Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-fnpn6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-26T20:12:47.931Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Motivations for particle verb word order in Middle and Early Modern English1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 October 2013

MARION ELENBAAS
MARION ELENBAAS*
Affiliation:
LUCL/Department of English Language and Culture, Leiden University, PO Box 9515, 2300 RA, Leiden, The Netherlandsm.b.elenbaas@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines possible motivations for the choice of particle verb word order in Middle English (1100–1500) and Early Modern English (1500–1700). The word order alternation of Present-Day English particle verbs, which presents language users with a choice between verb–object–particle and verb–particle–object order, first emerged in Early Middle English (twelfth century). For Present-Day English, several studies (e.g. Gries 1999, 2003; Dehé 2002) have shown that the choice is influenced by a number of linguistic factors, such as the heaviness of the object (morphosyntactic factor) and the givenness of the object (discourse factor). This article reveals the influence of a number of morphosyntactic factors and also shows that the choice is increasingly influenced by the givenness of the object. The differences between Present-Day English on the one hand and Middle and Early Modern English on the other hand are discussed in the light of syntactic changes going on in these periods. It is argued that the developments in particle verb syntax are characterised by an increasing division of labour between the two word orders, which may also explain why both orders survive into Present-Day English.

Type
Research Article
Information
English Language & Linguistics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , November 2013 , pp. 489 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

I would like to thank the audiences at the Symposium on the History of English Syntax, held at the University of York on 22–23 May 2010, and at the 31st TABUdag, held at the University of Groningen on 3–4 June 2010, for their helpful comments. I would also like to thank Eric Hoekstra for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this paper. I am particularly grateful for the insightful feedback I received from Bettelou Los. Of course, any errors are mine.

References

Arnold, Jennifer E., Wasow, Thomas, Losongco, Anthony & Ginstrom, Ryan. 2000. Heaviness vs newness: The effects of structural complexity and discourse status on constituent ordering. Language 76 (1), 28–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bech, Kristin. 2001. Word order patterns in Old and Middle English: A syntactic and pragmatic study. PhD dissertation, University of Bergen.Google Scholar
Biber, Douglas, Johansson, Stig, Leech, Geoffrey, Conrad, Susan & Finegan, Edward. 1999. Longman grammar of spoken and written English. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1971. The phrasal verb in English. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan, Cueni, Anna, Nikitina, Tatiana & Baayen, R. Harald. 2007. Predicting the dative alternation. In Bouma, Gerlof, Krämer, Irene & Zwarts, Joost (eds.), Cognitive foundations of interpretation, 69–94. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.Google Scholar
Bresnan, Joan & Hay, Jennifer. 2008. Gradient grammar: An effect of animacy on the syntax of give in New Zealand and American English. Lingua 118, 245–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cappelle, Bert. 2009. Can we factor out free choice? In Dufter, Andreas, Fleischer, Jürg & Seiler, Guido (eds.), Describing and modeling variation in grammar, 183–202. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chen, Ping. 1986. Discourse and particle movement in English. Studies in Language 10, 79–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collins, Peter. 1995. The indirect object construction in English: An informational approach. Linguistics 33, 35–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dehé, Nicole. 2002. Particle verbs in English: Syntax, information structure and intonation (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 59). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diessel, Holger & Tomasello, Michael. 2005. Particle placement in early child language: A multifactorial analysis. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 1 (1), 89–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dikken, Marcel den. 1995. Particles: On the syntax of verb–particle, triadic, and causative constructions (Oxford Studies in Generative Syntax). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobson, Eric J. 1972. The English text of the Ancrene Riwle edited from B.M. Cotton ms. Cleopatra C vi (EETS O.S. 267). London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dongen, W. A. van. 1919. ‘He put on his hat’ and ‘he put his hat on’. Neophilologus 4 (1), 322–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Elenbaas, Marion. 2007. The synchronic and diachronic syntax of the English verb–particle combination (LOT Dissertation Series 149). PhD dissertation, Radboud University Nijmegen.Google Scholar
Elenbaas, Marion & van Kemenade, Ans. Forthcoming. Verb particles and OV/VO in the history of English. Studia Linguistica.Google Scholar
Erades, Peter. 1961. Points of Modern English syntax XL (continued). English Studies 42, 56–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Bruce. 1976. The verb–particle combination in English. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy. 1984. Direct objects and dative shifting: Semantic and pragmatic case. In Plank, Frans (ed.), Object: Towards a theory of grammatical relations, 151–81. London and New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Gries, Stefan. 1999. Particle movement: A cognitive and functional approach. Cognitive Linguistics 10 (2), 105–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gries, Stefan. 2003. Multifactorial analysis in corpus linguistics: A study of particle placement. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Hasselgård, Hilde. 2010. Adjunct adverbials in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hiltunen, Risto. 1983. The decline of the prefixes and the beginnings of the English phrasal verb: The evidence from some Old and Middle English texts (Annales Universitatis Turkuensis, Series B, 160). Turun Yliopisto (University of Turku, Finland), Turku.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Eric. 2009. Asymmetries between verbal arguments not involving the subject, especially with respect to idiom formation. In Coopmans, Peter, Everaert, Martin & Marelj, Marijana (eds.), Promoting systems interface, 137–54. Utrecht: Utrecht Institute of Linguistics OTS.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul. 1979. Aspect and foregrounding in discourse. In Givón, Talmy (ed.), Syntax and semantics, 213–41. San Diego: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffreyet al. 2002. The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ishizaki, Yasuaki. 2012. A usage-based analysis of phrasal verbs in Early and Late Modern English. English Language and Linguistics 16 (2), 241–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, Kyle. 1991. Object positions. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 9, 577–636.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kayne, Richard. 1985. Principles of particle constructions. In Guéron, Jacqueline, Obenauer, Hans Georg & Pollock, Jean-Yves (eds.), Grammatical representation, 101–40. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
van Kemenade, Ans & Milicev, Tanja. 2012. Syntax and discourse in Old English and Middle English word order. In Jonas, Dianne, Whitman, John & Garrett, Andrew (eds.), Grammatical change: Origins, nature, outcomes. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kincaid, Arthur Noel. 1972. The dramatic structure of Sir Thomas More's History of King Richard III. Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 12 (2), 223–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroch, Anthony. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1, 199–244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice & Diertani, Ariel. 2004. Penn–Helsinki parsed corpus of Early Modern English. www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCEME-RELEASE-2/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Kroch, Anthony & Taylor, Ann. 2000a. Verb-complement order in Middle English. In Pintzuk, Susan, Tsoulas, George & Warner, Anthony (eds.), Diachronic syntax: Models and mechanisms, 132–63. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony & Taylor, Ann. 2000b. Penn–Helsinki parsed corpus of Middle English, 2nd edn. www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/PPCME2-RELEASE-2/Google Scholar
Kruijff-Korbayová, Ivana & Steedman, Mark. 2003. Discourse and information structure. Journal of Logic, Language and Information 12, 249–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kytö, Merja. 1991. Manual to the diachronic part of the Helsinki Corpus of English texts: Coding conventions and lists of source texts. Helsinki: Department of English, University of Helsinki.Google Scholar
Los, Bettelou, Blom, Corrien, Booij, Geert, Elenbaas, Marion & van Kemenade, Ans. 2012. Morphosyntactic change: A comparative study of particles and prefixes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meurman-Solin, Anneli, López-Couso, María-José & Los, Bettelou (eds.). 2012. Information structure and syntactic change in the history of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nam, Seungho. 2004. Goal and source: Their syntactic and semantic asymmetry. In Ettlinger, Marc, Fleisher, Nicholas & Park-Doob, Mischa (eds.), Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of Berkeley Linguistics Society, 304–17. Berkeley, CA: Berkeley Linguistics Society.Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad. 2002. Particle placement. In Dehé, Nicole, Jackendoff, Ray, McIntyre, Andrew & Urban, Silke (eds.), Verb–particle explorations, 141–64. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olsen, Susan. 1996. Partikelverben im Deutsch-Englischen vergleich. In Lang, Ewald & Zifonun, Gisela (eds.), Deutsch-typologisch, 261–88. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petrova, Svetlana & Solf, Michael. 2009. On the methods of the information-structural analysis of historical texts: A case study on Old High German. In Hinterhölzl, Roland & Petrova, Svetlana (eds.), Information structure and language change: New approaches to word order variation in Germanic, 121–60. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1981. Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In Cole, Peter (ed.), Radical pragmatics, 223–56. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
Prince, Ellen F. 1992. The ZPG letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information status. In Mann, William C. & Thompson, Sandra A. (eds.), Discourse description: Diverse analyses of a fund-raising text, 295–325. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London and New York: Longman.Google Scholar
Randall, Beth. 2003. CorpusSearch 1.1. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Seoane, Elena. 2006. Information structure and word order change: The passive as an information-rearranging strategy in the history of English. In van Kemenade, Ans & Los, Bettelou (eds.), The handbook of the history of English, 360–91. Malden, MA, and Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Seoane, Elena. 2009. Syntactic complexity, discourse status and animacy as determinants of grammatical variation in Modern English. English Language and Linguistics 13 (3), 365–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thim, Stefan. 2012. Phrasal verbs: The English verb–particle construction and its history. Berlin and Boston, MA: De Gruyter Mouton.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toivonen, Ida. 2003. Non-projecting words: A case-study of Swedish particles. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, Anthony. 1982. Complementation in Middle English and the methodology of historical syntax: A study of the Wycliffite sermons. London and Canberra: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Wasow, Thomas. 1997. Remarks on grammatical weight. Language Variation and Change 9, 81–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar