The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

84 The syntax of early English(45) Why make ye youreself for to be lyk a fool?why make you yourself for to be like a fool‘Why do you allow yourself to behave like a fool?’ (Chaucer Melibee 980)As in present-day English, inversion was absent if the wh-word was itself thesubject. Although do is found (albeit rarely) in questions in Middle English,such constructions should probably not be interpreted as containing theempty operator do (cf. Ellegård 1953: 161–2, who shows that interrogative dodid not occur before 1400); rather, they were the questioned counterpart of aclause already containing do. The first attested example is from Chaucer:(46) Fader, why do ye wepe?‘Father, why do you weep?’ (Chaucer Monk 2432)Only in the early Modern English period was there a sharp rise in the occurrenceof do in interrogative (and negative) sentences.In Old English, as we have seen, hwæer could be used in simple interrogativeclauses followed by normal, i.e. non-inverted, word order. Examples ofthis seem to be extremely rare in Middle English; one instance is (47), foundin Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde in a highly rhetorical passage. The verb wasusually in the subjunctive, as in Old English, because the construction wasmostly used as an expression of doubt.(47) ‘O Troilus, what dostow now?’ she seyde./ ‘Lord! wheyther thow yeto Troilus what do you now she said lord whether you yetthenke [subjunct.] upon Criseyde?’think on Criseyde?‘“O Troilus, what will you do now?” she said. “Will you still be thinking ofCriseyde?”’ (Chaucer Troilus V 734–35)Far more frequent was a construction with whether followed by inverted wordorder and the indicative mood in so-called alternative questions like (48).(48) Wheither seistow this in ernest or in pley?whether say you this in earnest or in play‘Are you saying this in earnest or in jest?’ (Chaucer Knight 1125)In Old English, when a prepositional object was wh-moved, it was the rule forthe preposition to move along with the object (so-called ‘pied-piping’). Thisbegan to change in early Middle English. In the thirteenth century Brut, wesee the first sporadic instances of preposition stranding in wh-questions:(49) nuste nan kempe, whæm he sculde slæn onnot-knew no soldier whom he should hit on‘No soldier knew whom he should strike at’ (Layamon Brut(Clg) 13718–19)Around the same time, preposition stranding also began to occur in whrelatives,topicalized constructions and passives (see section 3.2.3). It is quite