The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

14 The syntax of early Englishthe learner resolves with an appeal to UG. This is a situation not allowed forby Lightfoot, and it remains to be seen if that is correct for all language change.A second contentious feature of this approach is that it assumes that thelearner tries to match the input from the language environment in full. We willnow briefly look at a case study by Alison Henry (1997), in which both thesecontentious issues play an important role. Henry studies syntactic change inprogress in Belfast English imperative constructions and observes that, fromone generation to the next, children ignore some of the positive evidence thatthey receive and adopt a grammar which systematically deviates from theparent grammar. Belfast English is undergoing a remarkable syntactic changein imperative constructions; the oldest of three generations has two types ofimperative constructions, one with and one without inversion:(9) a. You sit downb. Sit you downc. Sit everybody downHenry shows on the basis of a number of distributional criteria that theproper analysis of inverted imperatives in what she calls the ‘UnrestrictedInversion’ dialect has the finite verb in the C-position, much as in the DutchVerb-Second constructions discussed above.(10) [ CP[ CSit i[ AgrSPyou . . . t i...down ]]]This is the only construction left in Belfast English in which lexical finite verbsmove to C; other contexts have do-support here. In the dialect of the oldestgeneration, when the verb is passive or unaccusative (i.e. where the subject isthe underlying object), the subject may appear in AgrSP, as in (10), correspondingto (11a–b), but it may also remain in object position, as in (11c–d):(11) a. Be you picked for the teamb. Be you going out of the door when they arrivec. Be picked you for the teamd. Be going you out of the door when they arrive(11c–d) are analysed as follows:(12) [ CP[ Cbe . . . [ VPpicked you for the team]]]The middle generation also has inverted imperatives, but they are nowrestricted to constructions with passives and unaccusative verbs:(13) a. Go you awayb. Arrive you on timec. Be picked you for the teamd. *Eat you those vegetablese. *Run you around the room