The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

The Verb-Second constraint and its loss 125the element na cannot be interpreted as modifying the constituent it precedes;in (69), na does not modify æt mot (the sentence does not mean: ‘it is not thespeck that you can draw . . .’); similarly in (70) it does not modify se leorningcniht.It is the whole sentence that is being negated by both negation elements.We will illustrate this with examples of na/no.One very striking observation stands out when we consider the examples(69)–(70): when the subject is a pronoun, it appears on the left of na; when thesubject is a noun, it appears on the right of na. Furthermore, object pronounsmay occur on the left of na, as in (71a). This discrepancy is remarkably systematicin this minority pattern, which is found most prominently in negativeinitialsentences. Here are some more examples:(71) a. Ne het he us na leornian heofonas to wyrcennenot ordered he us not learn heavens to make‘He did not bid us learn to make the heavens’(ÆLS(Memory of the Saints) 127)b. Nis na se halga gast wuniende on his gecynde swa swa henot is not the holy ghost existing in his nature as hegesewen wæsseen was‘The Holy Ghost is not existing in his nature as he was seen’(ÆCHom I, 22.322.17)c. Ne wende na Ezechias Israhela kyning æt he gesyngade . . .not thought not Ezechias Israel’s king that he sinned‘Ezechias, king of Israel, did not think he was sinning . . .’ (CP 4.39.2)These facts show very clearly that the position of the nominal subject is reallydifferent from that of the pronominal subject, as these two positions are separatedby the reinforcing negation element: the position for the nominal subjectis to the right of na, and the position on the left of na is a general position forpronouns, subject or object, rather than a subject position.This observation provides a fresh perspective on the discussion of the statusof personal pronouns in Old English, and on the nature of the position of pronounsin topic-initial constructions. Before we go on to discuss this, let us considera more articulate sentential structure than we have assumed so far forOld English, one which is clearly suggested by the negation facts. This structureis in line with recent generative syntactic theorizing in that each morphologicalelement, e.g. tense inflection, negation, agreement inflection, heads itsown projection according to the general phrase structure format. Thus, the bynow familiar CP/IP format, is further articulated into CP, FP (a projectionhosting pronouns), NegP (for negation) and TP (where T stands for Tense).This results in the following structure: