Labile Verbs and Word Order in Early Middle English: an Initial Study

This paper serves as an initial exploration of the hypothesis put forth by García García (2012) according to which morphological syncretism in the expression of valency in causative pairs may have a connection with syntactic parameters, specifi cally the overt expression of all verbal arguments and...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: García García, Luisa, Ruiz Narbona, Esaúl
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2012
País:España
Institución:Universidad de Sevilla (US)
Repositorio:idUS. Depósito de Investigación de la Universidad de Sevilla
OAI Identifier:oai:idus.us.es:11441/164737
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/11441/164737
https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.19.2012.59-79
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Word order
early Middle English
causatives
labile verbs
morphological loss
valency changes
English syntax
Descripción
Sumario:This paper serves as an initial exploration of the hypothesis put forth by García García (2012) according to which morphological syncretism in the expression of valency in causative pairs may have a connection with syntactic parameters, specifi cally the overt expression of all verbal arguments and a fi xed or consistent word order. In this paper we assess the relative position of subject-verb and verb-object in early Middle English transitive and intransitive clauses containing melten, (a)quenchen, and burnen and compare them with those with a transitive- and intransitive-only verb respectively. The most outstanding result shows that labile verbs used transitively seem to anticipate the VO order that will become generalized in later stages of English.