Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
Selected Papers from the Fourteenth International ... - STIBA Malang
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Syntactic dialectal variation in Middle English 155<br />
Regarding <strong>the</strong> position occupied by <strong>the</strong> relative clause, it has been observed<br />
that <strong>the</strong> less-preferred structural technique of Old English, namely intraposition,<br />
becomes <strong>the</strong> preferred form in <strong>the</strong> East- and <strong>the</strong> West-Midlands in early Middle<br />
English, <strong>the</strong> most advanced areas. By contrast, <strong>the</strong> dialects <strong>from</strong> <strong>the</strong> South, both<br />
Southwestern and Kent, avoid <strong>the</strong> use of embedded structures and instead favour<br />
extraposition and also, in <strong>the</strong> Southwest, left-dislocation.<br />
The analysis of <strong>the</strong> distribution of relativizers and <strong>the</strong> position adopted by <strong>the</strong><br />
relative clause with respect to <strong>the</strong> main clause provides relevant evidence of geographical<br />
variation in early Middle English, agreeing with <strong>the</strong> evidence provided<br />
at o<strong>the</strong>r linguistic levels, as is <strong>the</strong> case of orthography and pronunciation, lexis and<br />
morphology. The evidence seems to suggest that more advanced dialects (such<br />
as those in <strong>the</strong> East- and West-Midlands) innovate earlier than less advanced or<br />
more conservative dialects (Southwestern and Kentish), and thus confirm <strong>the</strong><br />
North-South divide.<br />
References<br />
Carkeet, David. 1976. Old English correlatives: an exercise of internal syntactic reconstruction.<br />
Glossa 10:1. 44–63.<br />
Fernández Cuesta, Julia & María Nieves Rodríguez Ledesma. 2004. Nor<strong>the</strong>rn Features in 15th<br />
and 16th-Century Legal Documents From Yorkshire. Methods and Data in English Historical<br />
Dialectology ed. by Marina Dossena & Roger Lass, 287–308. Bern: Peter Lang.<br />
Fischer, Olga. 1992. Syntax. The Cambridge History of <strong>the</strong> English Language, vol. II, 1066–1476<br />
ed. by Norman Blake, 207–408. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<br />
Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman & Win van der Wurff. 2000. The Syntax of<br />
Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<br />
Givón, Talmy. 1993. A Function-Based Introduction. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.<br />
Holmes, Janet. 2001. An Introduction to Socio-Linguistics. 2nd edition. London: Longman.<br />
Hopper, Paul & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2003. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge<br />
University Press.<br />
Keenan, Edward. 1985. Relative clauses. Language typology and syntactic description, vol. II:<br />
complex constructions ed. by Timothy Shopen, 141–170. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press.<br />
Kivimaa, Kirsti. 1966. þe and þat as clause connectives in early Middle Enlgish with special consideration<br />
of <strong>the</strong> emergence of <strong>the</strong> pleonastic þat. (Commentations Humanarum Litterarum 39, 1).<br />
Helsinki: Societas Scientarum Fennica.<br />
Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 1997. Verb movement in Old and Middle English: dialect<br />
variation and language contact. Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change ed. by Ans van<br />
Kemenade & Nigel Vincent, 297–325. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.<br />
Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. Verb-Object order in early Middle English. Diachronic<br />
Syntax. Models and Mechanims ed. by Susan Pintzuk, George Tsoulas & Antony Warner,<br />
132–163. Oxford: Oxford University Press.<br />
Kroch, Anthony, Ann Taylor & Donald Ringe. 2000. The Middle English Verb-Second Constraint:<br />
A Case Study in Language Contact and Language Change. Textual Parameters in