The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

Verb–particles in Old and Middle English 205tion that, as for Old English, the particle marks the position of the verb beforeV-movement.There are in principle a number of ways in which the word orders of (46) canbe derived. One straightforward way that is consistent with the universal basehypothesis is to say that particles are still base-generated according to the structure(37) above, as in Old English. Object and particle then together form a verblessclause, a small clause, which is not an implausible analysis since they caneasily be paraphrased as a resultative clause (‘as a result of the raising, her handsare up’). (46a) then reflects that base word order, like (46c). Supposing that thelearner constructing a grammar works on this assumption, she is faced with theproblem of how to analyse (46b). As linguists, we can see that (46b) is acontinuation of an Old English pattern in which the particle is checked to theleft of the base position of the verb, in Pred. And it is standard in Old Englishand in Middle English for the finite verb to be checked overtly in F, as we sawin chapter 4. But we are then faced with the question of whether there issufficient evidence for the learner in the language environment to postulate suchan analysis. Since (46b) is the most frequent pattern, this may seem reasonable.Such an analysis still leaves open the possibility that the finite verb might haveundergone overt checking in the functional position F in all three examples.A second way to analyse (46) is to say that, since (46b) is the most frequentpattern, we should take this as primary, and say the verb and particle form onecomplex verbal head, with an object in a VO structure. On this assumption, it isvery difficult to derive the alternative word orders in a principled way: since verband particle form a unit, it is impossible to insert functional projections betweenthem, hence no object can be checked in that position. Another objection is thatit should probably still be possible to move the verbal part to check against afunctional feature, leading to word orders like ‘raised XP up her hand’. But suchword orders are not attested, as far as we are aware. Clearly, if we aim for oneuniform analysis, the first analysis seems the more attractive, and this once againprovides some support for the universal base hypothesis of Kayne (1994).There is, of course, a third option, which is to say that all V–part wordorders are simply lexical units at this time, while for the V . . . part word orders,a Small Clause analysis still seems feasible. Effectively, this amounts to sayingthat V–part orders are defined in the lexicon as idiomatic combinations, andthat there is a second lexical entry for V–NP–part word orders, in which theverb is subcategorized for a Small Clause predicate.We do not yet have sufficient factual details of Middle English to be able todecide which of these possible analyses seems the most viable. While we knowthat V-movement continued to be an option until late Middle English and