The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

The loss of object–verb word order 163(58) I may my persone and myn hous so kepen and deffenden.‘I can keep and defend myself and my house in such a way.’(Chaucer Melibee 1334)(59) Ne he ne may habbe skele: et he him moe excusinor he not may have reason that he him may excuse‘Nor may he have a reason to excuse himself’ (Ayenb. 7.1)In examples (55) and (56) the object is in front of a finite lexical verb, in (57) and(58) the object comes in between the auxiliary and the non-finite verb, and in (59)the object precedes the auxiliary. We can therefore say that fourteenth-centuryEnglish basically allows the same word order options as early thirteenth-centuryEnglish: the patterns in (55)–(59) correspond exactly to those in (52)–(54).This rather full distribution of OV order across syntactic environmentscomes to an end in the fifteenth century. By that time, OV order is quite infrequent,but in a study of a large amount of fifteenth-century prose (van derWurff 1997b) it was found that OV shows not only a quantitative but also aqualitative decline. Apart from its use in fixed expressions such as so God mehelp, OV order becomes restricted to just two syntactic contexts. One of theseis constructions which have an empty subject, such as coordinate and relativeclauses, of which we give one example each in (60) and (61).(60) summe he exiled, summe he put out here rite eyne, and namely e worthiman, Athanasius, whech mad Quicuncque vult, pursewed so feruently at hedurst not appere openly vii ere‘some he exiled, of some he put out their right eye, and especially thehonourable man Athanasius, who composed the Quicumque vult, hepursued so intensely that he did not dare to show himself in public forseven years’ (Capgrave Cronicles 62.23)(61) alle at is writinge reden or heere‘all that will read or hear this writing’ (Sermon 2250)The other surviving productive OV context in the fifteenth century is clausesfeaturing an auxiliary and an object that contains a negative or quantifiedelement, as in (62)–(65).(62) ei schuld no meyhir haue‘they were not allowed to have a mayor’ (Capgrave Cronicles 199.6)(63) I haue non schepyde as yete‘I have shipped none yet’ (Cely Letters 87.11)(64) he ha on vs mercy, for he may al ynge do‘he has mercy on us, for he can do everything’ (Barlam 2740)(65) Item, whethyr ye haue eny thyng spokyn of my going to Caleys.‘Another point: have you said anything about my going to Calais’(Paston Letters 355.28)