Variation and change in Old and Middle English — on the validity of the Double Base Hypothesis

Abstract

This paper investigates the role of Grammar Competition (Kroch 1989) in explaining word order variation in embedded clauses of Old and Early Middle English. It is argued that heretofore unnoticed distributional properties of adverbs point to the conclusion that the finite verb does not leave the extended verbal projection (i.e., νP/VP) in embedded clauses of Old English. Therefore, we claim that in these contexts, variation in the placement of the finite verb has to be attributed to competing grammars that differ with respect to parameter settings associated with the functional head ν (contra the Double Base Hypothesis, Pintzuk 1999). Moreover, the proposed analysis provides a principled account for the intriguing fact that a certain serialisation pattern (S-V-O-Vfin) is absent from the variety of ordering possibilities encountered in Old English. It is further argued that our account opens up a new perspective on a set of syntactic factors which can be shown to have a statistically significant influence on the position of the finite verb in embedded clauses.