7.1 Introduction
In this chapter we discuss diachronic developments involving the various clausal constituents. The emphasis here will be on arguments (subjects, direct, indirect and prepositional objects) and negation, concentrating on the changes they have undergone in terms of function and expression. Changes in the behaviour of adjuncts are discussed in Chapter 9 (“Word Order”), as these mostly have to do with their position in the clause. We first discuss internal developments in the expression of subjects and objects (Sections 7.2 and 7.3), followed by changes in the relations they enter into with each other and with the finite verb, which involve the loss of impersonal constructions, the active/passive relation and agreement (Sections 7.4 to 7.6).Footnote 1 Finally, we turn to changes in the expression of clausal negation (Section 7.7). For each constituent, we start with a description of the basic historical developments, followed by a discussion of how these developments can be understood when viewed in the context of other changes taking place in the language, such as the effect of the large-scale introduction of loanwords and other types of linguistic contact, the loss of verbal and nominal inflections, the concomitant rise of periphrastic constructions, and changes in word order.
7.2 Subjects
Throughout its history, English has had a stable system of grammatical functions in active clauses that contain an agent expression: the agent of the clause functions as the subject, the theme or affected entity functions as the direct object, and the recipient or experiencer as the indirect/prepositional object, while other roles, such as instrument or source, or references to time and location, have adjunct status. In (1), we give two present-day examples in which semantic roles and grammatical functions are linked in this way.
However, even within this basic clause type, certain variations and alternations are possible, and there have been several changes in the types of elements that can function as specific clausal constituents. As far as subjects are concerned, the principal changes have to do with ‘empty’ and ‘dummy’ subjects, and a widening of semantic roles in subject position (see further Sections 7.5 and 7.6, and Chapter 9).
First, let us look at empty subjects, as in PDE (2) and (3). We use the symbol Ø to mark the empty subject.
(2) Ø seems he was involved in some sort of scandal (BNC).
(3) Mmm. Ø Did not know Giles but Ø think advice was quite good
(Helen Fielding, ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’, Daily Telegraph, 2/5/1998)
The sentence in (2) illustrates the omission of a dummy it, which has no referential meaning but is present simply to fill the subject slot in clauses containing a subordinate argument clause; we will use the label ‘null dummy subject’ for this phenomenon. The sentence in (3) is different, because the empty subject position has to be interpreted as I, a meaningful pronoun. In PDE, the distribution of these two types of empty subjects is not exactly the same: it-omission as in (2) appears to be characteristic of informal speech, while pronoun-omission of the type seen in (3) (for which the term pro-drop is sometimes used) is typical of diary-style (see Haegeman Reference Haegeman1997). Both types are more usual in main clauses than in subordinate clauses.
We first discuss the first type: null dummy subjects. These subjects are plentifully attested in OE texts; an example is (4). The corresponding example in (5) makes clear that use of an overt dummy subject with hit ‘it’ was also possible (sometimes also þæt is found here, but this is infrequent).
(4) Swa þonne is me nu swiþe earfeðe hiera mod to ahwettanne
So then is me now very easy their mood to whet (Or.4,13.113.7)
‘In the same way then it is now easy for me to whet their appetite’
(5) hit bið swiðe unieðe ægðer to donne
it will-be very uneasy either to do (CP.46.355.19)
‘It won’t be easy to do either’
In ME texts, the two options (i.e. null and overt dummy subjects) continue to exist side by side; an example with a null dummy subject from this period can be seen in (6).
(6) Acc himm wass lihht to lokenn himm/ fra þeӡӡre laþe wiless
But to-him was easy to keep himself from their evil wiles (Orm.10316)
‘But it was easy for him to protect himself against their evil tricks’
After 1500, however, only the variant with overt dummy it survives in the written records, becoming, therefore, correspondingly more frequent. Some suggestions have been made about the possible causes for this development − the increasingly fixed subject-verb order being one of them, but the existence of informal spoken examples like (2) in PDE must make us hesitant to declare null dummy subjects dead and buried by 1500. Rather, the development appears to have been from general use of null dummies in OE to restricted use in PDE. It is quite likely that standardization also played a role with it becoming compulsory in written language.
Besides the use of it as a dummy subject, the word there can also be found as a dummy or expletive subject in PDE existential sentences – that is, in intransitive clauses with an indefinite ‘logical’ subject, as in There is a shift in the political wind (BNC). This usage likewise goes back to OE times, but at that period the there-construction was only one of several competing variants (and a rather minor variant to begin with). Thus in the relevant sentence types, the use of there (7a) alternated with hit (7b) and the absence of a dummy subject (7c).
a … þæt þær nære buton twegen dælas: Asia & þæt oþer Europe
… that there not-were but two parts: Asia and the other Europe (Or.1,1.8.11)
‘… that there were only two parts: Asia, and the other one, Europe’
b Is hit lytel tweo ðæt ðæs wæterscipes welsprynge is on hefonrice
is it little doubt that the watercourse’s spring is in heaven-kingdom (CP.Ep.6)
‘There is little doubt that the source of the watercourse is in the heavenly kingdom’
c Sum rice man wæs
some rich man was (ÆCHom.I,23 366.44)
‘There was a rich man’
It is during the ME period that these other variants fall out of use, and the PDE situation establishes itself with expletive there becoming the rule. In late ME, dummy there is actually used somewhat more widely than in PDE, as it sometimes appears even in transitive clauses (Tanaka, Reference Tanaka2000). This construction is found especially in cases where the logical subject is a negative word like nobody or nothing; as in (8).Footnote 2 The construction disappears soon after 1500.
(8) Ther shal no thyng hurte hym (Past.Letters,643.24(1461))
We now turn to the history of pro-drop in English, the second type of omitted subject illustrated in (3). The usual account of the development holds that pro-drop was possible (but never very frequent) in OE, and disappeared well before the present time. It was probably an archaic remnant from earlier prehistoric times, and indeed most of the examples are found in Beowulf, a poem that is known to have preserved more archaic syntax overall (cf. Fulk, Reference Fulk and Neidorf2014). An OE example of the phenomenon is given in (9).
(9) Se halga ða het him bringan sæd. Ø wolde on ðam westene wæstmes tilian
The saint then ordered to-him bring seed. Ø wanted in the wasteland plants grow(ÆCHom.II.10.86.176)
‘The saint then ordered seed to be brought to him. He wanted to grow a crop in the wasteland’
Again, as with the null dummy subject, the development seems to have been from somewhat wider (but not very frequent) use in OE to very restricted use in PDE, but a more accurate account of this can only become possible when more data have become available on the exact distribution of pro-drop over the stylistic spectrum at each individual stage of the language (including PDE).
For the OE period, more detailed work has been done recently on this phenomenon by Walkden (Reference Walkden2013) (an analysis based on the tagged Penn-Helsinki corpus), and Van Gelderen (Reference Van Gelderen2013). But even when corpus evidence is used, there are problems. Lass (Reference Lass, Dossena and Lass2004: 26–28) notes with reference to an example of pro-drop with the first person plural in the early OE text of Caedmon’s Hymn (i.e. in Nu Ø sculon herigean heofonrices weard ‘Now [we] must praise the heavenly Lord’) that most editors of the early mss of this poem have inserted the OE pronoun we, even though the pronoun only appears in tenth-century or later versions (where it was indeed sometimes inserted by scribes), thus obscuring (possibly) relevant linguistic evidence. A problem here is that the corpora are usually based on edited texts and not on mss (cf. also Walkden, Reference Walkden2013: 156).
Still, on the basis of these two recent studies, it is possible to identify a number of structural factors and contexts that seem to have promoted the occurrence of pro-drop in OE. One factor that has clearly played a role is person features: first and second person pronouns are omitted far less often than third person ones (the example in (9) is typical in this respect). Walkden (Reference Walkden2013: 165) shows that in the texts that robustly allow pro-drop, its occurrence in first and second person never rises above the level of 4 per cent, while in the third person (both singular and plural), it may amount to as much as 80 per cent. It is likely, because all these texts are based on Latin, that pro-drop use will have been influenced by the source text, but the fact that it is infrequent in the other two persons counts against this as a crucial factor. Rather, the distribution may show that the omission of the third person was in itself a native phenomenon, unlike that of the other two persons.
The two studies further note that pro-drop is far less frequent in subordinate clauses; the context promoting pro-drop usually involves a sequence of main clauses with identical subjects (as can also be seen in (9), and one subordinate example can be found in (10)). Walkden (Reference Walkden2013: 172) refers in this respect to the availability of ‘aboutness topics’ – that is, the subject can be left out when the topic that the null pronoun refers to is already known, and situated on the same discourse level. This would link it to the regular absence of a subject pronoun in coordinated clauses, with or without a conjunction, where of course the null subject is still regular even in PDE (as in They won their opening match by 51 runs, but Ø lost the second by four wickets (BNC)). It should also be remembered in this connection that the distinction between main and coordinate clauses was not always so clear in OE texts. Finally, there are two factors that may be more controversial or more difficult to prove. Walkden suggests that the phenomenon may have been dialectal since it occurs more often in Anglian texts, which, themselves being rare, also would explain the rarity of pro-drop itself, while Van Gelderen (Reference Van Gelderen2013) argues that rich inflexional agreement was responsible for pro-drop, connecting its later loss to the loss of overt agreement with the first and second person pronouns. We agree, however, with Walkden (ibid.: 168) that this cannot be a crucial factor because pro-drop is regular also in the third person plural, even though the plural had no inflexional person-distinctions in OE. More generally, there seems to be no correlation between the distinctiveness of a verbal ending and the incidence of pro-drop.
Other examples of pronoun omission in OE are more clearly different from what is possible in PDE. They concern cases where the omitted subject is identical to a non-subject in an earlier clause, as in (10)–(11). In (10) the empty subject is understood to refer back to the dative him in the preceding clause. Examples like (11) are attested more frequently since here the dative NP occurs in an impersonal construction with the dative functioning notionally as a subject (see further Section 7.5),
(10) ah hie a motan mid him gefeon, þær Ø leofað & rixað a buton ende
but they ever may with him rejoice, there Ø lives and rules ever without end(HomU.18(Bl.Hom.1)188)
‘but they may rejoice with him forever, where he lives and rules for ever without end’
(11) Ða gelicode þam gedwolum þæs bisceopes dom, and wacodon þa þreo
Then liked to-the heretics the bishop’s proposal, and watched then three nihtnights (ÆLS(Basil)336)
‘Then the heretics liked the bishop’s proposal and watched then for three nights’
Pronoun omission of this type continues throughout the ME period and is still sometimes found in the sixteenth century, as in example (12), but then disappears from written texts.
(12) that done they ledde hym faste bounde in chaynes of yren in to Babylone and there Ø was set in pryson (Fisher, Rissanen, 1999: 249)
In ME, we occasionally come across another (and apparently new) context allowing subject pronoun omission. It consists of clauses with a topic phrase introduced by a prepositional element and an empty subject that is understood to be identical to this topic; an example is (13).
(13) As for Thomas Myller Ø wyll do nothyng in thys mater
As for Thomas Myller, [he] will do nothing in this matter (Cely Letters, Fischer et al., Reference Adamson2000: 70)
However, this is a short-lived innovation, as it does not seem to survive the ME period.
A final context for pro-drop that we mention here is the use of a second person singular verb in -(e)st, which sometimes lacks the subject pronoun thou. We saw in the prior discussion that pro-drop of a second person pronoun is somewhat rare in OE, but it is not unusual in ME and it continues in eModE, until the pronoun thou and the associated verbal form cease to be used altogether. A Shakespearian example is given in (14).
(14) Hast thou neuer an eie in thy heade? Canst Ø not heare? (1Henry IV.ii.1)
It is in cases like this that English comes closest to what may be called standard pro-drop languages like Spanish and Italian, where the rich verbal inflection suffices to identify the person and number of the empty subject (i.e. a clause like Spanish Te quiero cannot mean anything else than ‘I love you’, due to the -o ending). However, even with the eModE verbal form in -est, it is much more usual to find overt thou rather than a null subject. Quite possibly this omission has a phonetic cause. We know from other evidence that the pronoun thou could be assimilated to the verbal ending in -(s)t in ME constructions, which resulted in forms like canstu, further reduction could then lead to canste (with a schwa) > canst.
7.3 Objects
To begin the discussion of objects and the changes that they have undergone, we may first consider some cases of object omission. In PDE, this phenomenon can be found in various types of sentences, some of which are illustrated in (15a-c).
a His friends were eating/He was reading
b I see/You know
c Grill for five minutes/Handle with care
d The trumpets are blowing
The examples in (15a) feature verbs that can be used transitively, but in their use here they appear to be used intransitively, with no syntactically active object being present at all. The precise nature of such transitive-intransitive alternations is still a matter of debate, but their historical development is not particularly spectacular: they are found from the earliest period onwards. The instances in (15b) are different: they feature verbs of cognition like see, know, understand, or imagine, whose empty object is always interpreted as referring to the topic currently being discussed or considered (hence, they cannot refer to a concrete entity: You know can be equivalent to You know what I mean or You know what he/she/it is like, etc., but not normally to You know him/her/it). Some of these cases can be regarded as semi-frozen expressions, resulting from a process of grammaticalization. Thus, Thompson and Mulac (Reference Thompson and Mulac1991) show how the subject-verb-object sequence [I think + that-clause] may have given rise to the epistemic marker I think, which has shed its clausal object (via an earlier loss of the complementizer that) as a result of repeated and predictable use in discourse. Crucial in Thompson and Mulac’s scenario is the loss of the complementizer that before the object clause. Fischer (Reference Fischer2007: 297ff.) shows that this creates a problem with dating: I think is already attested as an epistemic marker before that was lost. She suggests, referring to evidence from other Germanic languages, that epistemic I think developed out of earlier formulaic, independent clauses, later strengthened by the scenario sketched by Thompson and Mulac (see also Chapter 8).
In both (15a) and (15b), the absence of an overt object is lexically restricted: the choice of another verb can make the construction odd or impossible (*His friends were making; *?I discovered). The only productive use of empty objects in PDE is found in imperative clauses, in particular in instructions of the type seen in (15c). It is also only in these cases that an overt pronominal object can be inserted without causing an appreciable change in meaning, making them comparable to the cases of subject pro-drop discussed above. This type of ‘object pro-drop’ can already be found in the earliest texts; an OE example is given in (16).
(16) … nim marubian sæd, mængc wið wine, syle drincan[INF]
… take of-white-horehound seed, mix with wine, give drink(Med3(Grattan-Singer)28.1)
‘… take the seed of white horehound, mix (it) with wine, and give (it) (to them) to drink’
In this sentence, the empty object of mængc and syle is coreferential with the overt object in the preceding coordinated clause nim marubian sæd. This is in fact a context in which object pro-drop is found more generally in OE and ME, also when the verb is not imperative. Ohlander (Reference Ohlander1943) and Visser (Reference Visser1963–73: 525–27) give many examples like (17), with the pattern [verb + overt object and verb + empty object].
(17) He […] clupte him and keste kyndeliche ful ofte
He embraced him and kissed (him) affectionately very often
(late ME,Wil.ofPalerne,1587)
After 1500, this construction disappears, ‘almost suddenly and for no perceptible reason’, as Visser (ibid.) puts it. However, it may be possible to view PDE imperatives like (15c) as survivals of the somewhat wider options for object pro-drop existing at earlier stages of the language. These wider options also licensed sporadic examples outside imperatives or coordinated clauses. An example is: Gerueys answerde, ‘certes were it gold, Or in a poke nobles al vntold, Thow sholdest haue’ (Chaucer,Mil.T.3780, ‘Gerveys answered,’ certainly, if it was gold, or nobles [gold coins] in a bag, all uncounted, you would get (it/them)’.
As regards the sudden disappearance of structures like (17), it is quite possible (but more research is necessary) that this development is related to word-order changes. Note that when the object precedes the finite verb, as was the case with (clitic) pronouns in earlier English before 1500, then one pronoun would have sufficed: He him clupte and keste, a structure still found in OV languages like German and Dutch in subordinate clauses. Possibly (17) functioned as a bridge construction between the old and the new orders.
(15d), finally, presents an interesting case of a verb, originally transitive, which acquired intransitive properties in the ME period. This development is probably related to word-order changes, affecting the role of the subject in the structuring of information in the clause (see Chapter 9).
When it comes to overt objects, there are several changes in their nature and marking to be noted, mainly as a consequence of other changes in the language (for changes connected to position, see Chapter 9). To begin with, the loss of case distinctions had an effect on the marking of the direct object. In OE, the canonical case for direct objects could be said to be the accusative, but some verbs governed a dative and a few took a genitive. Examples are given in (19).
a He sende þone halgan gast[ACC] to eorþan (ÆCHom.I,22 360.168)
He sent the Holy Ghost to [the] earth’
b he wolde gehelpan […] þearfum[DAT] and wannhalum[DAT]
he wanted [to] help [the] poor and [the] sick (ÆLS(Oswald)272)
c Uton for þi brucan þæs fyrstes[GEN] þe us god forgeaf
let-us for that enjoy the time that us God gave (ÆCHom.I,40 530.186)
‘Let’s therefore enjoy the time that God has given us’
It may be possible to see a semantic difference correlating with the choice of the case form, with the accusative marking complete and direct affectedness of the object, the dative incomplete or indirect affectedness, and the genitive some sort of partitive meaning (cf. the discussion of transitivity in Hopper and Thompson, Reference Hopper and Thompson1980). In particular for verbs that show variation in the case form of their object, some kind of semantic differentiation seems plausible. The OE pairs in (20), for example, may express antagonistic or more direct action in (20a) and a less directly oppositional action in (20b) (for more discussion, see Plank, Reference Plank, Davenport, Hansen and Nielsen1983; Fischer and Van der Leek, Reference Fischer, Van der Leek, Koopman, van der Leek, Fischer and Eaton1987).
i and ða folgode feorhgeniðlan[ACC]
and then followed deadly-foes (Beo.2928)
‘and then he pursued his deadly foes’
ii Ongann ða Augustinus mid his munecum to geefenlæcenne þæra
Began then Augustinus with his monks to imitate of-their
apostola lif[ACC]
apostles life (ÆCHom.II,9 78.205)
‘Then Augustinus with his monks began to imitate the life of the apostles’
i Him[DAT] folgiað fuglas scyne
him follow birds bright (Phoe.591)
‘Bright-coloured birds will follow him’
ii pater fæder … and patrisso ic geefenlæce minum fæder[DAT]
pater father … and patrisso I look-like my father (ÆGram.215.3)
However, the difference is not always clear-cut, and for many verbs allowing only one case option, the specific form taken was probably to a large extent conventional rather than semantically motivated (though the respective roles of convention and semantic motivation need not have been the same for all verbs or verb classes); Mitchell (Reference Mitchell1985: §1082) gives a convenient overview of the semantic classes that verbs governing the dative and genitive tend to fall into. Whatever the exact system in OE may have been, the disappearance of the formal accusative-dative distinction in all nouns and pronouns after the OE period meant that contrasts as in (20) could no longer be made. Instead, it became the rule for any object to have the objective form (i.e. the base form of any ordinary noun and the object-form of the personal pronoun). In some cases, the semantic distinction was maintained with the help of French loanwords; for example, the OE verb hieran could mean either ‘hear’ (when governing an accusative) or ‘obey’ (when governing a dative). In ME, the distinction came to be expressed by using the separate (French) lexical item obey. Similarly, the different cases with folgian and geefenlæcan seen in (20) can now also be expressed by means of a loan (persecute, imitate) being used next to native follow, look like. Note that, even though the genitive survived as a formal category (though more clearly in the singular than in the plural), it nevertheless ceased to be used for object marking, perhaps because it was not very frequent in that function in OE anyway. The genitive did of course retain its function as a ‘possessive’ marker in noun phrases (see Chapter 5 for more detailed discussion).
From the early ME period onwards, verbs increasingly came to be used in various types of larger multi-word idioms, including prepositional verbs, phrasal verbs and light verbs (Brinton and Akimoto, Reference Brinton and Akimoto1999). The rise of such expressions, in some cases, affected also how objects are expressed or how they function in the clause. For a start, there was an increase in the use of verb and prepositional complement collocations where OE might have had a verb-object collocation. Thus, the OE verb ofsendan seen in (21a) has disappeared from the language, but its function has been taken over by the prepositional verb send for. In a similar way, forweorpan in (21b) has been replaced by a verb plus particle (or again a French equivalent):
a & ofsænde se cyng Godwine eorl
and sent-for the king Godwine earl (ChronE(Plummer)1048.35)
‘and the king sent for earl Godwine’
b Forþan þe þu eart strencð min hwi forwurpe þu me
Because you are strength my why out-throw you me (PsGlI(Lindelöf)11,42.2)
‘Since you are my strength, why do you throw me out /reject me?’
In ModE, this development has continued to the point where there are systematic pairs like hit/stab/poke versus hit at/stab at/poke at or live/feed/subsist versus live on/feed on/subsist on. A similar development, involving the emergence of multi-word verbal expressions, is seen with the so-called phrasal verbs – for example, verbs like to swallow down, to mail off, to give up, accompanied by an adverbial particle or preposition, which increased enormously in eModE, as Hübler (Reference Hübler2007) has shown (see also Chapter 6). He relates the rise of these to a general cultural change starting in courtly society, arguing that a drift appeared toward an increased use of lexical means of expression at the expense of gestural means, because the latter began to be seen as rude or uncivilized.
It is highly likely that the increase in the use of prepositional and phrasal verbs was helped along by contact with ON (cf. Hiltunen, Reference Hiltunen1983). Phrasal verbs often express distinctions that were made in OE by means of prefixation to the verb (thus OE geotan means ‘to pour (sth.)’, but begeotan means ‘to pour (sth.) over (sth./sb.)). The ON pattern came in useful since many OE prefixes got lost in the later ME period. In other cases, the loss of prefixed verbs could be compensated for by Romance loanwords; thus, the semantic content of the verbs ofsendan and forweorpan used in (21) came to be expressed by summon and reject respectively. The changes in this area are therefore most profitably viewed as consisting in a shift in general methods of meaning-making rather than the replacement of individual forms by others.
The reason why such replacements occurred much more frequently in English compared to other Germanic languages, is twofold. First, as already mentioned, contact played a role: the easy availability of French loans followed later in the Renaissance by more Latin loans, and the ON pattern with phrasal verbs. Secondly, another development, in itself also related to contact, was that OE not only lost many of its inflexional affixes but also the majority of its derivational ones. Where Dutch and German and the Scandinavian languages have preserved their prefixal system more or less intact (e.g. OE begeotan and forweorpan have remained as Du begieten / Grm begiessen / Swed begjuta and Du verwerpen / Grm verwerfen / Swed förkasta, respectively), English lost it. Because of this, it was easier in many cases to adopt French words or follow ON patterns rather than to try and preserve affixes which had become unproductive. In some cases native OE prefixes were kept as in PDE beset/behead/belittle/ behave/become and overhear/overflow/oversee, but most of these prefixes are no longer productive, and in many cases the verbs are fully lexicalized, with the derivation no longer transparent.
Another long-term development in meaning-making involving the object concerns the use of combinations like ‘take a look’, ‘do a somersault’, ‘make an attempt’, ‘have lunch’, and so on, where the meaning of the combination appears to be located primarily in the indefinite object NP rather than in the verb (hence, they are sometimes called ‘light verb combinations’). Some combinations like this are attested in OE (e.g. andan habban ‘to have envy’, rest habban ‘to take rest’ and blod lætan ‘to let blood’); more appear in ME, also with nouns preceded by the indefinite article, such as ‘take a nap’, ‘make a leap’ (see the data in Iglesias-Rábade, Reference Iglesias-Rábade2001; Moralejo-Gárate, Reference Moralejo-Gárate2001); and from 1500, there is a further steady increase in the types and tokens of these collocations (Claridge, Reference Claridge2000; Trousdale, Reference Trousdale2013). Their high frequency in PDE is therefore the result of a gradual process stretching over a period of more than a thousand years.
It is not only direct objects that underwent change. The loss of the accusative-dative distinction also had an effect on the marking of the indirect object. In OE, this constituent was always in the dative case (usually without a preposition), as in (22), but from ME onwards it had what came to be called ‘objective case’, as in (23), making it formally indistinguishable from the direct object.
(22) & sealde ðam fixum[DAT] sund & ðam fugelum[DAT] fliht
and gave the fishes swimming and the birds flight
(ÆCHomI,1 182.106)
‘and he gave fish the ability to swim and birds to fly’
(23) Wolle we sullen Iosep þis chapmen þat here come?
‘Shall we sell Joseph to these merchants that are coming this way?’
(Jacob&Joseph,118)
(Note that (23) is a relatively unusual example where the direct object is also human.) Perhaps as a reaction to this reduction in overt marking, another option developed for the indirect object: the to-phrase, as in (24).
(24) Betir is that Y 3yue hir to thee than to another man
‘It is better if I give her to you than to another man’ (Wycliff,Gen.29.19)
Until quite recently it was believed that the to-phrase in these ditransitive constructions was quite rare in OE, both in traditional philological works (cf. Mustanoja, Reference Mustanoja1960: 95ff.; Visser, Reference Visser1963: 637) and in a number of generative studies (e.g. McFadden, Reference McFadden2002; Polo, Reference Polo2002). De Cuypere (Reference De Cuypere2015: 5) has shown, however, that this is not really the case; he found that to+dative already occurs in OE in 15 per cent of the ditransitive cases. He concurs with Allen’s (Reference Allen2006) findings that one cannot really maintain that the to-phrase replaced the dative indirect object as a result of the loss of morphological case. As Allen (Reference Allen2006) notes, there was a broad correlation between the rise of the to-phrase and reduced morphology and increasingly fixed word order, but no direct connection. Rather, the already existent OE to-indirect object spread slowly to more and more verbs in the ME period as a good alternative (especially when the order of the two objects used was accusative-dative); this in turn may also have been advanced by a prepositional French construction frequently seen in ME texts translated directly from the French (cf. Allen, Reference Allen2006: 214–15).
Whether there was any difference in meaning between the two options (dative or to-PP) at this time is difficult to say. Whereas a great deal of effort has been spent on the ‘dative alternation’ in PDE involving Indirect Object−Direct Object versus Direct Object−to-Indirect Object (see, for example, Thompson, Reference Thompson and Landsberg1995; Davidse, Reference Davidse, van Belle and Langendonck1996; Bresnan and Ford, Reference Bresnan and Ford2010), so far little work has been done on this question for historical stages of the language. A study by Wolk et al. (Reference Wolk, Bresnan, Rosenbach and Szmrecsanyi2013) investigates the factors governing the dative alternation for lModE. The factors governing the choice are found to be essentially the same as in PDE, but their relative impact has changed over time. De Cuypere (Reference De Cuypere2015) tested the variables used by Bresnan and Ford (Reference Bresnan and Ford2010) (pronominality, word length, definiteness and number) on the order of the two objects in OE (irrespective of form). In addition, he checked the OE forms against two extra variables, namely date of composition and influence from Latin source texts. De Cuypere established that the order in OE is again motivated by the same factors that motivate it in PDE. As far as the difference between the use of a bare dative or a to-PP is concerned, he found that the PP only occurs in OE after verbs of communication (e.g. cweðan ‘to say’, tellan ‘tell’) and cause-motion (e.g. bringan ‘bring’, feccan ‘fetch’), but not yet with verbs of ‘transfer of possession’ like ‘to give’. However, unlike McFadden (Reference McFadden2002) he does not find clear evidence for grammaticalization of the preposition to from a more concrete ‘goal’ function to one of ‘recipient’.
7.4 Impersonal Constructions
We have seen so far in this chapter that changes affecting the subject as such and the object as such have not been spectacular. However, when it comes to alternations involving subjects and objects together, there have been some major changes, both losses and gains. The losses have mainly affected the class of constructions usually labelled impersonal (discussed here), while the gains have been in the passive (discussed in Section 7.5). It is quite probable that these gains and losses are related. Passives and impersonal constructions share the absence of an agentive subject, so that the loss of one construction may lead to the use of another. See also the discussion later in this Section for cases in which a passive replaced an impersonal.
In OE, there was a well-developed system of grammatical marking for verbs expressing various kinds of sensation and emotion – for example, verbs with meanings like ‘be ashamed’, ‘regret’, ‘be hungry’, ‘like’, ‘detest’ and so on (the class as a whole is sometimes called ‘psych’ verbs, bringing out their shared concern with psychological states). Concentrating on verbs involving an experiencer and a source (or cause) of the relevant sensation/emotion, we can summarize the grammatical patterns in OE as in (25).
(25)
a EXPERIENCER SOURCE nominative genitive/PP b SOURCE EXPERIENCER nominative dative/accusative c EXPERIENCER SOURCE dative/accusative genitive/PP
The alternation between experiencer-as-subject and source-as-subject (both can occur in the nominative) is in itself remarkable enough; it is complemented by a third pattern which has no overt subject at all, and oblique marking of both experiencer and source. Example sentences with the impersonal verb ofhreowan ‘to pity/repent’, corresponding to the structures given in (25a-c), are given in (26a-c).
a se mæssepreost[NOM] þæs mannes[GEN] ofhreow
The mass-priest of- the man was-pity (ÆLS(Oswald)262)
‘The priest felt pity for the man’
b Đa ofhreow þam munuce[DAT] þæs hreoflian mægenleaste[NOM]
Then was-pity to-the monk the leper’s feebleness (ÆCHomI,23 369.139)
‘Then the leper’s feebleness arose pity in the monk’
c him[DAT] ofhreow þæs mannes[GEN]
to-him was pity of-the man (ÆCHomI,13 281.12)
‘He felt pity for the man’
Not all OE impersonal verbs occur in all three constructions, and some verbs show a clear preference for the one or the other pattern, but these differences appear to be lexical rather than grammatical.
In cases where the EXPERIENCER is in the dative and the SOURCE is itself a clause, dummy hit sometimes fills the subject slot (compare Section 7.2), as shown in (27), although the empty subject variant, as in (28), is much more usual.
(27) hit ne gerist nanum ricum cynincge[DAT] þæt […]
it not befits to-no powerful king that (ÆLS(Augurius)257)
‘It does not befit any powerful king to…’
(28) Ne gedafenað bioscope[DAT] þæt […]
not befits to-bishop that (ÆCHomII,10 81.14)
‘It does not befit a bishop to…’
What happened to this OE system of impersonal verbs? In ME, the system survives but it shows signs of a slow loss of productivity. Several of the relevant OE verbs, such as the ones used in (27) and (28), are lost from the language, and the remaining ones tend to become restricted to the one or the other nominative pattern, with other lexical items, often from French, filling in the gaps; for example, OE constructions with the verb lician meaning ‘to have/give pleasure’ split into constructions with the verb like and the new French verb please, like being used in construction (25a) and please replacing like in (25b) and (25c) (accompanied by it) from about 1350 onwards. In principle, therefore, the three patterns of (25) are all still attested but without any formal distinction between accusative and dative, without genitive marking of any arguments (sometimes a PP was used), and mostly with a dummy subject added when there was no complement in the form of a clause or infinitive and only one lexical argument present. Interestingly, there were also some new additions to the class of impersonal verbs. These include the native English modals ought and must, as in (29a), but also loans from French such as marvel in (29b).
a Us[OBL] moste putte oure good in aventure
‘We must put our goods in the hands of fortune’
(Chaucer,Can.Yeo.Tale,946)
b Me[OBL] mervayleth mykel of þis sight
me marvels much of this sight (Alteng.Leg.500)
‘I greatly wonder about this sight’
By the end of the ME period, however, the patterns of (25) cannot be said to be characteristic of the class of impersonals any more. The empty subject option (25c) was lost from the language altogether (compare Section 7.2) and individual verbs had mostly become restricted to the pattern of either (25a) or (25b). Some continue to show dual behaviour for a while in the sixteenth century, the verb like being the most prominent example; compare the lykor liked them so well, that they had pot ypon pot (Harman, Rissanen, Reference Rissanen1999: 251), with a source-subject, and I liked well his naturall fashion (More,Letters, ibid.), with an experiencer-subject. They also became involved in alternations in ways that varied from verb to verb; compare the sentences with the verbs remember and shame in (30)–(31), which, next to the old impersonal types (30a–b) and (31a), now also show reflexive (30c) and passive constructions (31b), as well as constructions with a nominal element (31c):Footnote 3
a Whan she remembred his unkyndenesse (Chaucer,M.ofLaw.T.1057)
b But lord crist! whan that it remembreth me … (Chaucer,W.ofB.Prol.469))
c … I wol remembre me alle the yeres of my lif (Chaucer,Pars.T.135)
a Or ells/ he shal shame hire ate leeste (Chaucer,Fkl.T.1164)
b And weren ascam[ed] sore for þan o[n]wreaste deade
‘and were sorely ashamed because of that evil/wretched death’ (Laȝ.Brut(Otto)29608)Footnote 4
c … he/ that hath shame of his synne (Chaucer,T.ofMel.1776)
One of the reasons for the ultimate demise of the system of grammatical marking for impersonals may be the influx of French loanwords, which might have ‘impersonal’ meanings but resist full-scale integration in the system of impersonal syntax, thus introducing all kinds of exceptional behaviour into this verbal class. Other causes may also have played a role. Thus, it has repeatedly been suggested that instances of (25b) with a preposed experiencer could have been reanalysed as instances of (25a), with the experiencer functioning as subject. The standard (but invented) example given to illustrate this is (32) (cf. Lightfoot, Reference Lightfoot1979: 231):
a þam cyninge[DAT] licodon[PL] þa peran[NOM PL] (OE)
the king liked the pears
b the king liked the pears (ME)
In (32a), the phrase þam cyninge is unambiguously recognizable as a dative, and the verb licodon is clearly plural, showing that the plural noun peran is the subject of the clause. In (32b), however, the relevant formal markers have disappeared and the sentence would therefore be liable to reanalysis, whereby the king would become subject (in accordance with the increasing fixation of subject-verb word order in ME) and peran object. It has been objected that the very frequent sentence-type Him liked pears, where the case of the experiencer is unambiguously objective, would be counterevidence to such a reanalysis, but this observation itself has been countered by arguments to the effect that preposed dative experiencers had several subject properties anyway, even in OE (see especially Allen, Reference Allen1995).Footnote 5
As the systematic OE alternations involving impersonal verbs were thus becoming eroded, some individual impersonal expressions survived as lexicalized or even fossilized units. A good example is the phrase methinks, now obsolete but fully alive in the eModE period.Footnote 6 Its origin lies in the OE impersonal verb þyncan, which means ‘to seem’. In the ME period, this verb was still used productively with various kinds of experiencer argument; in (33), the experiencer is third-person singular, and in (34) it is third-person plural. (Note that the verb þinken in (34) is plural, suggesting that the preposed experiencer hem ‘them’ indeed has subject status in spite of its case marking).
(33) and as he paste beyonde the castel/ hym thought he herde two bellys rynge(Malory,MorteDarthur,205)
(34) For hem þinken þat þei wolden ay be to-gydere
‘For to them, it seemed that they would always be together’ (Hilton,MED)
In addition, it was also possible for the experiencer argument to follow the verb, as in the phrase It thynketh me good (Caxton,Reynard 57) ‘it seems good to me’. After 1500, however, the verb soon became restricted to the single collocation me thinks, with a first-person singular experiencer preceding the verb. At the same time, the phrase loses its verbal status and comes to function as a single-word adverb, as shown by the spelling methinks, the absence of a past tense form, and its increasing mobility inside the sentence. We thus have here an erstwhile verb slowly grammaticalizing (or lexicalizing) into an epistemic adverb (on the difficulty of assigning this to either lexicalization or grammaticalization, see Wischer, Reference Wischer2000).
7.5 Passive Constructions: Gains and Losses
A construction that has undergone considerable development in the history of English is the passive. The sources from which the passive developed were discussed in Chapter 6 and its subsequent success in English may be related to the changing functional demands placed on the subject, as discussed in Chapter 9. Here, we deal with changes in the realization of the arguments of the passive verb in a finite clause. We shall first distinguish three types of passives in PDE, as shown in (35).
(35)
a He was arrested direct passive b He was given a reprimand indirect passive c This was frowned upon. prepositional passive
The labels in (35) reflect the status that the passive subject would have in the corresponding active clause: direct object in (35a) (they arrested him), indirect object in (35b) (they gave him a reprimand) and object of a preposition in (35c) (they frowned upon this). Of these three types, only the first one goes back to OE times; the other two came into existence in the ME period.
The indirect passive is first found towards the end of the fourteenth century; an example is (36).
(36) whan he was gyvyn the gre be my lorde kynge Arthure
‘when he was given the prize by my lord King Arthur’
(Malory, MorteDarthur, Denison, Reference Denison1993: 125)
Its rise has generally been attributed to the coalescence of the dative and the accusative,Footnote 7 and the increasing fixity of word order to SVO has also often been said to play a role (cf. Denison, Reference Denison1993: 103ff.). The first factor would have the effect of making the indirect object of an active clause formally indistinguishable from the direct object: both would have the same objective case (i.e. the indirect object of an active clause would then be just as eligible as a direct object to become the subject of a passive clause). The second factor would allow an initial dative object to be reinterpreted as subject.
A problem with this scenario is, as Allen (Reference Allen, Butt and King2001: 54) has pointed out, that dative fronted passives had died out before the new indirect passives arrived. Allen shows on the basis of a detailed corpus investigation that the change involving the development of the indirect passive took place in separate steps, and that no direct relation can be postulated therefore between the loss of dative case and the emergence of the new indirect passive. Allen argues, instead, that there is a direct relation between the loss of the dative fronted passive (The student was given a book) and the fronted dative in active sentences (as in The student I gave a book). Owing to this positional loss (of the fronted element), the original dative and accusative NPs (Allen does not include the pronouns in this story because they still had distinct case forms for subjects and objects) came to be used side by side immediately after the finite verb (I gave the student a book/I gave a book the student). It was only when the recipient object came to be fixed in the first position after the verb, that it became reanalysed as an object. This fixed position is what enabled the indirect passive to occur: because of the reanalysis to object, a subject position in passives became possible.
Other accounts (cf. Denison, Reference Denison1993: 113ff.) of the change focus, unlike Allen, on passive clauses already in existence. Compare the Old English example in (37) with the similar ME one in (38).
(37) Đæm scipmannum[DAT] is beboden gelice & þæm landbuendum[DAT][…] þæt
To-the sailors is ordered likewise and to-the landdwellers that
hig Gode[DAT] þone teoðan dæl agyfen
they to-God the tenth part give[SUBJ] (ThCap.1(Sauer)35.375.12)
‘The sailors and likewise the farmers are ordered to give the tenth part to God’
(38) ech bischop […] is ordeyned […] that he offre 3iftis and sacrifices for synnes
every bishop is ordered that he offer gifts and sacrifices for sins (Wyclif,Hebr.5.1)
‘For every bishop is ordered to offer gifts and sacrifices to atone for sins’
In OE, (37), the initial NP is clearly marked as a dative, and the clause has an empty subject, just like the example in (4). In ME, (38), however, the initial NP would have become liable to reanalysis as a subject, because it had lost its case marking and it occupied the canonical subject position (a reinterpretation analogous to that of the structure in (32), The king liked the pears). This account, however, suffers from the same problem (i.e. the fact that these passives only occur long after the demise of morphological case on common nouns).
A fact that is left unexplained in the regular accounts, where the rise of the indirect passives is directly related to changes in the morphological case system, is the extreme slowness of the spread of the indirect passive. Only a handful of clear examples have been found in fifteenth-century texts, and several run-of-the-mill PDE instances were still considered odd (or characteristic of careless usage) in the early twentieth century. The sentence in (39), for example, was still held up in Jespersen (Reference Jespersen1909–49: III,309) as an unacceptable indirect passive.
(39) He was sent a note
Nowadays, however, this and other tokens of the construction are quite unexceptionable. It therefore appears that lexical and analogical factors have played a major role in the development, with certain verbs accepting the new construction long before others. This would tie in well with the idea, proposed by various scholars over the years, that passives (or at least certain types of passives) involve a lexical rather than syntactic rule (i.e. that the spread involves an increase in schematic macro-construction types).
Prepositional passives as in (35c) are somewhat older than indirect passives: they start appearing around 1200. In their rise, a crucial role is played by word-order change, and their history is therefore dealt with in Chapter 9.
To set off against these gains in the possibilities for passive formation, there is one type that existed in OE but disappeared early in the ME period. This is the passive of a verb that did not take an accusative object. We saw in (19b) that help was such a verb; a passive with it is given in (40).
(40) and wæs ða geholpen ðam unscyldigum huse[DAT]
and was then helped to-the innocent house (ÆCHom.II,39.1 293.178)
‘and then the innocent house was helped/was given help’
Here, the passive has an empty subject, and the only argument of the verb is the object – it is marked by dative case, just as it is in the active clause in (19b). The passive operation in OE therefore appears to have worked as follows: if the active clause had an accusative object, it would be promoted to subject of the passive (this is the direct passive); if the clause had no accusative object, the subject would remain empty or its position would be filled by the dative indirect object, the so-called dative-fronted passive, see (41). If the object was a clause, the subject position in the passive was sometimes filled by dummy hit (42a), sometimes by a fronted dative, see (42b) and (37), but the position could also remain empty (42c).
(41) and sæde þam arleasan hu him geandwyrd wæs.
and said to-the wicked how to-him answered was (ÆLS(Edmund)94)
‘and told the cruel man how he had been answered.’
a Eac hit awriten is, ðæt sunne aþystrað ær worulde ende
also it written is that sun darkens before world’s end (WHom.3 41)
‘It is also written that the sun will be eclipsed before the world’s end’
b Him[DAT] wæs geandwyrd. þæt hi angle genemnode wæron
Him was answered that they angels called were (ÆCHom.II,9 74.67)
‘He was told that they were called angels’
c Næs nanum men forgifen þæt he moste habban […] his agen fulluht
‘not-was no man granted that he might have his own baptism
buton Iohanne anum
but John alone (ÆCHom.II,3 25.206)
‘It was granted to no one to perform his own baptism except to John’
As with other impersonal and empty subject constructions, the option in (42b, c) disappeared (from written texts, at least) in the course of the ME period; compare the discussion in Sections 7.2 and 7.3.
We also briefly mention here a phenomenon that is somewhat similar in effect to the passive as far as meaning is concerned. It consists in the suppression of the agent argument of a verb and conversion of its direct object to subject status, but without the attendant introduction of a passive auxiliary. In studies of PDE, the construction is sometimes called the ‘middle’ or ‘medio-passive’; two examples are given in (43) and (44).
(43) This car drives like a dream.
(44) This book won’t sell.
In PDE, the middle use of verbs is systematically different from the simple active use in requiring either a manner adverbial or a modal. This type of alternation is already found in eModE, but it becomes really frequent only in texts from the past two hundred years. The causes of its rise in popularity, and the pathway that it has followed, still need to be fully investigated. The development as such is no doubt connected with the fact that, throughout the history of English, individual verbs have sometimes allowed both transitive and intransitive uses; examples are the verbs grow (the potatoes grew/they grew potatoes), heal (the wound healed fast/he healed the wound), fly (he flew his kite/the kite flew), and many others. Next to this, more transitive verbs acquired an intransitive use in ME, related to word-order developments, as mentioned in connection with (15d) above. Dreschler (Reference Dreschler2015: 371ff.) further notes a link with changes in information structure, when subjects become the preferred way to express old information, which she believes also furthers the use of middles (see also Chapter 9).
The overall result of the increase of all these alternations is that the subject position in English has come to be associated with a wide variety of functional roles: whereas the subject in OE active clauses was strongly associated with the role of agent – except in one of the variants of the well-defined impersonal system and in passive clauses where it had the role of theme – at later stages the subject of an active clause can be not only the agent but also a theme or experiencer, while in (medio)-passives the only role it cannot bear is that of agent.
7.6 Agreement
Having discussed changes in the nature and use of subjects and objects, it is now time to look at the kind of relations these two constituents enter into with the finite verb and how they are referred to anaphorically in discourse. This falls under the heading of agreement or concord. Next to agreement between clausal constituents, there is also agreement inside the NP. In OE adjectives and determiners would agree with their head noun in terms of case, gender and number. With the loss of the inflectional system, however, this type of agreement disappeared in the course of the late OE and early ME period. Here we will concentrate on clausal agreement. There is agreement between subject and finite verb, between subject and subject complement, and between NPs and their anaphors.
When we look at agreement between subject and verb, or subject and subject complement, we note that this was to some extent more loosely structured in the older periods than in PDE. In OE, ME and also still in eModE, both syntactic and semantic considerations play an important role, while in the later periods syntactic factors became more prominent in avoiding what is seen as ‘number-mismatch’. A good deal of what was considered to be more ‘logical’ found their origin in rules laid down by prescriptive grammarians and schoolmasters in the sixteenth century and after. This ‘logical’ attitude was no doubt furthered by the development of a written standard and the influence of general education, as we see that many of the loose constructions found in the older periods are still quite common in spoken and non-standard language today. Evidence for this has become more easily available since the development of spoken next to written corpora, such as the spoken parts of the BNC corpus (for a good discussion of the various possibilities in subject-verb agreement, and the factors that influence it, see Keizer Reference Keizer2007: 12–17 and passim).
In general, concord or the lack of it seems to depend on the following four parameters: (i) the semantic and syntactic nature of the NP triggering concord; (ii) the relative positions of finite verb and subject NP in the clause; (iii) the animacy principle; (iv) the presence of a specific context (presentational or generic).
Concerning (i), nouns, when collective, occur both with singular and plural verbal inflections, many of which are determined lexically. This is true for PDE (e.g. people and police take a plural, herd, committee, meeting and others are usually followed by a singular verb, and nouns such as team, army, government may take both, at least in British English), but there was somewhat more variation per individual noun in the older periods, no doubt because of the absence of a standard language, in which pre/proscriptive attitudes play a role. For instance people occurred with both a singular and a plural verb in ME (see (45)), while folk tended to occur with a plural verb.
a Unnethe myghte the peple that was[SG] theere / This newe rachel brynge fro his beere. (Chaucer,Prior.T.625)
b Thus seyn[PL] the peple and drawen[PL] hem[REFL.PL] apart(Chaucer,Sq.T.252)
When the NP is complex, the inflection of the verb depended and depends on whether the NP as a whole is seen as a semantic unity (or not) in the case of a coordinate NP, see (46), or on which part of the NP acts as the head in the case of of-adjuncts (47).
a Whereof Supplant and tricherie/ Engendred is[SG] (Gower,CA(Frf)ii.2840–1)
b so þat rightwisness ne vengeance han[PL] nought to don amonges vs (Mandeville(Tit)192.1)
a Also ther is[SG] a kynde of small beastes no bigger than a pigges of a moneth olde (Roger Barlow’s A Brief Summe of Geographie, c.1541)
b Ϸere ben[PL] also in þat contree a kynde of Snayles (Mandeville(Tit)128.36)
Concerning the examples in (46), there is also still variation in PDE but here a complex NP coordinated by and usually takes a plural, and one coordinated by (n)or a singular verb. With reference to the examples in (47), an interesting development has been and still is taking place with phrases like kind of, sort of, type of. Plurality has become a stronger force here as is evident from the fact that, particularly in spoken varieties of PDE, we now often come across utterances such as those sort of courses rather than this sort of courses (cf. Keizer, Reference Keizer2007: 171). It is possible that these phrases are grammaticalizing into post-determiners, so that they no longer form the head of the construction, with the result that the of-phrase determines the agreement rather than the original head (for a synchronic analysis see Keizer, Reference Keizer2007: ch.7; more details on their historical development can be found in Traugott, Reference Traugott, Bergs and Diewald2008, and Brems and Davidse, Reference Brems and Davidse2010).
Anaphoric elements (demonstrative, personal, relative pronouns) usually agree with their antecedent NP in number and gender (in OE there was grammatical gender, which becomes natural gender in ME), but again, as with subject-verb agreement, parameter (i) plays a role here, as can be seen in the examples of (48):
a the meynee[SG] of the Soudan, … þei[PL] ben[PL] aboute the souldan with swerdes drawen (Mandeville(Tit)24.26–8)
b Vor harpe & pipe & fu3eles [song]/ mislikeþ 3if hit[SG] is[SG] to long (Owl&N(Clg)343–4)
Concerning position (parameter ii), lack of agreement occurred more often when the plural subject followed the verb, as in (49a), while the verb tended to be plural when the last part of the subject NP that precedes it contains a plural noun, as in (49b):
a In that cytee was[SG] the sittynges[PL] of the .xij. tribes of Israel
(Mandeville(Tit)71.17–8)
b … where the Arke of god with the relikes[PL] weren[PL] kept longe tyme
(Mandeville(Tit)70.20–1)
The animacy parameter (iii) was already shown to be relevant for the emergence of natural gender in anaphoric relations. It also comes more and more to the fore in the treatment of collective and coordinated NPs. Thus in (48a), the household or private army of the Sultan, being human, is referred to as they, while the coordinated plural in (48b), being inanimate, has it as an anaphor. This trend continues in the modern period. It is noticeable, especially in British English, that collective nouns referring to humans, tend to take a plural rather than a singular verb, in spite of still strong prescriptive norms.
In presentational contexts (parameter iv), where some new element is introduced onto the scene, the verb either agreed with the dummy subject there or it, whether overt (50a) or not (50b), or with the subject complement (50c). In PDE, the rule is for the verb to agree with the ‘logical’ subject and not with the dummy subject.
a And all aboute þer is[SG] ymade large nettes[PL] (Mandeville(Tit)141.26–7)
b Hyllys, wodes and feldes wyde[PL]/ Ø Was[SG] in that cuntre on euery side(G.ofWarwick,6023)
c Hit ben[PL] þe Shirreues men[PL] þat hider ben[PL] comen.(Chaucer,Gamelyn,583)
While on subjects and agreement, we may also note a relatively minor change in the form of subject complements, which nevertheless has given rise to a great deal of heated prescriptive comment. It is seen in sentences like (51).
a The person responsible is I / It is I who is responsible
b The person responsible is me/ It is me who is responsible.
In earlier English, the form of the pronoun in this presentational sentence type would always be the nominative, as can be seen in (52a-c)
a Ic hit eom (ÆCHom.I,15,301.50)
b it am I (Chaucer,Kn.T.1736)
c I it am (Town.Plays,Conspiracy,372)
Note, however, that it is the finite verb here that agrees with the personal pronoun, turning the pronoun into more of a subject, hence the use of the nominative. This is also seen in other clauses introduced by (h)it followed by a plural subject (complement), as is clear from the OE example in (53), and also ME (50c).
(53) ealle hit sindon godes æhta. & na diofles
all it are god’s properties[NOM PL] and not devil’s (ÆCHom.I,11,269.96)
‘they are all God’s properties and not the devil’s’
In OE, only the order given in (52a) is attested, while in ME the order shown in (52b) is the norm, (52c) is rare. It looks as if both the development of cleft sentences to convey emphasis, using the construction it + BE, and the fact that subjects became more and more fixed in initial position immediately followed by the finite verb, have led to this development with the result that, ic hit eom > it am I > it is I. The last stage, it is me, with the oblique pronoun, probably arose to give the pronoun extra emphasis, and the development may also have been promoted by semantically ambivalent contexts with zero-relative constructions like It’s me you fear, where me is – at least semantically – the patient argument of fear (for details see Lange and Schaefer, Reference Lange and Schaefer2008).Footnote 8 The first examples of the ‘modern’ construction are attested in the sixteenth century. A Shakespearian example is: Oh, the dogge is me, and I am my selfe (Two Gentlemen of Verona ii,3). In the following centuries, this sentence type becomes very common. That the older form, (51a), has managed to survive at all is in fact surprising; prescriptive condemnation of (51b), misguided though it appears from a historical-linguistic point of view, may have been influential.
Finally, we look at anaphora used in generic contexts after indefinite pronouns such as anyone, everyone, and so on. In OE, these pronouns are still rare (cf. Rissanen, Reference Rissanen1967: 246), but when they occur, the original numeral an ‘one’ still has individualizing force (it is written separately from the quantifier), and a singular anaphor is therefore the rule. In ME, usage becomes looser presumably because the indefinite pronoun acquires a more generic sense, now often written as one word: the singular form is still the rule but plurals are now also found, as can be seen in (54)
(54) For scham ilkan þat werk þai[PL] left (Curs.Mundi(Cotton)2263)
For shame each-one, that work, they left
Later prescriptive grammars advocated the use of a singular pronoun, as being the logical option, while the more ‘neutral’ pronoun he was used in cases of gender uncertainty. The question of the appropriate style for using pronouns to refer to such generic antecedents became politicized in the 1970s, however, and remains a matter of substantial dispute. Traditional grammarians and guide-books stick to the ‘logical’ rule, objected to by feminists and others who are looking for social justice. Uncertainty as to what is right is clearly present in practice, judging from the many variants that are found, with most people using the plural anaphor in order to avoid offence, as in Each one gets thirsty, so they drink. This plural form sounds more awkward, however, when the anaphoric (possessive) pronoun occurs within the same clause, as in Every boss should treat their staff well. Other solutions being reverted to are the employment of a plural noun in the first place, as in Bosses should treat their staff well, or using he or she (his/her) or (s)he, but these latter options are often felt to be clumsy and awkward, particularly when the anaphor needs to be repeated a few times (for more details on the usage of anaphors such as nobody … they between 1500–1800, see Laitinen, Reference Laitinen, Kay, Horobin and Smith2004).
7.7 Negation
A final clause-level structure to be discussed in this chapter is negation. In OE, negation was expressed by the negative marker ne, which immediately preceded the finite verb, as in (55). With some verbs (notably be, have and some of the pre-modals as well as some of the other preterite-present verbs), ne cliticized to the verb, as illustrated by nolde (from ne wolde) in (55).
(55) Þeah ðe eall mennyssc wære gegaderod. ne mihton hi ealle
although all mankind were gathered not might they all
hine acwellan. gif he sylf nolde
him destroy if he self not-wanted (ÆCHom.I,1 188.269)
‘Even if all of mankind were gathered together, all of them would not be able to destroy him if he did not want (it) himself’
Sometimes – and increasingly so towards the end of the OE period – negative clauses would have multiple negation or so-called negative concord. Two negatives did not cancel each other out (as present-day prescriptive grammar would have it) but simply reinforced one another (as they indeed still do in colloquial speech and in many dialects of English). The typical pattern was for ne to be accompanied by another negative marker, especially not, as in (56).
(56) and þæt fyr ne derede naht þam ðrim cnihtum. ðe on god
and that fire not hurt nought the three youths who in God
belyfdon.
believed (ÆCHom.II,1 9.241)
‘and that fire did not hurt the three youths, who put their faith in God’
In origin, not was a negative pronoun meaning ‘nothing’, which had developed from a compound noun na-wiht (lit. ‘no thing/creature’ – that is, a thing of no value). It survived in its pronominal function into PDE in the form nought. Its OE pronominal use is illustrated in (57). As (56) shows, however, by OE times not could already be used as a negative adverb as well.
(57) 7 þa git þa he wæs ymbhringed mid his feondum he nawiht on hand
and then yet when he was surrounded with his enemies he nothing in hand
nyman wolde buton his agene gyrde anlipie.
take would but his own staff only (Bede3(O)14.208.26)
‘and even when he was surrounded by his enemies, he would not take anything in his hand with the exception of his own staff’
In ME, negation by ne continued in use, but reinforcement by the negative adverb not became more and more common while ne itself came to be increasingly omitted. The only circumstances in which unsupported ne still occurred (even up to the eModE period), was in subordinate clauses after inherently negative main clauses, such as after an interrogative or negative clause, after the adverb but, and verbs such as ‘deny’ and ‘doubt’ (cf. Fischer, Reference Fischer1992b: 282), as in (58),Footnote 9
a ffor ther nys no creature so good / that hym ne wanteth somwhat of the perfeccion of god / that is his maker (Chaucer,Boece,2270–1)
‘for there exists no creature who is so good that he doesn’t lack something of the perfection of God, who is his maker’.
b ‘Denyestow’quod sche, that alle schrewes ne ben worthy to han torment?’ (Chaucer,Boece,BkIV,pr4, 225)
‘Do you deny’, she said, ‘that all wicked people deserve to suffer?’
As a result of the loss of ne, not became virtually obligatory in negative clauses as the default negative adverb. Its typical position would be following the finite verb, as in (59), though occasionally it would slip into the old position of ne, as in (60). This situation eventually settled into the PDE system, the last major change being that in the course of late ME and eModE negative clauses would more and more often have either a modal, or the auxiliaries be and have, or operator do as finite verb (cf. Section 6.6). As a result, not nearly always follows one of a relatively small set of verbs, leading to a handful of highly frequent combinations. It is therefore hardly surprising that new patterns of contraction developed, as in (61).
(59) the othir ij. ostis of the Frenshemenne cam not, for thay lay longe tyme in the hauene of Scluys, abidyng wynd and wedir (Chronicle,Richard II,1378–9)
‘The other two armies of the French did not come, because they lay still a long time in the harbour of Scluys, waiting for the right wind and weather.’
(60) I not doubt He came aliue to Land. (Shakes.Temp.II.i.122)
(61) But I shan’t take up your valuable Time with my Remarks
(1731, Lillo,The London Merchant)
The development from ne over ne … not to not as default negator has become a classic example of what is called Jespersen’s Cycle – though Van der Auwera (Reference Van der Auwera and van Gelderen2009) argues it should in fact be known as Gardiner’s Cycle. The cycle is a cross-linguistically recurrent pattern of change, whereby a negative marker first gets to be reinforced but is eventually replaced by its reinforcement. For English, the cycle is well documented in Jack (Reference Jack1978) and Iyeiri (Reference Iyeiri2001).
In itself, this negative cycle did not completely do away with patterns of negative concord in English. Not was never the only element that could reinforce ne. For example, NPs in negative clauses might take the negative determiner no, as in (62).
(62) Whan any of hem sike were, to him he wolden a-non, / And arst ar he hem blessede, nane fot fro him nolden gon. (S.E.Leg.VitaBlasii,73,11)
‘When any of them fell ill, they would immediately go to him and unless he gave them his blessing, (they) would not move an inch from his side (lit. they would not go no foot from him)’.
As ne disappeared, the negative determiner no(n) could either become the only marker of negation in the clause, as in (63a), or ne could be replaced by not, leading to a new negative concord pattern with not…no, as in (63b).
a Also I beseche ȝow þat ȝe willyn speke to John Martyn as towchyng þe mater of Chertone þat he wolde take non distresse (Stonor.Lett.1425)
‘I also ask you that you would speak to John Martyn with respect to the matter of Chertone, so that he would not be distressed (lit. take no distress).’
b THEY SCHALL not go in no wise to no dishonest festis dyners or sopers (Third Order St.Franceys,Ch.vi)
‘In no way shall they go to any dishonourable feasts, dinners or suppers.’
The latter pattern eventually disappeared, however, possibly due to standardization and the example of Latin, which had single negation. If negative clauses needed reinforcement, this was increasingly done by means of non-assertive forms such as any or ever, as in (64),Footnote 10 even though outside the written standard language negative concord continued to thrive, as illustrated by (65).
(64) I shall not declare vnto you ony parte of the epystle. (1509, Fisher,Wks.i.2)
(65) Can't see no bloody parachute on there! (BNC)
A final remark about changes taking place in the negative system concerns the phenomenon of ‘negative raising’ as found in (66), were the negative of the lower clause (‘we should not take a bus’) is as it were raised into the higher clause.
(66) I don’t think we ought to take a bus because we were very badly treated when we did that (BNC)
There is no evidence for negative raising in OE. The only cases that look like negative raising are cases such as (67),
(67) ac he ne com na to demenne mancynn … ac to gehælenne
but he not came not to judge mankind … but to heal (ÆCHom.I,22 320.5)
‘but he didn’t come to judge mankind but to save them’
But it is more likely that these are cases of ‘forward-looking’ negative concord (cf. Traugott, Reference Traugott1992: 271). Fischer (Reference Fischer, Ostade, Tottie and van der Wurff1999) notes that the OE cases all concern instances like (67) where a contrast is expressed, which makes the use of the negative in the first clause more natural (i.e. ‘he did not come to judge but he did come to save’). She finds evidence for negative raising only in eModE mostly with the verb ‘seem’ where there is also subject raising (68), or in cases with a small clause (69), which makes it different from true negative raising, which crosses a clause boundary.
(68) so that it seems this Creature has no very good foresight: It [the creature] does not seem to have any eyelids (Hooke,13.5,211; Fischer, 1999: 66)
(69) I don’t think it lawful to harbour any Rogues but my own (Farquhar 8, ibid.: 76)
The first examples which truly look like raising are instances like (70), but note that this still does not involve raising from a full subordinate clause but from an infinitival one.
(70) when his spirits were so low and spent, that he could not move nor stir, and he did not think to live an hour (BURNETROC 21, ibid.: 75)
Cases like the one illustrated in (66) are slow to develop and only become more frequent, also spreading to other verbs such as believe and expect in lModE. Interestingly, it is most common in PDE when the complementizer that is lacking (see (71), and Footnote Note 11) suggesting that there is still no real clause boundary, and that verbal forms like I don’t think/expect, etc. function more like pragmatic markers than independent main clauses in these cases (cf. Sections 7.3 and 8.3.1).
a I don't think that he himself would see it as a failure at all (BNC)
b I don't think he'll eat them (BNC)Footnote 11
7.8 Concluding Remarks
The changes discussed in this chapter are somewhat more disparate and less dramatic than some of the changes discussed in the other chapters. Nonetheless, they illustrate some of the typical features of language change. Much of what happened to the expression of clausal constituents in English happened as a result of other changes. The loss of inflectional case markings and the fixation of word order undoubtedly contributed to the increasing obligatoriness of the subject slot, the loss of impersonal constructions, the decline in dative objects and the rise of passives (see further discussion in Chapter 9). Such knock-on effects are typical of syntactic change. Another recurrent characteristic of change is the interaction between syntax and the lexicon. It is not uncommon for syntactic changes to have lexically gradual implementation, constructions with different lexical heads being affected at different times. For instance, the loss of impersonal constructions, the loss of dative objects and the loss of prefixed verbs all have been long drawn-out processes, with different verbs affected at different times. Compensation strategies, too, may take a rather piecemeal shape – such as the borrowing of French alternatives to English prefixed verbs.
