The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

The Verb-Second constraint and its loss 109(22) æt hi mihton swa bealdlice Godes geleafan bodianthat they could so boldly God’s faith preach‘that they could preach God’s faith so boldly’ (ÆCHom I, 16.232.23)(23) æt he mehte his feorh generianthat he could his life save‘so that he could save his life’ (Or 2.5.48.18)There are also a few examples of movement of a verb from a verb–particlecombination:(24) gif Crist scute a adunif Christ casts then down‘if Christ then casts himself down’ (ÆCHom I, 11.170.21)The kind of V-movement illustrated in (22)–(23) differs in several ways fromthat in main clauses. Preposed constituents such as topics and questionelements followed by the finite verb, are a main-clause phenomenon, as willbe discussed further below. The nominative subject in embedded clauses(whether nominal or pronominal) always precedes the finite verb (as illustratedby (22)–(24)), except in special constructions such as passives. Regulartopics followed by the finite verb as in main clauses do not appear in this position;very occasionally an object pronoun appears before the finite verb, butthis merely shows that pronouns are special in their behaviour. Moreover,verb fronting in main clauses is vastly more frequent than in embeddedclauses (about 95 per cent against 35 per cent). Thus, we can say that whilethere is undeniably V-movement in embedded clauses, the phenomenonappears to be rather different from that in main clauses. What seems to be thecase is that there is a more restricted form of V-movement in embeddedclauses, one that bears no relation to topicalization. Let us say, pendingfurther discussion below, that this V-movement is to a position following thesubject, and therefore lower than that in Verb-Second main clauses, as illustratedhere with (25):(25) [ CP[ Cæt [ IPhi [ Imihton iswa bealdlice Godes geleafan bodian V i]]]]There are also some cases where the finite verb appears on the left of thenon-finite verb, but with objects preceding it:(26) a. æt he wisdom mæge wi ofermetta æfre gemenganthat he wisdom may with pride ever mingle‘that he may always combine wisdom with pride’ (Met 7.6)b. æt he Saul ne dorste ofsleanthat he Saul not dared murder‘that he didn’t dare to murder Saul’ (CP 28.199.2)