The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Old English syntax 67(79) a. To hwæm locige ic buton to æm eamodum . . . ?to whom look I except to the humble‘To whom do I look except to the humble . . . ?’ (CP 41.299.18)b. æt fyr getacnode one Halgan Gast, urh one we beo gehalgode‘The fire betokened the Holy Ghost, through whom we are hallowed’(ÆCHom II, 17.167.190)These facts are discussed in meticulous detail in Allen (1977, 1980) and in vanKemenade (1987). Allen argues that they motivate the postulation of twostrategies of relativization in Old English, one by wh-movement, as in (79), theother by controlled unbounded deletion of a relative pronoun, as in (78). Wecan then say that it was impossible in Old English to move a relative pronounout of a PP, hence we get pied piping when a PP or prepositional object isrelativized. Unbounded deletion of a prepositional object was possible, hencewe get preposition stranding there. As far as we can ascertain, however, thetwo strategies, preposition stranding and pied piping, have exactly the sameproperties with respect to conditions on movement, and on the relationbetween a Spec,CP element and its trace(s). This, van Kemenade (1987)argues, supports the idea that they are both wh-movement constructions; andshe goes on to analyse preposition stranding constructions in terms of whmovementof the phonetically empty counterpart of a personal pronoun orær (which we know can be moved out of a PP). We will not discuss the finerpoints of the analysis here. For our purposes, it is important to bear in mindthe distinction between passives and wh-movement constructions here:preposition stranding in passives is not attested at all in Old English.