The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Old English syntax 53clause. Failure to recognize it as a separate category yields a very misleadingpicture of main clause word order. We saw above that main clauses generallyhave Verb-Second. By analogy, we would expect coordinate main clauses toexhibit Verb-Second phenomena, have topics, show inversion and have the wordorders typical of main clauses. But very often they do not. Although a smallnumber of main clauses have no Verb-Second (Koopman 1995), the number ofcoordinate main clauses lacking it is far greater (even ones starting with a topic)and they often have the verb-final word orders usually associated with subordinateclauses. Consider (41):(41) 7 a ongeat se cyning æt 7 he on a duru eode 7and then perceived the king that and he on the door went anda unheanlice hine weredethen nobly himself defended‘and then the king perceived this and he went to the door and then noblydefended himself’ (ChronA(Plummer) 755.13)The first coordinate clause of (41) shows inversion after a, which is characteristicof main clauses, but the second coordinate clause has no Verb-Secondand the finite verb follows the PP on a duru, while the third coordinate clausedoes not repeat the subject and again has the verb in clause-final position (seealso Stockwell and Minkova 1990).2.4 Some clause types2.4.1 QuestionsQuestion formation in Old English does not differ greatly from itscounterpart in the present-day language. Most questions are of two maintypes: yes–no questions and wh-questions. The two types share the prominentsyntactic feature of subject–verb inversion. In yes–no questions the truthvalue of the whole statement is questioned: they ask for an affirmative or negativeresponse and are typically verb-initial:(42) Truwast u nu e selfum and inum geferum bet onnetrust you now you self and your companions better thanam apostolum ...?the apostles‘Do you trust yourself now and your companions better than theapostles...?’ (Solil 2.61.24)In wh-questions a constituent is questioned by fronting an interrogativepronoun or adverb, such as hwelc ‘which’, hwær ‘where’, hwy ‘why’, and hwa‘who’. An example is: