The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

Verb–particles in Old and Middle English 199(37) represents the structure before movement. One approach would be to saythat the whole small clause moves to check a predicate feature in Spec,PredP(so that the whole of AgrP moves to Spec,PredP). Alternatively, the particleut might adjoin to the head of Pred, and the object might move to check afeature in Spec,AgrO, along the lines discussed in chapter 5. The issues in factrevolve around the same problems as those discussed in chapter 5 to derive theword order options of bare infinitival clauses, though we should realize thatparticles on this analysis are checked overtly with a considerably higher frequencythan bare infinitivals. It may be observed that (37) also reflects thesurface word order of postverbal NPparticle attestations like thoseexemplified in (36) above, so that this would allow us to say that those caseshave the same structure with covert checking. For V . . . particleNP orderslike (30), we would indeed have to assume that the particle moves independentlyof the NP, presumably to the head Pred, while the verb has beenmoved to F. The details of an analysis along these lines remain to be workedout, but it should at least be clear that the above sketch allows an account ofthe variety of positions occupied by the Old English particles also within theuniversal base hypothesis.6.6 Some remaining problems: particles separated from the verb(part . . . V)Above we have discussed the distribution of particles showing that itprovides strong support for the assumption that the particle marks the baseposition of the verb in Old English in an OV analysis and does not undergomovement of any kind. In a universal base hypothesis the particle is moved toa position left of the finite verb, which itself is moved there for checking purposes(see chapter 5). Essential in both approaches is that the particle isanalysed as being immediately to the left of the finite verb. However, we haveshown that what appears to be a particle can precede and be separated fromthe verb. This happens in some of the constructions discussed in section 6.2.2,but also when the particle precedes a PP. In some cases we can reasonablyargue that we are not dealing with a particle but with an adverb modifying thePP. There are, however, a few cases that are not open to this analysis and wewill look at them in this section.Two subordinate clauses, given in (38a–b), and a coordinate main clause,given in (38c), have what looks like a particle left of the verb, which is separatedfrom it by an object. The subordinate clauses come from texts that are notin Hiltunen’s corpus: