The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

elated, in other words that the fact that the verb moves to a position next toinitial no entails weakening of no to ne, with the possibility of ne being proclitic.This is an argument for the following formalized representation of thetwo sentential negation patterns in Beowulf, which we hypothesize are successivestages that show overlap in the poem:(30) BeowulfThe non-V-movement pattern:[ Spec,CPno [. . . finite verb . . .]](31) Beowulf and Classical Old EnglishThe V-movement pattern[ Spec,CPne [ Cfinite verb [ . . .]]]| |cliticizationGrammaticalization and grammar change 313(30) represents the ‘oldest’ pattern. Sentential negation is expressed by movingno to Spec,CP. The finite verb is not moved. In (31), there is again a negativeconstituent in Spec,CP, but now the finite verb is attracted to C. The questionof what triggered the rise of this pattern is of some interest. Why should thelearner construct a grammar that yields a novel word order pattern?Presumably there is no positive basis in the language environment on which toconstruct the grammatical basis for such a pattern. With Lightfoot (1999:152), we think that the answer must probably come from a UG conditionstating that lexical material in Spec,CP must be licensed by a lexically filled C.If this is correct, this innovation is a case of UG-driven change as discussedin chapter 1.It seems that V-movement to C, the position right-adjacent to the negativeelement in Spec,CP, entails that no is reduced/procliticized to the finite verb.We hypothesize that at the stage represented in (31), this cliticization is phonological.By this, we mean that, although ne is a prefix/proclitic, it does syntacticallyrepresent a constituent in Spec,CP. This allows an account for thepuzzle discussed above in connection with negative-initial clauses with nealone: topics are extremely rare there. This is straightforwardly accounted forby (30) and (31): syntactically, the negative element is in Spec,CP, hence noother elements can appear there. For the learner acquiring a grammar, the factthat sentences with ne alone are always introduced by neVfin, is presumablyevidence that there is a negative operator associated with Spec,CP. The learnerwill conclude that no other constituent can appear there.At the stage of the language represented by Beowulf, the negative elementseems to be in transition from being an independent constituent, an adverb as