The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

The loss of object–verb word order 173the period 600–900. Viewed within the analysis developed in 5.3.2, the changewould consist in the loss of uniformly strong case features. Next, of course, wewould like to know what caused this grammatical change. Within the model ofchange described in chapter 1, we want to know what changes there may havebeen in E-language to bring about the change in I-language, i.e. what wasdifferent in the language environment of English children acquiring a grammararound 900 compared with children acquiring it around 600? In the absence ofsufficient textual records from this period, it is somewhat difficult to establishthis with any great precision. However, the literature on the change from OV toVO contains several proposals for the cause of the increase in surface VO order(see Denison 1993: 27–58 for a useful summary and critical evaluation) andsome of these may be relevant for the explanation of the loss of uniformlystrong features.Stockwell (1977), for example, attributes the rise of VO order to the prevalenceof, amongst other things, postverbal afterthought-like elements, such asrelative clauses, second conjuncts of coordinated phrases, appositions andadverbs (to these, we can add heavy objects). The accumulated evidence of allthese sentence types, Stockwell (1977) argues, would at some point lead languagelearners to conclude that surface VO was possible quite generally.Another idea is that postverbal position was generalized from heavy objects toprogressively lighter objects, with this position perhaps initally having someexpressive value that became bleached due to common use (see Lightfoot 1979:393 ff.; 1981b: 231 f.) and/or to diffusion across dialects (see van der Wurff1990b: 42–4). Yet another factor that has been invoked for the shift from OVto VO is processing problems that might be caused by the consistent use of OVorder for internally complex objects (for a detailed demonstration, see Colman1988). What may also have played a role is the scantiness of evidence for OVorder in main clauses, which is the prime environment guiding language learners(see Lightfoot 1991); in particular the position of finite verb and particlesmay have been significant in this respect (see chapters 4 and 6). Finally, it hasbeen proposed that the change to VO order may have been due the loss of overtcase marking of NPs, either directly or mediated through a system ofidentification or licensing (see Weerman 1989: 157–78, and Kiparsky 1997).On the basis of suggestions like these, we can imagine a child acquiring agrammar of English around 900 which would be exposed to a language environmentwhich was different from that of earlier generations in the followingrespects: it contained more elements such as relative clauses, adverbs, appositionsand heavy objects in postverbal position; it also contained postverbalobjects that were only marginally heavy or pragmatically marked; it had fewerpreverbal objects that were internally complex or unambiguously accusative,