‘Gehyrdon ge þæt gecweden wæs’ – A Corpus-based Approach to Verb-initial Constructions in Old English

Abstract

As in other Germanic languages, Old English non-dependent clauses are usually verb-second. Even though considerably less common, verb-initial constructions are also witnessed in Old English prose. This study is therefore devoted to these non-dependent verb-initial constructions in Old English in order to: a) determine the statistics of the construction across some Old English prose compositions; b) examine the kind of verbs favoured in these positions; and c) analyse the contexts in which this construction is likely to occur. The approach stems from Ohkado's study of these clause-types in the first series of Ælfric's Catholic Homilies, stating that their function may ultimately depend on authorial preferences. In our case, the source of evidence has been extracted from a selection of The Toronto Complete Corpus of Old English. Accordingly, complete pieces have been investigated to conclude whether the use of V1 is consistent in Old English prose or, on the contrary, it is a matter of the writer's idiolect.