The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

Changes in infinitival constructions 219We have already indicated that the reanalysis shown in (10) became possiblebecause the loss of case inflections made the interpretation of the relevantNP ambiguous. The fact that it was rendered possible does not, however, meanthat the loss of inflections made the reanalysis in (10) necessary. The loss ofdative case had no particular effect in other constructions, such as the doubleobject construction (in which the indirect object NP may have been sufficientlyidentified by its position in the clause). We may expect, therefore, that therewere further contributing factors. One of these is probably the fixing of VOword order as discussed in chapter 5. This can be shown by means of twotypical examples from Old and Middle English:(11) leohtre is am bearnum maga swingcela to geoliannelighter is for-children of-kinsmen lashes to sufferonne Godes yrre on to beyrnannethan God’s ire to run-into‘it is less painful for children to suffer the lashes of their kinsmen than toincur God’s anger’ (ThCap2(Sauer) 33.369.8)(12) if it be a foul thing a man to waste his catel on wommen(Chaucer Parson 848)In Old English, illustrated by (11), the infinitival object nearly always precedesthe infinitive in surface word order (i.e. swingcela and yrre come beforegeolian and onbeyrnan respectively). The matrix benefactive object is foundboth before and after the matrix verb, depending on the type of clause andalso on stylistic factors (in (11), bearnum follows the predicate leohtre is). InMiddle English, surface VO word order becomes the norm. As shown inchapter 5, sentences with overt movement of the object to AgrOP (yieldingsurface OV order) become ever rarer in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenthcenturies, and by 1400 this option has virtually disappeared. This canindeed be seen also in (12), where both objects (the matrix benefactive objectman, and the infinitival object catel) follow the verb. This means that in MiddleEnglish the (old) benefactive phrase comes to be positioned next to theinfinitive. Through this fixed adjacent position and the loss of dative marking,an interpretation becomes available in which the older benefactive is thesubject of the infinitive.This reanalysis was unlikely to occur in Old English, because Old Englishstill had a wider variety of surface word orders, resulting from the V-movementprocesses discussed in chapter 4 and from the overt checking of object casesdiscussed in chapter 5. This then may also explain why the reanalysis did nottake place in either German or Dutch: since Dutch and German are firmly SOVin their surface word order, and have maintained word order asymmetriesbetween main and subordinate clauses due to V-movement, the benefactive