The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Middle English syntax 75The THEME could also have the form of a clause; for some verbs, this was infact the most frequent pattern.In present-day English, only the following two patterns are found:(12) a. EXPERIENCER – objective THEME – nominative(they surprised me)b. EXPERIENCER – nominative THEME – objective(I don’t like them)If the THEME is a clause in present-day English, it can function as thesubject, with or without dummy it (that you should say so surprises me; it surprisesme that you should say so).Early in the Middle English period, the option of marking the THEME asgenitive, as in (11b) and (11c), disappeared. Instead, the THEME argumentcame to be expressed by the objective form, as in (13a), or by a prepositionalphrase, as in (13b), a possibility that in fact occurred (alongside the genitive)in Old English as well.(13) a. Ic hit ierneI it-OBJ yearn‘I yearn for it’ (Vices&V 59.27; Allen 1995: 128)b. . . . yonge men . . . yurnes to gaumesyoung men yearn to games‘. . . young men like games’ (Destr.Troy 2937)This change can be seen as part of a larger development, whereby the genitiveceased to be used to mark verbal arguments, also of non-impersonal verbs.This development is somewhat unexpected, since we have seen that the genitivesurvived as a formal category. However, after the Old English period, thestatus of this formal category changed: it became restricted to functionswithin a NP (most typically, possessive function).Another early Middle English change is the general syncretism of dativeand accusative, which coalesced into one objective case. The effect for impersonalverbs is that the Old English marking of EXPERIENCER as dative, asin (11a) and (11c), changed into marking as objective, as in (14).(14) sche him pleseth/ of suche wordes as sche spekthshe him-OBJ pleases by such words as she speaks‘she pleases him by the words that she speaks’(Gower Confessio Amantis 1.1698; Denison 1993: 72)The two changes affecting genitive and dative resulted in the Old English patterns(11a, b) being converted into the present-day (12a, b). Pattern (11c),which is often called a ‘true’ impersonal construction since it has no nominative(and therefore, under some interpretations, no subject), remained a trueimpersonal, as shown in (15) and (16).