Arguments against a universal base: evidence from Old English

Different parts and versions of this article have been presented at the Workshop on Historical Syntax (University of Aarhus, 2004); the University of Geneva (2004); the University of Stuttgart (2003); the University of York (2003); the Second Holland–York Symposium on the History of English Syntax (University of Leiden, 2003); the Eighteenth Comparative Germanic Syntax Workshop (University of Durham, 2003), the Seventh Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference (University of Girona, 2002); the Sixth Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference (University of Maryland, 2000). I thank the audiences at these talks, especially Eric Haeberli and Ann Taylor, and the two editors of this special issue for helpful discussion. I am particularly grateful to two anonymous reviewers for suggestions that helped to clarify my thinking on the contents of this article, even though I was not able to incorporate all of their comments and ideas. All errors and omissions remain my own responsibility. This work has been supported by AHRB Research Leave Grant 4727 APN 13199 and a matching grant from the Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York; this support is gratefully acknowledged.