The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Middle English syntax 101(91) And on hir bare knees adoun they falle/ And wolde have kistand on their bare knees down they fell and would have kissedhis feet . . .his feet‘They fell down on their bare knees and wanted to kiss his feet . . .’(Chaucer Knight 1758)Here the action expressed in the infinitive is simultaneous with that of thematrix verb, and present-day English would employ a present infinitive. Theperfect infinitive is used in Middle English examples of this type in order toindicate that the action of ‘kissing’ did in the end not take place, as the furthercontext of (91) indeed makes clear.3.5.3 Adverbial clausesIn this section, we will highlight some new developments taking placein the area of adverbial clauses. A fuller description of the types of adverbialclauses, the various subordinators used, the order of the clauses and the moodtypical for each type of subordinate clause can be found in Fischer (1992a:343–64).As noted above, the distinction between subordinate and main clauses wasnot always as clear in Old and Middle English as it is in the present-day language.One reason for this is the fact that the written language was still closerto the spoken language. Subordination or hypotaxis is not a prominentcharacteristic of spoken language, which is more heavily paratactic. This wasstill visible in Old English. A good number of the subordinating conjunctionswere of the same form as adverbs (so that the clause introduced by themresembled a main clause). Thus we have the typical correlative constructionsa ...a, nu ...nu, where the distinction between main and subordinate clauseonly became clear (and this not always) by differences in word order. The onlyclearly demarcated subordinate clause types in Old English were relativeclauses introduced by e, and conditional clauses introduced by gif. Mostother subordinate clauses in Old English can actually be analysed as being atype of relative clause, since they are introduced by phrases such as for æme, æfter æm e, etc., which consist of a preposition, a demonstrativepronoun and the relative particle.In Middle English, the language began to develop more specific markers foreach type of subordinate clause, and separate lexical items for subordinate andmain clauses. Three general developments may be observed:(i)The Old English correlative pairs disappear; the conjunctions are distinguishedfrom the adverbs. Thus, a . . . a becomes when . . . then,