The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

158 The syntax of early EnglishLet us turn now to the position of PPs. This position can presumably notbe derived by checking movement, since it is hard to provide a motivation forthe checking of PPs. We could say that PPs can be adjoined to VP or to AgrOP.This would allow them to occur in the following positions, shown in (51): onthe right of the verb (no movement, PP1 and PP2, the first a complement, thesecond an adjunct), on the immediate left of the verb (adjunction to VP, PP3)or preceding objects (adjunction to AgrOP, PP4):(51)AgrOPPP4SpecAgrOPAgrO'AgrOVPPP3VPSpec(V')V'PP2VPP1Such free adjunction may not seem like a theoretically principled solution. Ina feature checking approach, we might want to formulate separate functionalprojections to derive the position of PPs, but these are issues that have not yetbeen addressed in detail in the theoretical literature, and we must thereforeleave them open here.We now turn to a further complexity: the position of stranded prepositions.Let us recapitulate the basic facts concerning preposition stranding in OldEnglish, summarized in 2.6: preposition stranding occurs in PPs with a pronominalor locative object, and also in those wh-movement constructions inwhich there is no overt wh-element; the stranded preposition is always part ofa complement PP, and it nearly always immediately precedes the verb. In thosecases where it is not on the immediate left, it is right-adjacent to the verb. Werepeat the preposition–verb example (13) here for convenience:(13) a wæs hiora an se Apollinus e we ær ymb spræconthen was of-them one the Apollinus that we before about spoke‘Then one of them was the Apollinus that we spoke about before’(Bo 38.116.1)If the position of PPs is variable, it may seem surprising that stranded prepositionshave a fixed position. The theoretical literature on preposition stranding