The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

position of specifier elements is fixed because it is determined by licensingrequirements. The fact that this is a fixed position is supported further by thefact that na, even when it is morphologically a constituent negation, sometimesmoves away from its constituent to the characteristic position for na,asobserved above. (73) illustrates this:(73) a. ne leofa se mann na be hlafe anum, ac lyfa be eallum amnot lives the man not by bread alone but lives by all thewordum e ga of godes muewords that go from God’s mouth (ÆCHom I, 11.166.15)b. Ne lifa na se man be hlafe anum, ac lifa be am wordumnot lives not the man by bread alone, but lives by the wordse ga of godes muethat go from God’s mouth (ÆCHom I, 11.168.26)‘Man lives not by bread alone, but lives by the words that go from themouth of God’The contrast between (73a) and (73b) is interesting. (73a) shows the essentialconstituent negation of na: ‘man lives not by bread alone’. But on the next page,we find the same sentence with the same constituent negation meaning, butwith na in the position characteristically as in (71): on the left of the nominalsubject. We can account for this fixed position of sentential na by assumingthat the second sentential negator occupies Spec,NegP, and that sometimes, ina case of constituent negation with sentential scope like (73), the constituentnegator na moves to Spec,NegP.In the structure (72), we can account for the basic Verb-Second patterns asdiscussed above. Recall that the core patterns are as follows:(74) a. Wh-element (or ne or a)–Vf–Subject . . .b. Topic–Vf–Subject NP . . .c. Topic–Spronoun–Vf . . .The Verb-Second constraint and its loss 127If the first constituent is an interrogative constituent, as in (74a), that constituentis in Spec,CP and Vf moves to C (through intermediate head positions asindicated in (72)). If the subject is a noun, it is in Spec,TP in (72); if it is apronoun, it is in Spec,FP. This difference in position is not visible on thesurface in wh-questions. It emerges very clearly, however, in (74b–c). Topicsmove to Spec,CP like wh-constituents (recall that this is shown by the fact thatthey occur only in root clauses). But they do not draw Vf to C, as seems to betrue for all historical stages of English, except in some Northern texts inMiddle English, as will be discussed below. Rather, Vf moves to the head positionof FP, where it is followed by the nominal subject (in Spec,TP) as in (74b),or preceded by the pronominal subject (in Spec,FP), as in (74c). The advantageof this analysis over previous ones is that there is a separate position for