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

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