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

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.