The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

An outline of Middle English syntax 77needs to be taken into account in a full history of the impersonals. Secondly,among the category of two-place impersonal verbs that we have described, thereappears to be lexical variation (synchronic as well as diachronic) as to whichverbs occur in which configurations; since the available data are incomplete andonly give us a partial view, scholars inevitably disagree about what the completeview would be like. Thirdly, cross-linguistically the relevant verbs (sometimescalled psych verbs, since they tend to indicate various psychological states) alsooften show rather special patterns of case marking and grammatical relations,and so far there has been little consensus on their proper analysis. Some theories,for example, entertain the possibility that a fronted dative EXPERI-ENCER argument in some cases can function as subject of the clause; this ofcourse will have consequences for the kind of empirical distinctions we willwant to make (e.g. between fronted and non-fronted EXPERIENCERS) andfor the way the diachronic development of these constructions is viewed (seeAllen 1995 for a detailed analysis of Old and Middle English impersonals alongthese lines, with full references to earlier work).3.2.3 PassivesIn section 2.2.1, we saw that the prototypical Old English passive hada nominative subject corresponding to an accusative object in the active sentence,as in the passive (20) corresponding to the active in (6a).(20) onne he bi west gesewen, onne tacna he æfenwhen it-NOM is westward seen then signifies it evening‘when it [the evening star] is seen in the west, it signifies evening’(Bo 39.135.32)Passives of this type continue throughout the Middle English period (though,to be precise, the changes in the case system meant that the active sentencewould no longer have an object marked accusative, since the accusative anddative had coalesced in the new category of objective case). The MiddleEnglish pair in (21)–(22) illustrates the simple active–passive alternation.(21) Sei ou ever emperour?saw you ever the-emperor-OBJ‘Did you ever see the emperor?’ (WPal. 276)(22) Nass he næfre sehenn her urrh erli flæshess ehenot-was he-NOM never seen here through earthly flesh-GEN eye‘He was never seen here by the eyes of mortals’ (Orm. 19425)But in addition to this simple type, two new types of passives began to appearin the Middle English period: the prepositional passive and the recipient