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Clause structure in Old English: evidence from Negative Concord1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

Eric Haeberli  and
Liliane Haegeman
Eric Haeberli
Affiliation:
Département de linguistique générale, Université de Genève, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland. E-mail:haeberli@uni2a.unige.chhaegeman@uni2a.unige.ch
Liliane Haegeman
Affiliation:
Département de linguistique générale, Université de Genève, CH-1211 Genève 4, Switzerland. E-mail:haeberli@uni2a.unige.chhaegeman@uni2a.unige.ch
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Abstract

This paper deals with the clause structure of Old English. In the main body of the paper we adopt the ‘traditional’ analysis of the West Germanic languages in which it is proposed that VP is head-final. We will argue (contra Van Kemenade 1987, pace Cardinaletti & Roberts 1991, Pintzuk 1991, Tomaselli 1991) that the clause structure of Old English contains a head-initial functional projection whose head can be the landing site of verb movement in subordinate clauses. This claim is based on evidence related to the distribution and interpretation of negative elements in Old English and West Flemish. We will show that differences between these two languages with respect to Negative Concord phenomena can be accounted for straightforwardly in terms of an Old English clause structure which is different from the one traditionally proposed for the modern Germanic SOV/V2 languages.

In the appendix to the paper we briefly turn to the recent alternative approaches to the phrase structure of SOV languages in terms of a universal base hypothesis where all projections are head-initial (see Kayne (1993), Zwart (1993), Roberts (1995) for a discussion of Old English).

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 81 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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