was old english a v2 language?

Anthony KrochUniversity of Pennsylvania

June 2013

Was Old English a V2 language?

• Anthony Kroch and Ann Taylor. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. CD-ROM, second edition, 2000.

• Ann Taylor, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Frank Beths. York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. Oxford Text Archive, first edition, 2003.

• Anthony Kroch, Beatrice Santorini, and Lauren Delfs. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. CD-ROM, first edition, 2004.

• Ann Taylor, Arja Nurmi, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk, and Terttu Nevalainen. Parsed Corpus of Early English Correspondence. Oxford Text Archive, first edition, 2006.

English Data Sources

The V2 constraint in Old English:the pronoun exception

(1) Þæt hus hæfdon Romane to ðæm anum tacne geworht.

(2) Ælc yfel he mæg don.

(3) Þin agen geleafa þe hæfþ gehæledne.

(4) & seofon ærendracan he him hæfde to asend.

The V2 constraint in Old English:the exception to the exception

(5) Hwi sceole we oþres mannes niman?

(6) Þa ge-mette he sceaðan.

(7) Ne mihton hi næ nigne fultum æt him begitan.

(8) Hæfdon hi hiora onfangen ær Hæsten to Beamfleote come.

The problem of verb-final clauses in Old English

(9) ...ðeah hit ær upahæfen wære.

(10) Se manfulla gast þa Martine gehyrsumode.

(11) ac he heora onfon nolde.

(12) and Dryhten soðlice heofonas geworhte.

The problem of verb-final clauses in Old English II

(13) Eac þis land wæs swiðe afylled mid munecan.

(14) Þeahhweðer his hiredmen ferdon ut mid feawe mannan of þam castele.

Verb-first subjunctive clauses in Old English

(15) Cume se blinda to me.

(16) Stande þin word, cyning.

(17) Ne wille ðu swa sprecan;

(18) Write he þa fæstnunge mid his agenre handa.

hæfdon

geworht

Romane

þæt hus

Phrase structure of an ordinary declarative English V2 clause

hæfdon

geworht

Romane

þæt hus

hæfdon

geworht

þæt hus

hæfdon

geworht

þæt hus

hæfdon

geworht

þæt hus

hæfdon

geworht

hæfdon

þæt hus

hæfdon

geworht

hæfdon

þæt hus

hæfdon

geworht

hæfdon

þæt hus

hæfdon

geworht

hæfdon

þæt hus

hæfdon

Quantitative Evidence for V-to-T and V-to-C in Old and Early Middle English

1000 1200 1400 1600date

subject.type

pronoun

total^0.5

Sentences with topicalized direct objects: Frequency of V2 by subject type

1000 1200 1400 1600date

total^0.5

subject.type

pronoun

Sentences with topicalized PPs: Frequency of V2 by subject type

1000 1200 1400 1600date

total^0.5

subject.type

pronoun

Sentences with topicalized adverbs: Frequency of V2 by subject type

1000 1200 1400 1600date

total^0.5

subject.type

pronoun

Sentences with topicalized þa: Frequency of V2 by subject type

subjectDP

subject pronoun

238 1382

338 29

Inversion in positive sentences with topicalized objects

.02.59

subjectDP

subject pronoun

Inversion in negative sentences with topicalized objects

.65 .42

subjectDP

subject pronoun

3245 4253

9063 2727

Inversion in indicative sentences with a topicalized constituent

.74 .39

subjectDP

subject pronoun

143 80

308 162

Inversion in subjunctive sentences with a topicalized constituent

.68 .67

Low subjects in Old English

$(9)$ac mycel geþolode ðurh his mildheortnes se Crist$ for ure þearfe.

$ (10)$in þa tid wæs in Mercna mægðe Wulfhere cyning.

German subject positions (Haeberli 1999, 2002)

$ (11) $Dieses Haus wird später Hans für die Familie kaufen.

$ (12)$ Dieses Haus wird er später für die Familie kaufen.

$ (13)$*Dieses Haus wird später er für die Familie kaufen.

German subject positions (Haeberli 1999, 2002)

$ (11) $Dieses Haus wird später Hans für die Familie kaufen.

$ (12)$ Dieses Haus wird er später für die Familie kaufen.

$ (13)$*Dieses Haus wird später er für die Familie kaufen.

$(14)$ Dieses Haus wird Hans später für die Familie kaufen.

XPi V0

Romane

hæfdon

geworhtþæt hus

þæt hus

Romane

Why not verb-third sentences?

XPi V0

Romane

hæfdon

geworhtþæt hus

þæt hus

Romane

XPi V0

Romane

hæfdon

geworhtþæt hus

þæt hus

Romane

þone fleam TPC0

Þurcytel

þone fleam

astealde

Þurcytel

astealde

ærest

A V3 example or an Infl-final one?

þone fleam TPC0

Þurcytel

þone fleam

astealde

Þurcytel

astealde

ærest

A V3 example or an Infl-final one?

(2) and him se innoþ eac geopenode ongean and him the heart also opened again

(coælive, +ALS_[Vincent]:170.7907)

(1) þæne se geatweard$ let in that-one the doorkeeper$ let in

(cowsgosp, Jn_[WSCp]:10.3.6596)

Unambiguous V3 clauses with topicalized objects

full DP subjects pronoun subjects

V2 cases74

V3 cases20

frequency V3.21

0.21.88

Frequency of unambiguous V3 clausesagainst all particle verb cases

(1) ac þone yfelan fæstrædan willan folneah nan wind ne mæg but the evil constant will almost no storm not may

awecggean awaken

(cocuraC,CP_[Cotton]:33.224.4.85f.)

V3 clauses with topicalized objects ambiguous due to West Germanic verb raising

number SOVI main clauses with full noun phrase subjects

ratio of SOIV to SOVI in unambiguous verb-raising environments

rate of object topicalization in verb-final clauses

predicted number of OSIV cases due to verb-raising with topicalization

actual number of OSIV cases

Expected versus observed number of V3 clauses with topicalized objects given verb raising

OE (Early) OE (Late) 1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

Decline of direct object topicalization in English

96 A CORPUS STUDY OF THE VORFELD

Table 4.2: Summary of Vorfeld occupation of arguments.

Vorfeld Prop est (%)

Argument yes no lo pt hi

subject 43 523 18 597 69.7 70.1 70.4direct object 3 418 20 432 13.9 14.3 14.8indirect object 38 815 3.2 4.5 6.1

Note: subject = SU, direct object = OBJ1 + OBJ1 VC, indirect object = OBJ2 + OBJ2 VC.

Table 4.3: Classification after part-of-speech and syntactic category.

Category CGN labels

nominal NP, N, VNW, MWU (when proper names)prepositional PP, VZverbal TI, OTI, AHI, INF, WW, PPARTclausal CP, WHSUB, WHQ, WHREL, REL, SVAN, SMAIN, SSUB, SV1

Note: See Appendix A for explanation of the CGN POS/Cat-labels. Conjunctions/lists of onecategory are also assigned that category. Other POS-types (notably adjectives and adverbs) wereassigned to a rest category.

other things questionnaire data. We will see in later sections that there is more to thedifference between direct and indirect objects than meets the eye, however. If we take theeffect of definiteness on Vorfeld occupation into account, the difference between directobjects and indirect objects is not as big as Table 4.2 suggests.

Subjects and objects can be a of a wide variety of categories. We can divide the dataof Table 4.2 into four main categories: nominal, prepositional, verbal and clausal. Thetranslation between CGN-tags and the four categories is given in Table 4.3. The categoriesnominal and prepositional should be self-explanatory. The difference between verbaland clausal is that clausal constituents are finite, and contain all arguments of the verb,whereas verbal constituents are non-finite or do not contain all arguments of the verb.Tables 4.4–4.6 show how each of the grammatical functions breaks down into thesecategories. Below, I will illustrate the data with some examples for each grammaticalfunction. The nominal data will considered in more detail in the section on definiteness(Section 4.3).

Subjects Vorfeld occupation of subjects per category is detailed in Table 4.4. Theproportion of subjects in the Vorfeld is high in each category, although clausal subjectsappear to have a slightly reduced chance of appearing in the Vorfeld.

96 A CORPUS STUDY OF THE VORFELD

Table 4.2: Summary of Vorfeld occupation of arguments.

Vorfeld Prop est (%)

Argument yes no lo pt hi

subject 43 523 18 597 69.7 70.1 70.4direct object 3 418 20 432 13.9 14.3 14.8indirect object 38 815 3.2 4.5 6.1

Note: subject = SU, direct object = OBJ1 + OBJ1 VC, indirect object = OBJ2 + OBJ2 VC.

Table 4.3: Classification after part-of-speech and syntactic category.

Category CGN labels

nominal NP, N, VNW, MWU (when proper names)prepositional PP, VZ

verbal TI, OTI, AHI, INF, WW, PPART

clausal CP, WHSUB, WHQ, WHREL, REL, SVAN, SMAIN, SSUB, SV1

Note: See Appendix A for explanation of the CGN POS/Cat-labels. Conjunctions/lists of onecategory are also assigned that category. Other POS-types (notably adjectives and adverbs) wereassigned to a rest category.

other things questionnaire data. We will see in later sections that there is more to thedifference between direct and indirect objects than meets the eye, however. If we take theeffect of definiteness on Vorfeld occupation into account, the difference between directobjects and indirect objects is not as big as Table 4.2 suggests.

Subjects and objects can be a of a wide variety of categories. We can divide the dataof Table 4.2 into four main categories: nominal, prepositional, verbal and clausal. Thetranslation between CGN-tags and the four categories is given in Table 4.3. The categoriesnominal and prepositional should be self-explanatory. The difference between verbaland clausal is that clausal constituents are finite, and contain all arguments of the verb,whereas verbal constituents are non-finite or do not contain all arguments of the verb.Tables 4.4–4.6 show how each of the grammatical functions breaks down into thesecategories. Below, I will illustrate the data with some examples for each grammaticalfunction. The nominal data will considered in more detail in the section on definiteness(Section 4.3).

Subjects Vorfeld occupation of subjects per category is detailed in Table 4.4. Theproportion of subjects in the Vorfeld is high in each category, although clausal subjectsappear to have a slightly reduced chance of appearing in the Vorfeld.

Frequency of direct object topicalization in modern spoken Dutch (Bouma 2008)

Evolution of PP preposing in English

OE (Early) OE (Late) 1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

Evolution of adverb fronting in English

locative adverbs

temporal adverbs

The history of topicalization in English (Speyer 2008)

• Why does topicalization decline in Middle English but not disappear? If the change a parametric one, it should go to completion. Otherwise, topicalization, a clear case of stylistic variation might be expected to be stable in frequency over time.

• This question has answer in the specific interactionbetween parametric settings and stylistic variation in the history of English.

OE (Early) OE (Late) 1151-1250 1251-1350 1351-1420 1421-1500 1501-1569 1570-1639 1639-1710

Decline of direct object topicalizationby subject type

full DP subjects

pronoun subjects

Correlation between frequencies of object topicalizationand of V2 in Middle English texts (Wallenberg 2007)

edvern

0 5 10 15 20 25

% Full DP Topicalization

Subject type in sentences with topicalized objects

Subject type in sentences with in situ objects

personal pronoun demonstrative pronoun full noun phrase181 2 1790.5% 1% 8.5 %

personal pronoun demonstrative pronoun full noun phrase140 20 14246.4 6.6 47.0

Distribution of subject types in a corpusof topicalized and non-topicalized

sentences in natural speech

Clash avoidance

• The type of topicalization that declines:

(1) The nèwspaper Jóhn read; the nòvel Máry did.

• The type of topicalization that doesn’t:

(2) The nèwspaper I réad; the nòvel I dídn’t.

(Compare: The nèwspaper read Jóhn.)

Translating German topicalized arguments intoEnglish in three modern German novels

[by Böll, Dürrenmatt and Grass]

Topicalized to topicalized:

G: Mahlkes Haupt bedeckte dieser Hut besonders peinlich.E: On Mahlke’s head this hat made a particularly painful impression.

Topicalized to non-topicalized:

G: Zu den sechs kamen noch drei weitere.E: Three others joined these six in the afternoon.

2nd accent on the German

subjectaccent elsewhere

topicalization in the English translation

no topicalization in the English

100100

Accent placement and topicalization frequencies in translating German topicalized arguments into English

was old english a v2 language?

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