The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Old English syntax 61gedon swa him leofost byput as him most pleasing is‘Father and mother must put their child to whatever occupation is mostpleasing to him’ (ÆHom 20.54)Finally, relatives can be used without a relative pronoun. This happens primarilywhen the relative clause contains the verb hatan and the relative correspondswith the subject:(65) Him a andswarode his ealdorbisceop, Cefi wæs hatenhim then answered his high priest Cefi was called‘The high-priest, who was called Cefi, then answered him’(Bede 2.10.134.11)The word order patterns in relative clauses are the patterns which occur in subordinateclauses in general, though they are more frequently OV than othersubordinate clauses.Relative clauses usually follow their antecedents immediately, as in most ofthe examples given so far, but, as was pointed out in section 2.3.1, they can beseparated from them and then occur in clause-final position:(66) & gesealde his suna æt rice Constantinuse one he hæfdeand gave his son the kingdom Constantinus whom he hadær be Elenan his ciefesebefore by Helen his concubine‘and gave the kingdom to his son Constantine whom he had by hisconcubine Helen’ (Or 6.30.148.8)(67) myccle swior we sceolan am sofæstan gode as lac geoffrian emuch rather we ought the true God this gift offer whous alysde fram deaeus delivered from death‘much rather we ought to offer this gift to the true God who delivered usfrom death’ (ÆLS(Basil) 279)2.5.2 Complement clausesComplement clauses are those clauses which function as complementto a verb, adjective or noun. They can be finite or non-finite. A complementclause which is a statement is usually a finite clause introduced by æt ‘that’.The subordinating conjunction is sometimes omitted if the verb is one ofsaying, such as cwean, secgan ‘say’, where the clause reports what is beingsaid. The most important type of non-finite complementation in Old Englishis the infinitival clause. As in the present-day language, there are infinitiveswith and without to, but the system underlying the choice is different, as willbe sketched below. In Old English, the distribution of the various types of