The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

Verb–particles in Old and Middle English 185(8) a. omdat je deze school eerst moet doorlopen/*door moet lopenbecause you this school first must complete‘because you must complete this school first’b. Het heeft geen zin deze school *door te lopen/te doorlopenit has no point this school to complete‘There is no point in completing this school’Apart from intonation, the difference in Dutch between particle and prefix isshown by these syntactic tests. It may be that a similar distinction held in OldEnglish, but it is much more difficult to establish, because there are no nativespeakers’ intuitions to rely on. When there are no recorded examples with thenegative ne, nor the infinitive marker to, nor an auxiliary or modal verb, andthe particle is in front of the verb, we do not have absolute certainty about itsstatus. We will return to this point in section 6.3.1.6.3 Particles in Old EnglishIn this section we will describe the syntax of particle verb in OldEnglish, using quantitative data taken from Hiltunen (1983), a thorough studyof the rise of the phrasal verb. 3 Theoretically there are four ways in which particleand verb can be ordered in the surface string, taking into account thatother clause elements (X) could intervene:(9) a. part–X–Vb. part–Vc. V–partd. V–X–partThe frequency of these patterns depends on clause type. As stated inchapter 2, it has become common to distinguish three types of clauses: mainclauses, coordinate clauses and subordinate clauses, and we will look ateach in turn.3Hiltunen studied twelve Old English and fifteen Middle English texts, with few exceptionsin toto. The Old English texts include the major prose works (CP, Or, GD, Bede,Laws, BlHom, ChronA, ChronE, extracts from the WS Gospels, WHom, ÆCHomI&II, ÆLS and ApT). The Middle English texts are: ChronE (continuations), TrinityHomilies, Vices&Virtues, e Wohunge of Ure Lauerd, Lambeth Homilies, Chad, St.Katherine, St. Marherete, St. Juliana, Hali Meihad, Sawles Warde, Ancrene Riwle,History of the Holy Rood Tree and the Vespasian A Homilies. The complete databaseis given in an appendix, and has been used by subsequent scholars (Koopman 1985,van Kemenade 1987, Pintzuk 1991).