The rightward movement of complements and adjuncts in the Old English of Beowulf

Abstract

ABSTRACTAlthough it has generally been recognized that Old English was a verb-final language with verb-seconding, the existence of clauses with main verb complements and adjuncts appearing after the otherwise clause-final verb seems to contradict the hypothesis that the language was strictly verb-final in underlying structure. There are three possible analyses to explain these clauses: variable word order in the base, leftward verb movement, and rightward movement of NPs and PPs. In this article, we demonstrate that only the third analysis adequately explains the data of the Early Old English poem Beowulf. Moreover, by investigating the mapping between syntactic structures and metrical units, we provide evidence for two types of rightward movement with two distinct structures: heavy NP shift, with a characteristic major intonational boundary between the main verb and the postposed NP, and PP extraposition, where the intonational boundary was much less common.