural 

language. Papers in honor of Gerald Sanders. 1993. xix, 382 pp. 

97 BroGyanyi, Bela and reiner liPP (eds.): Comparative-Historical Linguistics: Indo-European and 

Finno-Ugric. Papers in honor of Oswald Szemerényi III. 1993. xii, 566 pp. 

96 lieB, hans-heinrich (ed.): Prospects for a New Structuralism. 1992. vii, 275 pp. 

95 Miller, D. Gary: Complex Verb Formation. 1993. xx, 381 pp. 

94 haGèGe, Claude: The Language Builder. An essay on the human signature in linguistic morphogenesis. 

1993. xii, 283 pp. 

93 liPPi-Green, rosina l. (ed.): Recent Developments in Germanic Linguistics. 1992. xii, 163 pp. 

92 Poyatos, Fernando: Paralanguage: A linguistic and interdisciplinary approach to interactive speech and 

sounds. 1993. xii, 478 pp. 

91 hirsChBühler, Paul and e.F.K. Koerner (eds.): Romance Languages and Modern Linguistic 

Theory. Selected papers from the XX Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, University of Ottawa, 

April 10–14, 1990. 1992. viii, 416 pp. 

90 KinG, larry D.: The Semantic Structure of Spanish. Meaning and grammatical form. 1992. xii, 287 pp. 

89 BurriDGe, Kate: Syntactic Change in Germanic. Aspects of language change in Germanic with particular 

reference to Middle Dutch. 1993. xii, 287 pp. 

88 shielDs, Jr., Kenneth: A History of Indo-European Verb Morphology. 1992. viii, 160 pp. 

87 BroGyanyi, Bela and reiner liPP (eds.): Historical Philology: Greek, Latin, and Romance. Papers in 

honor of Oswald Szemerényi II. 1992. xii, 386 pp. 

86 Kess, Joseph F.: Psycholinguistics. Psychology, linguistics, and the study of natural language. 1992. 

xiv, 360 pp. 

85 Broselow, ellen, Mushira eiD and John McCarthy (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. 

Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume IV: Detroit, Michigan 1990. 1992. 

viii, 282 pp. 

84 DaVis, Garry w. and Gregory K. iVerson (eds.): Explanation in Historical Linguistics. 1992. 

xiv, 238 pp. 

83 FiFe, James and erich PoPPe (eds.): Studies in Brythonic Word Order. 1991. x, 360 pp. 

82 Van Valin, Jr., robert D. (ed.): Advances in Role and Reference Grammar. 1992. xii, 569 pp. 

81 lehMann, winfred P. and helen-Jo Jakusz hewitt (eds.): Language Typology 1988. Typological 

Models in the Service of Reconstruction. 1991. vi, 182 pp. 

80 CoMrie, Bernard and Mushira eiD (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual 

Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume III: Salt Lake City, Utah 1989. 1991. xii, 274 pp. 

79 antonsen, elmer h. and hans henrich hoCK (eds.): STAEFCRAEFT: Studies in Germanic 

Linguistics. Selected papers from the 1st and 2nd Symposium on Germanic Linguistics, University of 

Chicago, 4 April 1985, and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 3–4 Oct. 1986. 1991. viii, 217 pp. 

78 KaC, Michael B.: Grammars and Grammaticality. 1992. x, 259 pp. 

77 Boltz, william G. and Michael C. shaPiro (eds.): Studies in the Historical Phonology of Asian 

Languages. 1991. viii, 249 pp.

76 wiCKens, Mark a.: Grammatical Number in English Nouns. An empirical and theoretical account. 1992. 

xvi, 321 pp. 

75 Droste, Flip G. and John e. JosePh (eds.): Linguistic Theory and Grammatical Description. Nine 

Current Approaches. 1991. viii, 354 pp. 

74 laeuFer, Christiane and terrell a. MorGan (eds.): Theoretical Analyses in Romance Linguistics. 

Selected papers from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages XIX, Ohio State University, April 

21–23, 1989. 1991. viii, 515 pp. 

73 staMenoV, Maxim i. (ed.): Current Advances in Semantic Theory. 1991. xi, 565 pp. 

72 eiD, Mushira and John McCarthy (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual 

Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume II: Salt Lake City, Utah 1988. 1990. xiv, 332 pp. 

71 o’GraDy, william: Categories and Case. The sentence structure of Korean. 1991. vii, 294 pp. 

70 Jensen, John t.: Morphology. Word structure in generative grammar. 1990. x, 210 pp. 

69 wanner, Dieter and Douglas a. KiBBee (eds.): New Analyses in Romance Linguistics. Selected papers 

from the Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages XVIII, Urbana-Champaign, April 7–9, 1988. 1991. 

xviii, 385 pp. 

68 Ball, Martin J., James FiFe, erich PoPPe and Jenny rowlanD (eds.): Celtic Linguistics/ 

Ieithyddiaeth Geltaidd. Readings in the Brythonic Languages. Festschrift for T. Arwyn Watkins. 1990. 

xxiv, 470 pp. 

67 lehMann, winfred P. (ed.): Language Typology 1987. Systematic Balance in Language. Papers from the 

Linguistic Typology Symposium, Berkeley, 1–3 Dec 1987. 1990. x, 212 pp. 

66 anDersen, henning and e.F.K. Koerner (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1987. Papers from the 8th 

International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Lille, August 30-September 4, 1987. 1990. xii, 577 pp. 

65 aDaMson, sylvia M., Vivien a. law, nigel VinCent and susan wriGht (eds.): Papers from the 5th 

International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. 1990. xxi, 583 pp. 

64 BroGyanyi, Bela (ed.): Prehistory, History and Historiography of Language, Speech, and Linguistic 

Theory. Papers in honor of Oswald Szemerényi I. 1992. x, 414 pp. 


Linguistics. Volume I: Salt Lake City, Utah 1987. 1990. xiii, 290 pp. 

62 FraJzynGier, zygmunt (ed.): Current Progress in Chadic Linguistics. Proceedings of the International 

Symposium on Chadic Linguistics, Boulder, Colorado, 1–2 May 1987. 1989. vi, 312 pp. 

61 CorriGan, roberta l., Fred r. eCKMan and Michael noonan (eds.): Linguistic Categorization. 

Proceedings of an International Symposium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, April 10–11, 1987. 1989. viii, 348 pp. 

60 KirsChner, Carl and Janet ann DeCesaris (eds.): Studies in Romance Linguistics. Selected 

Proceedings from the XVII Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. 1989. xii, 496 pp. 

59 Voorst, Jan van: Event Structure. 1988. x, 181 pp. 

58 arBeitMan, yoël l. (ed.): Fucus: A Semitic/Afrasian Gathering in Remembrance of Albert Ehrman. 

1988. xvi, 530 pp. 

57 BuBeniK, Vit: Hellenistic and Roman Greece as a Sociolinguistic Area. 1989. xvi, 331 pp. 

56 hoCKett, Charles F.: Refurbishing our Foundations. Elementary linguistics from an advanced point of 

view. 1987. x, 181 pp. 

55 hall, Jr., robert a.: Linguistics and Pseudo-Linguistics. 1987. vii, 147 pp. 

54 weiDert, alfons: Tibeto-Burman Tonology. A comparative analysis. 1987. xvii, 512 pp. 

53 sanKoFF, David: Diversity and Diachrony. 1986. xii, 430 pp. 

52 FasolD, ralph w. and Deborah sChiFFrin (eds.): Language Change and Variation. 1989. viii, 450 pp. 

51 ChatterJee, ranjit: Aspect and Meaning in Slavic and Indic. With a foreword by Paul Friedrich. 1989. 

xxiii, 137 pp. 

50 ruDzKa-ostyn, Brygida (ed.): Topics in Cognitive Linguistics. 1988. x, 704 pp. 

49 wauGh, linda r. and stephen ruDy (eds.): New Vistas in Grammar: Invariance and Variation. 

Proceedings of the Second International Roman Jakobson Conference, New York University, Nov. 5–8, 1985. 

1991. x, 540 pp. 

48 GiaCalone-raMat, anna, onofrio CarruBa and Giuliano Bernini (eds.): Papers from the 7th 

International Conference on Historical Linguistics. 1987. xvi, 672 pp. 

47 lehMann, winfred P. (ed.): Language Typology 1985. Papers from the Linguistic Typology Symposium, 

Moscow, 9–13 Dec. 1985. 1986. viii, 200 pp. 

46 PriDeaux, Gary D. and william J. BaKer: Strategies and Structures. The processing of relative clauses. 

1987. ix, 197 pp. 

45 KooPMan, willem F., Frederike van der leeK, olga FisCher and roger eaton (eds.): Explanation 

and Linguistic Change. 1986. viii, 300 pp.

44 JunGraithMayr, herrmann and walter w. Mueller (eds.): Proceedings of the Fourth 

International Hamito-Semitic Congress. 1987. xiv, 609 pp. 

43 aKaMatsu, tsutomu: The Theory of Neutralization and the Archiphoneme in Functional Phonology. 

1988. xxi, 533 pp. 

42 MaKKai, adam and alan K. MelBy (eds.): Linguistics and Philosophy. Festschrift for Rulon S. Wells. 

1985. xviii, 472 pp. 

41 eaton, roger, olga FisCher, willem F. KooPMan and Frederike van der leeK (eds.): Papers from 

the 4th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics, Amsterdam, April 10–13, 1985. 1985. 

xvii, 341 pp. 

40 Fries, Peter h. and nancy M. Fries (eds.): Toward an Understanding of Language. Charles C. Fries in 

Perspective. 1985. xvi, 384 pp. 

39 Benson, James D., Michael J. CuMMinGs and william s. GreaVes (eds.): Linguistics in a Systemic 

Perspective. 1988. x, 452 pp. 

38 BroGyanyi, Bela and Thomas KröMMelBein (eds.): Germanic Dialects. Linguistic and Philological 

Investigations. 1986. ix, 693 pp. 

37 GriFFen, toby D.: Aspects of Dynamic Phonology. 1985. ix, 302 pp. 

36 KinG, larry D. and Catherine a. Maley (eds.): Selected papers from the XIIIth Linguistic Symposium 

on Romance. Languages, Chapel Hill, N.C., 24–26 March 1983. 1985. x, 440 pp. 

35 CollinGe, n.e.: The Laws of Indo-European. 1985. xviii, 273 pp. 

34 FisiaK, Jacek (ed.): Papers from the VIth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Poznaön, 

22–26 August 1983. 1985. xxiii, 622 pp. 

33 VersteeGh, Kees: Pidginization and Creolization. The Case of Arabic. 1984. xiii, 194 pp. 

32 CoPelanD, James e. (ed.): New Directions in Linguistics and Semiotics. 1984. xi, 269 pp. 

31 GuillauMe, Gustave (1883–1960): Foundations for a Science of Language. Texts selected by Roch Valin. 

Translated and with an introduction by Walter Hirtle and John Hewson. 1984. xxiv, 175 pp. 

30 hall, Jr., robert a.: Proto-Romance Morphology. Comparative Romance Grammar, vol. III. 1984. 

xii, 304 pp. 

29 PaProtté, wolf and rené DirVen (eds.): The Ubiquity of Metaphor: Metaphor in language and 

thought. 1985. iii, 628 pp. 

28 Bynon, James (ed.): Current Progress in Afro-Asiatic Linguistics. Papers of the Third International 

Hamito-Semitic Congress, London, 1978. 1984. xi, 505 pp. 

27 BoMharD, allan r.: Toward Proto-Nostratic. A New Approach to the Comparison of Proto-Indo- 

European and Proto-Afroasiatic. With a foreword by Paul J. Hopper. 1984. xi, 356 pp. 

26 BalDi, Philip (ed.): Papers from the XIIth Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, University Park, 

April 1–3, 1982. 1984. xii, 611 pp. 

25 anDersen, Paul Kent: Word Order Typology and Comparative Constructions. 1983. xvii, 245 pp. 

24 lehMann, winfred P. and yakov MalKiel (eds.): Perspectives on Historical Linguistics. Papers from 

a conference held at the meeting of the Language Theory Division, Modern Language Assn., San Francisco, 

27–30 December 1979. 1982. xii, 379 pp. 

23 Danielsen, niels: Papers in Theoretical Linguistics. Edited by Per Baerentzen. 1992. xxii, 224 pp. 

22 unterMann, Jürgen und Bela BroGyanyi (hrsg.): Das Germanische und die Rekonstruktion der 

Indogermanischen Grundsprache. Akten des Freiburger Kolloquiums der Indogermanischen Gesellschaft, 

Freiburg, 26–27 Februar 1981.. Proceedings of the Colloquium of the Indogermanische Gesellschhaft, 

Freiburg, 26–27 February 1981. 1984. xvii, 237 pp. 

21 ahlQVist, anders (ed.): Papers from the Fifth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, 

Galway, April 6–10 1981. 1982. xxix, 527 pp. 

20 norriCK, neal r.: Semiotic Principles in Semantic Theory. 1981. xiii, 252 pp. 

19 raMat, Paolo (ed.): Linguistic Reconstruction and Indo-European Syntax. Proceedings of the 

Colloquium of the 'Indogermanische Gesellschaft'. University of Pavia, 6–7 September 1979. 1980. 

viii, 263 pp. 

18 izzo, herbert J. (ed.): Italic and Romance. Linguistic Studies in Honor of Ernst Pulgram. 1980. xxi, 338 pp. 

17 lieB, hans-heinrich: Integrational Linguistics I. 1984. xxiii, 527 pp. 

16 arBeitMan, yoël l. and allan r. BoMharD (eds.): Bono Homini Donum. Essays in Historical 

Linguistics, in Memory of J. Alexander Kerns. (2 volumes). 1981. xvi, 557, viii, 581 pp. 

15 anDerson, John a. (ed.): Language Form and Linguistic Variation. Papers dedicated to Angus McIntosh. 

1982. viii, 496 pp. 

14 Closs trauGott, elizabeth, rebecca laBruM and susan C. shePherD (eds.): Papers from the 

Fourth International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Stanford, March 26–30 1979. 1980. x, 437 pp.

13 Maher, J. Peter, allan r. BoMharD and e.F.K. Koerner (eds.): Papers from the Third International 

Conference on Historical Linguistics, Hamburg, August 22–26 1977. 1982. xvi, 434 pp. 

12 FisiaK, Jacek (ed.): Theoretical Issues in Contrastive Linguistics. 1981. x, 430 pp. 

11 BroGyanyi, Bela (ed.): Studies in Diachronic, Synchronic, and Typological Linguistics. Festschrift for 

Oswald Szemérenyi on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday. 1979. xiv, 487, x, 506 pp. (2 vols.). 

10 PriDeaux, Gary D. (ed.): Perspectives in Experimental Linguistics. Papers from the University of Alberta 

Conference on Experimental Linguistics, Edmonton, 1–14 Oct. 1978. 1979. xi, 176 pp. 

9 hollien, harry and Patricia hollien (eds.): Current Issues in the Phonetic Sciences. Proceedings of 

the IPS-77 Congress, Miami Beach, Florida, 17–19 December 1977. 1979. xxi, 587pp., xiii, 608 pp. 

8 wilBur, terence h.: Prolegomena to a Grammar of Basque. 1979. x, 188 pp. 

7 Meisel, Jürgen M. and Martin D. PaM (eds.): Linear Order and Generative Theory. 1979. ix, 512 pp. 

6 anttila, raimo: Historical and Comparative Linguistics. 1989. xvi, 460 pp. 

5 itKonen, esa: Grammatical Theory and Metascience. A critical investigation into the methodological and 

philosophical foundations of 'autonomous' linguistics. 1978. x, 355 pp. 

4 hoPPer, Paul J. (ed.): Studies in Descriptive and Historical Linguistics. Festschrift for Winfred P. 

Lehmann. 1977. x, 502 pp. 

3 Maher, J. Peter: Papers on Language Theory and History. Volume I: Creation and Tradition in Language. 

With a foreword by Raimo Anttila. 1979. xx, 171 pp. 

2 weiDert, alfons: Componential Analysis of Lushai Phonology. 1975. xiv, 139 pp. 

1 Koerner, e.F.K. (ed.): The Transformational-Generative Paradigm and Modern Linguistic Theory. 1975. 

viii, 462 pp.

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