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

Verb types and word order 57
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.