Abstract
Abstract The loss of case-marking distinctions in English has generally been seen as responsible for profound changes in the language. In particular, the changes in grammatical relations which we will look at in the following chapters are frequently assumed to have resulted directly from the syncretism of the cases. Let us briefly review here the changes which are thought to have affected the experiencer verbs and the passives of verbs which governed a dative object in OE. One change which is frequently regarded as important in the loss of the ‘impersonal’ constructions is the syncretism between nominative and dative nominal case. The idea here is that in OE the distinctive dative case marking of pam cyninge in a phrase like pam cyninge ofhreowep made it quite clear that of hreowan was an ‘impersonal’ verb, but once dative case marking had disappeared from the nominal paradigm, it was impossible for language-learners to be certain whether the king was to be analysed as an (indirect) object, as earlier, or as a subject.
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