ENGLISH HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS 2008

AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND

HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E.F.K. KOERNER
Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie
und Universalienforschung, Berlin
efk.koerner@rz.hu-berlin.de

Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board

Lyle Campbell (Salt Lake City)

Sheila Embleton (Toronto)
Elly van Gelderen (Tempe, Ariz.)
John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Manfred Krifka (Berlin)
Martin Maiden (Oxford)
Martha Ratliff (Detroit, Mich.)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.)
Joseph C. Salmons (Madison, Wis.)

Volume 314

Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber and Robert Mailhammer (eds.)

English Historical Linguistics 2008.

Selected papers from the fifteenth International Conference on English Historical
Linguistics (ICEHL 15), Munich, 24–30 August 2008.
Volume I: The history of English verbal and nominal constructions
 ENGLISH HISTORICAL
LINGUISTICS 2008
SELECTED PAPERS FROM
THE FIFTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON ENGLISH HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
(ICEHL 15), MUNICH, 24–30 AUGUST 2008

VOLUME I: THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH VERBAL

AND NOMINAL CONSTRUCTIONS

Edited by

URSULA LENKER
JUDITH HUBER
ROBERT MAILHAMMER
Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
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International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (15th : 2008 : University of

Munich)
English historical linguistics 2008 : selected papers from the fifteenth International Con-
ference on English historical linguistics (ICEHL 15), Munich, 24-30 August 2008.
p. cm. (Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Cur-
rent Issues in Linguistic Theory, issn 0304-0763 ; v. 314)
The fourteen contributions to this volume, which were selected from papers delivered
at the 15th International Conference on the History of the English Language
(ICEHL) held at the University of Munich (24-30 August 2008).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. English language--Grammar, Historical--Congresses. 2. English language--History-
-Congresses. I. Lenker, Ursula, 1963-. II. Huber, Judith, 1981-. III. Mailhammer,
Robert, 1975-. IV. Title.
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 Table of contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction: Capturing and explaining syntactic change

in the history of English 1
Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber, Robert Mailhammer

part i.  Verbal constructions

“Þonne hate we hine morgensteorra”: On verb complementation

in Old English 11
Nils-Lennart Johannesson

Tracking and explaining variation and change in the grammar of American

English: A case study, with evidence from the TIME Corpus 29
Juhani Rudanko

Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses: Semantic divergence? 45

Elina Sellgren

Prescription or practice? Be/have variation with past participles of mutative

intransitive verbs in the letters of Joseph Priestley 63
Robin Straaijer

On the idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 79

Minoji Akimoto

The clausal complementation of good in extraposition constructions:

The emergence of partially filled constructions 95
An Van linden

part ii.  Modality and (marginal) modals

The ‘ fail to’ construction in Late Modern and Present-Day English 123
Thomas Egan
 English Historical Linguistics 2008

The interplay of modal verbs and adverbs: A history of mæg eaþe 143
Jerzy Nykiel

Current change in the modal system of English: A case study of

must, have to and have got to 165
Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

part iii.  Developments in the English noun phrase

Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English 185

Artur Bartnik

Genitive variation in letters, history writing and sermons

in Late Middle and Early Modern English 197
Teo Juvonen

part iv.  Syntactic variation and change through contact

On the use of beon and wesan in Old English 217

Ilse Wischer

The reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity in early Middle English 237

Margaret Laing

Stylistic fronting in the history of English 255

Masayuki Ohkado

Subject and Word index 279

 Acknowledgements

The fourteen contributions to this volume, which were selected from papers deliv-
ered at the 15th International Conference on the History of the English Language
(ICEHL) held at the University of Munich (24–30 August 2008), focus on the gen-
esis and variation of nominal and verbal constructions in the history of English.
At ICEHL 15, about 170 papers were given, of which fifty were handed in for con-
sideration in the proceedings. The editorial board agreed on compiling three vol-
umes, which were to be organized thematically. For the present volume, the edito-
rial team from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt picked those papers
which were related enough to form a fairly coherent volume dealing with syntac-
tic and morpho‑syntactic topics and ultimately, after a thorough inspection by the
editors and reviewers, the fourteen papers here united were chosen for the present
publication. The editing was completed in time for the subsequent ICEHL confer-
ence in Pécs, Hungary, in August 2010. In addition to this book, an editorial team
based at the University of Munich (editor‑in‑chief: Hans Sauer) will compile at
least one more volume, to be published with John Benjamins, comprising selec-
tions from the remaining papers carrying a different thematic focus.
The editors wish to thank the organizing committee of the 15th International
Conference on the History of the English Language (ICEHL) at the University of
Munich for organizing and supporting such a huge conference logistically and aca-
demically. Our heartfelt gratitude also goes out to all the colleagues who have been
involved in the selection process for this volume as referees, readers and advisors.
Specifically, we would like to thank Daniel Hole, Ulrike Krischke, Angelika Lutz,
Wolfgang Mager, Hans Sauer, Gaby Waxenberger and those reviewers who wish to
remain anonymous for their quick and thorough review of the contributions, sub-
stantially improving sections of this book with their pertinent comments. We are
also very grateful to the series’ editor, E.F.K. Koerner, and the staff of John Benjamins
for their support and, of course, to the authors for their cooperation and patience.
Last but not least, thanks are due to Veronika Bischofberger, Jonas Bodensohn,
Andrea Graf, Andrea Halbich, Christoph Hauf, Barbara Hefele, Jutta Öhlschläger and
Stefan Stenke for their supporting work during the production process of the manu-
scripts and to Anke de Looper and Martine van Marsbergen at John Benjamins, for
their help in the final stages of guiding the volume through the press.
Eichstätt, May 2010 Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber, Robert Mailhammer
 Introduction
Capturing and explaining syntactic
change in the history of English

Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber, Robert Mailhammer

Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

1. New paths of investigation: Corpus and constructionist approaches

In recent years, the study of historical syntax has in particular benefited from a
methodological trend towards usage-based or functional approaches. This is
largely due to the intrinsically compositional nature of syntax. Unlike morpho­
logy and phonology, which describe the formation and use of single speech signs,
syntax is about stringing items together in order to form more complex functions
and meanings. As a result, syntax forms a larger context, which it is, however, at
the same time dependent on, since the co‑ and contextual parameters feed back
on how words can be put together. In a synchronic approach, the contextual in-
formation can be backgrounded in favour of formal issues, but from a diachronic
perspective it is exactly the changes in collocations, constructions (in a general
sense) and sentence types that form the object of investigation. These changes oc-
cur in a complex interplay of conventionalization and variation, which is why it is
important to pay attention not only to standardized or widely-used varieties of a
language, but also to its dialectal varieties.
Consequently, studies in historical syntax, which either – explicitly or im-
plicitly – contrast historical stages of a language with its later stages, or which
describe a diachronic development, have increasingly made use of corpus studies
and of a range of what can be labelled usage-based approaches, such as frequen-
cy-based accounts and, more recently, various kinds of constructional grammar
(see Croft 2001: 14–21 for an overview of different approaches, with references),
investigating not only the standard language but also various kinds of diatopic,
diastratic and diaphasic varieties. Such functional investigations combine de-
scription with explanation, in the sense that changes in syntactic conventions are
 Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber, Robert Mailhammer

documented, which may then be explained with, for instance, the help of a for-
mal theory.
The key significance of such fine-grained studies of micro-variation for a
theory of language change has been increasingly recognized in recent years
(see, e.g., Enfield 2005). The problem of examining language change has always
been to “catch it red-handed”, mainly because the perspective was often too wide,
the method too crude and the resolution of the study too low. The gradual nature
of change and the increasing entrenchment of new forms and meanings make it
necessary to look more closely and to single out phenomena which can then be
studied more carefully and more comprehensively. Traditional philology has al-
ways inherently assumed such a viewpoint, and this is why the editions of the
nineteenth and early twentieth century are so valuable. In this sense, corpus lin-
guistics takes philology to the next level, employing essentially the same perspec-
tive, but with much richer datasets. Ever more often, linguists also examine ongo-
ing language change and use data from comparatively large contemporary
corpora such as the Brown quartet (Brown/LOB for 1961 and Frown/F‑LOB for
1991/92), the TIME Corpus or the BNC (see the contributions by Close & Aarts,
Rudanko, Sellgren and Van linden, all in this volume) not only to study variation
and change in Present-Day English, but to employ a wider perspective aimed at
retrieving regular patterns of linguistic change (for a general discussion of the
value of contemporary data, see Mair 2006:  12–35 and Leech, Hundt, Mair &
Smith 2009: 1–50). And this is exactly what is needed to capture, and ultimately,
explain language change: a wealth of data on one well-defined, clearly bounded
phenomenon.
In syntax, these smallest observable phenomena are constructions in a broad
sense, collocations which first become conventionalized and may then be gram-
maticalized. Therefore, the investigation of syntactic change starts with an analy-
sis of the elements that are strung together on a regular basis and an examination
of their behaviour through time (see, e.g., Ferraresi & Goldbach 2008). Recent
studies in English historical linguistics have frequently followed this trend. The
use of corpora has by now become part and parcel of the standard methodology
analyzing the emergence, variation and developments of syntactic units, colloca-
tions, idioms and constructions in all historical stages of English and across vari-
eties, both in a general and in a theory-determined sense.
However, there is another dimension to language change, and this is the fact
that language change is a behavioural change of speakers, since changes of speech
patterns require a change in behaviour. This has become especially clear through
the network-based sociolinguistic studies of language variation (see, for instance,
Milroy & Milroy 1992). In identifying reasons for such behavioural changes, re-
cent theories on language change have made great progress (see, e.g., Labov 2001
 Introduction 

and Enfield 2003). One such reason is external influence. The investigation of
externally motivated language change depends on the availability of a broad
range of linguistic and extra‑linguistic data and the application of a strict meth-
odology (see Thomason & Kaufman 1988), but the explanatory potential of change
through language contact has been demonstrated time and time again. This is
especially valid for the history of English with its massive impact – not only in the
lexicon – from, in particular, Norse (see the discussions in Laing and Ohkado,
both in this volume), Latin and French (see, for example, Akimoto and Egan,
both in this volume). In recent years, the significance of Celtic influence on the
structure of English has become increasingly apparent after it had been underes-
timated in earlier scholarship (see Filppula & Klemola 2009 and also Wischer,
this volume).

2. Functional and distributional approaches to the history

of nominal and verbal constructions

2.1 Approaches

A considerable proportion of the articles assembled here apply a usage‑based ap-

proach, a majority of them investigating questions of constructions and comple-
mentation in the history of English. The general idea of usage-based approaches
is to focus on the way certain forms and syntactic units are employed, discussing,
for example, the frequencies and kinds of formal properties these constructions
display and which functions they perform. Based on such a comprehensive de-
sign, the different approaches also emphasize different aspects, such as frequency,
pragmatics or the degree of fixed contextual embedding and constructional en-
trenchment. In a sense, this could be termed a neo-philological or post-philolog-
ical approach, a move ‘back to the roots’ of linguistics, in which the data are of
primary concern (for a discussion of the importance of early Middle English data,
see, for instance, Laing, this volume). Interestingly, this parallels the recent come-
back of documentary linguistics as a linguistic subfield in its own right, whose
primary aim is to document language and to make it accessible to outsiders
(see Himmelmann 1998, for an overview of the field). In most of the papers
brought together in the present volume, however, the comprehensive and detailed
empirical base serves as a foundation for more general and also theoretical infer-
ences, when, for instance, data on the conventionalization of constructions (in a
general sense as well as in the sense of construction grammar) are linked up fur-
ther with theories on grammaticalization (see Egan, this volume) and language
change (see, for instance, Sellgren and Rudanko, both in this volume).
 Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber, Robert Mailhammer

2.2 Verbal constructions

Many studies in the volume set out to capture data on constructions – whether ad
hoc, conventionalized or grammaticalized – and document variation and stabil-
ity. In a considerable number of the contributions “constructions” such as verb
complementation patterns, phrasal units or idioms are investigated without ex-
plicit reference to construction grammar as a theory (see Goldberg 1995). The
papers by Rudanko, Sellgren and Straaijer, for instance, examine questions of
verb complementation from a basically distributional viewpoint, whereas Johan-
nesson’s paper on verb complementation in Old English assumes a distinctly
theoretical perspective. Johannesson develops a three-partite system for Old
English verbs – according to the dimensions of copularity, transitivity and status
(personal vs. impersonal) – and uses it to account for the fact that Old English
verbs of naming can take an object complement either marked for nominative or
accusative.
In one of the distributional analyses of a large corpus (the TIME Corpus),
Rudanko shows that the patterns of complementation of accustomed have radi-
cally changed in the course of the twentieth century. In the 1920s, the older pat-
tern with to‑infinitive is roughly as frequent as the newer one with to ‑ing. Yet,
Rudanko finds that this was not a matter of free variation, but that the new com-
plementation pattern emerged in combination with non‑volitional agents as well
as in contexts without complement or adjunct extraction. The older to‑infinitive
complementation remained more widespread with volitional agents and in con-
texts involving complement or adjunct extraction. By the 1960s, however, the in-
finitival complementation was largely replaced by to ‑ing.
In a similar vein, Sellgren (using data from the BNC) compares different com-
plementation patterns of prevent in Present-Day English, the older (prevent) some-
body from doing something, and the more recent (prevent) somebody doing some-
thing. She proposes that one of the factors that govern the choice of complement
is a semantic distinction: the from‑pattern is preferred if the prevented action is a
hypothetical one, while the other pattern is chosen more often in less hypotheti-
cal cases, where, for instance, the prevented action has been realized before.
In an even more fine-grained micro-study, Straaijer focuses on the usage of
one individual author. He compares the usage of the auxiliaries be and have with
mutative intransitive verbs (such as begin or arrive) in the private writings of the
eighteenth-century grammarian Joseph Priestley with a) the rules of his gram-
mar and b) a reference corpus of contemporary letters (for variation in the forms
of be in Old and early Middle English and their functions, see also Wischer and
Laing, both in this volume). In his Rudiments of English Grammar, Priestley sug-
gests that the choice of auxiliary with these verbs depends on the context, have
 Introduction 

being more appropriate with reference to past or completed events, be in other

cases. Since this distribution is also found in his own usage and is furthermore in
line with the eighteenth century’s general usage, Straaijer adds further evidence
to the claim that Priestley is a de‑ rather than a pre‑scriptivist.
While most of the studies thus deal with constructions in a more general
sense, the contributions by Akimoto and Van linden make explicit use of con-
struction grammar in the shape of the approach developed by Goldberg (1995).
Akimoto compares the distribution of give + Oi + Od and give + Od + to through
the history of English and traces the development of idiomatic expressions such
as give rise to from the latter. He finds that the direct object slot in these expres-
sions has ever more frequently been filled with short, eventive nouns from Early
Modern English onwards. In a functional synchronic-diachronic description of
the clausal complement patterns found with good in extraposition constructions,
Van linden shows that PDE good differs from other deontic-evaluative adjectives,
such as important or convenient, in that it preferably combines with proposition-
al to‑infinitive clauses (as in it is good to hear that) instead of mandative that‑claus-
es (as in it is important that you go there). The frequency of propositional to‑claus-
es with good is attributed to the existence of two partially filled constructions in
the sense of Goldberg (1995): the locative pattern and the knowledge/acquisition-
of-knowledge pattern. Both of these papers using large corpora illustrate that, as
Croft (2001: 11) asserts, one of the fundamental methods of construction gram-
mar is a quantitative and distributional analysis of different diachronic occur-
rences of a given construction. From this basis, further inferences are possible via
frequency‑based models of language change, which ties in further with cognitive
theories (see Bybee 2003) and grammaticalization (see Egan, this volume).

2.3 Modality and (marginal) modals

Three contributions in this volume address constructional issues of modality and

(marginal) modals in the history of English. Egan’s paper is a good example for
linking distributional findings to issues of grammaticalization. He shows that the
employment of fail to has changed radically from being almost always negated in
the eighteenth century to being hardly ever used with negation in Present-Day
English. He discusses its semantic development and argues that fail to is to some
extent grammaticalized as a negative marker in Present-Day English.
The developmental ancestor of many constructions in a general as well as a
theory-specific sense is the collocation, the topic of Nykiel’s paper. He traces the
development of the Old English collocation mæg eaþe ‘may easily’, which is on its
way to lexicalization in Old English, to its disappearance in Middle English.
Nykiel finds that OE eaþe may collocate with mæg in all the verb’s meanings
 Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber, Robert Mailhammer

except that of “permission” and suggests that the collocation mæg eaþe reinforced
the deontic and possibility‑interpretation of mæg.
In their contribution on current changes in the system of English deontic/
epistemic modals, Close & Aarts look at the uses of must and have to/have got to
in the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English. In environments were
both must and have (got) to are possible, the deontic as well as the epistemic use
of must is shown to have declined from the 1960s to the 1990s, while deontic have
to, already more frequent than must in the 1960s, keeps rising. Contrary to what
one might expect, however, have to is not increasing in its epistemic use, and also
have got to, the most recent of the three, is in decline.

2.4 Developments in the English noun phrase

Two papers in this volume focus on features in the diachrony of noun phrases.
Bartnik discusses Old English discontinuous quantificational structures, i.e., quan-
tifiers that are not adjacent to the noun or pronoun they quantify. He shows that
the group is heterogeneous and offers a classification according to whether or not
they show morphological agreement. While the first case involves movement such
as topicalization or scrambling, the quantifier is base-generated in the other case.
Juvonen’s analysis of s- and of-genitives in late Middle and Early Modern
English challenges the claim that the s-genitive rises from being a mere relic in
1400 to becoming a normal genitive variant from the fifteenth to the seventeenth
century, arguing that the s‑genitive was the unmarked choice for human posses-
sors all along (particularly widespread in the informal genre of letters), while the
of-genitive is more frequent in formal contexts like sermons. Thus genre is seen as
the most important factor in genitive variation, with factors such as weight, topi-
cality, givenness and genitive function also playing a role.

3. Syntactic variation and change through contact

The second strain of investigation present in this volume focuses on language

variation and, in a further extension, on explanation operating with language
contact. The papers by Wischer and Laing complement each other in this succes-
sive application of research methodology, examining the forms of the copula
verbs OE beon/wesan in Old and early Middle English.
In her distributional investigation of the double paradigm of beon and wesan
in Old English, Wischer finds that the difference between the two verbs, one of
future/habitual present vs. (current) present meaning, is linked to a similar one
in Celtic. Wischer argues that it is the prolonged contact with Celtic after the
 Introduction 

Anglo-Saxon settlement that the spread of the b-forms to the subjunctive, im-
perative and infinitive, and the development of the Old English full double para-
digm, an exception among the West‑Germanic languages, is to be attributed to.
In a fine-grained study, Laing investigates how the Old English distribution
of b‑ and s‑roots of the BE-paradigm, with b‑ more often referring to future time,
develops in regional varieties of Middle English. She identifies four different
types, some of which continue the Old English distinction in the present indica-
tive singular only, while others – with ar-/er- instead of b-forms in the plural –
also maintain the distinction to the plural.
While the impact of the Celtic languages (as discussed by Wischer, this volume,
in particular) is a topic which has been revived in recent years (see now Filppula &
Klemola 2009), the linguistic impact of Old Norse has been a long‑standing and
more stable area of research. In his paper, Ohkado re‑examines the evidence for the
Norse origins of a particular word order pattern in English. He shows that in Old
and Middle English clauses with pronominal or empty subjects, the finite verb
tends to be preceded by adjectives, participles, infinitives, negatives and other ad-
verbs more frequently than in clauses with a full NP subject, where the verb tends
to be followed by these elements. Ohkado attributes this difference in word order to
stylistic fronting of these elements into the subject gap, a phenomenon known, for
instance, from Old Norse. On the basis that stylistic fronting can be observed in all
Middle English dialects, but even more so in non‑Northern ones, the paper argues
(against Trips 2002 and also Ohkado 2006) that it is not only due to Scandinavian
contact but has to be a genuine property of Old and Middle English.
This volume thus brings together two avenues of research which have been
extremely fruitful in the investigation of English historical syntax, namely, func-
tional and data-oriented as well as contact‑linguistic approaches. The key strength
of the former perspective is its fine-grained examination of micro‑variation and
micro‑change, whereas motivating language change is at the heart of the latter. In
recent years, it has become clear that both of these perspectives are indispensable
parts of a theory of language change. In particular, the study of constructional
change and language variation, which the majority of contributions to this vol-
ume are concerned with, has shown to provide crucial data for the description
and explanation of syntactic change in the history of English.

References

Bybee, Joan. 2003. “Mechanisms of Change in Grammaticization: The Role of Frequency”. The
Handbook of Historical Linguistics ed. by Brian D. Joseph & Richard D. Janda, 602–623.
Oxford: Blackwell.
 Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber, Robert Mailhammer

Croft, William. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspec-
tive. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Enfield, Nicholas. 2003. Linguistic Epidemiology: Semantics and Grammar of Language Con-
tact in Mainland Southeast Asia. London: Routledge/Curzon.
Enfield, Nicholas. 2005. “Areal Linguistics and Mainland Southeast Asia”. Annual Review of
Anthropology 34.181–206.
Ferraresi, Gisella & Maria Goldbach, eds. 2008. Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction.
(= Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 302.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Filppula, Markku & Juhani Klemola, eds. 2009. Re-Evaluating the Celtic Hypothesis. (= Special
issue of English Language and Linguistics 13:2.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Goldberg, Adele E. 1995. Constructions: A Construction Grammar Approach to Argument
Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Himmelmann, Nikolaus. 1998. “Documentary and Descriptive Linguistics”. Linguistics
36.161–195.
Labov, William. 2001. Principles of Linguistic Change. Vol. II: Social Factors. Malden, Mass. &
Oxford: Blackwell.
Leech, Geoffrey, Marianne Hundt, Christian Mair & Nicholas Smith. 2009. Change in Con-
temporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mair, Christian. 2006. Twentieth-Century English: History, Variation, and Standardization.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Milroy, Lesley & James Milroy. 1992. “Social Network and Social Class: Toward an Integrated
Sociolinguistic Model”. Language in Society 21.1–26.
Ohkado, Masayuki. 2001. Old English Constructions with Multiple Predicates. Tokyo:
Hituzi Syobo.
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part i

Verbal constructions
 “Þonne hate we hine morgensteorra”
On verb complementation in Old English

Nils-Lennart Johannesson
Stockholm University

Traditional works on Old English syntax offer no explanation why verbs

of naming could combine accusative and nominative complements. This
paper offers such an explanation, based on an account of Old English verb
complementation in terms of transitivity, copularity and status.
transitivity is defined in terms of the number of internal arguments marked
for oblique case (none, one or two), copularity in terms of the presence
or absence of an internal argument in the nominative case, and status in
terms of the presence or absence of an external argument of the verb marked
for nominative case. By treating these features as dimensions rather than
mutually exclusive categories (in particular transitivity and copularity),
it becomes possible to account for combinations of internal arguments marked
for nominative case and oblique case, such as þas þing þincað þam arasedum
clericum unweorðlice (‘these things seem trivial to experienced clerks’) and
þonne hate we hine morgensteorra (‘then we call it the Morning Star’), as
well as for verbs of naming showing alternation between, on the one hand,
a combination of accusative object and nominative complement, as in the
previous example, and on the other hand two accusative objects, as in se steorra
... þone sume menn hatað þone fexedan steorran (‘the star ... which some people
call the long-haired star’).

1. Introduction

In Old English, we find examples of transitive verbs followed by a combination of

an oblique‑case complement and a nominative complement. The combination of
dative + nominative is illustrated here by the clause swa þas þing þincað þam
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

arasedum clericum unweorðlice in (1); the combination of accusative + nomina-

tive by the clause þonne hate we hine morgensteorra in (2).1
(1) We witon þæt þære næddran attor ys þæs mannes unhælo;
swa [þas þing]N þincað [þam
so these.nom things.nom seem.prs.ind.pl the.pl.dat
arasedum clericum]D [unweorðlice]N, ac þam þe þæt
experienced.pl.dat clerks.dat trivial.pl.nom
Lyden ne understandað, hig magon þe leohtlicor witan hwæt
gerimcræft forstande.2 (ByrM 1 2.1.419)
‘We know that the serpent’s poison is a man’s undoing; in the same way,
these things seem trivial to experienced clerks, but those who do not un-
derstand Latin may the more easily know what the calendar signifies.’
(2) þonne hate we [hine]A [morgensteorra]N, forþam
then call.prs.ind.pl we him.acc morningstar.nom
he cymð eastan up; bodað þære sunnan cyme. (Bo 39.136.4)
‘Then we call it the Morning Star, because it rises in the east; [it] heralds
the rising of the sun.’
To the best of my knowledge, the construction with dative + nominative has never
disturbed anyone. Visser (1963: 212) merely states, “[i]n Old English þyncan (= to seem)
was often used as a copula, both with a personal pronoun in the dative ..., and without
such a pronoun”. He never seems to reflect on the status of the dative constituent
(which does not have to be a pronoun, as (1) above shows). Mitchell discusses the pas-
sive use of þyncan (1985: 436–438) but seems to have nothing to say about the use of a
dative NP after þyncan. On one occasion he mentions þyncan in passing as a copula:
“copula verbs such as beon/wesan, weorþan, þyncan and others, ...” (1985: 636), with-
out indicating, however, that þyncan is in any way different from the other copulas.
The combination accusative + nominative, by contrast, seems to have caused
a raised eyebrow or two. Visser comments, “A remarkable feature is the occasional

1. All Old English examples in this paper are quoted from the 2004 release of the Dictionary
of Old English Corpus. Texts are identified by means of their Short Short Title, line references
are given as stated in the Corpus files. Angle brackets are used in examples, as in the Corpus,
to mark words modified by the editor of the text.
2. In the numbered examples, a subscript upper-case letter indicates the case of the preced-
ing noun phrase, adjective phrase or small clause (A = accusative, D = dative, G = genitive, N =
nominative); a finite clause used as the complement of a verb is marked Cl. The letter t indicates
the trace of a moved constituent; a subscript lower-case letter links the trace to the moved con-
stituent. The relevant verb is bolded. In the modern English translation, lower-case subscript
letters are used to indicate identity of reference, [ ] enclose additions, // enclose explanations.
 Verb complementation in Old English 

use of the nominative after the verb hatan” (1963: 553), and Mitchell acknowl-
edges the existence of the nominative variant, but has no explanation to offer:
§1476. When the person or thing named is the object of a verb of naming, the name
can be nominative or accusative ... Both usages are idiomatic. I must leave it at that.
§1477. ... the naming element ... can be an adjective, which may also be nomina-
tive ... or accusative ... My collections are not complete and it may be coincidental
that my examples with the nominative are early and those with the accusative
late. The reverse would have been less surprising in the light of the loss of inflex-
ions. (Mitchell 1985: 618)

This paper will outline a system for the categorization of Old English verb com-
plementation within which examples such as these can be easily accounted for.
Since the verb complementation system is partly dependent on the general syn-
tactic framework employed, a certain amount of ground will need to be covered
before we can come back to examples like (1) and (2): in Section 2 below, a brief
introduction to the framework used to describe Old English clause structure will
be outlined, in Section  3 the verb complementation system will be presented,
with some comments on impersonal verbs like þyncan, and in Section 4 the dis-
cussion will finally home in on the properties of naming verbs like hatan.

2. Descriptive framework

The description of Old English clause structure in this paper will be couched in
the framework of Government and Binding Theory (Haegeman 1994). It is not
possible in the space available here to present the overall treatment of Old English
clause structure within the chosen framework; for an account of the general
framework the interested reader is referred to Haegeman (1994), for its applica-
tion to Old English clauses to Johannesson (2010), in particular Chapter 2. An
easily accessible overview of Old English syntax which is generally compatible
with that in Johannesson (2010) can be found in Traugott (1992). A few com-
ments about the status of subjects in the current framework may be called for,
however, since it differs in certain respects from that of Traugott (1992: 213).
A prototypical subject (in the following referred to as a personal subject) of an
active clause is base-generated as a Specifier in the verb phrase (VP). This can be
demonstrated when a subject noun phrase moves from that position leaving behind
a quantifier such as ealle. The personal subject is always marked for nominative
case, and is always raised from [Spec, VP] to [Spec, IP], the specifier position in the
inflectional phrase. From this position the subject controls Subject-Verb agreement
by transferring its number and person (in the singular only) features to the cluster
of inflectional features under the I-node, the Head of the inflection phrase. An
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

example of this type of subject is shown in (3), and the derivation of the clause, in-
cluding the raising of the subject from [Spec, VP] to [Spec, IP], is shown in (4).3
(3) Heora weorc beoð æfre untodæledlice, and hi
they.pl.nom
habbað ealle ane godcundnysse,
have.pl all.pl.nom one.f.acc divine-nature.f.acc
and ealle an gecynd and ænne mægenþrymm. (ÆHom 6 247)
‘Their works are ever indivisible, and they have all one divine nature, and
all one kind, and one majesty.’
(4) hi habbað ealle ane godcundnysse

CP

Spec C'

hi C IP

habbað Spec I'

3 hi VP I

Spec V' +T
pres
+A[pl]
4 NP V NPA
habbað
NP Q habb- ane god-
cundnysse 2
1 hi ealle

3. The diagram in (4) also shows the movement of the verb stem habb‑ from V to I to pick
up its inflectional features and emerge as the form habbað, the topicalization of the pronoun
hi (movement to [Spec, CP]), and finally the verb movement to C, triggered by the topicaliza-
tion and serving to place the verb in second position in the clause. A moving constituent
leaves a trace behind. To simplify the reading of the tree diagrams used here, such a trace is
shown as an italicized version of the moved constituent, and an arrow is used to represent the
movement. The curved arrows in these diagrams represent the transfer of agreement features
from the subject in [Spec, IP] to the I-node.
 Verb complementation in Old English 

But not every clause has a subject base-generated in [Spec, VP]. In a passive clause
the [Spec, VP] is empty, and a subject is provided by raising an object noun phrase
to [Spec, IP]. If the raised object was marked for accusative or genitive case in the
object position, its case changes to nominative upon moving to [Spec, IP], and it
controls Subject-Verb agreement.4 An object marked for dative case, however, re-
tains its case marking and does not control Subject-Verb agreement; the verb as-
sumes its default form, which is identical with the third person singular form. A
subject of this kind will in the current framework be called a derived subject.
Derived subjects are not only used in passive clauses, but also constitute one op-
tion for providing a surface subject in impersonal constructions (see further
Section 3 below). Derived subjects in passive clauses are illustrated in (5) to (7);
the derivation of the final clause in (7) is illustrated in (8).
(5) Þa cwæð se ealda symeon. To þære eadigan marian. His swurd sceal
þurhgan þine saule. þæt swurd getacnade cristes þrowunge.
Næs [seo eadige
neg.was the.sg.f.nom blessed.sg.f.nom
maria]A→N na ofslegen ne gemartyrod lichomlice:
Mary.sg.f.nom not killed.sg
Ac gastlice.5 (ÆCHom I, 9 254.169)
‘Then the old Simeon said to the Blessed Mary, “His sword will pierce
your soul.” The sword signified Christ’s Passion. The Blessed Mary was
not killed or martyred bodily, but spiritually.’
(6) And þa englas dydon swa [heom]D beboden wæs,
as them.dat commanded.sg was.3.sg
and he astah on heofonas. (LS 1.1 (AndrewBright) 100)
‘And the angels did as they had been commanded, and He /Christ/ as-
cended to Heaven.’
(7) Helias se witega wæs us mannum gelic. ðrowiendlic swa swa
we. and he swa ðeah abæd. þæt [ren]G→N wæs
so-that rain.m.nom was.3.sg

4. Traugott (1992: 213) claims that “only NPs that take accusative in active constructions
may be passivised”. The counterpart in the current framework of “passivised” in this quota-
tion would be “raised to [Spec, IP] and changed to nominative case”. However, in Old English
clauses with ditransitive verbs which combine dative and genitive objects, the genitive object
was raised to become the passive subject, as illustrated in (7).
5. The notation A→N here and in later examples marks an accusative object which has been
raised to become a passive subject, thereby shifting case from accusative to nominative.
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

forwyrned. [ðam wiðerweardum folce]D

denied.sg the.sg.dat contrary.sg.dat people.sg.dat
to ðreora geara fyrste. and syx monða fæce;6 (ÆCHom II, 21 189.277)
‘The prophet Elias was like us men, capable of suffering like us, and he
nevertheless prayed so that rain was denied the contrary people for a pe-
riod of three years and six months.’
(8) þæt ren wæs forwyrned. ðam wiðerweardum folce. to ðreora geara fyrste.
and syx monða fæce;
C'

C IP

þæt Spec I'

NPN VP I

ren Spec V' +T

pret
V IP +A[3sg]

bēo- Spec I'

3
wæs NPN VP I

ren Spec V' –T

pp
V' PP +A[masc,sg]

V NPD NPG to ðreora

geara fyrste.
and syx
1 forwyrn- ðam renes
monða fæce
wiðer-
4 forwyrned weardum
folce

6. The notation G→N marks a genitive object which has been raised to become a passive sub-
ject, thereby shifting case from genitive to nominative.
 Verb complementation in Old English 

For subjects in impersonal constructions, see Section 3 below.

3. Dimensions of complementation

Old English verbs can be categorized with respect to their syntactic properties in
terms of three separate dimensions: copularity, transitivity, and status.
The first two dimensions are defined on the basis of the case of the complement(s)
of a verb (if any), the third dimension is defined on the basis of the kind of subject
the verb takes.
The definition of the dimension of copularity is based on the presence or
absence of a complement marked for nominative case. Thus a copular verb has
one complement marked for nominative case, whereas a non-copular verb has no
such complement. The most common copular verbs in Old English are, of course,
the standard copulas beon/wesan ‘to be’ and weorþan ‘to become’. As we will see,
there are also other kinds of copular verbs, even some which simultaneously are
transitive: such verbs take both a subject complement (nominative case) and an
object (marked for accusative or dative case).
The definition of the dimension of transitivity is based on the presence or
absence of a complement marked for an oblique (i.e., non-nominative) case. For
the purposes of verb complementation, the accusative, dative and genitive cases
make up the group of oblique cases in Old English (the remnants of the instru-
mental case occur only in adverbial expressions). An intransitive verb is one which
takes no oblique-case complement, a monotransitive verb takes one oblique-case
complement (object), and a ditransitive verb takes two. All three oblique cases can
be found after different monotransitive verbs, and all possible combinations of
two different oblique cases can be found after different ditransitive verbs.
The definition of the dimension of status, finally, is based on the kind of
subject that the verb combines with. A personal verb (or, more precisely, a verb
which enters into a personal construction) is one which has a subject which origi-
nates within the VP (it is base-generated in [Spec, VP]). Such a subject is always
marked for nominative case. An impersonal verb (or a verb which enters into an
impersonal construction) is one which does not have a subject base-generated in
[Spec, VP]. When a clause with an impersonal verb nevertheless typically has a
surface subject, that subject is then of a different type:
Inserted subject: A “dummy” subject (hit or þæt) may be inserted in the course of
the derivation of the sentence, if, for example, the second complement of þyncan
is realized by a finite clause, as in (9). There, hit has been inserted in [Spec, IP].
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

(9) Hit þuhte [þam dysegum hæþenum]D

It.nom seemed.3.sg the.pl.dat foolish.pl.dat pagans.pl.dat
[þæt seo dæd waclic wære]Cl, þæt he wolde sylfwilles on rode
[that ... was].clause
beon gefæstnod; ... . (ÆHomM 12 125)
‘It seemed to the foolish pagans that the action was despicable, that He
would voluntarily be fastened on the cross; ... .’
Raised subject: A second possibility is that the subject of a small clause which
functions as the nominative complement of the impersonal verb is raised to
[Spec, IP] in the higher clause and thus controls the number and person agree-
ment of the impersonal verb, as shown in (10).
(10) We witon þæt þære næddran attor ys þæs mannes unhælo; swa
[þas þing]i,N þincað [þam
these.nom things.nom seem.prs.ind.pl the.pl.dat
arasedum clericum]D [ti unweorðlice]N, ...
experienced.pl.dat clerks.dat trivial.pl.nom (ByrM 1 2.1.419)
‘We know that the serpent’s poison is a man’s undoing; in the same way,
these things seem trivial to experienced clerks, ... .’
Derived subject: A third possibility for impersonal verbs is that the surface subject
is derived from an oblique-case complement (object) of the verb which is raised to
[Spec, IP]. As in passive constructions, an accusative or genitive complement
switches to nominative case when it moves to [Spec, IP], and the construction takes
on a “pseudo-personal” look, as shown in (11). A dative complement, by contrast,
remains unchanged, as shown in (12). “Dative subjects” cannot affect the agree-
ment form of the verb; when a dative complement is raised to [Spec, IP], the verb
assumes its default form, which is identical with the third person singular form.
(11) Almachius se arleasa het þa ardlice gefeccan þa eadigan
Cecilian, and hi axode sona <of> hwylcere mægðe heo wære,
and hi motodon lange, oþþæt [þam deman]D
until the.sg.m.dat judge.sg.m.dat
ofþuhte [hyre drystignyss]G→N, and cwæð orhlice eft to
annoyed.3.sg her boldness.f.nom
þam mædene, Nast þu mine mihte? (ÆLS (Cecilia) 308)
‘The wicked Almachius then ordered [his men] to quickly fetch the bless-
ed Cecilia, and [he] straightway asked her of what family she came, and
they argued for a long time, until the judge was annoyed by her boldness,
and [he] replied to the maiden scornfully, “Don’t you know my power?”’
 Verb complementation in Old English 

(12) For ði [him]D ofhreow [þæs mannes]G:

Therefore him.dat rued.3.sg the.sg.m.gen man.sg.m.gen
for ðan þe he wæs bepæht mid þæs deofles searocræftum.
 (ÆCHom I, 13 281.12)
‘Therefore Hei felt sorry for Manj, because hej had been deceived by the
devil’s treachery.’

4. Analysis

The three dimensions of syntactic verb categorization in Old English are inde-
pendent of one another and must all be specified in the description of a given
clause. There are two values in the dimension of copularity, three in the dimen-
sion of transitivity, and a further two in the dimension of status. Thus, twelve
different combinations of values are theoretically possible. In actual fact, howev-
er, only ten of these combinations have been attested: ditransitive copular verbs,
whether personal or impersonal, do not seem to have existed in Old English. The
ten attested combinations are presented in Tables 1 and 2, where a few brief ex-
amples of each type are given; subscript capital letters are used in the table exam-
ples to indicate the case of complements.
For a comprehensive discussion of all the different personal and impersonal
complementation patterns in Old English the reader is referred to Johannesson
(2010). The remainder of this paper will be devoted to a discussion of monotransi-
tive copular personal verbs, more specifically naming verbs such as cigan, hatan
and nemnan.
Monotransitive copular personal verbs take, by definition, one oblique-case
complement and one nominative complement; they have a subject base-generated
in [Spec, VP]. The oblique-case complement is always marked for accusative case.
A few examples of constructions with this type of verb, in addition to (2), are
given in (13) to (15).
(13) Witodlice he ongan þisne licetere næmnian & mid ceorliscum
worde [hine]A cigan [æswica]N, forþon
him.acc call.inf hypocrite.sg.m.nom
þe he eowde hine sylfne beforan manna eagum III dagas & III
niht on gebede standan. (GDPref and 3 (C) 14.200.11)
‘Indeed, hei began to name the otherj a deceiver and with churlish words
to call himj a hypocrite, because hej showed himself j before the eyes of
men standing in prayer for three days and three nights.’
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

Table 1.  Complementation types, personal verbs (A = accusative, D = dative, G = geni-

tive, N = nominative)

Personal constructions (subject base-generated in [Spec, VP])

Non-copular verbs Copular verbs

Intransitive ... & we forðferdon. (Alex 16.1) ‘... Ic eom [fiscere]N (ÆColl 87) ‘I
and we marched off.’ am a fisherman.’
... ðær sind weallas ymbe þone ... þa wearð he [dreorig]N
flod ... (HomU 12.2 30) ‘There (ÆCHom I, 13 284.87) ‘... then
are embankments on either side he became sorrowful.’
of the river.’
Monotransitive & se husbunda ofsloh [ðone he ongan ... [hine]A cigan
man]A. (ChronF 1050.13) ‘and [æswica]N (GDPref and 3 (C)
the owner of the house killed the 14.200.11) (A + N) ‘he began ...
man.’ to call him a hypocrite’
Beorgað [steopcildum]D ... . þonne hate we [hine]A [morgen-
(WHom 11 197) ‘Defend steorra]N ... (Bo 39.136.4) (A +
orphans.’ N) ‘Then we call it the Morning
... & þa stowa gelicodon [his Star.’
eagum]D ... (GD 2 (H) 13.129.14) [Þone monað]A we nemnað on
‘... and those places pleased his ure geðeode [se æftera lyða]N.
eyes ...’ (Mart 2.1 Jy 0, A.5) (A + N) ‘That
... he fægnode [þæs]G ... (ÆLS month /July/ we call in our
(Chrysanthus) 24) ‘... he rejoiced language “After-Lithe”.’
at that ...’ NB: cigan, hatan and nemnan
are occasionally constructed like
læran (non-copular, ditransitive,
A + A).
Ditransitive [Ðisne anweald]A forgeaf crist
[þam apostolum]D. (ÆCHom I,
16 309.75) (D + A) ‘Christ gave
this power to the apostles.’
& ic geann [Siferðe]D ... [anes
swurdes]G ... . (Ch 1503 60) (D +
G) ‘And I bequeath to Siferð ... a
sword.’
... ær þan þe ge [hine]A [æniges
þinges]G biddon. (ÆCHom I, 10
261.99) (A + G) ‘... before you ask
him for anything.’
... þu ... [hine]A [þeodscipe
ðinne]A lærest ... . (PPs 93.11) (A
+ A) ‘... you ... teach him your
law.’
 Verb complementation in Old English 

Table 2.  Complementation types, impersonal verbs (A = accusative, D = dative, G = geni-

tive, N = nominative; A→N, G→N: case shift from accusative/genitive to nominative when
a complement is raised to subject position in [Spec, VP]; t = trace of moved constituent)

Impersonal constructions (no subject base-generated in [Spec, VP])

Non-copular verbs Copular verbs

Intransitive & hit rinde ða ... (Gen 7.12) ‘And ... ic hit eom. (GDPref and 3 (C)
then it rained ...’ 25.228.21) ‘It is me.’
... hit sniwð ... . (ÆGram 128.14) [Ic Δ eom] [þe ðær syngode] ...
‘... it is snowing ...’ (ÆLS (Pr Moses) 257) ‘It was I who
... & swa miclum Δ sniwde ... sinned there’
(Alex 30.11) ‘... and [it] snowed so ...sei þincð nu [ti wærrest &
much ...’ geapest], þe oðerne mæig beswican
... (LS 28 (Neot) 167) ‘he seems
now most prudent and shrewdest,
who can deceive another man ...’
Monotransitive ... ac syþðan [him]D hingrode. ... [þas þing]i,N þincað [þam
(ÆCHom I, 11 266.9) (D) ‘... but arasedum clericum]D [ti unwe-
after that he became hungry.’ orðlice]N, ... (ByrM 1 2.1.419) (D +
He læsode his swyn & geseah, N) ‘... these things seem trivial to
þæt hy æton beanbylgas, & experienced clerks, ... .’
[hine]A hingrode. (GD 2 (H)
3.106.28) (A) ‘He fed his pigs and
saw that they ate bean-pods, and
he became hungry.’
Ditransitive For ði [him]D ofhreow [þæs
mannes]G ... (ÆCHom I, 13
281.12) (D + G) ‘Therefore He felt
sorry for Man.’
... forðon þe [þone welan]A lyst
[anwaldes]G, & [þone anwald]A
lyst [weorðscipes]G, & [þone
weorðscipe]A lyst [mærða]G. (CP
33.76.33) (A + G) ‘... because
wealth desires power, power
desires honour, and honour
desires fame.’
... [þam deman]D ofþuhte [hyre
drystignyss]G→N ... (ÆLS
(Cecilia) 308) (D + G) ‘... her
boldness annoyed the judge ...’
... þa [se mæssepreost]A→N [þæs
mannes]G ofhreow ... (ÆLS
(Oswald) 262) (A + G) ‘then the
priest felt sorry for the man’
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

(14) Ða nolde he gecigan god mildheortne. ac het [hine]A

but called.3.sg Him.acc
[his mildheortnyss]N. þus cweðende. min god and min
his mercy.sg.f.nom
mildheortnyss; (ÆCHom II, 5 49.219)
‘Then he would not call God merciful, but called Him his mercy, saying
thus, “My God and my mercy”.’
(15) [Þone monað]A we nemnað on ure geðeode
that.sg.m.acc month.sg.m.acc we call.pl
[se æftera lyða]N.
the.sg.m.nom second.sg.m.nom Lithe.sg.m.nom (Mart 2.1 Jy 0, A.5)
‘That month /July/ we call in our language “After-Lithe”.’
As both Visser (1970: 553) and Mitchell (1985: 618) point out, an alternative con-
struction with the NP expressing the “name” marked for accusative case also
occurs, as shown in (16) to (20).
(16) & God gecygde [ða drignysse]A
God.m.nom called.3.sg the.sg.f.acc dryness.f.acc
[eorðan]A & ðæra wætera gegaderunga he het sæ; God geseah
earth.f.acc
ða ðæt hit god wæs. (Gen 1.10)
‘And God called the dry place “earth” and the gatherings of water He
called “sea”; God saw then that it was good.’
(17) Ða nolde he gecigan [god]A [mildheortne]A.
then neg-would.3.sg he call.inf God.m.acc merciful.sg.m.acc
ac het hine his mildheortnyss. þus cweðende. min god and min
mildheortnyss; (ÆCHom II, 5 49.219)
‘Then he would not call God merciful, but called Him his mercy, saying
thus, “My God and my mercy”.’
(18) Þa wearð geond eall Engla land swylc tacen on heofenum
gesewen swylce nan mann ær ne geseh. Sume menn cwædon
þæt hyt cometa se steorra wære [þone]A
which.sg.m.acc
sume menn hatað [þone
some.pl.m.nom people.pl.m.nom call.pl the.sg.m.acc
 Verb complementation in Old English 

fexedan <steorran>]A, & he æteowde ærest on

long-haired.sg.m.acc star.sg.m.acc
þone æfen Letania Maiora, þæt ys VIII Kł. Mai., & swa scean
ealle þa VII niht. (ChronC 1066.4–6)
‘Then throughout England there was such a sign seen in the sky as no man
had ever seen. Some men said that it was the star “comet”, which some
people call “the long-haired star”, and it appeared first on the eve of the
Greater Litanies, that is 24 April, and so it was shining for seven nights.’
(19) Sume næmmeð [þone cæstel]A
some.pl.m.nom call.pl that.m.acc fortress.m.acc
[Magdalum]A, þe Maria wæs of Magdalenisc geclypod, &
Magdalus.m.acc
þæt becumð wel to þyssere trahtnunge. For Magdalus is stepel
geclypod, & betacneð eadmodnysse. (InFestisSMarie 56)
‘Some call that fortress “Magdalus”, from which Mary was called
“Magdalen”, and that befits this exposition well. For Magdalus means
“steeple”, and signifies humility.’
(20) Sume eac sæcgeað þæt heo stelan mid twigum hysopan gelicne
hæbbe & leaf beanum gelice, þanon [hy]A sume
whence it.f.acc some.pl.m.nom
men þam sylfum naman nemnað [hysopan]A.
people.pl.m.nom call.pl hyssop.sg.f.acc
 (Lch I (Herb) 57.1)
‘Some people also say that it /a plant/ has a stalk with branches similar to
hyssop and leaves similar to beans, whence some people call it hyssop by
that very name.’
It will be proposed here that the verbs of naming in this kind of construction have
the same complementation pattern as læran ‘teach’, as illustrated in (21). In other
words, the verbs of naming are used as ditransitive non-copular personal verbs
with two accusative objects.
(21) Ond þa sona het se biscop ðone cniht him to gelædan ond
[hine]A lærde [gastlicne wisdom]A,
him.acc taught.3.sg spiritual.sg.m.acc learning.sg.m.acc
ond he wæs eall mid godes snyttro gefylled. (Mart 5 My 2, A.11)
‘And then straightway the bishopi commanded that the boy j should be led
to himi, and [hei] taught himj spiritual learning, and hej was completely
filled with God’s wisdom.’
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

When a verb of naming used as a monotransitive copular personal verb is passiv-

ized, the accusative object is raised to become the passive subject, marked for
nominative case, as shown in (22) to (26). The nominative “name” complement
remains in the nominative case.
(22) Him he getimbrade in Suðrigna lande bi Temese streame in
stowe, [seo]N is geceged [Ceortes eig]N ...
which.3.sg.f.nom is called.sg Ceort’s island.sg.f.nom
 (Bede 4 7.282.12)
‘For himself he built [a monastery] in Surrey by the River Thames in a
place which is called Chertsey ...’
(23) And [þu]N cnapa byst [þæs
and you.sg.nom boy.m.nom are.2.sg the.sg.m.gen
hehstan witega]N genemned, þu gæst
Highest.sg.m.gen prophet.sg.m.nom called.sg
beforan Drihtnes ansyne his wegas gearwian ... (Lk (WSCp) 1.76)
‘And you, boy, will be called the prophet of the Highest; you will go before
the face of the Lord to prepare His ways.’
(24) Hælendes þegna sum þa wæs swyþe gebolgen, [se]N wæs
he.nom was
haten [Iudas se Scariothisca]N;
called Judas.nom the.sg.m.nom man-of-Scariot.sg.m.nom
forþon he com of þæm tune þe Scariot hatte; he cwæþ, To hwon
sceolde þeos smyrenes þus beon to lore gedon? (HomS 21 45)
‘One of Jesus’ disciples was then greatly annoyed, he was called Judas Is-
cariot; because he came from the town that was called Scariot/Kerioth/;
he said, “Why should this ointment be wasted thus?”’
(25) [Se oðer monð]N hatte
The.sg.m.nom second.sg.m.nom month.sg.m.nom is-called
[Februarius]N.  (ByrM 1 2.1.17)
February.sg.m.nom
‘The second month is called February.’
(26) Saga me hwilc wyrt ys betst and selust. Ic þe secge,
[lilige]N hatte [seo wyrt]N
lily.sg.f.nom is-called the.sg.f.nom plant.sg.f.nom
for þon þe heo getacnað Crist. (Sol I 28.1–2)
‘Tell me which plant is best and most excellent. I tell you, “lily” is the
name of the plant, because it signifies Christ.’
 Verb complementation in Old English 

Passivization of Old English verbs with two accusative objects seems to have been
avoided (cf. Traugott 1992: 213; Mitchell 1985: §835 on the lack of Old English passive
constructions of the type ‘he was taught singing’). The verb læran could alternatively
be constructed with the person-denoting object marked for dative case (27); this
construction can occasionally be found in the passive voice (28). Alternatively, the
“thing taught”’ could be marked for dative case, with the person-denoting object
marked for accusative case, which was changed to the nominative when the clause
was passivized (29). The most common passive use of læran, however, involves a
person-denoting passive subject in the nominative case (derived from an accusative
object) and a prepositional phrase expressing the “thing taught” (29).
(27) Hæfde he se ilca cyning þæs biscopes broðor mid hine, se wæs
Cælin haten; se wæs mæssepreost & <efenlice> Godes mon til:
se [him & his hiwum]D [godcunde
he.nom him.dat and his household.pl.dat divine.sg.f.acc
lare]A lærde, & þa geryno þegnade þæs halgan
lore.sg.f.acc taught.3.sg
geleafan. (Bede 3 17.230.12)
‘That same kingi had the bishop’s brotherj, who was called Cælin, with
himi; hej was a priest and equally a good man of God: hej taught himi and
hisi household the divine lore, and served the mysteries of the holy faith.’
(28) Wæs in ða tid ðeaw Ongolcynnes folcum þæt, þonne
mæssepreost oðþe oðer in tun com, ðæt hie ealle to his bebode
gesomnedon Godes word to gehyrenne; & fuslice gehyrdon, ða
[pro]A→N ðe [him]D gelærde wæron, ond eac
[which.pl.nom] part them.dat taught.pl were.pl
swylce neodlice mid dædum læstton, ða ðe hie ongeotan
mehton.7 (Bede 4 28.362.23)

7. My interpretation of the two occurrences of the pronoun ða in the last two lines of (28)
differs from what is suggested by the editor’s punctuation. I take ða to be a plural accusative
form, the object of gehyrdon and læstton, respectively. The first ocurrence of ða is the anteced-
ent of the relative pronoun in the relative clause ðe him gelærde wæron. The relative pronoun
in that clause is a phonologically empty (and hence invisible) pronoun, which is fronted to
[Spec, CP] in the relative clause. This pronoun will here be labelled PRO; whether this is the
best label or not (cf. the discussion in Haegeman 1994: 422–426) is irrelevant to our present
concerns. In this clause PRO starts out as the accusative object (‘the thing taught’) of læran,
which is first raised to [Spec, IP] to become the passive subject (shifting case in the process
from accusative to nominative), and is later raised to [Spec, CP]. Its presence and its number
(plural) and case (nominative) are shown by the fact that from its temporary position in
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

‘At that time it was a custom among the people in England that when a
priest or someone else came to a village, they all gathered on his com-
mand to hear the word of God; and they listened eagerly to those [things]
that they were taught, and also diligently carried out in their actions
those which they could understand.’
(29) Þa wæs se Godes mon bebyrged in Sancte Paules cirican þæs
apostoles, [þæs monungum]D [he]A→N
whose.sg.m.gen admonitions.f.dat he.nom
gelæred wæs & geleornade, þæt he ða heofonlecan eadignesse
taught.sg was.3.sg
gehyhte. (Bede 4 14.296.32)
‘Then the man of God was buried in the church of St. Paul the Apostle,
whose admonitions he had been taught and [had] learnt, so that he trust-
ed in the heavenly bliss.’
(30) Eac swylce he sumne æðelne cyricsangere begeat, se wæs Mafa
haten, [se]A→N wæs on Cent [on sangcræft]PP gelæred
he.nom was.3.sg in Kent in singing.m.acc taught.sg
fram æfterfyligendum þara discipula þæs eadigan papan Sancte
Gregorii; & he þone XII winter mid him hæfde. (Bede 5 18.466.16)
‘Similarly hei /Acca, bishop of Hexham/ received a famous cantorj who
was called Mafa; hej had been instructed in singing in Kent from succes-
sors of the disciples of the blessed pope St Gregory; and hei had himj with
himi for twelve years.’
Some verbs of naming, by contrast, do occur in passive constructions with the
object referring to the “thing/person named” raised to become a nominative pas-
sive subject, and with the “name” object retaining its accusative case marking, as
shown in (31) to (35). Admittedly, these examples are found in contexts where
Latin influence will have been strong, and the “name” NPs are mostly Latin
names of various kinds. Example (31) is the only one I have been able to find with
unambiguous Old English accusative forms. But to the extent scribes recognized
the Latin accusatives as accusatives, these constructions do fit the general pattern
of passivization: only the object that is raised to the position of the passive subject
has its case changed to the nominative.

[Spec, IP] it controls subject-verb agreement, resulting in the plural forms of the past partici-
ple (gelærde) and the finite verb (wæron).
 Verb complementation in Old English 

(31) Ond æfter Cristes upastigennysse he gecyrde twa mægða to

godes geleafan, [þa]A→N wæron þus genemned,
those.nom were.pl thus called
[Scyððiam þa mægðe]A ond [Achaiam
Scythia.f.acc the.sg.f.acc nation.f.acc and Achaia.f.acc
þa mægðe]A.
the.sg.f.acc nation.f.acc (Mart 5 No 30, A.6)
‘And after Christ’s Ascension he /St Andrew/ converted two nations to
the faith of God, they were called thus, the nation of Scythia and the na-
tion of Achaia.’
(32) And hi þa ongunnon <cegan> ealle heora godas, &
þær wæs [sum]A→N genemned [ypochratin]A &
there was.3.sg one.m.nom called.sg Hippocrates.m.acc
[oðer]A→N [mercurium]A & [se þridda]A→N [galligenum]A.
 (LS 30 (Pantaleon) 197)
‘And they then began to invoke all their gods, and there was one called
Hippocrates and another [was called] Mercury and the third [was called]
Galligenus.’
(33) And hi þa drihtene lof sungon & sægdon, & ferdon in þa dune
[pro]A→N þe is nemned [Montem Olifete]A.
[which.sg.f.nom] part is called.sg Mount.m.acc Olivet
 (HomS 19 47)
‘And they then sang and spoke in praise of the Lord, and went to the hill
that is called the Mount of Olives.’
(34) Þa sende se cyning sumne heretogan,
[Holofernem]A gehaten, mid mycelre fyrdinge and bebead
Holofernes.m.acc called.sg
him þas word: Ne wanda þu nan ðing, ne ara ðu nanum rice, ne
ænigre burhscire, ac ælce getrymmede burh þu gebige to me.8
 (ÆHomM 15 45)
‘Then the king sent a certain general, [who was] called Holofernes, with a
great army and commanded him [with] these words: “Do not desist from
anything, do not spare any country, nor any city, but subject each forti-
fied city to me.”’

8. The past participle clause Holofernem gehaten can be regarded as an abbreviated version
of a passive relative clause, se wæs Holofernem gehaten.
 Nils-Lennart Johannesson

(35) [Se stan]A→N is haten [piriten]A.

That.m.nom stone.m.nom is called.sg pyrite.m.acc (Lap 24)
‘That stone is called “pyrite”.’

5. Conclusion

The system for categorization of Old English verb complementation outlined in

this paper was originally developed in an attempt to come to terms with the kind
of syntactic variation found in clauses with impersonal verbs, as illustrated in
examples (9) to (11) above. The three-dimensional verb complementation model
together with the recognition of similarities between passive uses of personal
verbs and the provision of different types of subjects (inserted, raised, derived) in
clauses with impersonal verbs made it possible to distinguish “pseudo-personal”
uses of impersonal verbs (as shown in (11), as well as in Table 2) and constructions
with personal verbs proper, which have a subject base-generated in [Spec, VP].
The analysis of the use of naming verbs in clauses like þonne hate we hine
morgensteorra and se steorra ... þone sume menn hatað þone fexedan steorran
emerged as a spin-off effect of the adoption of the three-dimensional verb com-
plementation model. In other words, the system turned out to be capable of ac-
counting for cases it had not primarily been developed to handle.
Mitchell (1985: 453) warns against “elaborate and rigid schemes of classifica-
tion”. It has hopefully emerged that the classification system proposed here is, by
contrast, simple and flexible, while at the same time powerful enough to handle
all types of Old English verb complementation patterns, including those used by
verbs of naming.

References

Aarts, Bas. 2008. English Syntax and Argumentation. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
Haegeman, Liliane. 1994. Introduction to Government & Binding Theory. 2nd ed. Oxford:
Blackwell.
Johannesson, Nils-Lennart. 2010. Stæfcræft. An Introduction to Old English Syntax. 3rd ed.
Stockholm: Dept. of English, Stockholm University.
Mitchell, Bruce. 1985. Old English Syntax. Volume I. Concord, the Parts of Speech, and the
Sentence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1992. “Syntax.” The Cambridge History of the English Language.
Vol. 1. The Beginnings to 1066 ed. by Richard M. Hogg, 168–289. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Visser, Fredericus Theodorus. 1963. An Historical Syntax of the English Language. 1, Syntacti-
cal Units with One Verb. Leiden: Brill.
 Tracking and explaining variation and change
in the grammar of American English
A case study, with evidence from the TIME Corpus

Juhani Rudanko
Department of English, University of Tampere*

Both to infinitive and to ‑ing complement clauses selected by adjectival heads

may involve subject control in English, but there are syntactic differences
between them. In spite of the differences, some matrix predicates have shown
variation and change between the two types of sentential complement in
recent times. The article examines the adjective accustomed from this point
of view, with evidence from the TIME Corpus. It is observed that in the first
decade covered by the corpus, from 1923 through 1932, to infinitives were
slightly more frequent than to ‑ing complements, but that in the 1960s the to
‑ing pattern had become predominant in comparison with the to infinitive
pattern. The article points to such variation and change affecting the sentential
complements of accustomed in one particular text type of American English,
and identifies two explanatory principles to account for the variation observed.
The first is the Extraction Principle, which is defined more broadly than in
some earlier work, and the second is the postulation of a semantic contrast
between the two complementation patterns. It is argued that both the
Extraction Principle and the semantic distinction are statistically significant in
explaining variation at one stage in the overall process of change that has been
called the Great Complement Shift.

* I am grateful to the participants of the ICEHL conference, the anonymous referees and
the editors for their comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Ian Gurney, Tiina
Harjula, Veera Peteri, and Elina Sellgren, all of the University of Tampere, for helping me fi-
nalize the article. All remaining shortcomings are my responsibility.
 Juhani Rudanko

1. Introduction

This study examines variation and change between two patterns of sentential
complementation selected by the adjective accustomed in recent American Eng-
lish. To introduce the patterns independently of this adjective, consider (1a–b):
(1) a. John is eager to change the agreement.
b. John is averse to changing the agreement.
The pattern of (1a) may be termed the to infinitive pattern, and the pattern of (1b)
the to ‑ing pattern. In the latter pattern the ‑ing form is a gerund.
(1a) and (1b) are similar in that each contains a matrix adjective that selects a
complement. It is assumed here that the complement is sentential, with its own
subject even though the subject is covert or implicit. This assumption was for in-
stance made by traditional grammarians, including Jespersen, who writes:
Very often a gerund stands alone without any subject, but as in other nexuses
(nexus substantives, infinitives, etc.) the connexion of a subject with the verbal
idea is always implied. (Jespersen [1940] 1961: 140)

It is convenient here to follow this traditional approach, in order to represent the

subject arguments of the lower predicates in (1a–b).
Another similarity between the sentences of (1a–b) is that each higher predi-
cate, be eager and be averse, assigns a semantic role to its subject. The sentences
with their sentential complements are therefore control constructions, rather
than NP Movement constructions. Both involve subject control, with PRO as the
lower subject, to use a term from current work.
However, there are also important differences between (1a) and (1b). First, the
complements are not interchangeable:
(2) a. *John is eager to changing the agreement.
b. *John is averse to change the agreement.
Second, the string that follows to may be replaced by the pronoun it or that in the
case of (1a), but not in the case of (1a):
(3) a. *John is eager to change the agreement, but I am not eager to that.
b. John is averse to changing the agreement, but I am not averse to that.
Further, the string that follows to is subject to ellipsis in (1a), but not in (1b):
(4) a. John is eager to change the agreement, but I am not eager to.
b. *John is averse to changing the agreement, but I am not averse to.
 Variation and change in American English 

One way of accounting for the differences observed is to make the traditional as-
sumption that the to of (1a) should be analyzed differently from the to of (1b). In
particular, the to of (1a) may be termed the infinitival marker,1 to adopt a term
from Quirk et al. (1985: 1178, note a). For its part, the to of (1b) is a preposition. In
syntactic terms, the infinitival marker to is under the Infl node (Chomsky
1981: 18–19), or the Aux node, to use more traditional terminology. By contrast,
the prepositional to is under a P node, introducing a prepositional phrase, with
the prepositional phrase consisting of the preposition and what may be termed a
nominal clause, to adopt a term from traditional grammar. A nominal clause
may be viewed as a sentence dominated by a NP node.
Analyzed in the way described, the sentences of (1a–b) may be represented as
in (5a´–b´):
(5) a.´ [John is [eager]Adj [[pro]NP [to]Aux [change the agreement]VP]S2]S1
b.´ [John is [averse]Adj [to]Prep [[[pro]NP [changing the agreement]VP]S2]NP]S1
The ellipsis constructions of (4a–b) involve the ellipsis of a VP (cf. Huddleston &
Pullum 2002: 1526), and the result is well-formed in (4a) because the string that
follows to is a VP in (5a´), whereas this is not the case in (5b´), and (4b) is therefore
ill-formed. As for the pronoun usage of (3a–b), since the string that follows the
word to is a NP in (5b´), it may be replaced by a pronoun of the type of it or that,
that is, of the type of pronoun that may generally replace NPs.
In spite of robust differences between the two types of complement, it has
been observed in the literature (for instance, Kjellmer 1980; Denison 1998: 266–267;
Rudanko 1998: Chapter 3; Rudanko 1999: Chapter 2; Rudanko 2000: Chapter 2,
3 and 4; Vosberg 2003a; 2003b; Vosberg 2006) that there are matrix predicates,
including verbs, adjectives, and nouns, that have shown variation and change
between the two constructions in recent centuries. In broad terms, it is the pur-
pose of this article to examine one such predicate, the adjective accustomed.
The general story of accustomed is well known (Kjellmer 1980; Vosberg 2003a:
314–315; Rudanko 1999:  9–10; 2006; 2007; Leech et al.  2009:  183–184). In the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was frequent with sentential complements
involving subject control, and those complements were overwhelmingly of the to
infinitive type. Some tokens of to ‑ing complements have come to light in the lit-
erature, but the frequency of such tokens in these two centuries is very low (Ru-
danko 2006). The predominance of the to infinitive pattern is also reflected in the
OED treatment of the adjective (s.v. accustom, vb., 3.b). There are altogether four

1. Even though the term “infinitive marker” is used here, it is important to point out that
this does not mean that I hold the view that the infinitival to is necessarily without any mean-
ing or without any semantic contribution. For some discussion, see Rudanko (1989: 34–35).
 Juhani Rudanko

illustrations of sentential complements involving subject control given, all of the

to infinitive variety and none of the to ‑ing type.
However, in Present-Day English it is in fact the to ‑ing pattern that predom-
inates in both British and American English. The predominance is less pro-
nounced in a more conservative text type as represented by the “Books” segment
of the Bank of English Corpus, but is nearly total in the more agile text types of
newspaper English and of spoken English (see Rudanko 2007). Overall, the com-
petition of the to ­‑ing pattern with the to infinitive pattern and the spread of the
former at the expense of the latter illustrate one aspect of a set of changes in the
system of English predicate complementation that Rohdenburg (2006) has re-
cently termed the Great Complement Shift.
The present article aims to shed further light on principles that may explain
variation in the argument structure properties of accustomed and on the process
of change that has resulted in the present situation. Most of the earlier work on
the adjective has been on British English, but the focus here is on a text type of
American English. The data come from the new TIME Corpus, compiled by
Mark Davies at Brigham Young University. The corpus comprises some one
hundred million words in total, and two decades were chosen for the present
investigation, namely, 1923–1932 and the 1960s. The corpus starts from the be-
ginning of 1923, and in order to reach as far back as possible, it seems appropri-
ate to select the first decade of the corpus, from 1923 to the end of December
1932, as the first segment to be examined. As regards the choice of the 1960s, it
may be noted that present-day usage of accustomed was for instance investigated
in Rudanko (2006: 39–45), and the 1960s is a decade that is approximately in the
middle of the period that extends from the first decade of the TIME Corpus to
the present day.
In the case of each decade the first task is to ascertain the facts regarding the
use of the two types of sentential complements involving subject control. Going
beyond descriptive findings, the study also identifies and discusses two principles
that may be invoked to explain change and variation in the system of English
predicate complementation.

2. The adjective accustomed in the first decade of the TIME corpus

2.1 Variation in the data and the extraction principle

The search string adopted is simply accustomed. This is ideal from the point of
view of recall, and is possible from the point of view of precision because the
number of irrelevant tokens is not excessively high.
 Variation and change in American English 

For the first decade of the TIME Corpus the search string retrieves 209 to-
kens. The total number of words for this period in the corpus is 11.3 million. The
raw figure thus represents a frequency of 18.5 per million words.
The search string also retrieves a number of tokens that are irrelevant. Some-
times the word form accustomed is a form of the verb accustom, as in (6), rather
than of the adjective.
(6) As the eye accustomed itself to the religious dim, it caught the gleam of
many a fine garment. (1925)
Usages where accustomed is a premodifier inside an NP, as in (7), can be set aside
in the study of the complementation patterns of the adjective:
(7) ... he played in his accustomed effective style. (1923)
The adjective accustomed is also frequently found with to NP complements, as in (8):
(8) For people who are not accustomed to it office is a very heady wine.
(1924)
As argued in Section 1, a to ‑ing complement involves a nominal clause, and it is
therefore of interest to note the presence of such to NP complements in the cor-
pus, but the focus here is on sentential complements involving subject control.
With these exclusions made, I counted 95 relevant tokens in the material. This
represents a frequency of 8.4 per million words. Table 1 gives information on the
two types of sentential complement.

Table 1.  To Infinitive and to ‑ing Complements of Accustomed in the First Decade of the
TIME Corpus

raw frequency normalized frequency

to infinitive 53 4.7
to ‑ing 42 3.7

A first conclusion is therefore that both types of complement were found in ro-
bust numbers in the text type of American news magazine English during the
first decade of the TIME Corpus. Here is an initial illustration of each type:
(9) a. ... Captain N. E. Cousins of the liner Ruth Alexander, accustomed to
navigating Pacific coastal waters for 30 years. (1923)
b. ... I want them to become accustomed to respect the popular voice of
the people ... (1924)
 Juhani Rudanko

Given the amount of variation in the material, it is of interest to attempt to iden-

tify explanatory principles to account for the variation. Two such principles are
examined here. The first is the non-semantic factor of extraction. To appreciate
the potential impact of extraction, it is appropriate to quote Vosberg’s original
definition of the Extraction Principle:
In the case of infinitival or gerundial complement options, the infinitive will
tend to be favoured in environments where a complement of the subordinate
clause is extracted (by topicalization, relativization, comparativization, or inter-
rogation, etc.) from its original position and crosses clause boundaries. (Vosberg
2003a: 308)

The Extraction Principle is an important principle explaining variation between

different complement options. However, extractions in English are not limited to
the extraction of complements.2 Adjuncts may also often be extracted, and while
it is worth keeping the distinction between complements and adjuncts in mind as
an important theoretical distinction, a broader definition of the principle is ap-
plied here, and the word “complement” of Vosberg’s definition is replaced with
the word “constituent”. This is done in order to take the extraction of adjuncts
into account.
The reason underlying the Extraction Principle has to do with two intercon-
nected considerations. First, it is unquestionable, in view of John Robert Ross’s
work in the 1970s, that to infinitive complements are more explicitly sentential
than ‑ing complements (Ross 1973). The latter are sentential complements, but
there is a gradient of sententiality among sentential complements, and ‑ing com-
plements are at the nouny end of that scale. Here it is again also possible to recall
the grammatical differences between the two patterns discussed in Section  1,
where it was argued that a to ‑ing complement involves a nominal clause and a to
infinitive is sentential without being a NP.
Second, it is also unquestionable that the extraction of a constituent, whether
of a complement or an adjunct, produces a more complex sentence compared to
the canonical, non-extraction version of the sentence. Given these two considera-
tions, it is possible to view the Extraction Principle as a manifestation of Rohden-
burg’s Complexity Principle:
In the case of more or less explicit grammatical options the more explicit one(s)
will tend to be favored in cognitively more complex environments. (Rohdenburg
1996: 151)

2. The possibility of a broader interpretation of extraction is also raised in Vosberg (2006: 69)

and Rohdenburg (2006: 151). The latter source thus refers to “extracting postverbal elements
out of complement clauses”, without restricting such elements to complements.
 Variation and change in American English 

In other words, since extraction produces a complex environment, a more explic-

itly sentential complement – the to infinitive – tends to be preferred over a less
explicitly sentential complement – the to ‑ing complement.
Applying the modified version of the Extraction Principle to the present ma-
terial, the results given in Table 2 are obtained.

Table 2.  To infinitive and to ‑ing Complements in Canonical and Extraction Contexts
in the First Decade of the Corpus

to infinitive to ‑ing
raw normalized raw normalized
frequency frequency frequency frequency

canonical 41 3.6 40 3.5

extraction 12 1.1  2 0.2

Applying the Chi square test to these findings, with the Yates correction factor,
the Chi square value is 4.62, and the results are significant at the .05 level.
Here are the two illustrations of extractions out of to ‑ing complements and
some illustrations of extractions out of to infinitive complements, with the ex-
traction rule in question spelled out in brackets after each illustration:
(10) a. ... the emotional appeal of the case is emphasized much more than we
are accustomed to seeing. (1924) [Comparativization]
b. Think of all the adjectives I can now employ! Where I have been ac-
customed to using “great,” “magnificent,” “heart-rending,” I ... (1927)
 [Wh-Movement]
(11) a. The States of Europe descended from the mountains of animosity from
which they have long been accustomed to glare at one another, went
down the rugged mountain paths of doubt, ... (1924) [Relativization]
b. ... a notebook of 90 chaotic pages in which Coleridge was accustomed
to scrawl the names of books which he had read or intended to read,
... (1927) [Relativization]
c. We sit in our library, in a room where we are accustomed to study and
reflect, where all the surroundings are natural. (1928)[Relativization]
d. Before long Hudkins’ coarse face, misshapen by the beatings he is ac-
customed to take even when he wins a fight, was made even more
than normally ferocious ... (1929) [Relativization]
e. Such advertisements socialite Japanese matrons have long been accus-
tomed to read in magazines of the highest class ... (1930)[Topicalization]
 Juhani Rudanko

The illustrations show that extractions of complements and extractions of ad-

juncts are found in the material and that more than one kind of extraction rule is
encountered. For instance, in (10a) the extraction rule operative is Comparativi-
zation, and the constituent extracted is a complement out of a sentential comple-
ment of the adjective accustomed. On the other hand, while (11d) and (11e) also
involve the extraction of a complement, the extraction rules involved are Rela-
tivization and Topicalization, respectively.
Extractions of adjuncts appear often to involve adjuncts of place, as in (10b)
and in (11a–c). It is also clear in the light of these illustrations that the extraction
rule that is most commonly found with extractions of adjuncts is Relativization.

2.2 A semantic distinction

The other explanatory principle is semantic. In an earlier publication I observed

that with a to ‑ing complement the adjective has a sense close to that of used to,
with the “complement of the adjective expressing a regular situation” (Rudanko
2006: 39). As regards to infinitive complements
the sense of the adjective may be close to that of ‘tend’, with the complement of
the adjective expressing a regular practice. There may thus be more of a sense
of choice on the part of the referent of the matrix subject in the case of the to
infinitive complement than in the case of the to ‑ing complement. (I am grateful
to Ian Gurney, personal communication, for commenting on the distinction.)
 (Rudanko 2006: 39–40)

Both the construction accustomed + to infinitive and the construction accus-

tomed + to ‑ing are subject control constructions, and this means that the higher
subject and the lower subject are coreferential. It is then possible to take up the
suggestion made in Rudanko (2006) that accustomed with the to infinitive pat-
tern is associated with a sense of choice and that accustomed with the to ‑ing pat-
tern is associated with lack of choice and to subject it to a systematic investigation
in the present material, where, as we have seen, there is abundant variation be-
tween the two patterns. Since the extraction factor was found to be significant
above, the sentences involving extraction are excluded from this meaning‑based
investigation (see also note 4 below). Lower subjects expressing or encoding a
sense of choice on the part of the lower subject may be designated as +Choice, and
those that encode lack of a sense of choice may be designated as –Choice. The
same terms are used to characterize the predicates in question.
The notion of choice is here interpreted on the basis of the semantic role of
Agent. This association is appropriate because choosing implies a volitional act
and intentional engagement, and because the concept of volitional engagement in
 Variation and change in American English 

the event or state is an important feature of what Dowty (1991: 572) has termed
the “Agent Proto-Role”. For his part, Jackendoff (1990:  129) identifies three
“semi-autonomous parts” when summing up his view of an Agent: “doer of ac-
tion”, “volitional Actor”, and “extrinsic instigator”. In a similar vein, the notions
of “volition, control, and responsibility” are prominent in Hundt’s (2004: 49) dis-
cussion of agentivity. A +Choice lower subject is therefore viewed here as one that
is agentive, and a –Choice lower subject as one that is ‑agentive.
Some illustrations of +Choice lower subjects are given in (12a–d), and of
–Choice lower subjects in (13a–d).
(12) a. Speculators are now accustomed to buy White Rock on margin or–if
they dare–sell Canada Dry Ginger ... (1926)
b. To all appearances the excessively freedom-loving Riffi, each of whom
is accustomed to guard his personal freedom with his own rifle, can
not be made ... (1926)
c. Anselmo Bonin, accustomed to boasting that he had a great fortune
in gold and who was always ready to lend to his neighbors, was dis-
turbed by a visit from four masked bandits. (1923)
d. Washington political experts are accustomed to writing of Borah as
the one man in the Senate who “goes his own gait” – regardless of
what people say; ... (1923)
(13) a. The hearts of real Presbyterians had rather grown accustomed to be
saddened by the utterances of Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, ... (1929)
b. The child becomes accustomed to see the law disobeyed ... (1930)
c. ... for the Anglicans are thoroughly accustomed to being a minority
bloc in a Church which ... (1928)
d. Harvardmen recall that last spring, long accustomed to being driven
by a chauffeur. (1931)
Predicates of the type of buy White Rock, as in (12a), guard one’s freedom, as in
(12b), boast that he had a fortune in gold, as in (12c), and write of Borah as the one
man ..., as in (12d), all encode an event or a situation that involves an agentive or
+Choice subject. By contrast, predicates of the type of be saddened by the utter-
ances, as in (12a), see a law disobeyed, as in (13b),3 be a minority bloc, as in (13c),
and be driven by a chauffeur, as in (13d), all encode an event or a situation that
involves a non-agentive or –Choice subject.

3. On viewing see as a non-agentive verb, in uses that are similar to those discussed in the
text, cf. Gruber (1967: 943), who contrasts it with the verb look, which is typically agentive.
Compare also Taylor’s (2003: 30–31) comments on see and look from the point of view of the
notion of choice.
 Juhani Rudanko

It is possible to strengthen such intuitions with tests. One such test that is salient
in the present context is the imperative construction, for an imperative tends to be
more easily compatible with an agentive predicate than with a non-agentive predi-
cate. Here it is appropriate to quote a remark on imperatives and choice by Taylor:
Prototypically, an imperative instructs a person to do something, and is there-
fore only acceptable if a person has a choice between carrying out the instruc-
tion or not. (Taylor 2003: 31)

Applying this test in the present context, we might for instance compare (12a)
and (13b). Thus Buy White Rock! is readily conceivable as an imperative, but ?Be
saddened by the utterances! is less so, motivating the distinction made between
the two predicates here. The quotation from Taylor also links the imperative to
the notion of choice.
It may be added that the lower sentence may be in the passive, as for instance
in (13a), and in that case the subject represents the object argument of the verb in
terms of argument structure. Such a subject is prototypically non-agentive and
–Choice because it prototypically carries the Patient or Undergoer role.
It is clear from the illustrations given in (12a–d) and (13a–d), that the seman-
tic principle that the accustomed + to infinitive pattern is linked to a +Choice
lower subject and the accustomed + to ‑ing pattern is linked to a –Choice pattern
cannot be maintained as an absolute rule. Thus (12c–d) illustrate to ‑ing comple-
ments with +Choice subjects, and (13a–b) illustrate to infinitive complements
with –Choice subjects. However, while the principle is not always adhered to, it is
still appropriate to inquire whether it may have validity as a tendency.
When all the relevant sentences are examined in the present material, the
results given in Table 3 are obtained.
The Chi-square value is 6.42 and the results are statistically significant at the
.05 level of significance (df = 1).4
The present discussion suggests, therefore, that lower predicates with –Choice
subjects offered a particularly fertile ground for the spread of the to ‑ing pattern
with the adjective accustomed. By contrast, the to infinitive complement was
linked to scenarios where the lower clause encoded the lower subject as express-
ing a degree of agentivity.

4. As noted, the 14 tokens involving extraction were excluded from the present figures, since
extraction was found to be a significant factor bearing on variation. However, it may be ob-
served that as regards the two to ‑ing tokens, one of them has a +Choice and the other a
–Choice lower subject, but little can be concluded from them because of their low number. As
for the 12 to infinitives with extraction, it turns out that as many as 11 of the 12 have +Choice
subjects. They therefore strengthen the tendency observed in the text that is based on the to-
kens in canonical contexts.
 Variation and change in American English 

Table 3.  To infinitive and to ‑ing Complements with +Choice and –Choice Lower Predi-
cates in the First Decade, Excluding Extraction Contexts

to infinitive to ‑ing
raw normalized raw normalized
frequency frequency frequency frequency

+Choice 35 3.1 23 2.0

–Choice  6 0.5 17 1.5

It may be added that when the lower clause is in the passive voice, the lower subject
is prototypically –Choice. Unfortunately, there are only five such sentences in the
material. No claim of statistical significance can be based on such a small number of
tokens. However, it is still of interest to observe that among the five tokens, there are
four to ‑ing complements, of which one is given as (13d), and only one to infinitive
complement, which is given as (13a). This is in line with the tendency identified.

3. Accustomed with sentential complements

involving subject control in the 1960s

Turning to the 1960s, the size of the subcorpus is 16.1 million words. The search
term used was again simply the form accustomed. The search string accustomed
retrieves 243 tokens of the word. This represents a frequency of 15.1 per million
for all uses of the word, as compared with 18.5 in the decade of 1923 to 1932.
Most of the 243 tokens are irrelevant, for similar reasons as in the case of the
earlier corpus, but 64 of them are of the salient type, with the adjective accus-
tomed selecting a sentential complement involving subject control. This repre-
sents a frequency of 4.0 per million, which is considerably lower than the corre-
sponding figure of 8.4 per million for the first decade.
The picture that the 64 tokens offer is very different from that of the first dec-
ade. The frequencies of the two types of complement are given in Table 4 below.

Table 4.  To Infinitive and to ‑ing Complements of Accustomed in the 1960s

raw frequency normalized frequency

to infinitive  3 0.2
to ‑ing 61 3.8

Here are the three to infinitive complements and four of the 61 to ‑ing
complements:
 Juhani Rudanko

(18) a. Algiers has lived so intimately with violence that well-dressed women
are accustomed to step daintily over the bodies of ... (1962)
b. We are shaken in a strange manner by the rapid friction of beings and
things, and we become accustomed to perceive the forces of beings
through the very forces enslaved by them. (1966)
c. When her fearless father Macnamara led her across the peat bogs, he
was accustomed to throw her across the wider draining ditches. (1967)
(19) a. In no time at all Premier Menderes was such a frequent caller at the
singer’s apartment that other tenants grew grumpily accustomed to
being stopped and searched by bodyguards. (1960)
b. The nation is becoming accustomed to waving farewell to Mr. Wilson ...
(1966)
c. After all, they had grown accustomed to opening to the middle of the
paper ... (1966)
d. ... modern audiences, who are accustomed to seeing females in fe-
male roles. (1967)
The quantitative findings show that the to ‑ing pattern was overwhelmingly pre-
dominant over the to infinitive pattern in complements of the adjective accus-
tomed in the text type of news magazines in American English in the 1960s. A
major grammatical change had thus been almost fully completed within some
four decades. At the same time, there are still questions of a qualitative nature to
investigate, especially in the light of the discussion of the first decade.
Regarding the nature of the three sentences with to infinitives, (18a) and (18c)
are sentences where the situation encoded by the lower clause is of the +Choice
type, with an agentive lower subject. In both (18a) and (18c) it is possible to conceive
of turning the complements of accustomed into imperative sentences, of the type
Throw her across the wider ditches!, applying the test to sentence (18c). In view of the
discussion of ±Choice contexts above, it is not surprising that isolated remnants of
to infinitive complements should have survived in such +Choice contexts.
By contrast, (18b) stands out, for its lower subject is an Experiencer and the
situation encoded by the lower clause is –Choice in its flavor. However, the sur-
vival of the to infinitive complement in (18b) is easily explained, for an examina-
tion of the larger context of the token revealed that the sentence is originally from
1913. The surviving tokens thus show that there may still be some lingering con-
nection between +Choice contexts and to infinitive complements, but the num-
bers are of course too low for such a tendency to have any statistical significance.
The surviving tokens of to infinitive complements are also of interest from the
point of view of what they do not contain. In particular, there is no token involv-
ing extraction among them. This raises the question of whether extractions can
 Variation and change in American English 

be found among the tokens of to ‑ing complements or whether extractions have

more or less disappeared with the disappearance of to infinitive complements.
The answer is that extractions have not disappeared, though their proportion is
slightly lower than in the earlier corpus. In the 1923–1932 corpus there were 14 ex-
tractions among 95 tokens. Now there are six extractions among the 64 tokens, but all
of them are found among the 61 to ‑ing complements. Here are some illustrations:
(20) a. In This Side of Paradise, F. Scott Fitzgerald alarmed mothers by tell-
ing them “how casually their daughters were accustomed to being
kissed”; (1964)5 [Wh Movement]
b. “Any new reporter in Washington, fresh from the city hall beat where
he was accustomed to putting nothing in the paper without identify-
ing the source, will find that if he tries that here, his sources will dry
up on him.” (1965) [Relativization]
c. In her four months as Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi has been large-
ly spared the biting public criticism that Indian politicians are accus-
tomed to meting out to their leaders. (1966) [Relativization]
d. The successful businessman or professional entering Government
service, however, may draw an official salary that is far less than the
sum he is accustomed to paying in taxes. (1969) [Relativization]
The extractions found testify to the entrenchment of the to ‑ing pattern, but the
slight decrease in their proportion may suggest that the triumph of the to ‑ing
pattern is not yet quite complete in this respect.
It may also be noted that both extractions of adjuncts and extractions of comple-
ments out of complements of accustomed are found in the material. (20a–b) involve
the extraction of adjuncts and (20c–d) involve the extraction of complements.
The other factor to consider here concerns the question of +Choice contexts.
It was observed in the data from the first decade that to ‑ing complements tended
to be more common in –Choice contexts than in +Choice contexts, and it is of
interest to examine whether they have now spread beyond such contexts to be
embraced by +Choice contexts or whether there is a residual reluctance to use
them in such contexts.
Of the four initial illustrations in (19a–d), (19a) and (19d) involve –Choice con-
texts, while (19b–c) involve +Choice contexts. When all 61 tokens are examined, it
is observed that the to ‑ing pattern is indeed readily found in +Choice contexts. The
six extraction contexts, with one exception, are of the +Choice type, as for instance

5. Accustomed in (20a) may at first sight look verbal in nature, but on reflection it seems clear
that the word is adjectival, since the sentence is not about the process of accustoming the daugh-
ters to being kissed casually but about the daughters being accustomed to being kissed casually.
 Juhani Rudanko

in (20b–c), and when the extraction contexts are set aside, there are 29 tokens of the
+Choice type, and 26 of the –Choice type. Here are two more tokens of both types:
(21) a. Long accustomed to dictating his own terms, Hughes refused. (1960)
b. Accustomed to interviewing McGeorge Bundy regularly when he
was dean of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the editors of the
Harvard Crimson telephoned him at the White House to ask if he
had anything to do with eliminating Latin from diplomas ... (1961)
(22) a. His long-suffering friends are even accustomed to having him turn up
with his equipment to record their squalling, hiccuping children. (1961)
b. Doctors are so accustomed to hearing about bad effects of smoking
... (1966)
Overall, the ease with which to ‑ing complements can now occur in +Choice con-
texts may be regarded as another indication, of a qualitative nature, of the pre-
dominance of this pattern over the to infinitive pattern with accustomed in Amer-
ican English variety of the text type of news magazine English by the 1960s.

4. Concluding observations

It is argued in the present investigation that there are robust grammatical differences
between the to infinitive and to ‑ing patterns in English. However, some higher pred-
icates have shown variation and change between the two patterns. The adjective ac-
customed offers a particularly striking example of a matrix adjective of this type.
The investigation of the sentential complements of accustomed involving sub-
ject control in the first decade of the TIME Corpus shows that the decade was
characterized by a considerable amount of variation between the two types of com-
plement. This study offers two explanatory principles to account for the variation.
The first principle was the Extraction Principle, which was broadened to in-
clude the extraction of adjuncts. It was shown that the Extraction Principle played
a significant role in preserving to infinitives. The second principle was semantic.
It was observed that when the lower predicate selected a +Choice subject, a to in-
finitive was the likely type of complement. On the other hand, when the lower
subject was of the –Choice type, the complement tended to be of the to ‑ing type.
Since the to ‑ing pattern was the new and emerging one with accustomed in the
overall context of the Great Complement Shift (Rohdenburg 2006), it is possible to
say that non-agentive lower predicates provided a semantic niche for its spread.
 Variation and change in American English 

The establishment of the two principles means that what may at first sight look
like free variation between two complementation patterns that are different from a
grammatical point of view is in fact rule governed, at least up to a significant extent.
Turning to the 1960s, the investigation revealed a radical change in the argu-
ment structure of accustomed. Within the space of some 30 or 40 years the to
infinitive pattern had become very rare, with only one or two tokens. To ‑ing
complements were now also found in extraction contexts, though perhaps not
quite as freely as to infinitives used to be found in such contexts in the first dec-
ade. To ‑ing complements were also readily used in +Choice contexts in the mate-
rial from the 1960s, which further testifies to their entrenchment from a qualita-
tive point of view. In other words, neither extraction nor the ±Choice factor can
be used to explain what variation there is in the 1960s.
The present study is focused on accustomed, and it raises the question of
whether other adjectives in English selecting sentential complements involving
subject control may have followed a similar trajectory of change in recent Eng-
lish, and whether the explanatory principles employed here can be applied in
their study. It is only the advent of large electronic corpora of the type of the
TIME Corpus that makes it possible to raise and to explore such questions in a
meaningful and systematic way. The scholarly community owes a debt of grati-
tude to Mark Davies and others who have compiled such large corpora and made
them publicly available. It may be hoped that the present article demonstrates
some of the possibilities that are offered by such corpora in the study of the core
grammar of English and of the recent history of English.

Sources

Davies (2007) = Davies, Mark. TIME Corpus (100 million words, 1920s–2000s). Available
online at http://corpus.byu.edu/time.

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 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses
Semantic divergence?

Elina Sellgren
University of Tampere

The article discusses the variation between the two most common sentential
complements of the verb prevent, as in prevent me from going and prevent me
going, from a semantic point of view. The variant me going became significantly
more common in British English in the twentieth century, competing with the
variant with from. Mair (2002) has suggested that a similar phenomenon may
be incipient with semantically similar verbs like hinder and stop, signalling
a more general grammatical change that is restricted to British English.
With data from the British National Corpus, the article proposes a semantic
distinction, a consequence of the recent competition, in order to partially
explain the variation. The distinction links the notion of hypotheticality to the
‑ing clause in the prepositional variant, whereas the ‑ing clause without from
expresses a realized event, or an existing property of the object NP of prevent.

1. Introduction

In Present-Day British English (BrE), prevent can choose two nearly identical sen-
tential complements. The historically more common prepositional variant with
from (from ‑ing), exemplified in (1), is nowadays used as often as the variant with-
out the preposition from (0 ‑ing), as exemplified in (2) (Mair 2002).1
(1) I prevented him from robbing the bank.
(2) I prevented him robbing the bank.

1. The corpora used by Mair (2002) were the following: Brown, Frown, LOB and FLOB, 1
million words each. Brown and Frown represent American English and LOB and FLOB
British English. The pairs Brown-LOB and Frown-FLOB represent the same decades respec-
tively (1961 and 1991).
 Elina Sellgren

The gerund with the subject of the ‑ing clause in the genitive or possessive case
(poss ‑ing) can also be found today, exemplified in (3) below, but it is referred to as
being “archaic” by Mair (2002: 112).
(3) I prevented his robbing the bank.
Due to its rarity today, poss ‑ing does not really compete with either of the afore-
mentioned variants.2 In order to get a picture of just how archaic and rare this
variant is, one can run a tag sequence search in the BNC Web, a search facility for
the 100 million word British National Corpus. By defining the positions after the
key term (i.e. any verb form of prevent) as “DPS + VVG”, the resulting example
sentences should be of the form “prevent + possessive determiner + ‑ing form”.
This procedure yields only 62 examples altogether. Instances where the object NP
is a common noun in the genitive can be assumed to be equally rare. Because this
complement type is most likely to follow the matrix verb prevent immediately,
this figure of 62 cases of poss ‑ing in the 100 million word BNC can be taken to be
representative. A study by Heyvaert et al. (2005) provides further evidence that
poss ‑ing is rare in twentieth century British English with prevent: the Times and
UK Spoken subcorpora in the Collins COBUILD corpus together contain only 32
such instances. From a diachronic point of view, poss ‑ing may have had a bigger
part to play in the battle of the ‑ing complements selected by prevent. In the
present paper, however, the focus is on synchronic variation.
It is notable that in Present-Day American English (AmE), only the preposi-
tional variant from ‑ing as in (1) is used (e.g. Rohdenburg 1995: 87, Dixon 1995: 217
and Mair 2002). The archaic variant poss ‑ing as in (3) is rare, just like in British
English. In earlier American English the variant without from as in (2), 0 ‑ing,
was apparently used to some extent (Mair 2002). According to Dixon (1995), the
0 ‑ing variant is found also in Australian English.
The OED seems to suggest that 0 ‑ing appeared later with prevent than poss
‑ing or from ‑ing, even though examples are given from the seventeenth century:
“prevent me going appears to be short for prevent me from going, perh[aps] influ-
enced by prevent my going”. Unlike Mair (2002), the OED sees 0 ‑ing as a reduced
form of from ‑ing. As for poss ‑ing, Visser (1973: 2363) mentions that this variant
has declined dramatically in frequency with prevent since the nineteenth century,
whereas the other two variants from ‑ing and 0 ‑ing are simply noted to coexist.
The roughly equal frequency between from ‑ing and 0 ‑ing in British English
is very recent. Mair (2002) observes that in the structurally and diachronically
parallel ICAME corpora of LOB and FLOB (British English) and Brown and
Frown (American English), the variant without from increased rapidly in

2. Cf. also Mair (2002).

 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

frequency from 1961 to 1991. In the LOB corpus, containing British English texts
from 1961, from ‑ing is dominant with 37 examples following the base form of
prevent, against only seven cases of the 0 ‑ing variant. Three decades later, both
variants are attested in FLOB with 24 examples, whereas in Brown and Frown
(American English) 0 ‑ing was found only once, namely in the 1961 corpus of
Brown. While the number of examples in these one million word corpora is not
particularly high, they can be taken as suggestive of a notable shift in the frequen-
cies of these complementation variants over the latter half of the twentieth cen-
tury. Such a rapid change invites attempts to explain the progressively more even
distribution. When and why can the preposition from be left out of the comple-
ment clause?
Mair proposes that in the future, 0 ‑ing may become the sole sentential vari-
ant with prevent in British English, whereas in American English the preposi-
tional variant will remain dominant. This process of divergence between two
language variants would be part of a grammatical change where in British English
semantically similar verbs, for example hinder, block, and stop, will also increas-
ingly gear towards 0 ‑ing at the expense of from ‑ing, and vice versa in American
English. According to Mair (2006: 133), 0 ‑ing with stop never had a foothold in
older American English and is non-existent today. Rohdenburg (2009: 211) posits
that the negative feature associated with from may “play a very special role” in
American English. In American English, verbs of negative causation (e.g. prevent,
stop, save) have followed a trend where they mark negative orientation by the use
of from without exception, whereas in British English the verbs of negative causa-
tion have followed suit only in the passive. Indeed, in any variety of Present-Day
English only the from ‑ing variant can be used when prevent is in the passive voice
(Huddleston & Pullum 2002: 1238):
(4) I was prevented from robbing the bank.
(5) *I was prevented robbing the bank.
One instance of passivization with 0 ‑ing is mentioned in Poutsma (1926: 649–
650), but it comes from one of Jane Austen’s novels, and thus obviously does not
represent present-day usage norms.
In the BNC, only one instance of 0 ‑ing with prevent in the passive can be
found by running a tag sequence search with VVG in position +1 after prevent:
(6) If one person is prevented getting AIDS from this officer, we’ve paid for
that person for two years ... (KRL, 4350)
In this connection, Mair (2006: 131) makes another interesting point: the pas-
sivization of the complement verb also has an effect on the choice of the comple-
ment type. The variant 0 ‑ing seems to be encouraged when the complement verb
 Elina Sellgren

is in the passive voice. In Mair’s (2006) OED Baseline Corpus, there are five in-
stances of the type “prevent the free copies being sold” and only one of the type
“prevent free copies from being sold”.
In the active voice, however, at least some verbs of negative causation can
leave out from in British English: Mair (2002) reported the increasing use of ‑ing
without from with prevent and stop over the twentieth century in British English.
This is a complete reversal of an earlier trend where verbs of negative causation
increasingly tended to mark negative orientation by means of from, a trend that
has reached completion in American English (Rohdenburg 2009: 211).
The reversal in British English of this historical trend of marking negative
orientation with from is most visible with the highest‑frequency verbs prevent
and stop, but could possibly be present, or incipient, with other verbs of negative
causation. But even in the 100 million word BNC, verbs like hinder, deter, debar
and dissuade, all selecting from ‑ing, are only represented by a couple of hundred
examples, the majority of which show nominal complementation. Thus, the lem-
ma search for hinder gives 594 matches, 882 for deter, 212 for dissuade and
120 matches for debar. Mair (2006) found, however, individual instances of 0 ‑ing
with discourage, block and ban in the BNC and certain newspapers (examples
quoted from Mair 2006: 133):
(7) ... aim to discourage Britain returning to the exchange rate mechanism.
 (CEK 2355)
(8) ... it became possible that the relatives of the dead [...] would seek a judi-
cial review to block the findings being published ...(Private Eye 1046: 13)
(9) ... the editorial I wrote for Palatinate over the banning of our ice hockey
team visiting Communist East Berlin ... (Private Eye 1053: 3)
Another verb that also seems to be gearing towards using 0 ‑ing is save. Mair
(2006: 134) found 13 instances of 0 ‑ing with save in the BNC, as against only
three of the from ‑ing type.
(10) It saves you from becoming under-insured as a result of inflation ...
 (AYP 1603)
(11) Oh well, it saves you penning. (GYT 157)
Though they are not very numerous, these examples could support Mair’s predic-
tion of 0 ‑ing becoming a syntactical Briticism with verbs of negative causation.
Even though the variation between the nearly identical complements from
‑ing and 0 ‑ing with prevent has its roots in historical developments, synchronic
factors either promoting or hindering the further advance of 0 ‑ing with prevent
and perhaps other verbs as well cannot be ruled out. If 0 ‑ing is about to defeat
from ‑ing, it is likely to follow a particular pattern.
 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

2. Explaining the complementation of prevent

In Mair (2002), the two most common variants, from ‑ing and 0 ‑ing, were found
to have become serious competitors only in recent decades. The phenomenon
where the preposition from is increasingly absent from a complement clause is
certainly intriguing, especially as this change happened so rapidly. Wherever the
competition will lead in the future, it is of interest to examine how it has devel-
oped, and what kind of factors direct the choice of the different complements
synchronically. Apart from diachronic change, one can postulate syntactic and
semantic explanations for the variation.
Semantic distinctions between the variants, though unsubstantiated by sys-
tematic study, have been suggested before. Dixon (1991: 236) proposes that 0 ‑ing
is used when the agent denoted by the subject in the sentence employs direct means
to prevent something, and from ‑ing is used when indirect means are employed.
Rudanko (2002: 58) offers the explanation that from ‑ing may involve indetermi-
nacy, while 0 ‑ing has a sense of immediacy and external observability. Moreover,
he suggests two different readings of prevent which entail two different underlying
structures: the ‘bring about’ reading, which is connected to an NP Movement
structure and the ‘act on’ reading, which is connected to a control structure.
The problem with any semantic description, such as the suggestion by Dixon
(1991) that from ‑ing involves indirect means of prevention on the part of the
agent and 0 ‑ing direct means, lies with sentences with underspecified contexts.
The notion of direct or indirect means in the act of prevention can only apply to
animate and non-abstract object noun phrases or “preventees”. The distinction
can therefore only apply to part of the data.
In addition to semantic explanations, the functional approach of Rohden-
burg’s complexity principle (e.g. 1995, 1996 and 2000) is useful:
In the case of more or less explicit grammatical options, the more explicit one(s)
will tend to be favored in cognitively more complex environments. (Rohdenburg
1996: 151)

This principle is valuable as an explanative factor from a functional point of view.

The principle predicts that the more explicit variant will be found more often in
complex syntactical environments. In general terms, speakers resort to the more
explicit variant in environments that are “for some reason more difficult, more
complex, less entrenched, less frequent, less accessible or in any other way cogni-
tively more complex” (Rohdenburg 2009: 88).
In the case of prevent, such complex environments can be passivized sen-
tences, relativizations, extractions or sentences with long and complex object
noun phrases. With prevent, from ‑ing is the structurally most explicit variant,
 Elina Sellgren

whereas 0 ‑ing and poss ‑ing are less explicit. In Rohdenburg’s analysis, the ar-
chaic variant (poss ‑ing) is the structurally least explicit option, due to its ambigu-
ity as a nominal-verbal hybrid: the same structure can sometimes be analyzed as
more nominal (I prevented his going) and sometimes as more verbal, when an
object is present (I prevented his stealing the book).
As was observed, the structurally more explicit from ‑ing complement is in-
deed dominant when prevent is passivized. The principle rests on the hypothesis
that out of several different variants, the structurally most explicit one will be
favoured in complex environments. This is because explicit constructions are
easier to process cognitively, especially in sentences with complex structures, be-
cause they decrease the processing load created by structural complexity. To ex-
emplify this in the case of prevent, consider example (12) below where the author
has chosen to include from in the complement clause. Not only is the object NP of
prevent very long (the fundamental beliefs in the nation and “the historic integrity
of the island of Ireland”), but also it is followed by a finite subordinate clause, be-
fore the from ‑ing complement finally completes the message of the sentence.
(12) But the fight did not prevent the fundamental beliefs in the nation and
“the historic integrity of the island of Ireland”, as nationalist parties de-
scribed it in their New Ireland Forum (1983–1984: i. 28), from remaining
basic to the perceptions of both parties. (BNC, A07, 317)
Apparently, the syntactic complexity of a sentence can to some extent protect the
historically more common and structurally more explicit variant from ‑ing
against the advancing 0 ‑ing variant. Using data from Collins COBUILD corpora,
in a recent study on prevent (Babováková 2005) it was found that the increasing
length and complexity of insertions as well as object noun phrases between the
matrix verb prevent and the ‑ing participle tend to favour the explicit variant,
from ‑ing. However, when the object noun phrase of prevent consists of only one
word, from ‑ing dominates, regardless of the head of the noun phrase (pronoun or
common noun). Theoretically, short object NPs after prevent could support the
use of the 0 ‑ing variant because they represent a “cognitively simple” environ-
ment. The predominance of from ‑ing following both short and long object noun
phrases may simply reflect the overall distribution of the competitors in the cor-
pora used. Roughly 57% to 70% of the sentential examples were used with from.
It is only in the case of passivization that the complexity principle is firm – but
otherwise there appear to be no hard and fast rules to the variation from the point
of view of syntactical complexity.
The question remains, what kind of factors promote the use of the relatively
new big player in the field, 0 ‑ing? What governs the choice of either variant when
the sentences examined are not particularly complex? This is the starting point of
 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

the present study which seeks to find a possible semantic distinction between the
variants, working systematically through two small samples. While it is acknowl-
edged that there are probably many factors at play simultaneously, the semantic
distinction proposed here appears to be valid enough to be seriously considered
as an important factor in the variation between the competing complements.
This study is inspired by Bolinger’s (1968) generalization that a difference in
syntactic form entails a difference in meaning. It is proposed here that the com-
plementation variants from ‑ing and 0 ‑ing may be developing slightly different
meanings due to the increasing competition in British English. A preliminary
look at data from earlier British English3 seems to suggest that we cannot find this
semantic distinction any earlier than the twentieth century. This implies that the
semantic distinction in question arose due to the increasing competition between
the two variants, a competition which itself may have been caused by other than
semantic motivations.

3. Data

The data for the study was collected from the British National Corpus (BNC) by
using the BNC Web search facility. The study was initially prompted by the ob-
servation during pilot searches that in many individual texts with several tokens
of prevent, the verb was found with both near-identical sentential variants in a
seemingly random fashion. When obtaining several different random sets of
100 examples of prevent from the BNC, it soon becomes obvious that the compe-
tition is most palpable between the from ‑ing and 0 ‑ing variants. For every set of
a hundred tokens of prevent, only one or two instances of poss ‑ing are likely to be
found (cf. Section 1). It is also clear that different authors use the more common
variants to varying degrees, some use only one of the variants, some use both
variants but with a pronounced preference one way or the other.
Two data sets were compiled for analysis. Data set 1 consisted of texts that
each had several occurrences of prevent with a sentential complement. This set was
compiled for exploring whether the varying usage of the complement patterns of
prevent by individual authors reflects a subtle semantic distinction between its
complement variants. By collecting a selection of texts that each have several to-
kens of the verb prevent (data set 1), it is possible to compare the usage behaviour
of individual authors. When both complement variants are found in one text, it is
interesting to examine whether one of the variants is clearly preferred and whether

3. Data extracted from the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, a corpus compiled by
Hendrik de Smet at the University of Leuven.
 Elina Sellgren

the choice of either variant follows some kind of a rule. Data set 1 represents the 14
texts in the BNC with the biggest number of tokens of prevent (381 tokens alto-
gether; see Table 1), and altogether they contain about 1.9 million words.
Data set 2 was a random sample of 100 tokens of prevent, comprising 44 in-
stances of sentential complementation. This set was collected in order to discover
whether any semantic distinctions could be found when comparing different au-
thors. In other words, data set 1 is oriented towards the authors, whereas data set
2 compares the variants that are in competition with each other in general, disre-
garding idiosyncratic preferences for either of the variants.
The examination of the use of prevent by individual authors is justified, be-
cause emerging semantic distinctions cannot be assumed to be found in the lan-
guage use of all speakers. One can hypothesize that an incipient semantic distinc-
tion between the competing complementation variants will wiggle its way through
into mainstream usage by the innovativeness of individual speakers and authors,
for instance newspaper journalists or internet writers. Whether the semantic dis-
tinction explored in the next sections has solidified its position to any degree can
be examined by comparing individual instances of the variants from different
texts (data set 2), rather than within individual texts (data set 1).

4. Discussion

4.1 Data set 1: Variation within individual texts

In data set 1, there is a remarkable amount of variation among the authors with
respect to preference for either sentential complement of prevent (see Table 1). The
texts chosen contained from 8 to 42 tokens of the verb prevent. The number of
tokens with sentential complements ranged from 5 to 37.
The author of the text ARF4 (extract from an academic book on medicine),
for example, uses from ‑ing exclusively, while the rest of the authors use 0 ‑ing in
at least one sentence. In some texts, like J7B and CJE, both variants are found
without a clear preference for either of them. In J7B (extract from an academic
book on law practices in commerce), from ‑ing is found 23 times and 0 ‑ing
14 times. In CJE (a training guide for dog owners), from ‑ing is found 10 times and
0 ‑ing six times.

4. The combinations of three letters and/or numbers refer to the codename for the file
in the BNC.
 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

Table 1.  Data set 1

Text No. of tokens of prevent from -ing 0 -ing

A0J   14    6    5
ARF   38    5    0
ASB   31    1    4
CCX   36    3   15
CJE   27   10    6
EDC   24    5    1
ECJ   21    1   19
EV5    8    2    6
GVR   12   11    1
HH6   28    1   27
HHV   42   30    6
HHX   30   19    4
J7B   42   23   14
K5M   17   11    5
Total 381 128 113

In most cases, however, authors prefer one of the variants very strongly. The au-
thor of HHV, for example, uses from ‑ing 30 times, but 0 ‑ing only six times.
(13) It is none other than the Prime Minister who, as Minister for Social Se-
curity, introduced measures to prevent people from receiving benefit in
those circumstances. (HHV 3204)
(14) Does he agree that if – in his admirable phrase – we are to prevent the
Commission interfering in the nooks and crannies of everyday life.
 (HHV 23850)
The author of ECJ, on the other hand, uses 0 ‑ing 19 times, but from ‑ing only once.
(15) Other safety factors to consider are the provision of side restraints in the
form of a low wall or balustrade, to prevent anyone from falling over the
side edges of the steps. (ECJ 91)
(16) Lift up the ball valve arm as high as it will go, and tie up to prevent the
cistern refilling. (ECJ 521)
Such huge differences in the preference for either complement demonstrate that
the nearly equal overall distribution of the variants in general (cf. Section 1; Mair
2002) does not reflect the situation accurately. Obviously, many authors do not
see the variants as interchangeable and grammatically unmarked options, nor do
they use them to an equal degree. Especially cases where one of the variants is
 Elina Sellgren

found only once or twice are interesting from the point of view of semantic dis-
tinctions. Even though the choice of using a preposition or leaving it out cannot
be unwitting on the part of the author, it is likely that in less formal types of writ-
ing the level of linguistic self-correction and monitoring is lower.
It is of course possible that the “exceptions” in the language use of a certain
author are caused by the syntactical complexity of the given sentence, thus follow-
ing the complexity principle mentioned earlier. More often than not, however, the
sentences in data set 1 were not that different as regards syntactical complexity.
There are undoubtedly many cases where hardly any distinction can be seen
between the sentences using the different variants – they appear to be in free
variation. Consider the following examples:
(17) Father Morrow said he had acted “in an attempt to prevent future coma-
tose, disabled and elderly patients from sharing the fate of Tony Bland”
 (CFB, 1201)
(18) He said he had acted “in an attempt to prevent future coma, disabled and
elderly patients suffering the same fate as Tony Bland”. (CFB, 1227)
Here the writer repeats a quotation with nearly identical sentences, but with dif-
ferent complementation variants. There are minor differences: comatose has been
abbreviated into coma, and the lower clause ‑ing participle has changed from
sharing to suffering.
To summon up even a far-fetched explanation, one could make the case that
sharing does not indicate as much passiveness on the part of the patients as suffer-
ing does. Hence the patients, denoted by the object noun phrase, may be able to
keep themselves at a distance from the event or situation of sharing the fate of
Tony Bland, which is the prevented event denoted by the ‑ing clause. Suffering
implies no volition on the part of the subject of the ‑ing clause (patients), and the
patients are thus much closer to that fate. Here we may consider Huddleston &
Pullum’s (2002: 657) description of the semantic function of the preposition from
as giving the following ‑ing participle the role of an “intended action as a spatial
goal”. The absence of the preposition may then be seen to collate the semantic
roles of the ‑ing form and the object noun phrase of prevent, denoting the pre-
vented event together. This notion may be related better to verbs implying no
volition or agentiveness on the part of their subject noun phrase.
There are many other instances where the similarity of the sentences is rather
striking. In (19) and (20) below, the syntactical environments of the sentences are
again nearly identical.
 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

(19) Care must be taken not to keep the stick forward for too long, as too much
forward movement during the take-off run will prevent the glider from
leaving the ground until a much higher speed is reached. (A0H, 637)
(20) Opening the airbrakes at that moment will prevent the glider leaving the
ground again. (A0H, 691)
The ‑ing clauses do not differ much in complexity: in (19) (the glider) from leaving
the ground is followed by a separate subordinate clause, in (20) (the glider) leaving
the ground is followed by an adverb. It is unlikely that anything outside the comple-
mentation sequence would have an effect on the choice of a complement variant.
Example (21) demonstrates a further instance of such striking similarity from
the same text:
(21) The launch should always be stopped if an overrun occurs, and if the
launch continues in spite of pulling the release the pilot should make
every effort to prevent the glider from leaving the ground by keeping the
stick right forward. (A0H, 759)
We can here recall Dixon’s (1995) idea that the from‑less variant involves a more
direct, physical interaction between the actor and the goal of action: it is easy to
see the difficulty in formulating this kind of semantic distinctions. In the exam-
ples above, the referents of both the subject and the object are inanimate, and the
semantic role of actor does not apply in the context. As mentioned also before,
Rudanko (2002: 58) suggests that NP from ‑ing may be more indeterminate and
less specific and NP ‑ing more immediate, involving a sense of external observa-
bility. Starting with this distinction in mind, (22) and (23) below with from ‑ing
may sound rather hypothetical, as in giving instructions beforehand:
(22) The wing unstalls immediately and prevents the spin from developing.
 (A0H, 1023)
(23) Any forward movement will prevent a spin from developing, whereas
failure to move forwards can result either in the spin continuing or, if the
opposite rudder has been applied, in the direction of the spin suddenly
reversing. (A0H, 1032)
Then again, (22) above is part of a description of a demonstration by an instruc-
tor, and the verb unstalls in the third person present tense gives the sentence a
very immediate feel. With 0 ‑ing in (24) below, on the other hand, the tone is very
certain: a spin will not develop.
(24) This shows conclusively that any movement forward will prevent a spin
developing even if the rudder is forgotten altogether. (A0H, 1025)
 Elina Sellgren

Reconsidering now the examples (19) to (21) above, repeated below, there may be
some differences after all between the different variants.
(19’) Care must be taken not to keep the stick forward for too long, as too much
forward movement during the take-off run will prevent the glider from
leaving the ground until a much higher speed is reached. (A0H, 637)
(20’) Opening the airbrakes at that moment will prevent the glider leaving the
ground again. (A0H, 691)
(21’) The launch should always be stopped if an overrun occurs, and if the
launch continues in spite of pulling the release the pilot should make
every effort to prevent the glider from leaving the ground by keeping the
stick right forward. (A0H, 759)
Examples (19’) and (21’) with from ‑ing sound much more hypothetical than (20’)
with 0 ‑ing, just as examples (22) to (23) with from ‑ing. “Too much forward move-
ment during the take-off run will prevent the glider from leaving the ground” is
something one would say when imagining a hypothetical scenario. The crucial
difference between the two very similar sentences may be the adverb again in
(20’): it implies that the glider is commonly known to leave the ground unless the
airbrakes are opened at the right moment. This more concrete sentence discusses
something that has been known to happen before. There is a sense of the writer
imagining the scenario in action in his or her mind’s eye in (20’), but this is prob-
ably due to the adverbial at that moment.
Many other cases of apparently free variation in the data are more easily ex-
plained. The examples (25) to (28) below come from an extract from the book
Train your dog, classified in the domain “Leisure” in the BNC, text type “Written
books and periodicals”. In examples (25) to (27), the from ‑ing variant is used – but
in (28), the preposition from is left out. Such a sudden change of practice points to
some special motivation behind the choice of a different complement variant.
(25) Regular exercise off the leash will help to prevent a young dog from be-
coming destructive around the home. (CJE, 1106)
(26) Yet if it is not alarmed by this procedure, you may well be able to relieve
the obstruction and so prevent the dog from choking at a time when
rapid action is required. (CJE, 771)
(27) In an emergency this may prevent a dog from straying into a potentially
dangerous situation, for example if you should suddenly encounter riders
on horseback when you are out for a walk along a narrow path.(CJE, 569)
(28) Desperate owners sometimes ask their vet if it is possible to prevent a dog
barking by surgical means. (CJE, 1038)
 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

One can again look at the meaning of the syntactically lower clause: in the first
three examples, it describes potentially harmful scenarios to the dog (e.g. choking),
whereas barking in (28) simply denotes a permanent quality or property of the
dog. Judging by these examples, it could be said that from ‑ing is used when talk-
ing about hypothetical, unrealized situations. Accordingly, 0 ‑ing is used when
talking about an event or a property of the object noun phrase that already exists,
or an event that happened before respectively.
The notion of from giving the following participle the role of an intended ac-
tion as a spatial goal is particularly clear here. In (25) to (27) above, the unwanted,
hypothetical scenarios denoted by the ‑ing participles effectively have the role of
“non-intended” actions as spatial goals. The preposition from puts the preventee,
the dog, at a conceptual spatial distance from those spatial goals. Without from
indicating spatial distance between the roles of the preventee and the prevented
action or event in (28), the object noun phrase a dog and the ‑ing form barking
consequently seem to form a more closely knit semantic unit.
To extend this idea further, the following examples may also serve to demon-
strate hypotheticality versus existing or realized situations or properties.
(29) ...By including express restrictive covenants in an employment contract
an employer will seek to achieve three goals once employment is over: (a)
to prevent the ex-employee canvassing orders from the employer’s cus-
tomers; (b) to prevent the ex-employee competing with his business (usu-
ally within a defined geographical area); (c) to prevent the ex-employee
from using/disclosing any legitimate business secrets. (J7B, 1309)
(30) Note that (a) and (c) alone are not enough: neither would prevent an em-
ployee from serving those customers of his ex-employer who approached
him. (J7B, 1310)
In (29), 0 ‑ing is used with the first two instances of prevent, whereas from ‑ing is
used with the last one, within the same sentence. An ex-employee canvassing
orders from their ex‑employer’s customers (see 29 a) and competing with their
ex‑employer’s business (see 29 b) are both realistic scenarios. They are not strictly
unethical actions, in fact they are a natural part of making business. Using or
disclosing business secrets of an ex‑employer, on the other hand, may be seen as
dishonest. Perhaps this scenario (see 29 c) is therefore seen as more unlikely than
the other two, and therefore perceived as hypothetical. Example (30), elaborating
on the previous sentence, may also discuss a hypothetical scenario, in the sense
that the ex‑employer’s customers approaching the ex‑employee are perhaps the
minority among the ex‑employee’s customers in general.
 Elina Sellgren

4.2 Data set 2: Variation between different texts

The data from the random sample, data set 2, was examined firstly with regard to
the idea of hypotheticality related to the from ‑ing complement. Secondly, the
idea was explored that the 0 ‑ing complement implies a closer connection be-
tween the object noun phrase of prevent and the ‑ing form, and that together they
denote a realized event or a property of the object noun phrase.
After discarding examples of nominal complementation, the random sam-
ple of 100 tokens of prevent produced 25 examples of the from ‑ing variant and
19 examples of the 0 ‑ing variant. The distribution follows quite closely that ob-
served in other studies: the variant from ‑ing is represented by 57% of the exam-
ples and 0 ‑ing by 43% (cf. Mair 2002 who finds a fifty-fifty ratio between these
variants). The sample is modest in size, but adequate for an exploratory seman-
tic analysis.
The majority of the examples seem to corroborate the ideas proposed above
in Section 3.
Examples (31) to (32) are prime candidates for the hypotheses, the first with
from ‑ing and the second with 0 ‑ing. Example (31) below demonstrates the idea of
hypotheticality:
(31) Indeed the only reason that modern living things are able to survive in
the presence of oxygen, is that they contain a variety of compounds that
prevent it from reacting with materials such as fats: compounds that in-
clude vitamins C and E, and uric acid. (AMS, 224)
If there were no compounds to prevent oxygen from reacting with materials in-
side living beings, there would be no “modern living things”. Any sense of the
compounds merely stopping something already happening, i.e. the oxygen react-
ing with the materials, is not possible: the act denoted by the participle has never
come to pass in a living creature, or it would not be alive.
Example (32), on the other hand, clearly discusses an event that some people
wanted to prevent, but which did actually happen (i.e. the commemoration of the
1916 Easter Rising).
(32) A classic clash of symbols occurred in April when the government took
no action to prevent the 1916 Easter Rising being commemorated in
Belfast. (AD2, 199)
To take another pair of contrasting examples, example (33) with from ‑ing dis-
cusses something hypothetical: the trader commits an offence unless he has tried
to prevent consumers from relying on misleading information.
 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

(33) If in that situation some consumers might reasonably be expected to rely

on the misleading information, the trader commits an offence unless he
has taken all reasonable steps to prevent them from doing so.
Example (34) below with 0 ‑ing, on the other hand, is concerned with an existing
situation, one where hens lay outdoors and roost in the trees if they are allowed
to. The intention of the parties concerned is to prevent the “event” of these hens
laying outdoors and roosting in the trees at the moment of speaking, with prevent
having a meaning closer to stop than hinder. The preventive measures stop an
activity that is already taking place, rather than pre-empting a hypothetical ac-
tivity that has not taken place yet.
(34) To prevent hens laying outdoors and roosting in the trees, the report
suggests that the birds be kept in their housing until mid-morning, and
be presented with a main feed in-house in the evening before being shut
in for the night.
In (35) with from ‑ing, it obviously happened that the speaker was prevented from
going to the woman, hence it is a hypothetical scenario.
(35) Vividly could he still recall his nurses preventing him from going to her
there, and he knew he had stood at a window just like this, gazing with
longing through the trees to the building where his mother was impris-
oned. (HGV, 4757)
In some cases, however, the semantic distinction proposed here is not quite so
clear. In seven cases it was not possible to maintain the idea of hypotheticality
with from ‑ing, or the idea of a realized event/property with 0 ‑ing, or the infor-
mation provided by the context was insufficient.
For instance, in (36) the discussion of a depreciation of the exchange rate
seems hypothetical, and apparently it has not happened due to the preventive
measures by the government.
(36) Ultimately there would be a depreciation of the exchange rate under a
free-floating regime, but the policy response of the government has been
to prevent this occurring by sustaining a high level of domestic interest
rates. (EC3, 658)
All in all, there are occasional cases where the semantic distinction does not ap-
ply, or it is simply impossible to determine due to lack of context. In such cases,
there are certainly other factors at work that can explain the choice of one variant
over the other. The level of formality of the text or the nature of the text type may
affect the choice of the complement if from ‑ing is felt to be the “default” or more
 Elina Sellgren

correct variant in a prescriptive sense. Considering Rohdenburg’s complexity

principle discussed above (Section 2), the length of the object noun phrase of pre-
vent, the length of the ‑ing participle, or even the inflectional form of prevent may
all guide the choice of the complement. On a more general level, it is possible that
through its historical spread, the 0 ‑ing variant is simply more and more often
seen as a neutral choice from a prescriptive point of view, in the sense of the au-
thors’ intuition about normative rules of language use.

5. Conclusion

This paper has offered a new, semantic perspective on the variation between the
two most common sentential complements of prevent, prevent me from going
(from ‑ing) and prevent me going (0 ‑ing). The variant from ‑ing was linked to the
idea of hypotheticality denoted by the ‑ing form, and 0 ‑ing was connected to the
idea of a realized event or a permanent or existing property of the object NP of
prevent, denoted by the object NP and the ‑ing form together. A surprisingly large
proportion of the examples in the data samples appeared to follow this semantic
distinction. In subsequent studies, statistical methods for validation may be help-
ful in determining how viable the distinction is in more numerical terms.
There have been several attempts at explaining the close competition, rang-
ing from Rohdenburg’s (e.g.  1996) complexity principle to Dixon’s (1991) and
Rudanko’s (2002) proposals regarding semantic and underlying structural and
syntactic distinctions, but they have never been systematically examined with
more data than a couple of examples. As was mentioned in the introduction, Mair
(2002) has suggested that prevent is spearheading a grammatical change whereby
semantically similar verbs in British English (e.g. hinder, block, stop) are increas-
ingly favouring the variant without from, perhaps eventually ousting the prepo-
sitional complement completely.
So far, it seems unlikely that such a process could be carried to completion,
considering the strong preference for the prepositional variant in passivized sen-
tences with prevent. On the other hand, the distribution of from ‑ing and 0 ‑ing in
relation to each other may not have stabilized yet, following a very rapid change
over the twentieth century. If both variants continue to be used on a par in British
English as regards their relative frequencies, it is possible that they select their
own niches of use, semantically or otherwise determined.
 Prevent and the battle of the ‑ing clauses 

Sources

BNC = The British National Corpus: <http://bncweb.lancs.ac.uk>

BROWN = A Standard Corpus of Present-Day Edited American English, for Use with Digital
Computers (Brown) compiled by W. N. Francis & H. Kučera. Brown University. Provi-
dence, Rhode Island. 1964, 1971, 1979.
CLMET = The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts compiled by Hendrik De Smet, University
of Leuven.
F-LOB = The Freiburg-LOB Corpus of British English compiled by Christian Mair, Albert-
Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. 1999.
FROWN = The Freiburg-Brown Corpus of American English compiled by Christian Mair, Al-
bert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. 1999.
LOB = The Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus compiled by Geoffrey Leech, Lancaster University,
Stig Johansson, University of Oslo & Knut Hofland, University of Bergen. 1976.

References

Babováková, Petra. 2005. The Complements of Prevent. A Master’s Thesis. Tampere: Tampere
University Press.
Bolinger, Dwight. 1968. “Entailment and the Meaning of Structures.” Glossa 2.119–127.
Dixon, Robert M.W. 1991. A New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles.
Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Dixon, Robert M.W. 1995. “Complement Clauses and Complementation Strategies”. Gram-
mar and Meaning: Essays in Honour of Sir John Lyons ed. by Frank R. Palmer, 175–220.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heyvaert, Liesbet, Hella Rogiers & Nadine Vermeylen. 2005. “Pronominal Determiners in
Gerundive Nominalization: A ‘Case’ Study”. English Studies 86.71–88.
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Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hundt, Marianne, Geoffrey Leech, Christian Mair & Nicholas Smith. 2009. Change in Con-
temporary English: A Grammatical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mair, Christian. 2002. “Three Changing Patterns of Verb Complementation in Late Modern
English: A Real-Time Study Based on Matching Text Corpora”. English Language and
Linguistics 6.105–131.
Mair, Christian. 2006. Twentieth Century English. History, Variation and Standardization.
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pecially Dutch, Students. Part 2, Section 2: The Parts of Speech: The Verb and the Particles.
Groningen: Noordhoff.
Rohdenburg, Günter. 1995. “On the Replacement of Finite Complement Clauses by Infinitives
in English”. English Studies 76:4.367–388.
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in English”. Cognitive Linguistics 7:2.149–182.
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2000. “The Complexity Principle as a Factor Determining Grammatical
Variation and Change in English”. Language Use, Language Acquisition and Language
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History: (Mostly) Empirical Studies in Honour of Rüdiger Zimmermann ed. by Ingo Plag &
Klaus Peter Schneider, 25–44. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
Rohdenburg, Günter. 2009. “Nominal Complements”. One Language, Two Grammars? Differ-
ences between British and American English ed. by Günter Rohdenburg & Julia Schlüter,
194–211. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rudanko, Juhani. 2002. Complements and Constructions. Corpus-based Studies on Sentential
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E. J. Brill.
 Prescription or practice?
Be/have variation with past participles of mutative
intransitive verbs in the letters of Joseph Priestley

Robin Straaijer*
Leiden University

This paper investigates variation in the usage of be and have with participles
of mutative intransitive verbs by the Late Modern English grammarian Joseph
Priestley. His usage, as exemplified by a corpus compiled from his private
manuscript letters, is compared with a reference corpus and with the “rules”
in his own grammar. The study shows that Priestley’s usage reflects the general
change for this linguistic feature from a predominant use of be to a greater
occurrence of have in the late eighteenth century, as discussed by Rydén
& Brorström (1987). It is also shown that when compared to his grammar,
Priestley’s usage upholds his reputation as an early descriptivist.

1. Introduction

This paper explores the usage of the auxiliaries be and have with the participles of
mutative intransitive verbs by Joseph Priestley (1733–1804)1, one of the most im-
portant eighteenth-century English grammarians. Mutative intransitive verbs
are verbs that denote some form of change in place or condition, such as the verbs
go or become respectively. In Old English, the original function of be or have with
a past participle was to denote a state. Originally in Old English, have was only
used with transitive verbs, but this was changing to include intransitive and

* The research for this paper was carried out as part of the research project “The Codifiers
and the English Language: Tracing the Norms of Standard English” at Leiden University,
sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). I would like to
thank Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, the editors of this volume and the two anonymous
reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
1. Life dates throughout this paper were taken from the online Oxford Dictionary of Na-
tional Biography (ODNB).
 Robin Straaijer

mutative verbs. During the Middle English period, be was already the regular
marker of perfectivity, without referring to aspect, but the use of have in the same
context was slowly rising (Rydén & Brorström 1987:  16–18). In Late Modern
English we also find an aspectual distinction between contexts where be is used
to indicate a state and have to indicate an action or process (Rydén & Brorström
1987: 26–27). In general though, be remained dominant throughout the seven-
teenth century.
The passages from Priestley’s letters given as examples (1) and (2) illustrate
the auxiliary variation in his own language with the mutative intransitive verb
begin (despite the fact that the tenses are not the same).
(1) The last time that I heard from Mr Belsham the war was not begun, but
apprehended. (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 27 August 1803)
(2) I shall, however, hardly undertake more than completing, in the best
manner that I can, what I have begun.
 (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 16 June 1798)
The change from be to have as the dominant auxiliary with mutative intransitive
verbs in Late Modern English has been extensively studied in a diachronic con-
text by Rydén & Brorström (1987), who found that the occurrence of have rose
from 20 percent around 1700 to 40 percent at the beginning of the nineteenth
century, and that have reached a “paradigmatic majority” in the first decades of
that century (Rydén & Brorström 1987: 196). In Present Day English, the auxil-
iary have is used almost exclusively with mutative intransitive verbs.
Priestley is an interesting subject for a study of this kind, since he is consid-
ered to be one of the few descriptivists in the predominantly prescriptive eight-
eenth century. The following remark by Leonard is illustrative of this: “Priestley
is undoubtedly the first writer in English, and apparently the only one in the
eighteenth century, to take a reasonably consistent view of usage” (1929:  142).
Similarly, Baugh & Cable say that of “all the grammarians of this period only
Priestley seems to have doubted the propriety of ex cathedra utterances and to
have been truly humble before the facts of usage” (2002:  278). Paradoxically,
Priestley is also counted among the founders of English prescriptivism
(Bryan 1923). Recent studies such as Hodson (2006) and Straaijer (2009) have
endeavoured to show a more balanced view to Priestley’s position with regard to
these two extremes of descriptivist and prescriptivist. In that light, this paper is
an addition to this. His choice of auxiliary with mutative intransitives compared
to his prescription – or rather description? – in his grammar will lead to more
nuance in Priestley’s reputation as a descriptivist.
The discussions involving participles in Late Modern English grammars ap-
pear to be more concerned with the passive voice of transitive verbs than with
 Be/have variation with mutative intransitive verbs 

anything regarding intransitives. An example is James Greenwood (1683?–1737),

in his Essay Towards a Practical English Grammar (1711): 2
The Participle which ends in ed is called the Passive Participle, because we having
in English no Passive Voice, that is, no distinct Ending to distinguish a Verb that
signifies doing, from a Verb that signifies suffering, we make up this Want by the
Help of the Verb Am, and this Participle, as, I am loved, I am burned (Greenwood
1711: 124)

It seems therefore as though the grammars do not say much about the choice of
be or have with mutative intransitives. However, the terminology of the time must
also be taken into account. The term “verbs neuter” that we find in these gram-
mars appears to be roughly equivalent to what we now call mutative intransitive
verbs, yet neuter verbs could also become transitive, so the match is not exactly
one-to-one. In his Short Introduction to English Grammar (1762), the grammari-
an Robert Lowth (1710–1787) defines the verb neuter in terms of transitivity:
the Verb Neuter is called Intransitive, because the effect is confined within the
Agent and doth not pass over to any Object (Lowth 1762: 45)

On the other hand, Greenwood defines the verb neuter in terms of active and
passive use:
The Signification of Verbs Absolute (or Neuter, which signify Action) is in a man-
ner Passive: and therefore Verbs Absolute and Passive are frequently us’d for each
other (Greenwood 1711: 155)

Rydén & Brorström also note Greenwood’s remarks (1987: 208–209) and take it as
a statement of his preference for have with these intransitives. James Buchanan
(fl. 1753–1773) seems to have pleaded for the use of be with mutative intransitives
in his British Grammar (1762) although we cannot rule out the possibility that he
was merely recording such usage:
Come, gone, run, set, risen, fallen, grown, withered, decayed, arrived, and such
like intransitive Verbs, which have frequently the passive Signs, am, art, &c. in-
stead of have in the Perfect Time; and was, wast, &c. instead of had in the Pluper-
fect; as, I am come, for I have come; I was come, for I had come, &c. (Buchanan
1762: 142)

In a footnote in the Short Introduction to English Grammar Lowth appears to

proscribe the use of be with mutative intransitives (see also Tieken-Boon van
Ostade 2006: 553):

2. Full-text editions used in this study were taken from Eighteenth Century Collections On-
line (ECCO).
 Robin Straaijer

I doubt very much of the propriety of the following examples: “The rules of our
holy Religion, from which we are infinitely swerved.” [...] “The whole obligation
of that law and covenant, which God made with the Jews, was also ceased.” [...]
“Whose number was now amounted to three hundred.” (Lowth 1762: 63)

It seems from this that Lowth was in favour of the use of have with these verbs,
which would be a progressive stance in light of the change in progress. However,
this footnote refers to the following passage in the main text in which Lowth
discusses neuter verbs.
The Neuter Verb is varied like the Active; but, having somewhat of the Nature
of the Passive form, retaining still the Neuter signification; chiefly in such Verbs
as signify some sort of motion, or change of place or condition: as, I am come;
I was gone; I am grown; I was fallen. The Verb am in this case precisely defines
the Time of the action or event, but does not change the nature of it; the Passive
form still expressing, not properly a Passion, but only a state or condition of Be-
ing. (Lowth 1762: 61–63)

It seems that by the “Passive form” Lowth means be + participle, which makes his
position on the subject less clear. According to Rydén & Brorström, Lowth’s pro-
scription may have made him a linguistic innovator for the change from be to
have “[s]ome late eighteenth and early nineteenth century grammarians, starting
with Lowth 1762, express doubts about the use of be with (certain uses of) some
verbs” (Rydén & Brorström 1987:  209). However, Tieken-Boon van Ostade
(2002: 163) hedges this position and intimates that more research on actual usage
is required in order to determine this conclusively:
Lowth may indeed have been the first to discuss the subject [...] but whether [...]
his grammar would also have acted as a linguistic innovator from the perspec-
tive of the social network model is a question that can only be answered when
the expansion of the [Corpus of Early English Correspondence] will have had its
effect (2002: 163)

Whatever his stance, Lowth shows an awareness of a difference in meaning be-

tween the uses of one auxiliary or the other with mutative intransitives. Priestley
mentions the subject for the first time in the second edition of his Rudiments of
English Grammar (1768), where he does his reputation as a descriptivist credit. He
makes no pronouncement of preference of neither be nor have, but argues that
though strictly speaking be may be more appropriate, the choice of auxiliary
should be determined by the context:
It seems not to have been determined by the English grammarians, whether the
passive participles of verbs neuter require the auxiliary am or have before them.
[...] I think we have an advantage in the choice of these forms of expression,
 Be/have variation with mutative intransitive verbs 

as it appears to me, that we use them to express different modifications of the

sense. When I say, I am fallen, I mean at this present instant; whereas, if I say, I
have fallen, my meaning comprehends, indeed, the foregoing; but has likewise,
a secret reference to some period of time past, as some time in this day, or in this
hour, I have fallen; implying some continuance of time, which the other form of
expression does not. (Priestley 1768: 127–128)

From the quotation above, it appears that Priestley advocates the use of be in a
context of immediacy or “recentness” and the use of have in a context of duration
or “pastness”. From this admittedly rather limited survey of Late Modern English
grammars it seems as if Lowth was indeed one of the first grammarians to note
the existence of a variation in choice of auxiliary with mutative verbs. Priestley
did not discuss it until the second edition of his grammar and we know that he
was familiar with Lowth’s, so it is possible that his remarks were at least partly
inspired by that grammar.
There are two main questions that this study will try to answer. What is the
position of Priestley’s usage in light of the shift from be to have with participles of
mutative intransitives? And how does Priestley’s practice compare to his pre-
scription? In other words, is Priestley’s usage conservative or progressive and
does he practise what he preaches?

2. Method

In order to discover Priestley’s actual usage, I shall look at the distribution of be

and have with intransitive mutatives in his personal correspondence. This study
uses autograph letters, rather than published letters, as primary data. Manuscripts
show the actual usage of their author more faithfully than edited correspondence,
because editing practices are often not transparent (see also Dury 2006). I tran-
scribed 419 of Priestley’s private letters and collected them as a machine-readable
idiolect corpus. At present, the Joseph Priestley Letter Corpus (JPLC) has a size of
197,794 words of running text and is still under construction.3 Using this corpus
I will examine whether there are diachronic or stylistic (in terms of register) var-
iations in the choice of auxiliary. I will also investigate the syntactic-semantic
environments in which variation with be and have occurs.
The JPLC covers the latter half of the eighteenth century, and I divided the
letters into three roughly equal periods, 1766–1779, 1780–1793 and 1794–1804.
Rather than using an arbitrary division into decades, I chose to use three periods

3. When completed the JPLC will contain 431 letters with a total size of 209,736 words
running text.
 Robin Straaijer

that were delimited by changes in Priestley’s personal situation,4 as such changes

may influence his usage. In order to analyze possible register variation, the cor-
pus was also divided into formal and informal letters. The level of formality of a
letter was based on the form of its salutation and end formula. For instance, an
end formula such as “yours sincerely” usually indicates an informal letter, while
the type “your humble servant” is usually indicative of a formal letter (see also
Tieken-Boon van Ostade 1999).
I will compare the findings for the JPLC to one part of the corpus of texts
compiled by Rydén & Brorström, namely the part that consists of letters from the
period 1750 to 1800. In order to be able to compare the results from my searches
with theirs, I use the same list of 161 mutative intransitive verbs (Rydén &
Brorström 1987: 228–230),5 which is too long to repeat here. No comparison be-
tween their corpus and the JPLC could be made for the verbs finish, meet, mis-
carry and (re)move because Rydén & Brorström give no data for these verbs for
the letters of the second half of the eighteenth century.
Another, more recent corpus-based investigation of the variation of be and
have with the participles of intransitive mutative verbs is Kytö (1997). It is a long
diachronic study covering the period from 1350 to 1990, which uses a large multi-
genre corpus of nearly 2.8 million words. Because it reports the sizes of the corpora
used, Kytö’s study would appear to be more suited for a comparison with this study
than Rydén & Brorström’s. However, the much longer period and the large number
of text types under investigation has the consequence that the data for the relatively
short period and the specific text type in which I am interested is too small to allow
a good comparison to be made. For the period from 1750 to 1800 Kytö’s corpus has
no more than a total of 30 occurrences of be and have for the genre of letters, which
is too small a number to perform a quantitative analysis of, for instance, syntactic-
semantic environments with any useful results. Hence, although the later study is
in some way more rigorously performed, I will be using the older study by Rydén &
Brorström as a reference corpus with which to compare my data.
It should be noted that, since the total size of Rydén & Brorström’s corpus is
not known, the statistical analysis of a comparison between the JPLC and Rydén
& Brorström’s corpus – or parts of it – has to be based on the total number of verb
forms rather than the total number of words in the corpus. Because of the low

4. In 1780 Priestley quit the employ of the Earl of Shelburne in Wiltshire and moved to
Birmingham, where he became a member of the Lunar Society. This had a considerable effect
on his social situation and his connections. In 1794 he emigrated to the United States of
America to escape religious and political persecution in Britain. The emigration itself and his
subsequent settlement in the back country of Philadelphia radically altered his personal and
social circumstances.
5. WordSmith Tools 5.0 (Scott 2008) was used for the concordance searches.
 Be/have variation with mutative intransitive verbs 

frequencies in the JPLC, the log-likelihood (G2) statistic rather than the chi-
squared (X 2) was used to calculate statistical significance.6

3. Results

The most frequently occurring mutative intransitive verbs in the JPLC are in in-
creasing order of frequency: return, miscarry, become, recover, go, arrive and come.
Each of these occurs at least ten times in the whole corpus. Table 1 shows their fre-
quencies in alphabetical order compared to Rydén & Brorström’s corpus. For easier
comparison with the corpus of Rydén & Brorström, I have normalized frequencies
of occurrences to percentages rather than to the number of occurrences per ten
thousand words because of the relatively low raw scores (given in parentheses).
As can be seen from Table 1, the use of have in the JPLC in general is close to
that of Rydén & Brorström’s letters for the second half of the eighteenth century
(1987: 232). There is no statistically significant difference between these two per-
centages (39 percent in the JPLC versus 33 percent in Rydén & Brorström) which
suggests that in general Priestley’s usage was neither conservative nor very
progressive.
Diachronic variation can be indicative of a conscious effort by the author to
change his usage, driven by changing contemporary norms for instance. There is
only a little evidence for diachronic variation in this feature within the JPLC.
Between the second and the third period there is a weakly significant increase in

Table 1.  Be/have variation with mutative intransitive verbs in the JPLC compared to
Rydén & Brorström (1987)

verb JPLC R & B 1987

be have be have

arrive 89% (31)   11% (4) 85% (68) 15% (12)

become 83% (10)   17% (2) 75% (12) 25% (4)
come 47% (21)   53% (25) 72% (93) 28% (37)
go 57% (13)   43% (10) 77% (169) 23% (50)
miscarry   0% (0) 100% (12) – – – –
recover 88% (14)   13% (2) 81% (30) 19% (7)
return 83% (10)   17% (2) 71% (27) 29% (11)
all verbs 61% (187)   39% (120) 67% (544) 33% (270)

6. The difference was considered not statistically significant when a G2-score corresponded
to p > 0.05, weakly significant when 0.01 < p < 0.05, significant when 0.001 < p < 0.01, and
highly significant when p < 0.001.
 Robin Straaijer

the use of have in general, which is consistent with the direction of the change in
the English language. In the formal register, be and have both occur equally often,
while the distribution between be and have within the informal register is close to
that of the entire corpus (60 percent be and 40 percent have). However, the differ-
ence between the two registers is not statistically significant. Since both time and
register are not significant variables, I have not given a tabular view of them and
they will not be included in the following discussion.
Rydén & Brorström mention several syntactic-semantic contexts that heavily
promote the use of have: past perfect, perfect infinitive, ing-constructions, and
conditional, concessive, optative, iterative, durative and negative contexts (Rydén
& Brorström 1987: 184–193). It appears that Priestley’s usage is governed by sim-
pler criteria, since only contexts of ‘pastness’ and conditional contexts signifi-
cantly favour the use of have. Conversely, only contexts of ‘recentness’ and the
present perfect significantly favour the use of be. These contexts of ‘pastness’ and
‘recentness’ are understood as being signalled primarily by the use of temporal
adverbials denoting past or present. Examples of this are given in the passage
from Priestley’s letters quoted in the following discussion.

4. Discussion

In this section I will discuss the most frequently occurring mutative intransitive
verbs in the JPLC in more detail. In order to be able to say anything meaningful
about the distribution of be and have with these verbs, I will limit myself to those
verbs which occur at least ten times in the whole corpus, as shown in Table 1. I
will briefly discuss the semantic and/or syntactic constraints of the construction
of these verbs’ participles with the auxiliaries be and have. I will discuss these
verbs in increasing order of frequency: return, miscarry, become, recover, go, ar-
rive and come. As have is the rising variant in the paradigm, I will discuss them
primarily in relation to this auxiliary.

4.1 Return

There is no significant difference in the use of either auxiliary with return be-
tween the JPLC and Rydén & Brorström. Priestley appears to favour have when
the sense is decidedly past, as indicated by “the day before yesterday” in (3), al-
though this could not be verified statistically.
(3) the day before yesterday, she coughing violently at ten times, in conse-
quence of taking something into the wind pipe, she burst a blood vessel
 Be/have variation with mutative intransitive verbs 

and continued to spit blood perhaps two hours, but in no great quantity,
and it has not returned since (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 2 July 1790)
In a context of recentness, i.e. when a relatively recent event is referred to, as in
(4), Priestley has a significant preference for be as an auxiliary.
(4) William is just returned to us from Boston, and better than I expected.
 (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 12 July 1795)

4.2 Miscarry

Priestley uses miscarry only with the sense of letters going missing or being deliv-
ered to the wrong place and indeed half of the occurrences of miscarry refer ex-
plicitly to letters, of which (5) and (6) are typical examples. The preference for the
use of have as the auxiliary with miscarry is highly significant. Indeed, the use of
be with this verb is not attested at all in the JPLC.
(5) As several of Mr Lindsay’s letters to me have miscarried, I fear it may be
the same with mine to you, or yours to me.
 (letter to John Wilkinson, 30 November 1797)
(6) Mrs Rayner’s letter must have miscarried, as I have never received it.
 (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 23 December 1798)
Note that according to Rydén & Brorström the use of have is dominant in this
construction from the time it emerged around 1600 (1987: 132). The possible al-
ternative interpretation of this construction as a transitive use would promote the
use of be. The fact that have is nevertheless preferred is indicative of the general
trend towards the use of this auxiliary. In the JPLC there are no other syntactic-
semantic environments in which miscarry occurs.

4.3 Become

There is no significant difference in the use of either auxiliary with become be-
tween the JPLC and Rydén & Brorström. Priestley uses have as the auxiliary when
the sense is more clearly past, as in (7).
(7) I think I told you that the air which I extracted from nitre, and which
was, at first, wholesome and good, had, in the course of a year, become
highly noxious. (letter to Richard Price, 26 November 1772)
The only two occurrences of have with become are of this type. When the sense is
obviously recent or present, as in example (8), Priestley has a significant prefer-
ence for the auxiliary be.
 Robin Straaijer

(8) I have just found, to my great surprise, that a quantity of air, which I got
about a year ago from salt petre, and which was then quite wholesome,
and in which candle burned perfectly well, is now become in the highest
degree noxious. (letter to Richard Price, 11 November 1772)
The tendency towards “free variation” between be and have that Rydén &
Brorström observe towards the end of the eighteenth century (Rydén & Brorström
1987: 50) is not corroborated in Priestley’s letters.

4.4 Recover

The distribution between be and have with recover in Rydén & Brorström is simi-
lar to that in the JPLC, where there is a significant general preference for be. As
shown in (9) and (10), Priestley uses both be and have with recover in the sense of
‘to improve in health’.
(9) The pope has recovered contrary to our expectations and wishes.
 (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 27 August 1803)
(10) I am now returned from Philadelphia, and tho I had a long relapse into a
state of very indifferent health after I informed Mr Lindsey that I was
perfectly recovered, I am now again much better than I lately expected I
ever should be (letter to Thomas Belsham, 2 April 1803)
In contexts of recentness there is a significant preference for be, as exemplified by (11).
Indeed, there is only evidence of the use of be as the auxiliary in Priestley’s letters.
(11) Mr Russell, who is just recovered from a feverish complaint that has held
him a long time, is affected more than I am.
 (letter to John Wilkinson, 4 June 1793)
In a context of “regular” definite pastness, as in (12), have seems preferred, though
the scores were too low to support this statistically.
(12) He had had an ague, which was very generally prevalent in this country, the
last summer, but had recovered very well, and even a second time after a re-
lapse; but after those he had frequent colds and indispositions, which affected
his stomach and bowels. (letter to John Wilkinson, 17 December 1795)

4.5 Go

Priestley does not generally favour either be or have with go, whilst he uses have
significantly more and be significantly less than in the reference corpus. Accord-
ing to Rydén & Brorström, have occurs mostly with go in conditional and iterative/
 Be/have variation with mutative intransitive verbs 

durative contexts (1987: 105). In the case of conditional contexts the results from
the JPLC would seem to agree, as the largest proportion of uses of have are in a
conditional context, such as in (13).
(13) If I had gone on a mistake of your [intention], it would have been kind to
have [???] apprized me of it after the first, or second time of drawing, be-
fore I had involved myself so far as I have done.
 (letter to John Wilkinson 3 November 1796)
However, in the other six instances in which Priestley uses have with this verb, it
is not in iterative/durative contexts, but rather in contexts in which there is a
definite sense of pastness and/or completion. For Priestley, the use of have ap-
pears to signal the perfective better than be, as in (14):
(14) Yourself and Mrs Lindsey as well as some others, have gone far beyond
you[r] proportion. (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 12 July 1795)
Rydén & Brorström found that be is used normally in the go + to-infinitive con-
struction (1987: 105), as in example (15). This is also the case in the JPLC, where
these constructions show a significant preference for be.
(15) In the winter we were very fortunate in having a man and his wife with
us from England, who are now gone to settle on a farm.
 (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 12 July 1795)
As expected, this is also a context of recentness, as shown by the occurrence of
now in example (15). The go + to-infinitive construction does not occur with have
as its auxiliary.

4.6 Arrive

There is no significant difference in the use of either auxiliary with arrive be-
tween the JPLC and Rydén & Brorström. In general, Priestley strongly favours the
use of be, the greater occurrence of which is highly significant. This corroborates
Rydén & Brorström’s findings that “[i]n the eighteenth century be is still heavily
predominant” (1987:  44). The frequently recurring construction arrive + locP/
dirP (locative or directional prepositional phrase) occurs exclusively with be. This
type, shown in (16), is the most frequent construction with arrive in the JPLC.
(16) I write to inform you that I and my wife are just safely arrived at Sandy
Hook, and expect to be at New York before Midnight.
 (letter to John Vaughan, 3 June 1794)
 Robin Straaijer

There are no occurrences of be + arrive +temP (temporal prepositional phrase) in

the JPLC. Rather, temporal relations are mostly conveyed by adverbials of time.
Have does not occur frequently enough with arrive in any one context to say any-
thing meaningful about its distribution, although there might be a preference for
have in negative contexts.

4.7 Come

In general, Priestley uses be significantly less and have significantly more with
come than is found in Rydén & Brorström. These authors report that be is the
dominant alternative (1987: 62). However, this is not reflected in the JPLC, where
there is no significant preference for either auxiliary. Rydén & Brorström also
found that be predominates in negative contexts (1987: 62). Again, this is not re-
flected in the JPLC, where there is no significant difference between the use of be
and have, each occurring about equally often. Rydén & Brorström note a pre-
dominance of be in the collocation come home (1987: 62–63). The JPLC has eight
instances of the semantically related collocation come hither, of which (17) is the
only attestation with be.
(17) But being come hither, and having, at a great risk and expence, brought
my library and Apparatus hither, tho that scheme has failed, I cannot
remove any more. (letter to John Adams, 13 November 1794)
However, it should be noted that the collocation come hither in the sense of arrive,
as illustrated in (18), seems more strongly perfective than come and thus would
promote the use of have.
(18) I would send you one of me, taken since I have come hither, but I am so
different from what I was, chiefly in consequence of wearing my hair, that
you would hardly know me. (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 29 May 1797)
Indeed, the preference of have in this construction (come hither) in the JPLC is
weakly significant. Incidentally, this is also an example of the construction come
+ locP/dirP, which is the single most frequently occurring construction with come
in the JPLC. The preference for the use of have in this construction is weakly sig-
nificant. An example of this construction with be is given in (19).
(19) Almost all the ships expected to arrive before winter are come in.
 (letter to Theophilus Lindsey, 7 November 1801)
To find a broader pattern of auxiliary selection, I investigated Priestley’s use of be
and have across all mutative intransitive verbs in the following contexts: negative,
conditional, pastness, recentness, present perfect and V + locP/dirP. There are
 Be/have variation with mutative intransitive verbs 

significant differences between the use of be and have in the conditional, pastness
and recentness contexts, and in the present perfect. In conditional contexts and
in contexts denoting pastness, have is used significantly more often, whilst be is
used more often in contexts denoting recentness and in the present perfect. Some
of these results corroborate the findings of the earlier studies. Both Rydén &
Brorström, and Kytö find a greater use of have in conditional contexts (Rydén &
Brorström 1987: 186; Kytö 1997: 58). Kytö reports more be in the present perfect,
which also indicates recentness, and more have in the past perfect, which indi-
cates pastness (Kytö 1997: 52–53). Rydén & Brorström find a preponderance of be
in the past perfect as well as in the present perfect (1987: 63), but this is not ob-
served in the JPLC, which has only two instances of the past perfect construction,
one with be and one with have.

5. Conclusions

Rydén & Brorström note that it is often difficult to distinguish between the func-
tion of be + past participle as copula + adjective and that of perfective auxiliary
with intransitive verb (1987: 24, 27), which they illustrate as follows:
The functional range of be + PP covers [...] be doing duty as (1) copula (with
adjectival statal PP): he is changed ‘he is different’ (2) perfective Aux, i.e. tense
marker (with intransitive verbs): he is changed ‘he has become different’ (Rydén
& Brorström 1987: 24)

This problematic ambiguity might also have affected actual usage and thus partly
account for the greater use of be in contexts of recentness, though it has no effect
on the use of have in contexts of pastness.
Compared to the general be/have distribution in Rydén & Brorström’s corpus
of letters between 1750 to 1800 (Rydén & Brorström 1987: 196) Priestley’s usage is
neither conservative nor progressive. His usage is illustrative of the general usage
of the educated, literate middle class from which he came, and from which Rydén
& Brorström derive their data (1987: 215–216). As shown in the quotation in the
introduction to this paper, Priestley gives no prescription for any standard usage
of either be or have because according to him it depends on the context which
auxiliary is more appropriate with the main verb in question. This is indeed re-
flected in his own usage in his letters: Priestley generally uses have when there is
a more definite sense of pastness or completion and be when this is less so. This
corresponds to what he says in his grammar, and can mean one of two things.
Either Priestley “cleaned up” his usage after writing his grammar or he described
his own usage in his grammar, thus in essence being his own informant
 Robin Straaijer

considering matters of usage and grammaticality. The first option is possible since
97  percent of the letters (corresponding to 94  percent of the total number of
words) in the JPLC date from after 1768, the year Priestley published the second
edition of his grammar. However, I am greatly inclined to say that the latter is the
case, since Priestley’s usage seems too consistent to have been influenced much by
writing his grammar, rather the opposite in fact.
We can therefore conclude that with regard to auxiliary option with mutative
intransitive verbs, Priestley lives up to his reputation as a descriptivist, and that
his description reflects his own usage.

References

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Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Buchanan, James. 1762. The British Grammar: Or, an Essay, in Four Parts, Towards Speaking
and Writing the English Language Grammatically, and Inditing Elegantly. London: print-
ed for A. Millar.
Bryan, William F. 1923. “Notes on the Founders of Prescriptive English Grammar”. Manly An-
niversary Studies in Language and Literature. Chicago: Chicago University Press. 383–93.
Dury, Richard. 2006. “A Corpus of Nineteenth-Century Business Correspondence: Method-
ology of Transcription”. Business and Official Correspondence: Historical Investigations
ed. by Marina Dossena & Susan M. Fitzmaurice, 193–205. Bern: Peter Lang.
ECCO = Eighteenth Century Collections Online. Gale Group.
<http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/ECCO>.
Greenwood, James. 1711. An Essay Towards a Practical English Grammar. London: printed by R.
Tookey, and sold by S. Keeble, J. Lawrence, J. Bowyer, R. and I. Bonwick, and R. Halsey.
Harris, James H. 1751. Hermes: or, a Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Language and Universal
Grammar. London: printed by H. Woodfall, for J. Nourse, and P. Vaillant.
Hodson, Jane. 2006. “The Problem of Joseph Priestley’s (1733–1804) Descriptivism”. Historio-
graphia Linguistica: International Journal for the History of the Language Sciences 33.57–84.
Kytö, Merja. 1997. “Be/have + Past Participle: The Choice of the Auxiliary with Intransitives
from Late Middle to Modern English”. English in Transition: Corpus-based Studies in
Linguistic Variation and Genre Styles ed. by Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö & Kirsi
Heikkonen, 17–85. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Leonard, Sterling Andrus. 1929. The Doctrine of Correctness in English Usage, 1700–1800.
Madison, Wis.: Wisconsin University Press.
Lowth, Robert. 1762. A Short Introduction to English Grammar. London: printed by J. Hughs;
for A. Millar; and R. and J. Dodsley.
ODNB = Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online. <http://www.oxforddnb.com>.
Priestley, Joseph. 1761. The Rudiments of English Grammar; Adapted to the Use of Schools.
With Observations on Style. London: printed for R. Griffiths.
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Priestley, Joseph. 1768. The Rudiments of English Grammar, Adapted to the Use of Schools;
With Notes and Observations, for the Use of Those Who Have Made Some Proficiency in
the Language. London: printed for T. Becket and P.A. De Hondt, and J. Johnson.
Rydén, Mats & Sverker Brorström. 1987. The BE/HAVE Variation with Intransitives in English:
with Special Reference to the Late Modern Period. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell.
Scott, Mike. 2008. WordSmith Tools 5.0. <http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/>.
Straaijer, Robin. 2009. “Deontic and Epistemic Modals as Indicators of Prescriptive and De-
scriptive Language in the Grammars by Joseph Priestley and Robert Lowth”. Current Is-
sues in Late Modern English ed. by Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade & Wim van der Wurff,
57–88. Bern: Peter Lang.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid. 1999. “Of Formulas and Friends: Expressions of Politeness
in John Gay’s Letters”. Thinking English Grammar ed. by Guy A.J. Tops, Betty Devriendt
& Steven Geukens, 99–112. Leuven: Peeters.
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respondence”. Variation Past and Present: VARIENG Studies on English for Terttu
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Rissanen, 161–72. Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
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Los, 539–557. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell.
 On the idiomatization
of “give + O + to” constructions

Minoji Akimoto*
Aoyama Gakuin University

This paper discusses the idiomatization process of the “give + O + to”

construction (e.g. give rise to and give way to). Investigation of this construction
from Middle English to Present-Day English based on various corpora shows
that, in the process of change of “give + indirect object + direct object” to “give
+ O + to”, the latter construction has strengthened its idiomatic nature leading
to the development of many idioms based on this construction in Present-
Day English. The function of eventive objects without suffixes (e.g. credit and
rise) as direct objects is essential in this process of idiomatization. Of various
factors contributing to the idiom formation of the “give + O + to” construction,
weakening of nouniness of the direct object, construction and frequency, and
French influence play the most important roles.

1. Introduction

“Give + O + to” idioms such as give birth to, give occasion to or give rise to1 are abun-
dant in Present-Day English. In Present-Day English, the verb give takes two types of
construction, that is either “give + indirect object (Oi) + direct object (Od)” or “give +
object (O) + to” (Quirk et al. 1985: 1208).2 Most idioms belong to the latter type. In
earlier English, however, the “give + Oi + Od” construction was more common

* I am grateful to Laurel Brinton, Ursula Lenker, Judith Huber and the anonymous referees
for helpful comments and suggestions on earlier versions of this paper. Thanks are also due to
Merja Kytö for enabling me to make use of the ARCHER Corpus.
1. For illustration, I give some frequent examples of the “give + O + to” construction in the
BNC: give rise to (1,856), give way to (817), give birth to (414), give credence to (58), give voice to
(55), give the lie to (47), give vent to (45), and give place to (32).
2. After Quirk et al. (1985: 1208), I shall represent “give + indirect object + direct object” as
“give + Oi + Od”, but in the case of “give + O + to”, although O is here a direct object, I shall
represent it as neutral.
 Minoji Akimoto

(see Denison 1993:  107; Visser 1970:  621; Allen 2006 and McFadden 2006). From
around the Middle English period, the “give + O + to” construction began to be fre-
quent, and hence productive. Most previous discussions have considered these chang-
es to be grammatical change, that is, a result of the loss of the case endings, without
any reference to the further development of the “give + O + to” construction with idi-
omatic nature. I shall investigate some factors which have led to the development of
idiomatic “give + O + to” patterns. This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, I
will survey the state of the “give + O + to” construction before Middle English; this
survey is based on the Middle English Dictionary (MED). In Section 3, I will first de-
scribe “give”‑constructions from Middle English to Present-Day English, and then
discuss the idiomatization process of the “give + O + to” construction, mainly based
on data from the OED, the Helsinki Corpus, ARCHER and FLOB. In Section 4, I will
discuss some factors contributing to the idiomatization of this construction.

2. A general survey of the “give + O + to” construction before Middle English

Quirk & Wrenn (1957: 64–65) say: “In late OE, tō came to be used with the indi-
rect object just as in Mod.E; thus gyfan (tō) ænig ‘give (to) anyone’”.3 Visser
(1970: 621–635) shows that in Old English the indirect object + direct object con-
struction is common, the indirect object being expressed in the dative and the
direct object in the accusative case. He further states that the indirect object re-
fers to a person and the direct object to a thing.
As regards Middle English, Kellner (1957:  271) states: “[...] throughout the
thirteenth century, to replacing the dative is far from being generally accepted”.
Denison (1993: 105–107) describes the process of change of benefactives marked
with the dative to those marked with to which, he says, became common begin-
ning in the fourteenth century.
From these quotations, it appears that the Middle English period can be con-
sidered as the first stage of the “give + O + to” construction. Therefore, I shall look
into the “give + O + to” patterns in the Middle English Dictionary (MED).
In the MED (s.v. yēven), twenty-seven meanings of give are identified. In the
following, I will give some examples of subdivided meanings. The numbers in
parentheses correspond to those of the entry meanings in the MED.
(1) ‘to give (sth.) gratuitously and unconditionally’ (1a.(b))
A frend Šeueþ a present to anoþir. (?a1425 Orch. Syon 159/35)
‘A friend gives a present to another.’

3. Mitchell (1985: 512‑513), however, casts doubt on the existence of giefan to ænigum.

 Idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 

(2) ‘furnish’ (1d.(g))

Þis lampe Šefth gret lyŠt To euery creature abouŠt hit dwellynge.
 (c1450 St. Editha 958)
‘This lamp gives a great light to every creature dwelling about it’
(3) ‘give (credence to sb. or sth.)’ (8.(a))
They yauen ful credence Vn to hir word. (c1380 Chaucer CT. SN. G.415)
‘They gave full credence to her word.’
(4) ‘issue’ (13.(d))
You shall ... geve warninge to the master and wardens therof.
 (1463–4 Doc. in Welch Hist. Pewterers Lond. 31)
‘You shall ... give warning of it to the master and wardens.’
(5) ‘bring life’ (9a.(e))
He þat Šeueþ liif to þe tre ond to þe braunchis is þe rote.
 (?a1425 Orch. Syon 37/23)
‘He that gives life to the tree and to the branches is the root.’
(6) ‘to do (battle)’ (14.(b))
He hath gyven bataill to the same kyng, and putt hym to flight.
 (a1475 Fortescue Gov. E. 129)
‘He has given battle to the same king and put him to flight.’
(7) ‘to give a hearing (to someone’s request)’ (20.(b))
Še list ... to Ševen audience To my request.(c1425 (a1420) Lydg. TB 1.1418)
‘You like [...] to pay attention to my request.’
(8) ‘give in’ (21b.(a))
The chiefteynes han ... yove way to hire enemyes & made the peopil pray
to him. (a1500 (1413) Pilgr. Soul 4.32. 78b)
‘The chieftains have given way to their enemies and made the people pray
to them.’

3. Analysis of “give + O + to” constructions

3.1 Rivalry among the give constructions

I would now like to trace the state of “give + Oi + Od”, “give + O + to” and other
constructions4 from Middle English to Present-Day English periods on the basis
of the Helsinki Corpus (hereafter HC), the ARCHER Corpus (hereafter AC) and

4. By other constructions I mean all constructions with give except “give + Oi + Od” and
“give + O + to” constructions, such as give a view and give away.
 Minoji Akimoto

the FLOB Corpus.5 Note that the frequencies given below differ in terms of the size
of the corpora, and that only the percentages can reflect some trends of change.
The following are some examples of each pattern given above. The examples
of “give + Oi + Od” will be cited in the later discussion.

Table 1.  Percentages of three categories of “give” constructions from Middle English to
Present-Day English

give + Oi + Od give + O + to Others6 total

ME I   33 (62%)    0 (0%)   20 (37%)    53

II   41 (46%)   13 (14%)   35 (39%)    89
III   39 (26%)   25 (16%)   84 (57%)   148
IV   58 (33%)   18 (10%)   96 (56%)   172
EModE I   28 (26%)   11 (10%)   69 (63%)   108
II   53 (35%)   11   (7%)   85 (57%)   149
III 136 (42%)   29   (9%) 155 (48%)   320
LModE I 168 (49%)   43 (12%) 128 (37%)   339
II 397 (39%) 138 (13%) 468 (46%) 1003
III 346 (31%) 135 (12%) 618 (56%) 1099
IV 286 (33%) 128 (14%) 450 (52%)   864
PDE 422 (33%) 138 (10%) 713 (56%) 1273

(9) Examples with “give + O + to”:

a. ... or Place for Devotion, with Images, which gave occasion to Doubt
if ever for that End ... (1698 A New Account of East India) [HC]

5. The Helsinki Corpus is divided into the following periods: ME I (1150–1250, 113,010 words),
ME II (1250–1350, 97,480 words), ME III (1350–1420, 184,230 words), ME IV (1420–1500,
213,850 words), EModE I (1500–1570, 190,160 words), EModE II (1570–1640, 189,800 words),
EModE III (1640–1710, 171,040 words). The ARCHER Corpus covers seven subperiods of 50
years, spanning the time between 1650 and 1990. Each 50-year subcorpus includes roughly
20,000 words per register, containing ten texts of approximately 2,000 words each. The entire
corpus totals some 1,700,000 words. Approximately two-thirds of the corpus are British English,
and the one-third is American English. The FLOB Corpus (short for Freiburg version of the Lan-
caster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus) contains 500 samples of approximately 2,000 words each, totalling
approximately one million words. As regards the Helsinki Corpus and the ARCHER Corpus,
see Kytö (1996) and Biber at al. (1994) respectively. For practical reasons, I chose between 10%
and 20% of the many examples of the “give + O + to” construction in each of these corpora.
6. The high frequency of this category includes the non-finite forms of give, its intransitive
uses, and its phrasal verb uses, such as give up and give away. Particularly, the development of
phrasal verbs since Late Modern English deserves attention. Of the give phrasal verbs in
Present-Day English (84 examples), give up (37) is the most frequent.
 Idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 

b. I endeavour to regulate my conduct so as to avoid giving offence to

any man ... (1778 reev. f3) [AC]
c. Next morning the girl was taken with labour, and soon gave birth to
a dead child ... (1864 mack. m6) [AC]
(10) Other examples:
a. ... and no man came yn to gyve evydence agaynste me. (1553 The
Autobiography of Thomas) [HC]
b. You have not heard a quantum sufficit to render you competent to
give a decisive opinion; besides you hear with passion and prejudice.
(1789 lows. d4) [AC]
c. Adam gave up making her understand his scruples of grammar, at
least until she should recover from the idiocy of her honeymoon.
(1878 eggl. F7) [AC]
The following points are worth making:
1. While the “give + O + to” construction is not attested in the ME I period
(1150–1250), this construction has been steady from ME II up to the present.
2. In the “give + Oi + Od” construction, more than two thirds of Oi are pronouns.
In Table 1, Ois include both nominal and pronominal objects. The second point
is demonstrated in Table 2, which shows the frequency of non-pronominal Ois
among Ois in the “give + Oi + Od” construction.

Table 2.  Number of attestations of non-pronominal Ois

give + Oi + Od total

ME I    7 (21%)   33
II    4   (9%)   41
III   13 (33%)   39
IV    4   (6%)   58
EModE I    5 (17%)   28
II    7 (13%)   53
III   20 (14%) 136
LModE I   35 (20%) 168
II   68 (17%) 397
III   86 (24%) 346
IV   77 (26%) 286
PDE 167 (39%) 422

Table 2 illustrates the predominance of pronominal indirect objects. This tendency,

which corresponds to McFadden’s (2006: 119) research on the word order in Middle
English, has continued from Early Middle English to Present-Day English.
 Minoji Akimoto

3.2 The “give + O + to” construction

The following tables 3 and 4 show the breakdown of objects in the “give + O + to”
construction; divisions are made between eventive objects and other nouns. The
reason for this division of nouns is that the eventive object in combination with
give tends to be idiomaticized because of its abstract nature (see below, Section 4),
while the non-eventive object noun usually does not constitute an idiom.

Table 3.  Percentages of eventive and other object nouns

Eventive object other noun total

ME I  0   (0%)  0   (0%)    0
II  5 (38%)  8 (61%)   13
III  7 (28%) 18 (72%)   25
IV  6 (33%) 12 (66%)   18
EModE I  8 (72%)  3 (27%)   11
II  5 (45%)  6 (54%)   11
III 19 (65%) 10 (34%)   29
LModE I 28 (68%) 13 (31%)   41
II 55 (39%) 83 (60%) 138
III 65 (48%) 70 (51%) 135
IV 55 (42%) 73 (57%) 128
PDE 88 (73%) 32 (26%) 120

Table 4.  Numbers of eventive objects with/without suffixes

suffix no suffix total

ME I  0  0  0
II  1  4  5
III  2  5  7
IV  3  3  6
EModE I  3  5  8
II  2  3  5
III  4 15 19
LModE I  7 21 28
II 18 37 55
III 22 43 65
IV 19 36 55
PDE 33 55 88
 Idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 

Quirk et al. (1985: 750–752) mention an eventive object, explaining that it is “se-

mantically an extension of the verb and bears the major part of the meaning”
(750). They distinguish three types: 1) a noun which has the same form as a verb
(e.g. fight), 2) a suffixed noun (e.g. argue vs. argument), and 3) a noun not derived
from a verb but semantically equivalent to the verb (e.g. effort). Thus, function-
ally, deverbal nouns which stem from their corresponding verbs with or without
suffixes are included in the category of eventive objects.
(11) Examples with eventive objects with suffix:
a. This mayster gevyth commaundementes to the childe in his growyn-
ge age. (d. 1497 In Die Innocencium) [HC]
‘This master gives commandments to the child in his growing age.’
b. ... if my Lady would give Entertainment to one (ˆHicksˆ), and an-
other Person ... (d. 1685 The Trial of Lady Alice Lisle) [HC]
c. ... since he hath submitted to the King in everything, and given all
satisfaction to the Court that he was able. (1654 mer 2. n1) [AC]
d. In the face of the threat to Transylvania, no one gave much thought
to the southern Dobrudja ... (1962 mann. f9) [AC]
(12) Examples with eventive objects without suffix
a. ... many oþer seyntys þat ben in Hevyn, whech Ševyn gret worshep to
me for þe grace þat ... (a1438 Margery Kempe) [HC]
‘... many other saints who are in heaven, who give great worship to me
for the grace that ...’
b. what arte thou that we maye geve an answer to them that sent vs ...(d.
1534 The New Testament) [HC]
c. The federal constitution does not affect the right of the state: for
though it gives effect to the treaty of peace ... (1795 para. 14) [AC]
d. ‘Well, would you mind confiding to me the circumstance that gave
rise to the reflection?’ (1895 mach. f6) [AC]
e. In addition, the presence of a family history gave a clue to the possi-
bility that ... (1985 wier. m0) [AC]
From the tables given above, we see a steady increase of deverbal nouns from the
Early Modern English period onward, although the increase is by no means
straight, with ups and downs depending on the centuries, possibly because of
different styles and registers of each century. Since the LModE period, those
nouns without suffixes, such as vent, way and rise have become frequent, which
sets the stage for the idiomatic nature of the “give + O + to” construction. The
nouns forming the more idiomatic phrases are those without suffixes. On the
other hand, those nouns with suffixes tend not to become idiomaticized possibly
 Minoji Akimoto

because they suggest more nouniness or heavy nouns whose property is incom-
patible with their idiomatic nature7 (for details, see Section 4).
A further related issue partly stemming from the assumption that the “give +
O + to” pattern forms an idiomatic construction is raised by Hudson’s (1992: 262)
finding that the Od is part of an idiom, but the Oi rarely is. Usually the indirect
object is an animate object, which means that an idiom does not consist of “verb
+ animate object”. If this is true, it can be said that a shift from the “give + Oi +
Od” construction to the “give + O + to” construction in English has paved the
way for the formation and development of give idioms based on the “give +
O(inanimate) + to” construction. That is, despite the order of “give + Oi + Od”, an
idiom consists of “give + Od”8, and therefore the Od must be closely related to the
verb. In this respect, it can be said that the “give + O + to” construction, once es-
tablished, has become a productive basis for the formation of idioms.9

4. Some factors contributing to the idiomatization

of the “give + O + to” construction

Semantically, idiomatization is a process whereby meaning becomes more opaque,

and syntactically, the phrase unity becomes more fixed than before. One character-
istic of idiomatization is the gradual abstractness of nouns whose conceptualization
is more or less equivalent to that of decrease in nouniness. In view of these semantic
and syntactic properties, the idiomatic patterns, such as give birth to and give rise to,
should be kept apart from idioms such as kick the bucket and shoot the breeze.
Nunberg et al. (1994), for instance, distinguish “idiomatically combining expres-
sions”, whose meanings are distributed among their parts, from “idiomatic phras-
es”, which do not contribute their meanings to their components. The idiomatic give
construction under discussion, such as give birth to and give vent to, compared with
such an idiom as kick the bucket, shows more transparency in meaning, but syntac-
tically fixed structure, i.e. *Rise should be given to the rumour, although there are
degrees of fixedness. In this respect, the “give + O + to” construction is closer to the
idiomatically combining expression type. These two types of idiom share the

7. Birth, for instance, is a deverbal noun, but the form does not go against this statement.
The essential point concerns the length (or heaviness) of the noun after the suffix is added.
8. See Tomlin (1986:  89–91) and Nunberg et al. (1994:  525–527). Larson (1988:  339–341)
holds a different opinion of this structure.
9. The placement of the object immediately after the verb also agrees with what Haiman
(1983: 782–783) calls ‘iconic motivation’; e.g. the linguistic distance between expressions cor-
responds to the conceptual distance between them.
 Idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 

abstractness of nouns and syntactic restraints, differing in their transparency. The

following are some representative examples which are given chronologically.
(13) ...wherefore you gave ear to my Lord (ˆCobhamˆ) for receiving Pensions
... (1603 The Trial of Sir Walter Raleigh) [HC]
(14) What ... dangerous opinions soever their phancies might give birth to.
(1662 Glanvill Lux Orient. Pref. 5) [OED]
(15) O every thing, Madam, is to give way to Business ... (1697 Relapse) [HC]
(16) ... wou’d you give the lye to Authority? (1723 bull. d2) [AC]
(17) It has given rise to an infinite deal of whimsical theory. (1756 Burke Subl.
& Beaut. III.xi (1759) 208) [OED]
The following factors are some of those which seem to contribute to the forma-
tion of the idiomatic “give + O + to” construction.

4.1 Weakening of Nouniness

I have borrowed the term “nouniness” from Ross (1973: 141), who advocates the
nouniness squish as follows: that > for to > Q > Acc Ing > Poss Ing > Noun. He
refers to degrees of nouniness in Present-Day English. I have put his idea into the
concrete/abstract, suffixed/non-suffixed cast in the idiomatization process of the
“give + O + to” construction.
Together with the semantic expansion of give and to, and frequency of use of
the construction as a whole, decrease in the nouniness of the object noun is im-
portant for idiom formation. For an expression to become idiomaticized, there is
a process which it must undergo, namely a shift from concreteness to abstract-
ness. This shift is observed in the formal and grammatical properties of nouns. At
first, a noun behaves as a concrete noun in its combination with give, but in the
process of idiomatization, the noun gradually loses its nominal properties, in-
cluding loss of the articles and plurality, or rejection of modification. When the
noun has completely lost its nominal nature, and has been embedded into the
“give + O + to” construction it begins to have idiomatic properties. I shall give
some examples in which this process takes place.
Before the idiom give voice to had been established, voice appeared under
various nouny forms, as in
(18) He that should give his voice unto Christ ... (1660 Hammond Wks. IV.510
(R.)) [possessive pronoun] – [OED]
(19) The Tantivy of wild pigeons, flying by twos and threes athwart my view.
gives a voice to the air. (1854 Thoreau Walden iv. 125)
 [indefinite article] – [OED]
 Minoji Akimoto

(20) Hail to the courage which gave Voice to its creed. (1855 Arnold Haworth
Churchyard v) [OED]
Examples (18) and (19) show the status of full NPs before they become idiomati-
cized, and example (20) shows an idiomatic phrase in the sense of loss of nominal
properties.10 These examples show all properties of nominals, such as determiner/
possessive determiner modification. In due course, however, voice in give voice to
changed its concrete nominal nature to abstract, less nominal nature. It is only
around the middle of the nineteenth century that give voice to established itself as
an idiomatic construction (as in example (20)).
The decreasing degree of nouniness is very common in the type of “V + O +
to” idioms. Other examples, not those of give idioms, include find fault with, make
use of and set foot on/in.11

10. I have checked the various forms of voice in give voice to in the OED. Since the examples are
not so many, I have given all the citations including the give voice type. As the examples show, the
early use of voice in the “give + O + to” construction was more concrete and literal. I gave all forms
of voice regardless of the “give + voice + to” and “give + voice” constructions, because what is im-
portant here are the various forms of voice which indicate their higher degree of nouniness.
(i) More Tribes ... gave their voices to approove it. (1600 Holland Livy v. xxx)
(ii) I will ... give my Voice ... (1617 Moryson Itin. Iii. 190)
(iii) ... to give my voice touching ... (1634 Mass. Bay Rec. (1853) I. 117)
(iv) He that should give his voice unto Christ ... (1660 Hammond Wks. IV. 510 (R.)
(v) ... others would give no Voice. (1678 Sidney in S. Papers (1746) I. 153)
(vi) ... to give my determining Voice before the Senate. (1715 J. Barker Exilius I. 83)
(vii) Nor give voice to slavery’s jackall cry. (1823 Byron Juan ix.xxvi)
(viii) The Tantivy of wild pigeons ... gives a voice to the air. (1854 Thoreau Walden iv. 125)
(ix) Hail to the courage which gave Voice to its creed. (1855 Arnold Haworth Church-
yard v)
(x) ... until he has given voice to the three words ... (1905 Jewish Encycl. XI. 146/1)
(xi) To find ... daily Press ... giving voice to facts ... (1913 Christian 3 Jan. 10/1)
(xii) Mr. Lyford gives voice to a temper ... (1961 Manas 5 Apr. 1/2)
(xiii) ... if any young hound gives a challenging voice to a bullock ... (1976 Shooting Times
& Country Mag. 18/24 Nov.)
(xiv) ... which hath in their time borne great reuerence to the church of God ... found great
fault against ye decrees ... (1583–1600 Deloney, The Works of Thomas Deloney: 283)
(xv) Why, Madam, the Bishop has set his Foot in it. (1710 Swift, Swift’s Polite Conversa-
tion: 59)
(xvi) We complained of advantages which the men take of our youth, inexperience, sen-
sibility, and all that ... (1771 Smollett, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker: 259)
These forms are in the non-idiom stage, but with an increase in abstractness in the nouns, they
have developed into idiomatic phrases.
11. The nouns in the following examples (i.e. fault, foot and advantage) show the status of full
NPs as in the give case given above, with modifiers and a plural form.
 Idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 

4.2 Construction and frequency

According to Goldberg (1995:  66, 89–90), there are basic sentence-level (argu-
ment) constructions which are extended in various ways. For instance, the di-
transitive construction is the semantic extension (via metaphor) of the caused-
motion construction called “Transfer of Ownership as Physical Transfer”.
Although Goldberg does not mention idioms based on the ditransitive construc-
tion, her idea of metaphor will be useful for the discussion of idiom formation.
During the shift of “give + Oi + Od” to “give + O + to” discussed before, the
meaning of give has become weakened in such examples as give rise to and give
way to. With the establishment of the “give + O + to” construction, this construc-
tion began to form a syntactic-idiomatic frame where each element is absorbed
into the construction. Although the meaning of give in the construction has lost
much of its ‘CAUSE-RECEIVE’ meaning, it has some semantic content (cf. Green
1974: 226–229). In contrast to an idiom, which by its nature is a fixed structure
and, therefore, not so productive, the construction has the potential for further
expansion. These notions seem contradictory, but at the same time it can be said
that the formation of idioms takes place despite the constant tug-of-war between
productivity and non-productivity.12
Frequency of use also plays an important role in establishing an idiomatic
construction. As “give + O + to” begins to be used frequently, phrases involving
give are created,13 and give and the following noun occur in sequence; the more
often the structure is used, the tighter it will become (cf. Bybee & Hopper 2001: 14),
and consequently a strongly combined sequence develops into routinized patterns.
Routinized or idiomaticized patterns, once established and frequently used, resist
change and often result in lexicalization.14
In the case of give idioms, firstly the token frequency, and then their type fre-
quency lead to the creation of a construction in which the “give + O + to” pattern
becomes entrenched. This construction gradually becomes solidified and in due
course extends itself to be productive. Change from concrete to abstract is regular
in the formation of an idiomatic construction, and together with the bleaching of

12. Recently some linguists have recognized more productive properties of idioms than before.
Fillmore et al. (1988: 534) state that “... the realm of idiomaticity in a language includes a great
deal that is productive, highly structured, and worthy of serious grammatical investigation.”
13. In Late Old English, giefan began to show an indication of the “give + deverbal noun”
construction, although limited to the “give + answer” collocation. See Brinton & Akimoto
(1999: 34–36).
14. Trousdale (2008), in a construction approach, discusses the development of the give-
g­ erund composite predicate in relation to grammaticalization and lexicalization. For further
discussion, see Brinton & Traugott (1995).
 Minoji Akimoto

give and to, the concrete noun often develops into an abstract noun. The series of
examples (taken from the OED) given below illustrates my argument.
(21) They ... made so grete bruyt that the moost hardyest of the paynyms gaf
them waye. (1485 Caxton Chas. Gt. 193)
‘They ... made so great noise that the hardest of the pagans retreated from
them’
(22) The coaches comming downe from the upper parts, give the way to those
that come up. (1617 Moryson Itin. iii. 55)
(23) They who, through weakness, gave way to the ill-designs of bad men
[etc.] (1793 Burke Corr. (1844) IV. 143)
(24) Don’t give way to despair so quickly. (1891 Strand Mag. May 552/2)
Example (22) can be said to be at an intermediate stage to an idiomatic phrase in
the sense that way appears with the. The meanings have become less literal, as
example (24) shows. Note that there are stages at which rival patterns exist in
parallel (that is, before the establishment of the “give + O + to” construction, the
“give + Oi + Od” and “give + O + to” constructions appeared at the same time).
In sum, on the basis of all these observations, I shall propose the following
stages of change for the formation of “give + O + to” idioms.
(A) give + indirect object + direct object ....... OE period
↓
(B) give + object + to + NP ....... ME period
[+ concrete]
↓
(C) give + object + to + NP ....... Late ModE period
[+ abstract]

CONSTRUCTION ....... Modern English
(A) to (B) is a stage where the construction of “give + indirect object + direct ob-
ject” changes into that of “give + object + to” from the Old English to the Middle
English periods.
From the (B) to the (C) stages, the construction of “give + object + to” begins to be
common and its frequency in the data increases. The noun in the construction chang-
es its nature from concrete to abstract. This means that the noun, which could be ac-
companied by the definite/indefinite articles or take the plural form, begins to lose
these properties, becoming a more and more abstract noun. At the same time, at this
stage, semantic opacity of the elements comes into play. The meanings of each ele-
ment, give, object and to, begin to become less transparent, tending to have idiomatic
 Idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 

meaning, i.e. give way to = ‘yield’. At stage (C), the “give + object + to” pattern becomes
settled and forms a construction with the idiomatic function being strengthened. Fi-
nally, the construction has been extended to produce similar idiomatic expressions.

4.3 French influence on the ‘give + O + to’ construction

In addition to these factors, French influence on the “give + O + to” construction

during the Middle English period should not be overlooked. As Allen (2006: 214)
mentions briefly in relation to the high incidence of to-datives in Ayenbite of In-
wit, French influence seems to have played a role, particularly in the development
of the “give + O + to” construction, which must have been promoted by the French
verb donner and some other French- and Latin-borrowed verbs, such as donate
and contribute (cf. Mustanoja 1960: 101–102, Visser 1970: 624).
The French donner construction permits only the “donner + O + à” pattern,
not the “donner + Oi + Od” pattern, except when the Oi is a pronoun clitic and the
Od is a full NP, and this may have encouraged the English “give + O + to” construc-
tion. Prins (1952: 138–141) gives the following examples after the model of donner:
a. give audience – donner audience
b. give chase – donner la chasse
c. give congee to – donner congé à
d. give credence to – donner créance à
e. give example – donner exemple
f. give leave – donner congé
g. give order – donner ordre
h. give points to – donner, rendre des points
Levin (1993: 46) gives a list of verbs of non-alternating to, such as we contributed
our paycheck to her vs. *we contributed her our paycheck. They are primarily verbs
borrowed from Latin. I checked those more or less related to the give class regard-
ing the earliest citations of their “V + O + to” patterns based on the OED: address
(1475), announce (1483), contribute (1653), convey (1574), deliver (1440), demonstrate
(1650), dictate (1667), distribute (1746), explain (1726), introduce (1739), recom-
mend (1400), report (1489), submit (1386), transfer (1516), and transport (1483).
Comparing the dates of the to construction of the French loans with the de-
velopment of the “give + O + to” construction, we understand that the verbs bor-
rowed from French with to constructions must have contributed to the develop-
ment of the “give + O + to” construction.
It should be emphasized, however, that verbs borrowed from French must
have enhanced the “give + O + to” construction, but that the development of this
construction as idiomatic unit has taken place after this stage and has undergone
 Minoji Akimoto

an independent process of idiomatization partly in the tendency from synthetic

towards analytic structures in English, although this tendency would need sepa-
rate discussion (see Smith 1996: 153–158).

5. Conclusion

I have examined the formation of “give + O + to” idioms from the Middle English
period to the present time on the basis of the OED CD-ROM, the Helsinki Corpus,
the ARCHER Corpus, and the FLOB Corpus. In Section 2, I made a general sur-
vey of the state of the “give + O + to” construction before 1500 by way of examples
in the MED. In Section  3, I demonstrated that the “give + O + to” patterns in
contrast to the “give + Oi + Od” patterns were on the increase, paving the way for
idiom formation where eventive objects including deverbal nouns without suf-
fixes are essential. Short eventive nouns without suffixes are susceptible to being
idiomaticized possibly because of their short forms with increasing frequency. In
Section 4, some factors contributing to the formation of the idiomatic “give + O +
to” construction were discussed. They are weakening of nouniness, construction
and frequency, and French influence.
On the whole, occurrences of the “give + O + to” construction have been in-
creasing throughout the history of English. This construction, once established,
becomes frequent and productive, generating many idiomatic expressions. This idi-
omatization process involves not only the bleaching of give and to, the semantic
expansion of give, and the consequent decrease in the nouniness of the object, but it
also involves the construction as a whole into which give enters. All these processes
have been encouraged further under the influence of verbs borrowed from French.

Sources

ARCHER = A Representative Corpus of Historical English Registers.

BNC = British National Corpus (100 million words) distributed by Shogakkan Company.
HC = Helsinki Corpus of English Texts. Diachronic Part. Ed. by Matti Rissanen, Merja Kytö,
and Collin M. Palander (1993). (Included in ICAME)
MED = Middle English Dictionary. (1952–2001). Hans Kurath, Sherman M. Kuhn, John Reidy,
and Robert E. Lewis (eds.) Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
http://ets.umdl.umich.edu/m/mec
OED = Oxford English Dictionary. 1989. Oxford: Clarendon, 2nd ed. (also OED CD-ROM
(Version 2.0, 1999)
Deloney, Thomas. 1583–1600 (1912). The Works of Thomas Deloney ed. by Francis Oscar
Mann. Oxford: Clarendon.
 Idiomatization of “give + O + to” constructions 

Smollett, Tobias. 1771 (1992). The Expedition of Humphry Clinker ed. by Lewis M. Knapp, rev.
by Paul-Gabriel Bouché. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Swift, Jonathan. 1738 (1963). Swift’s Polite Conversation, annotated by E. Partridge. London:
Andre Deutsch.

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 The clausal complementation of good
in extraposition constructions
The emergence of partially filled constructions

An Van linden*
K.U. Leuven (University of Leuven)

This article develops a functional synchronic‑diachronic description of the

clausal complement patterns found with good in extraposition constructions
(ECs), and compares these to the patterns found with other deontic-evaluative
adjectives, such as appropriate, important and fitting. The adjectives studied
can currently take either mandative complements expressing desired action,
or propositional complements describing arguable claims. Good differs from
adjectives such as appropriate and important in that it currently favours
propositional to‑clauses. More specifically, I will argue that it occurs in two
types of partially filled constructions in the sense of Goldberg (1995) featuring
such complements, viz. the locative pattern and the knowledge/acquisition of
knowledge (KAK) pattern. The diachronic data will reveal that good started
to prefer propositional to‑clauses only recently, amongst others through the
emergence of the KAK pattern in Late Modern English and its subsequent
rise in frequency. In addition, the present‑day occurrence of purely evaluative
adjectives like nice and great in the locative and KAK constructions suggests
that analogy with this class of adjectives may have played a role as well.

* The research reported on in this article has been made possible by research grants
OT/03/20/TBA and OT/04/12 of the Research Council of the University of Leuven, as well as
the Interuniversity Attraction Poles (IAP) Programme – Belgian State – Belgian Science
Policy, project P6/44 Grammaticalization and (inter)subjectification. In addition, it has been
supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science (grant no. HUM2007–60706/
FILO) and the European Regional Development Fund. I would like to thank the audience of
the Fifteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held in Munich for
their generous feedback on the material I presented there, which constitutes the core of this
article. I am also indebted to Anatol Stefanowitsch and Tim Van de Cruys for their help in
setting up the collostructional analysis reported on here. Finally, I am grateful to the two
anonymous referees and the editors of this volume for their detailed and helpful comments.
Of course, any errors of fact or interpretation remain my own responsibility.
 An Van linden

1. Introduction

In Present-Day English (PDE), the adjective good occurs in a number of extra­

posed complement patterns, as shown in (1) to (3). This article focuses on the
most frequent complement types in Present-Day English, viz. that‑ and to‑claus-
es, as in (1) and (2). If‑clauses, as in (3), are excluded from analysis.
(1) If we see people waving the Union Jack we say, “Put your flag away, this
isn’t a Morrissey gig” says Jim Bob. I think it was good that Morrissey was
questioned so much about racism in the press, but there’s so many other
people who get away with stuff, like countless rap bands. (CB, ukmags)1
(2) The main body of your letter should state the problem, stick to the point
and avoid repetition, again include any areas of information such as
model numbers, dates etc. Undoubtedly it is good to be firm, but avoid
rudeness or abuse as it will not help your complaint. (CB, ukmags)
(3) He commented: “The league is certainly more interesting than when I
came here in January. Then, the gap between Rangers and the rest was
from here to Dover. The young lads though are now playing with so much
freedom. It would now be good if John Collins stayed too. He is a good
player and you know what you’ve got with him as opposed to someone
that might be brought in.” (CB, today)
More particularly, this article aims at a functional description of the synchronic
distribution of complements, and it also studies the diachronic developments by
which the present system was fashioned. Therefore, in addition to the formal dis-
tinction between that‑ and to‑clauses, it also proposes a semantic distinction be-
tween mandative and propositional complements, which cross-cuts the formal
distinction. Mandative complements as in (2) refer to potential actions that are
desired to be actualized, whereas propositional complements as in (1) refer to
propositional contents that are taken to be true. I will show that the Present-Day
English distribution of clausal complement patterns with good differs from that
with other deontic‑evaluative adjectives, such as proper, fitting or appropriate in
that it currently prefers propositional to‑clauses. In fact, it will be argued that
good occurs in two types of partially filled constructions in the sense of Goldberg
(1995) featuring such complements, viz. the locative pattern and the knowledge/
acquisition of knowledge (KAK) pattern, illustrated in (4) and (5) respectively.

1. The synchronic data were extracted from the COBUILD corpus via remote log-in and are
reproduced (in each case marked with CB) with the kind permission of HarperCollins Pub-
lishers. They are taken from the following subcorpora: ukephem, ukbooks, ukmags, ukspok,
bbc, times, today, and sunnow (for more information, see http://www.collins.co.uk/cobuild/).
 Good in extraposition constructions 

(4) “How are you?” I ask her. “It’s good to be here on this Earth,” she replies
in low, rich, fruity tones. (CB, today)
(5) We’ve never been shy to bring in young players in the past and it’s good
to see England recognising their young talent now. (CB, ukmags)
The diachronic data will show that good started to favour propositional to‑clauses
only recently, as up to Early Modern English its distribution of complement pat-
terns did not differ so much from the ones observed with the other deontic‑eval-
uative adjectives studied. It will become clear that it is especially the emergence of
the KAK pattern in Late Modern English and its subsequent increase in frequency
that accounts for the synchronic high frequency of propositional to‑clauses with
good. In addition, Present-Day English complement constructions with purely
evaluative adjectives, such as great and nice, suggest that good has come to analo-
gize with this semantically distinct class of adjectives to a considerable extent.
The structure of this article is as follows. In Section 2, I will briefly introduce
the data and methods used in this study. In Section  3, I will present the syn-
chronic distribution of formal and semantic types of complements with good in
extraposition constructions, and I will compare this to the distribution with a
reference set of ten other deontic‑evaluative adjectives. Special attention will go
to the locative and the KAK pattern. In Section 4, I will investigate the diachron-
ic distribution of formal and semantic types of complements, and I will trace the
origin and development of the two propositional patterns. In Section  5, I will
expand on the two patterns as they are also found with adjectives characterized
by purely evaluative meaning, which may hint at analogy as an additional expla-
nation for the current distribution of complement patterns with good. In Section 6,
finally, I will summarize the main findings and formulate some questions for
further research.

2. Data and methods

Presenting a synchronic-diachronic account of the complement patterns found

with the adjective good, the following sections are based on detailed corpus study.2
Table 1 shows the synchronic and diachronic corpora used and the number of
tokens retrieved for each period.3

2. This section is based on Van linden (2009: 62–72, and forthc.).

3. The Late Modern English data of good are limited to the adjective immediately followed
by that, to and for, as the total number of tokens would otherwise have become unmanageable.
For the Present-Day English data, I also used a special design of query to avoid as much noise
as possible, including anticipatory it.
 An Van linden

Table 1.  The corpora used for each subperiod with their number of words and attesta-
tions of good

Subperiod of Time span Corpus Number of Attestations of

English words good
(million)

Old York-Toronto-Helsinki
English 750–1150 Parsed Corpus of Old   1.45 1,733
(OE) English Prose (YCOE)
Middle Penn-Helsinki Parsed
English 1150–1500 Corpus of Middle English,   1.16 2,525
(ME) Second Edition (PPCME)
Early Modern Penn-Helsinki Parsed
English 1500–1710 Corpus of Early Modern   1.79 2,438
(EModE) English (PPCEME)
Late Modern Corpus of Late Modern
English 1710–1920 English texts (Extended 15.01 685
(LModE) version) (CLMETEV)
Present-Day Collins COBUILD Corpus
roughly
English (CB) 42.10 1,241
1990–1995
(PDE) (only British subcorpora)

In addition, this article also compares the clausal complement patterns with good to
those of other adjectives that can take mandative as well as propositional comple-
ments. To find such adjectives expressing degrees of goodness or appropriateness, I
used Roget’s Thesaurus (Dutch & Roget 1970) along with the online Oxford English
Dictionary (OED). The adjectives in the Present‑Day English dataset are given in the
bottom row of Table 2. This set served as a starting point for the diachronic ono-
masiological search for lexical items. I looked for Old and Middle English counter-
parts of the Present‑Day English adjectives in the online Thesaurus of Old English
and the Middle English Dictionary. The adjectives thus identified were also searched
for in the five corpora listed in Table 1, taking into account spelling variants. The
numbers of tokens between brackets in Table 2 give the overall occurrence of the
adjectives, but not necessarily in the complement constructions studied here.
This study not only relies on qualitative and quantitative analyses of the dia-
chronic and synchronic corpus data, but also uses a collostructional type of ana­
lysis, viz. a multiple distinctive collexeme analysis (Gries & Stefanowitsch 2004).
Such an analysis starts with a particular construction, like the extraposition con-
struction with adjectival matrices studied here, and “investigates which lexemes
are strongly attracted or repelled by a particular slot in the construction (i.e. occur
more frequently or less frequently than expected)”, like the to‑infinitive slot of the
extraposition construction with the several adjectives (Stefanowitsch & Gries
 Good in extraposition constructions 

Table 2.  The deontic-evaluative adjectives under investigation and their number of tokens

Period Adjectives

OE andfenge (23), arlic (5), (ge)beorh (1), (ge)beorhlic (6), bryce (3), (ge)cop (1),
(487) (ge)coplic (2), (ge)cweme (61), (ge)cynde (28), (ge)cyndelic (37), cynn (7),
(ge)dafen (2), (ge)dafenlic (33), (ge)defe (4), (ge)defenlic (1), fremgendlic (3),
fremful (10), fremfullic (2), geornlic (5), (ge)limplic (17), (ge)mæte (4),
medeme (15), (ge)met (4), (ge)metlic (9), nytlic (7), nytt (28), nyttol (1),
nytweorðe (33), nytweorðlic (2), (ge)radlic (3), rædlic (1), rihtlic (53),
(ge)risenlic (14), (ge)risne (14), (ge)screpe (4), (ge)tæse (1), til (4), þæslic (14),
(ge)þungen (25)
ME able (33), aise (3), bicumelich (28), comely (3), commendable (2), competent
(542) (3), convenient (8), covenable (30), desiderable (5), desirable (1), expedient (5),
fremful (6), goodly (29), helply (2), just (30), kendeli (37), lele (2), limplich (1),
medeme (3), (i)mete (5), profitable (42), proper (4), (i)queme (62), rightful
(133), semeli (18), servisable (2), skilful (11), vertuous (34)
EModE advantageable (1), appropriate (8), commendable (13), commodious (15), com-
(1318) petent (14), convenient (192), covenable (2), desirable (13), expedient (27), fit
(288), fitting (11), important (9), just (186), meet (120), pertinent (3), profitable
(61), proper (137), rightful (4), servisable (9), shapely (1), skilful (32), suitable
(27), useful (38), virtuous (107)
LModE appropriate (189), convenient (420), desirable (415), expedient (93), fit (951),
(6908) fitting (81), important (1,784), meet (51), profitable (172), proper (2,361), suit-
able (391)
PDE appropriate (323), convenient (162), desirable (84), expedient (13), fit (306),
(3909) fitting (78), important (2,598), profitable (40), proper (150), suitable (155)

2003: 214). To calculate the association strength between a particular to-infinitive

(I) and an adjective (A), relative to the other to‑infinitives and adjectives included
in the analysis, we need four frequencies:
i. the frequency of I in extraposition constructions with A,
ii. the frequency of I in extraposition constructions with adjectives other than A,
iii. the frequency of A with to‑infinitives other than I, and
iv. the frequency of to‑infinitives other than I with all adjectives other than A
(cf. Stefanowitsch & Gries 2003: 218). On the basis of these frequencies, a collex-
eme analysis computes a vast amount of probability tests (viz. Fisher’s exact tests),
which for each adjective results in specific p‑values indicating the collostruction
strength with each to‑infinitive. The present analysis is based on exhaustive ex-
tractions of the extraposed to‑clauses with good and ten similar deontic‑evalua-
tive adjectives (as listed in Table 2) in the COBUILD corpus (see Table 3). These
data will be used to adduce evidence for the frequency and entrenchment of the
two constructions found with good in Present-Day English (cf. Goldberg 1999).
 An Van linden

Table 3.  The deontic-evaluative adjectives included in the collexeme analysis with their
number of to-infinitives in COBUILD

appropriate 88 expedient  8 good 278 proper 18

convenient 32 fit 49 important 969 suitable  3
desirable 23 fitting  6 profitable    7

3. Towards a functional description of the Present-Day English data

In this section, I will propose to distinguish between two semantic types of comple-
ment occurring with good (and other deontic‑evaluative adjectives), viz. mandative
and propositional ones, and I will show that this distinction cross-cuts the formal
distinction between that‑ and to‑clauses (Section 3.1). In addition, I will present the
quantitative instantiation of these types of complements in Present-Day English
(Section 3.2). Finally, I will concentrate on two recurrent patterns with proposition-
al to‑complements that are typical of good in Present-Day English, viz. the locative
pattern and the knowledge/acquisition of knowledge (KAK) pattern (Section 3.3).

3.1 Mandative versus propositional complements

From a functional perspective, that‑ and to‑clauses complementing matrices with

good can be of two types.4 In a first type, they express desired action, as in (6) and (7)
(cf. Wierzbicka 1988: 139 on verbal complementation; Biber et al. 1999: 673–674).
(6) I know a number of reputable journalists of various nationalities who
have done as I did. In part, the motivation is professional: new sources,
exchanges of information. In some cases, too, patriotism plays a part: it is
obviously good for one’s country that its foreign policy should be based on
information known to be sound. (CB, ukbooks)
(7) For example, you may fear that there are going to be some compulsory
redundancies at your place of employment. You obviously hope that you
are not going to be one of them, but it is good to take precautions just in
case you are. (CB, ukbooks)
In a second type, they contain a proposition that is presented as true, as in (8) and
(9). Following Huddleston & Pullum (2002: 996) and Halliday (1994: 70), I refer

4. This section is based on Van linden & Davidse (2009: 177–187) and Van linden (2009: 208–
219, and forthc. ).
 Good in extraposition constructions 

to these semantic types of complement as “mandative” and “propositional” ones

respectively (cf. Van linden & Davidse 2009).
(8) WHILE it is good that Will Carling has been reinstated as captain of the
England rugby team, let us not blame RFU president Dennis Easby for
the action he took. (CB, today)
(9) Well I think we’ll have a word with <ZZ1> company name’s <ZZ0> about
that or you know <ZF1> I <ZF0> I don’t honestly think I’ve heard them s
mention anybody else’s name really <ZF1> in <ZF0> in great seriousness.
But er it is good to be here and it is good to see As I say I’m sort of sitting
very much and looking on the outside and I’m seeing some a lot of different
sort of points of view coming out and a lot of different ideas (CB, ukspok)
Crucially, mandative and propositional complements differ in terms of the factu-
ality status of the State of Affairs (SoA) referred to in the complement. Mandative
complements invariably involve potential or virtual SoAs, which have not yet
been actualized at the moment of assessment. In (6), for instance, the context
does not give us any clues as to whether it is the case that the foreign policy of
one’s country is based on information known to be sound. Rather, it is assessed as
desirable that in general this should be the case. Therefore, just like that‑clauses
with a subjunctive or deontic modal finite form (cf. should in example (6)) (Hud-
dleston & Pullum 2002: 996), to‑infinitives as in (7) make excellent coding forms
of mandative complements, since they are non‑finite and non‑tensed forms
(cf. Bolinger 1967: 351–352). In the case of indicative that‑clauses, the potentiality
and desirability of the situation have to be inferred from the context.
Propositional complements, by contrast, involve situations that are presented
as presupposed true, as “fact”. What is essential to a propositional complement is
that it is a circumscribed claim that can be agreed with or not. For this, it needs
to have a reference point in the deictic centre shared by speaker and hearer
(Halliday 1994: 75; Langacker 1991: 195). In that‑clauses, it is finite tensed or epis-
temic modal VPs that give the proposition such a reference point, such as the
present perfect form has been reinstated in (8). In the case of infinitival comple-
ments, the temporal anchoring of the proposition is brought about indirectly. In
(9), the locative adverb here indirectly indicates that the actualization of the situ-
ation in the to‑complement is simultaneous with the moment of speaking, as it
deictically locates the proposition in the here‑and‑now of the speech event. In
addition, propositional complements need to have a subject in terms of which the
truth of the proposition is asserted or, in this case, presupposed (Halliday
1994: 76–77), such as Will Carling in (8). In (9), the context shows that the subject
of the propositional to‑clause is coreferential with the speaker. Although to‑infin-
itives clearly are less straightforward coding means of propositional complements,
 An Van linden

they have nevertheless become most frequent with good in Present‑Day English
(see Section 3.2).
The difference in factuality status of the SoA in the complement implies a dif-
ferent interpretation of the adjectival matrix. In fact, only potential SoAs, as in (6)
and (7), can be regarded as morally desirable in the true sense of the word, as these
SoAs have not yet been actualized. Deontic constructions with a potential SoA in
their complement thus have a volitional flavour: the assessor wants the SoA to be
actualized (on the basis of moral arguments) (cf.  Kiefer 1997:  242; McGregor
1997: 222; Verstraete 2005: 1405–1406). In (6), for example, it is the speaker’s mor-
al conviction that the information journalists deliver to their country’s politicians
should be correct; (s)he wants journalists to come up with sound information
only. The inherent potentiality of mandative complements thus forces a deontic/
volitional interpretation onto the adjectival matrix. By contrast, complement con-
structions with presupposed SoAs lack this volitional flavour. In fact, it makes
little sense to desire the actualization of a SoA that has already been actualized
(temporal relation of anteriority, as in (8)), is being actualized (temporal relation
of simultaneity, as in (9)), or is bound to be actualized (temporal relation of poste-
riority, as in (10) below) (cf. McGregor 1997: 221). Therefore, speakers cannot as-
sess such SoAs as desirable, but they can only evaluate them as being or having
been good. Again, the factuality status of the SoA under assessment forces a par-
ticular interpretation onto the adjectival matrix, viz. an evaluative meaning.
(10) It is going to be fascinating next season with the two big guns, Arsenal
and United, head‑to‑head at the top of the Premiership and in the Euro-
pean Cup. It can only be good for English football that so much quality
will be on view in the Champions League, which rival managers Arsene
Wenger and Alex Ferguson will be desperate to win. (CB, sunnow)
Finally, the examples above also show that the semantic distinction between
mandative and propositional complements does not systematically correlate with
the formal distinction between that‑ and to‑clauses on a one‑to‑one basis. The
two semantic types can be coded by the two formal types of complement. In the
following section, I will point out which combinations of meaning and form are
most frequent in the Present-Day English data.

3.2 The Present-Day English distribution of types of complements

The Present‑Day English data show that the synchronic distribution of clausal
complements with good differs from that with the ten other deontic‑evaluative
adjectives in a number of ways. Table 4 details the overall frequencies of the se-
mantic subtypes with good, cross‑classified with their formal codings.
 Good in extraposition constructions 

Table 4.  The overall distribution of propositional and mandative complements with
good in Present-Day English

COBUILD n N % % of % form per

good semantic semantic
type type

that   55 0.13 16.2 26.3

prop 61.7
to 154 0.37 45.4 73.7
that    2 0.0048 0.6 40.0
prop/mand 1.5
to    3 0.0071 0.9 60.0
that    4 0.010 1.2 3.2
mand 36.9
to 121 0.29 35.7 96.8
total 339 0.81 100.0 100.0 –

Table 5.  The overall distribution of propositional and mandative complements with the
ten deontic-evaluative adjectives (cf. Table 2) in Present-Day English

COBUILD Ten deontic-evaluative adjectives

n N % % of semantic % form per
type semantic type

prop that   103 0.24   5.8 95.4

  6.1
to     5   0.012   0.3   4.6
prop/mand that    17   0.040   1.0 77.3
  1.2
to     5   0.012   0.3 22.7
mand that   452 1.07   25.5 27.5
  92.7
to 1193 2.83   67.2 72.5
total 1775 4.22 100.0 100.0 –

Table 5 does so for the other deontic‑evaluative adjectives. In Tables 4, 5, 6, 11 and

12, “n” refers to absolute frequencies, “N” to normalized frequencies per 100,000
words,5 and “%” to relative shares.
The most striking difference between good and the other deontic‑evaluative
adjectives concerns the semantic type of complement they prefer. Good combines
most frequently with propositional complements (61.7  percent) (cf.  Table  4). A
Fisher’s exact test (cf.  Pedersen 1996) shows that this preference is statistically
significant, with Fisher’s exact p = 0.0005131. The other adjectives, by contrast,

5. The normalized frequencies (per 100,000 words) in Tables 4, 5, 11 and 12 have been
rounded up to two decimal places, or, in the case of figures with larger decimals, to at least two
significant digits.
 An Van linden

occur in an overwhelming majority of cases with mandative complements

(92.7 percent) (cf. Table 5). This preference is even more statistically significant,
with Fisher’s exact p < 2.2E‑16. In addition, Fisher’s exact tests run on the distri-
bution of semantic types of complements across Tables 4 and 5 confirm this dif-
ference in preferences as highly statistically significant, with Fisher’s exact
p < 2.2E‑16 for both propositional and mandative types.6 Within the type of
propositional complements, good prefers to‑infinitives (73.7 percent) (again a sig-
nificant preference, with Fisher’s exact p = 1.220E‑08), while the other adjectives
clearly prefer that‑clauses (95.4  percent) (a highly significant preference, with
Fisher’s exact p < 2.2E‑16). The following section, therefore, focuses on the propo-
sitional to‑clauses found with good.

3.3 Two patterns with propositional to‑clauses

Closer study of the extraposition constructions with good taking propositional

to‑clauses reveals that a distinction can be made between two major patterns, viz.
the locative pattern and the knowledge/acquisition of knowledge (KAK) pattern.7
The frequencies of these patterns are shown in Table 6.

Table 6.  The types of propositional to-clauses with good in COBUILD

Type of propositional pattern n %

locative pattern   48 31.2

KAK pattern   77 50.0
  (i)  KAK with secondary complement   60 39.0
  (ii)  KAK without secondary complement   17 11.0
other   29 18.8
total 154 100.0

3.3.1 The locative pattern

The locative pattern, which accounts for 31.2 percent of the propositional to‑claus-
es found with good (cf. Table 6), is a specific subtype of evaluative construction in
which speakers assess their or someone else’s spatio‑temporal location as good.
Expressions of spatio‑temporal location are taken to include not only true loca-
tive phrases (‘to be at a particular place’), as in (11),

6. The result for the ambiguous cases, however, is not statistically significant (Fisher’s exact
p = 0.7906).
7. This section is based on Van linden (2009: 254–263, and forthc.).
 Good in extraposition constructions 

(11) Deirdre’s luck changed thanks to The Sun’s spectacular crusade, which
captured the imagination of the nation. [...] Deirdre wrote a touching let-
ter of gratitude to campaigning Sun readers while she was banged up in
prison. And last night she gleefully clutched a special Weatherfield edition
of The Sun reporting her release. She said: “It’s just so good to be home. I
owe a big thankyou to The Sun’s brilliant campaign.” (CB, sunnow)
but also associative expressions (‘to be with someone’), as in (12),
(12) But O’Brien survived it. Some ‘friends’ couldn’t believe I had a by‑pass.
They said the way I wrote about their team suggested I couldn’t have a
heart. But I’ll let you in on a secret. It’s good to be back amongst my hurling
friends again. I’m looking forward to the Championship. (CB, sunnow)
and perception expressions (‘to see someone’), as in (13) (rather than to see a par-
ticular SoA, see Section 3.3.2).
(13) “Excuse me, could you tell when the next 406 bus leaves for Santa Ana?”
a voice said behind him. The phrase. His contact. “I’m afraid the 406
doesn’t go to” Marlette stopped abruptly when Hector Amaya stepped
into view. “It’s good to see you again, Marlette,” Amaya said with an icy
smile. Marlette’s mind was racing. Was Amaya his contact? Or had he
been set up? (CB, ukbooks)
What is characteristic of this pattern and common to the three examples above is
that the evaluative assessment is simultaneous with the realization of the SoA
referred to in the propositional to‑clause. This temporal relation of simultaneity
is implied by the locative meaning, which is fairly straightforward in expressions
such as (11) and (12). For perception expressions as in (13), it has been argued that
they have a locative component to their meaning as well: there must be some as-
sociation in terms of spatio-temporal location between the perceiver and the per-
ceived entity (cf. Wierzbicka 1980: 99–114), as in an act of perception, “a stimulus
of some kind, e.g. visual, auditory, or tactile, comes in contact with a sense organ
of the perceiver” (Foley & Van Valin 1984: 48). In addition to this relation of si-
multaneity, the locative meaning also implies that the understood subject of the
to‑infinitive has specific reference; typically it is coreferential with the speaker
(cf. (11) to (13)).
The finding that this locative pattern is typical of good (i.e. not attested with
other deontic-evaluative adjectives) is reflected by the results from the multiple
distinctive collexeme analysis. Table  7 shows the ten collexemes that are most
strongly attracted to the to‑infinitive slot of the extraposed to‑infinitive construc-
tion with good. Table  8 gives the results of the same analysis, with the lexical
 An Van linden

Table 7.  The collexemes most strongly attracted to the to-infinitive slot of the extrap-
osed to-infinitive construction with good

Collexeme Obs. Freq. in Obs. Freq. in Distinc- Fisher Yates Bonferroni

A B tive for: p-value correction

see 65 11 A 1.57E-33 1.73E-32

be_locative 21  1 A 2.96E-13 3.25E-12
talk 14  1 A 9.07E-09 9.98E-08
know 29 33 A 1.55E-05 1.70E-04
hear  6  1 A 7.49E-04 8.23E-03
go  7  3 A 1.85E-03 2.04E-02
have  6  2 A 2.42E-03 2.67E-02
meet  4  0 A 2.63E-03 2.89E-02
find  4  1 A 1.08E-02 1.18E-01
be_noun  6  6 A 3.47E-02 3.81E-01

Table 8.  The process types attracted to the to-infinitive slot of the extraposed to-infini-
tive construction with good

Collexeme: Obs. Freq. in Obs. Freq. in Distinc-tive Fisher Yates Bonferroni

process types A B for: p-value correction

perception 73 17 A 1.12E-40 1.23E-39

location 21 12 A 1.15E-08 1.26E-07
intensive 14 56 A 4.43E-01 4.88E+00
affection  4 15 A 4.91E-01 5.40E+00

items collapsed into process types (cf. Halliday 1994: Chapter 5). Crucially, the
smaller the p‑value, the stronger the collostruction strength.
It can be seen in Table 7 that the verbs attracted most strongly to the con-
struction studied here (viz. A in the Tables) are see (p = 1.57E‑33) and be followed
by a locative or associative expression (p = 2.96E‑13). The list also includes the
verb meet, which is often found in the locative pattern as well (p = 2.63E‑03). The
table thus shows that the frequencies of see, be‑locative and meet are significantly
higher than what would be expected on a chance level (with α = 0.05 as the stan­
dard level of significance, cf. Stefanowitsch and Gries 2003: 239, note 6). Table 7
also demonstrates that these results remain statistically significant after the Bon-
ferroni correction.8 Table 8 shows similar results for the process types. In fact, the

8. The Bonferroni correction is a “post hoc comparison” or adjustment that is often per-
formed in multiple testing applied to the same dataset (cf. Rietveld & Van Hout 2005: 65), such
 Good in extraposition constructions 

frequencies of perception and location are the only ones that are significant, even
at corrected level. Thus, compared to the other ten adjectives included in the mul-
tiple distinctive collexeme analysis, good stands out as preferring perception and
locative processes in the extraposed to‑infinitive construction. However, it should
be noted that not all instances of the verb see (and the perception type) are exam-
ples of the locative use discussed here. It will become clear in the next section that
see is also used in the knowledge/acquisition of knowledge pattern.

3.3.2 The knowledge/acquisition of knowledge pattern

The second pattern of propositional to‑clauses found with good is concerned with
the positive evaluation of knowing or getting to know a particular propositional
content (knowledge or acquisition of knowledge, henceforth KAK, cf.  Noonan
2007: 129–130). This pattern accounts for 50 percent of the propositional to‑claus-
es observed with good (cf. Table 6) and can be thought of as a “construction” in the
Construction Grammar sense, specifically in the sense of Goldberg (1995, 1996):
A construction is [...] a pairing of form with meaning/use such that some aspect
of the form or some aspect of the meaning/use is not strictly predictable from
the component parts or from other constructions already established to exist in
the language. (Goldberg 1996: 68)

The KAK pattern is very frequent with good, and it is also found with important,
albeit only once. Consider the following examples:
(14) He said: “[...] It is nice to get something like this after people have judged
your performances. I was runner‑up in Barnsley’s Player of the Season to
Ashley Ward. This is a nice consolation. It is good to know people have
thought you played well.” (CB, sunnow)
(15) The young pastors, now elderly men, had discharged the responsibility
vested in them beyond my father’s hopes and prayers. Christian faith and
worship had been resurrected and emerged stronger than ever. It is good
to read that this is being sustained, and we could imagine ourselves shar-
ing this wonderful Eastertide in Wenzhou. (CB, times)
(16) He revealed: “It started slowly at first, but then worked up until I was flat
out. I felt much leaner and sharper. It was good to hear people telling me
I was looking much better – particularly the manager.” (CB, sunnow)

as, for example, the eleven collostructional analyses here. It is used because uncorrected re-
sults of multiple testing may falsely give the appearance of significance, as 1 out of 20 proba-
bility tests will appear to be significant at the α = 0.05 level purely due to chance (Stefanow-
itsch, personal communication). I thus multiplied the Fisher exact p-values by the number of
tests run, viz. 11, to arrive at the corrected p-values.
 An Van linden

(17) It is important to see UK base financial markets on a world basis follow-

ing the recent spread of “global” or “round the clock” trading from for-
eign exchange to securities, financial futures and commodities. This has
been made possible by improved satellite based communications and the
deregulation of financial markets. (CB, ukephem)
The examples above all involve an extraposed to‑infinitival subject consisting of
a KAK predicate and a secondary propositional complement. Note that the
non‑deliberate perception verbs see and hear with participial complements are
included in this KAK use as well (even if they are typically regarded as expressing
immediate perception; cf. Noonan 2007: 142–144), as sensory perception essen-
tially implies acquisition of knowledge. What is crucial to the KAK pattern is that
it is not so much the SoA encoded by the to‑infinitive that is evaluated as good or
important. Rather, the construction as a whole expresses the speaker’s positive
evaluation of the propositional content of the secondary complement.9 In this
sense, the meaning of the KAK pattern cannot be compositionally derived from
its constituent parts, and thus forms a construction in the Construction Gram-
mar sense.
However, it should be noted that not all examples with to‑clauses containing
KAK predicates are propositional in nature. In fact, the following examples fea-
ture mandative to‑clauses. What is characteristic of these examples is that the
understood infinitival subjects have arbitrary reference, whereas those in the
KAK pattern have specific reference, viz. they are coreferential with the speaker
(cf. (14) to (17)), just like those in the locative pattern (see Section 3.3.1 above).
(18) “I’ve this urge to see something of the world.” “Some of the other cities,
you mean.” “Right. Some other cities.” “Well, why not?” asked Soniff, ex-
pansively. “The Purples have affiliates in a lot of the cities, and it’s always
good to see the way things get done other places.” (CB, ukbooks)

9. A similar pattern has been noted by Mair (1990:  25) with matrix predicates assessing
truth and probability, such as true, obvious and probable. These matrices are typically comple-
mented by propositional that-clauses, but they also occur in constructions with extraposed
to-clauses containing utterance or propositional attitude predicates (e.g. say or believe) and
secondary that-complements, as in “I often think”, Treece said rather smugly, “that it’s equally
true to say that genius is an infinite capacity for faking pains.” (W.16.2.107–1) (Mair 1990: 25
(23)). In this example, it is not the act of saying that is equally true, but rather the proposi-
tional content of the secondary that-clause (see also Herriman 2000: 591). This is why Mair
calls this construction “slightly incongruous” (1990: 25). In both the KAK and in Mair’s pat-
tern, it is this incongruity that makes the meaning of the whole construction unpredictable
from its constituent parts.
 Good in extraposition constructions 

(19) What kind of input have the police or other departments had? <M02>
Erm again it’s it’s it’s looking at the effectiveness of the the solutions that
we’re <M01> Mhm. <M02> we’re putting forward. Erm other people’s
experience may be that those things have been tried elsewhere and do or
don’t work and it’s important to know that. (CB, ukspok)
Apart from specific reference of the infinitival subjects, the KAK pattern shares
some further properties with the locative pattern. Importantly, the KAK con-
struction also involves simultaneity of evaluative assessment and realization of
the SoA referred to in the to‑clause. This property might be related to the presence
of a locative component in the KAK pattern as well. In functional accounts, for
instance, it has been argued that the semantics of KAK predicates includes a loca-
tive element, albeit indirectly: in the first place they have a possessive component
to their meaning, which in turn implies a locative aspect (Wierzbicka 1980: 105–
114; Foley & Van Valin 1984: 49). However, in cases like (20), the realization of the
KAK to‑clause must be interpreted as being both anterior to and simultaneous
with the evaluative assessment in the here‑and‑now of the speech event.
(20) Tracker funds are the cheapest and most straightforward of all equity in-
vestments. They simply invest in a basket of shares which replicate the per-
formance of the chosen index. They gained prominence last year when
Virgin rocked the market with the launch of its low-cost index-tracking
Pep, which is sold over the phone in the same way as Direct Line already
sells insurance. Virgin said: “It is good to see another company with a good
reputation coming into the market and showing that simple, low-cost
products are the way the industry must go. As well as low charges, tracker
funds also have investment performance on their side.” (CB, times)
In (20), the “seeing-event” evaluated as good arguably consists of a range of suc-
cessive “seeing-events” in a time span that started before and continues into the
moment of evaluation, or, in other words, the propositional content evaluated as
good is not an event that can be seen at a single glance. The finding that the events
referred to (viz. coming into the market with low‑cost products, and gaining
profits from this business) have taken place in a specific time span rather than at
a specific moment suggests that in the KAK construction the meaning of the
predicate see may differ from that in the locative pattern (see also De Smet &
Cuyckens 2007 on other patterns of combined complementation with see). In any
case, the participial form of the secondary complements (another company with a
good reputation coming and showing) suggests that see is still used in its immedi-
ate perception sense rather than in its (strictly KAK) ‘realize, understand’ sense
(cf. Noonan 2007: 72–73, 129–130, 142–143).
 An Van linden

Finally, the observation that the KAK pattern is more typical of good than of
important or the other deontic-evaluative adjectives of the reference set is con-
firmed by the results of a multiple distinctive collexeme analysis. Table 9 not only
shows the ten collexemes most strongly attracted to the to‑infinitive slot of the
extraposed to‑infinitive construction with good (cf.  Table  7), but also the ten
collexemes most strongly repelled by it. Table 10 does the same with the process
types (cf. Table 8). However, a distinction is made here between perception pred-
icates complemented by a secondary proposition (perception_comp) and those
without clausal complement (perception (proper)), so as to give some idea about
the ratio of locative versus KAK uses (see Section 3.3.1 above).

Table 9.  The collexemes most strongly attracted to and repelled by the to-infinitive slot
of the extraposed to-infinitive construction with good

Distinctive for A Distinctive for B

Collexeme Obs. Obs. Fisher Bonferroni Collexeme Obs. Obs. Fisher Bonferroni
Freq Freq Yates correction Freq Freq Yates correction
in A in B p-value in A in B p-value

see 65 11 1.57E-33 1.73E-32 remember 1 46 6.47E-05 7.12E-04

be_locative 21  1 2.96E-13 3.25E-12 understand 0 22 3.25E-03 3.57E-02
talk 14  1 9.07E-09 9.98E-08 ensure 0 19 7.15E-03 7.86E-02
know 29 33 1.55E-05 1.70E-04 realize 0 18 9.29E-03 1.02E-01
hear  6  1 7.49E-04 8.23E-03 recognize 0 15 2.04E-02 2.24E-01
go  7  3 1.85E-03 2.04E-02 make_sure 0 15 2.04E-02 2.24E-01
have  6  2 2.42E-03 2.67E-02 note 1 21 2.47E-02 2.72E-01
meet  4  0 2.63E-03 2.89E-02 say 0 14 2.65E-02 2.91E-01
find  4  1 1.08E-02 1.18E-01 look 0 13 3.43E-02 3.78E-01
be_noun  6  6 3.47E-02 3.81E-01 keep_cont 1 18 4.79E-02 5.26E-01

It is clear from Table 9 that the KAK predicates rank high in the list of attracted
collexemes (see, know, hear). It is also telling that the cognition/knowledge verb know
is a strongly attracted item, whereas the cognition verbs remember, understand, real-
ize and recognize are strongly repelled items (however, only the first two at corrected
level as well). The findings for these four verbs explain why the category of cognition
verbs – despite the result of know – ends up as a strongly repelled process type in
Table 10. This table also shows that both the category of perception proper and that
of perception with clausal complement are strongly attracted; the first one two or-
ders of magnitude more so than the second one. However, the first category still in-
cludes examples of the KAK pattern, for instance those which express the perceived
SoA as an action nominal rather than as a clausal complement, as in (21) below.
 Good in extraposition constructions 

Table 10.  The process types attracted to and repelled by the to-infinitive slot of the ex-
traposed to-infinitive construction with good

Distinctive for A Distinctive for B

Collexeme Obs. Obs. Fisher Bonfer- Collexeme Obs. Obs. Fisher Bonferroni
Freq Freq. Yates roni Freq Freq Yates correction
in A in B p-value correction in A in B p-value

perception 43 14 2.31E−21 2.54E−20 cognition 45 437 1.07E-11 1.18E−10

perception_ 30   3 1.35E−19 1.48E−18 utterance  4   62 2.57E-03 2.82E−02
comp
location 21 12 1.15E−08 1.26E−07 material 102 509 4.92E-02 5.41E−01
intensive 14 56 4.43E−01 4.88E+00 possession   15 94 1.00E-01 1.10E+00
affection  4 15 4.91E−01 5.40E+00 behavioural    0   1 8.12E-01 8.94E+00

It + COP + ADJ + to + KAK + object of KAK

is good predicate predicate
was important know that-clause
see participial clause
hear action nominal
read NP referring to
proposition

Figure 1.  The KAK pattern as a partially filled construction

(21) Mm. And it was quite good when we went to get my sister and my mum
‘cos my nephew’s like growing up really quick and it They hadn’t seen
him for a while and it was really good to see you know their reaction to
when they see the baby all grown up and doing all these different things.
 (CB, ukspok)
In general, the collostructional analysis thus provides further evidence for con-
sidering the KAK pattern as a partially filled construction with a restricted
number of lexical elements occurring in two of the six slots (in boxes), as pre-
sented in Figure 1 above.

4. Diachronic developments

This section concentrates on the diachronic development of the distribution of

complements with good, and compares it to the complement patterns observed
 An Van linden

for the deontic-evaluative adjectives of the reference set. More specifically, it trac-
es the emergence of the two propositional patterns discussed above, viz. the loca-
tive and the KAK pattern.
The distribution of formal and semantic types of complements with good and
the other deontic-evaluative adjectives has witnessed a number of changes across
the various historical periods. We can note that some changes affected both good
(see Table 11) and the deontic-evaluative adjectives (see Table 12), whereas other
developments seem to be restricted to good.
The main change common to good and the other deontic-evaluative adjectives
relates to mandative complementation. Tables 11 and 12 show that with all adjec-
tives studied this type of complementation shifted from a predominance of
that‑clauses in Old English to one of to‑infinitives in Middle English, a develop-
ment parallel to that of complements of verbs with a volitional element described by

Table 11.  The diachronic distribution of propositional and mandative complements of good

good Fr 750– 950– 1150– 1350– 1500– 1710– 1990–

950 1150 1350 1500 1710 1920 1995

n 1 4 0 1 0 2 55
that N 0.29 0.36 0.00 0.12 0.00 0.013 0.13
% 100.0 66.7 – 50.0 – 9.1 26.3
n 0 2 1 1 0 20 154
prop to N 0.00 0.18 0.28 0.12 0.00 0.13 0.37
% – 33.3 100.0 50.0 – 90.9 73.7
n 1 6 1 0 0 22 209
total N 0.29 0.54 0.28 0 0.00 0.15 0.50
% 100.0 100.0 100.0 – – 100.0 100.0
n 6 15 7 14 16 15 6

that N 1.74 1.36 1.99 1.74 0.89 0.010 0.014

% 66.7 93.8 41.2 37.8 21.3 30.6 4.6
n 3 1 10 23 59 34 124
mand N 0.87 0.090 2.84 2.86 3.29 0.23 0.29
to
% 33.3 6.3 58.8 62.2 78.7 69.4 95.4
n 9 16 17 37 75 49 130
total N 2.61 1.45 4.83 4.60 4.18 0.33 0.31
% 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
 Good in extraposition constructions 

Table 12.  The diachronic distribution of propositional and mandative complements of

the adjectives of the reference set

reference set Fr 750– 950– 1150– 1350– 1500– 1710– 1990–

950 1150 1350 1500 1710 1920 1995

n 1 5 0 1 6 8 103
that N 0.29 0.45 0.00 0.12 0.33 0.053 0.24
% 100.0 83.3 - 100.0 100.0 80.0 95.4
n 0 1 0 0 0 2 5
prop to N 0.00 0.090 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.013 0.012
% – 16.7 – – – 20.0 4.6
n 1 6 0 1 6 10 108
total N 0.29 0.54 0.00 0.12 0.33 0.067 0.26
% 100.0 100.0 – 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0
n 11 32 2 10 57 193 469

that N 3.19 2.90 0.57 1.24 3.18 1.29 1.11

% 78.6 100.0 100.00 47.6 39.0 21.8 28.1
n 3 0 0 11 89 691 1198
mand N 0.87 0.00 0.00 1.37 4.96 4.60 2.85
to
% 21.4 – – 52.4 61.0 78.2 71.9
n 14 32 2 21 146 884 1667
total N 4.05 2.90 0.57 2.61 8.14 5.89 3.96
% 100.0 100.0 100.00 100.0 100.0 100.0 100.0

Los (2005) (cf. Van linden 2009: 163–178, 2010 and forthc.).10 The tables also indi-
cate that – unlike with some volitional verbs (cf. Rohdenburg 1995) – this replace-
ment of the that‑clause by the to‑infinitive has not run its full course; the manda-
tive that‑clause continues to be a (minor) coding option in Present‑Day English.
The most important differences between the two datasets pertain to the rela-
tive frequencies of the two semantic types of complements and, within proposi-
tional complementation, to the relative frequencies of the two formal types of
clauses. Firstly, if we look at the relative shares of mandative and propositional
complements, Tables 11 and 12 show that good and the other deontic-evaluative

10. The to-infinitives referred to as appearing in the clausal complements of the adjectives stud-
ied here include inflected infinitives preceded by to in Old English, inflected infinitives preceded
by to, te or forto in Middle English, and those in for-NP-to-infinitive constructions from Late Mid-
dle English onwards. The data also include two postverbal bare infinitives in Middle English.
 An Van linden

adjectives studied differ most markedly in Present‑Day English (see also Tables 4
and 5 in Section 3.2 above). Up to Early Modern English, by contrast, the relative
shares of the two semantic types of complements are very similar; Fisher’s exact
tests demonstrate that the distribution of mandative and propositional comple-
ments with good and the other deontic-evaluative adjectives does not show sig-
nificant differences (with Fisher’s exact p‑values ranging from p = 0.1815 to p = 1).
In Late Modern English, good combines significantly more often with proposi-
tional complements than the other deontic-evaluative adjectives do (Fisher’s ex-
act p < 2.2E‑16), but overall it still patterns more frequently with mandative
(69 percent) than with propositional complements (39 percent). By Present‑Day
English, however, this distribution has almost been reversed, as good has come to
favour propositional complements (62 percent) over mandative ones (38 percent),
whereas the deontic-evaluative adjectives still prefer mandative clauses (94 per-
cent) (again Fisher’s exact p < 2.2E‑16, cf. Tables 4 and 5).
Secondly, if we consider the diachronic distribution of the formal types of
propositional complements, we can observe another difference. More specifically,
the development of the distribution of propositional that‑ and to‑clauses with
good seems to mirror the development found for the mandative complements:
even though the data are few, we can note a shift from a prevalence of that‑claus-
es to one of to‑clauses, which has been accomplished by Late Modern English (see
Table 11). With the other deontic‑evaluative adjectives, by contrast, that‑clauses
remain the preferred type of propositional complement throughout the various
periods (ca. 93 percent on average, see Table 12).
The finding that the predominance of propositional to‑clauses with good is a
recent development ties in with the origin and development of the locative and
KAK pattern. In fact, the KAK pattern only emerged in the Late Modern English
period and rapidly increased in frequency to become the predominant one in the
Present-Day English data (cf. Table 6). In the examples (22) and (23), dating from
the early twentieth century, the KAK predicates are perception verbs, which are
complemented by participial clauses. No such examples have been found in the
Old, Middle, or Early Modern English period.
(22) What a wholesome thing to have Mr. Henley, for example, at that in the
place of some of the several specialists who will lecture you so admirably
on the Troubadours! How good to hear Mr. Frederic Harrison (with some
one to follow) adjusting all our living efforts to the scale of the divine
Comte, and Mr. Walkley and Mr. Herbert Paul making it perfectly clear
that a dead dog is better than a living lion, by demonstrations on the lion.
 (CLMETEV 1902–03 Wells, Mankind in the making)
 Good in extraposition constructions 

(23) “It’s nothing.” She went in and tore it up, and then began to write – a very
short letter, whose gist was “Come and save me.” It is not good to see your
wife crying when she writes – especially if you are conscious that, on the
whole, your treatment of her has been reasonable and kind.
 (CLMETEV 1905 Forster, Where angels fear to tread)
The locative pattern, by contrast, is already attested in Old English, as illustrated
in (24). A Middle English translation of the same Bible verse is given in (25). Both
examples involve a clear locative phrase, viz. her/here (cf. (9)).
(24) Þa cwæð Petrus to him, Drihten, god ys us her to
Then said Petrus to him, Lord, good is to.us here to
beonne; Gyf þu wylt uton wyrcean her
be If you want.prs.ind go.prs.sbjv.pl make.inf here
þreo eardungstowa
three dwelling.places (YCOE 1000–1050 Mt (WSCp) 17.4)
‘Then Peter said to him: “Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you want it,
let us make here three dwelling‑places.”’
(25) And þerfore seyde seynt Peter: domine bonum est
and therefore said saint Peter: Lord.voc good.nom.n is
nos hic esse, faciamus hic tria
we.acc here be.inf, make.prs.sbjv.1pl here three.acc
tabernacula, þat is to seye: Lord it is gode for vs
dwelling.place.acc.pl, that is to say: Lord it is good for us
to ben here, make wee here .iij. dwellyng places.
to be.inf here, make.prs.sbjv we here three dwelling places
 (PPCME ?a1425 (c1400) Mandev.(1) (Tit C.16) 76)
‘And therefore Saint Peter said: “Lord, it is good for us to be here, let us
make three tabernacles here”, that is to say: “Lord, it is good for us to be
here, let us make three dwelling‑places here.”’
In spite of its early emergence, the locative pattern never was very frequent up to
Late Modern English, as can be inferred from the low absolute numbers of propo-
sitional to‑clauses with good (cf. Table 11). Presumably, its rise to about one third
of the propositional to‑clauses found with good in Present‑Day English (cf. Table 6)
can be explained as being promoted by the emergence and rise of the KAK
pattern. In addition, as suggested in the next section, analogy with purely evalu-
ative adjectives may have played a role.
 An Van linden

5. Locative and KAK patterns with purely evaluative adjectives

Even if among the deontic‑evaluative adjectives studied here, the locative and
KAK patterns are typical of good, it is certainly not the only adjective that occurs
in these patterns in Present‑Day English.11 Interestingly, the adjectives in the ex-
amples below are generally held to express only evaluative meaning (cf. Noonan
2007: 127–129), that is, unlike the adjectives studied here, they do not occur with
both mandative and propositional complements.12
(26) Those two putts must have flushed away some of the negative thoughts
that have been bedevilling him; at last, the flashing Ballesteros smile was
back. “It’s nice to be here for the weekend,” he said. One would think the
sponsors were fairly happy about it as well. (CB, times)
(27) Last June eight years down the line he completed an MA in International
Politics and Relations at Aberdeen University. “it’s it’s great to see you
here today at this ceremony. You’ve actually been nominated for a re-
gional award so you’re a regional finalist.” (CB, ukspok)
(28) I can’t get used to the idea of Marcia, spending the war – well “On the
other side? And courted by German officers? Your little sister? Is that
what you mean?” “I suppose that it is.” But it was both wonderful and
poignant to hear that Marcia was well. (CB, ukbooks)
(29) And the big story is still the situation in Iraq and particularly the situa-
tion facing the Kurds as they flee into the mountains away from Saddam
Hussein’s armies. [...] And things are pretty bad really for the Kurds at the
moment. And er it’s interesting to see Mrs Thatcher’s been weighing in
on their behalf. (CB, ukspok)
(30) “Everybody loves him round here and they don’t want me to upstage him.
Let’s just say I’ll creep up as close as I can.” Tony was present to see the
action and said: “It’s great to see Michael carrying on where I left off. The

11. This section is based on Van linden (2009: 265–267, and forthc.).

12. In terms of Noonan’s (2007: 120–145) semantic classification of complement-taking predi-
cates, the adjectival matrices central to this article, like be good or be proper, belong, when
combined with a mandative complement, to the type of desiderative predicates like want
(2007: 132–137), or modal predicates like ought, should or must (2007: 137–139). When com-
bined with a propositional complement, however, these adjectival matrices belong to the type
of commentative predicates (Noonan 2007: 127–128), which “provide a comment on the com-
plement proposition which takes the form of an emotional reaction or evaluation (regret, be
sorry, be sad) or a judgement (be odd, be significant, be important)” (cf. Van linden & Davidse
2009). The adjectival matrices in examples (26) to (31), by contrast, act inherently as commenta-
tive predicates, and cannot be used as desiderative or modal ones (cf. Noonan 2007: 127–129).
 Good in extraposition constructions 

race had a few problems but, at the same time, the racing was excellent
and it’s a unique track and occasion.” (CB, sunnow)
(31) Benn has always said that 1996 would be his last year, and he would like
to go out with the final tear‑up with Jones. It was not surprising to see
Benn wanting to retire after a hard campaign over nine years and after
being comprehensively outpointed by an ageing opponent Malinga is 36
who is himself contemplating retirement. (CB, times)
Examples (26) and (27) with nice and great instantiate the locative pattern. These
examples both have anticipatory it and a copular finite, but the locative pattern is
also often found without these elements, e.g., nice to meet you, or good to see you (not
included in the analyses here). Arguably, these locative expressions have become
semi-formulaic phrases typically used in face‑to‑face communication. The exam-
ples given here also suggest that the locative pattern is restricted to adjectives ex-
pressing degrees of likeability (cf. Nuyts 2006: 12: “the degree of the speaker’s (or
someone else’s) liking or disliking of the state of affairs”). We might thus be led to
conclude that in the locative pattern good has come to express likeability rather than
moral evaluation, and hence, that the locative pattern may qualify as a partially
filled construction, just like the KAK pattern, in which a specific constructional
make‑up is paired with a particular meaning that is not fully predictable from the
component parts. The locative construction can be visualized as in Figure 2.

It + COP + ADJ + to + Predicate with locative component

is good be + locative phrase
was great be + associative phrase
nice see + someone

Figure 2.  The locative pattern as a partially filled construction

Examples (28) to (31) above illustrate the KAK pattern with the adjectives won-
derful, poignant, interesting, great and surprising. The KAK predicates include
hear, know and see, and the secondary propositional complements take the form
of a that‑clause in (28) and (29), and that of a participial clause in (30) and (31). It
is clear from the examples that the types of evaluative meaning expressed by KAK
constructions include not only likeability but also expectability and significance.
This finding explains, for instance, why important is found in this pattern, but not
in the locative pattern. It also suggests that in this construction good has kept its
general moral undertone, more so than in the locative pattern.13 More generally,

13. However, as rightly noted by a referee, in some KAK constructions good can be assigned
a ‘likeability-rather-than-moral-evaluation-reading’, like, for instance, in (16).
 An Van linden

all examples above, featuring adjectives of a semantic class distinct from the one
studied here, offer further evidence for establishing the locative and KAK use
found with good (and important) as true patterns or constructions, which are
(getting) entrenched in the language (cf. Hopper’s “Emergent Grammar”; Hopper
1987, 1998).

6. Conclusions

In this article, I have developed a functional account of the clausal complement

patterns with good, and I have compared these to a reference set of ten other de-
ontic‑evaluative adjectives such as appropriate, fitting and important. In doing so,
I assumed distinctions between semantic types of complements, viz. mandative
versus propositional, and formal types, viz. that‑clauses versus to‑clauses, which
I found do not correlate with each other on a one‑to‑one basis. The Present‑Day
English data showed that good differs from the other deontic‑evaluative adjec-
tives in that it currently favours propositional to‑clauses, whereas those adjectives
prefer mandative to‑clauses. In fact, the synchronic data revealed that good is
frequently used in two patterns with propositional to‑clauses, viz. the locative
and the knowledge/acquisition of knowledge (KAK) pattern. In the first one, the
speaker assesses someone’s spatio‑temporal location as good, and in the second
one, the speaker expresses his/her positive evaluation of a particular proposi-
tional content. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative (amongst others, col-
lostructional) analyses of corpus data, these patterns were characterized as par-
tially filled constructions in the sense of Goldberg (1995).
The diachronic data revealed that good’s current preference for propositional
to‑clauses is a rather recent phenomenon, which could be detected as incipient in
the Late Modern English period, and which has established itself firmly only in
Present‑Day English. In fact, up to Early Modern English good clearly patterned
like the other deontic‑evaluative adjectives, favouring mandative complements
which themselves underwent a shift in predominant coding form, viz. from
that‑clauses to to‑clauses (cf. Van linden 2010). In Late Modern English, good still
preferred mandative complements, but to a significantly lesser degree than the
other deontic‑evaluative adjectives. In the same period, the KAK pattern emerged,
which probably also promoted the use of the locative pattern, already attested as
of Old English. It is only in Present-Day English that good combines in an over-
whelming majority of cases with propositional to‑clauses, especially in the loca-
tive and KAK patterns. The occurrence of these two patterns with purely evalua-
tive adjectives like nice, great, wonderful, poignant and interesting in Present-Day
English suggests that this class of evaluative adjectives may have set the example
 Good in extraposition constructions 

for good. That is, whereas good patterned much like the other deontic-evaluative
adjectives studied here up to Early Modern English, it may have come to analo-
gize with a different semantic class of adjectives. The question remains of course
why good changed its course of development in the first place, and, if analogy did
play a part in this shift, it still needs to be investigated when and how exactly the
analogies came about.

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part ii

Modality and (marginal) modals

 The ‘fail to’ construction in Late
Modern and Present-Day English

Thomas Egan*
Hedmark University College

This paper traces the development of the ‘ fail to’ construction over the last
three hundred years. In the eighteenth century, almost 95 percent of tokens of
‘ fail to’ were negated. In corpora from the late twentieth century, on the other
hand, fewer than 4 percent of all tokens of ‘ fail to’ are negated. The non‑negated
‘ fail to’ construction may encode unsuccessful effort or neglect of duty on
the part of the subject, or it may encode disappointment of the speaker’s
expectations. It may even encode negation pure and simple. Special attention is
paid to the growth in these uses of the construction in the nineteenth century.
The question of whether or not ‘ fail to’ is in the process of grammaticalizing is
also addressed.

1. Introduction

The ‘ fail to’ construction dates back to the fourteenth century. (1) and (2) are
from Chaucer.
(1) For she hath taught hym how he shal nat fayle
The Fles to wynne. (The Legend of Good Women 1646–7)
‘For she has taught him how he cannot fail to win the fleece.’
(2) And preyed hem to laboure in this nede,
And shapen that he faille nat to spede.(The Merchant’s Tale IV (E) 1631–2)
‘And asked them to exert themselves in this matter and fix things so he
could not fail to succeed.’

* I would like to thank Anne-Line Graedler, Ursula Lenker and two anonymous referees
for their helpful and constructive comments. In addition I would like to thank Geneviève
Girard-Gillet for helping me figure out the tortuous history of faillir and Christine Meklenborg
Salvesen for providing me with thousands of concordance lines from the Corpus de la littéra-
ture médiévale française and for checking my interpretation of some of these.
 Thomas Egan

Both of these examples presuppose that the subject of the matrix verb makes an
effort to realize the situation in the complement clause. And in both the matrix
verb is negated.1 Indeed, the earliest non‑negated example of the construction in
the OED dates from 1810. In this respect the OED accurately reflects the situation
before the nineteenth century. In the Helsinki Corpus, for example, twelve of thir-
teen tokens of the construction are negated. In the Corpus of Early English Cor-
respondence Sampler all of the twenty‑four tokens are negated. Today, however,
the picture with respect to polarity is very different. (3) and (4) are recent exam-
ples of the construction.2
(3) NOW WE KNOW why the government failed to stop 9/11.
 (http://www.anthraxinvestigation.com/OddsEnds.html)
(4) The thing the academics who push the semantic web fail to consider
(most of the time) is that the Real World does not function like their
Ideal World.
(http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/21/0235208&from=rss)
Neither (3) nor (4) is negated. Moreover, neither token presumes that the subject
of the matrix verb makes an effort to realize the situation in the complement
clause. In (3), the government was totally unaware of the existence of a plot to at-
tack New York. In (4), the academics in question have not expended any effort in
considering whether the Real World functions like their Ideal World.
The majority of instances of the construction in my data before the nine-
teenth century resemble (1) and (2) in being negated. Some two hundred years
ago the negated form began to lose ground rapidly. This development will be
traced in Section  3, after the various senses of the construction have been

1. On reading an earlier version of this paper, Ursula Lenker raised the question of whether
or not the construction is borrowed from French in this form, with the negation already in
place. Faillir is a very polysemous verb in Old French. It was already in the process of splitting
into falloir, meaning ‘have to’, and faillir, which means ‘almost do’ when it occurs with an in-
finitive complement. Negated faillir + infinitive in Old French could be used in non-imper-
sonal constructions in the same sense as ‘not fail to’. The Corpus de la littérature médiévale
française contains several examples of this negated construction from the thirteenth and ear-
ly fourteenth centuries. Among these are (i) Qui l’apele de cuer sanz fausseté, / ja ne faudra a
avoir repentance (Thibaut de Champagne (written before 1253)) ‘(he) who appeals to her from
the heart without duplicity will never fail to gain forgiveness’ and (ii) et vous touz, juges, ne
failliez pas a ce faire. (Miracle de Saint Lorens (written before 1339)) ‘and all of you, judges,
don’t fail to do this’. It would thus appear likely that the negated ‘ fail to’ construction was bor-
rowed in that form. The question remains, of course, as to why its non-negated counterpart
was not borrowed at the same time.
2. All tokens from the World Wide Web were downloaded using WebCorp on 27.05.2008.
apart from (44) to (46), downloaded on 22.12.2009.
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

presented in Section 2. Section 4 takes a close look at the rise of the non-negated
form in the nineteenth century and Section 5 considers the question of whether
or not the construction is in the process of grammaticalizing. Section 6 contains
a brief summary of the discussion.

2. The main senses of ‘fail to’

The ‘ fail to’ construction is used with the following four basic senses. The first
three definitions are taken from The New Oxford Dictionary of English (Pearsall
& Hanks 1988):
– be unsuccessful in achieving one’s goal
– neglect to do something
– behave in a way contrary to hopes or expectations by not doing something
– not do something.
The senses are progressively more subjective in the sense of that term used by
Traugott & Dasher, according to whom subjectivity involves the grounding of a
predication in the speaker’s perspective (Traugott & Dasher 2002:  6). The first
sense encodes the non-realization of the subject’s own goals, expressed in the
complement clause. The second encodes the non-realization of what the speaker
encodes as the subject’s obligations, if not his or her goals. In the third, the sub-
ject’s own goals are irrelevant: the construction merely encodes the disappoint-
ment of the speaker’s expectations. In the fourth, ‘ fail to’ functions as a negation
marker. The last two senses are more subjective than the first two insofar as they
make no explicit or implicit reference to effort or duty on the part of the subject.
They will both be classified as “subjective”, the first two senses as “objective”. Sub-
jectivity is, of course, not an absolute: thus subjective should be understood in the
sense of “towards the subjective end of the subjective-objective cline”, objective
understood as “towards the objective end of the cline”. Table 1 below shows the
four basic senses of both ‘ fail to’ and ‘not fail to’.
Examples (5) to (11), taken from various corpora in the ICAME collection, il-
lustrate the eight senses defined in Table 1. We begin with the four objective senses.
(5) He failed to set the hook at least half the time, not from being slow, but
because he was overeager – too fast. (Frown P13 193)
(6) The Super Sleuth, Jane Marple, never seems to fail to find her villain, and
an audience as well. (ACE)
(7) The shortage was discovered after Huff failed to report for work on
Sept. 18. (Brown A25 1880)
 Thomas Egan

Table 1.  The basic senses of ‘ fail to’ and ‘not fail to’

Basic senses Non-negated Negated Subjective/

‘fail to’ ‘fail to’ Objective

Effort Tried + did not succeed Tried + succeeded Objective

(see example 5) (see example 6)
Neglect Did not fulfil duty Fulfilled duty Objective
(see example 7) (see example 8)

Expectation Did not live up to speaker’s Lived up to speaker’s Subjective

expectations expectations
(see example 9) (see example 10)
Negation Did not do Did Subjective
(see example 11) (see example 11)

(8) There was the day Uncle Izaak had, in an unexpected grandiose gesture,
handed over the pretty sloop to Abel for keeps, on condition that he nev-
er fail to let his brother accompany him whenever the younger boy
wished. (Brown K23 1560)
(5) and (6) illustrate the two “effort” senses. In (5), the subject makes a conscious
effort to bait his hook, an effort that often proves unsuccessful. In (6), on the
other hand, the subject not only sets out to identify the culprit, but always suc-
ceeds in doing so. (7) and (8) illustrate the two “neglect” senses. In (7), the subject,
although obliged to turn up for work, omits to do so. In (8) the subject assumes
the obligation to allow his brother to accompany him. Tokens like (7) and (8) are
labelled “objective” since the obligation in question is not just in the eye of the
speaker, but is both known to, and assumed by, the subject.
(9) Traffic frequently has failed to measure up to engineers’ rosy estimates.
 (Brown A43 0650)
(10) You may know nothing at all about a society; but you cannot fail to rec-
ognize this specific type of hilarity. (LOB G77 55)
(11) “In typical cases women fail to exhibit any sexual overvaluation towards
men; but they scarcely ever fail to do so towards their own children.”
 (Frown G65 162)
(9) to (11) are very different from (5) to (8) with respect to the question of whether
the subject makes an effort to achieve the goal in the complement clause. In (9),
for example, the subject, traffic, neither makes an effort to, nor has a duty to, com-
ply with the subjective expectations of the engineers. In (10), it is the expectation
of the speaker with respect to the impossibility of the subject’s not recognizing
the hilarity in question that is encoded. The two tokens in (11) differ from those
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

in (9) and (10) in that the element of expectation is backgrounded, if indeed it may
be detected at all. (11) may felicitously be paraphrased: “In typical cases women
do not exhibit any sexual overvaluation towards men; but they always do so to-
wards their own children.”
In (11), fail to functions as a marker of negation in the first clause, scarcely fail
to as an emphatic marker in the second.
These are the eight basic senses to which all the tokens in the various corpora
investigated in this paper have been assigned. In the next section we will see how the
four negated senses have gradually given way to their non-negated counterparts.

3. The loss of negation

Figure 1 contains percentage totals for the number of tokens of ‘ fail to’ with pos-
itive and negative polarity in the 1850–1920 component of the Corpus of Late
Modern English Texts (CLMET: see De Smet & Cuckyens 2005) and a selection of
twentieth and twenty-first century corpora.

100.0
90.0
80.0
70.0
60.0
50.0
40.0
30.0
20.0
10.0 non-negated
0.0 negated
CLMET 1850–1920

Frown
LOB

ACE

Wellington
FLOB

BNC

Webcorp
Brown

Figure 1.  Percentages of tokens of non-negated and negated ‘ fail to’ in a selection of
corpora from CLMET 1850–1920 to WebCorp
 Thomas Egan

The six corpora in the ICAME collection in Figure 1 all contain one million
words. The number of tokens of the ‘ fail to’ construction varies from seventy-four
in the case of LOB, which contains British English from the early 1960s, to one
hundred in FLOB, which contains British English from the early 1990s. The
American corpora from the corresponding periods, Brown and Frown, contain
ninety-one and ninety-nine tokens respectively. The Australian Corpus of English
(ACE), from the mid 1980s, contains seventy-seven instances of the construction
and the Wellington Corpus from New Zealand, from the latter half of the 1980s
contains seventy-eight. The figures for the BNC (the British National Corpus) are
based on a one thousand token random sample of the verb fail which included
729 tokens of the construction, while a search of the World Wide Web, using the
WebCorp search engine, returned 380 relevant tokens.
It is obvious from Figure 1 that there has been a decline in the incidence of
negated ‘ fail to’ in the twentieth century. Moreover, the negated construction
would appear to be even rarer in Present-Day English. Only 5 of 380 tokens of
‘ fail to’ downloaded using WebCorp on 27.05.08 were negated. Moreover, all five
of them were biblical quotations. One of these is cited as (12).
(12) 1 Thessalonians 1:3 For we never fail to remember your works of faith
and labours of love and your persistent and unwavering hope in our Lord
Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father;
 (http://bibletab.com/f/fail.htm)
The reduction in negated tokens shown in Figure 1 is the continuation of a proc-
ess that seems to have begun in the nineteenth century, as may be seen from the
normalized frequencies in the three sub-corpora of the Corpus of Late Modern
English Texts in Figure 2.
In the first period covered by the Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, 1710–
1780, eighty-five of all ninety-one tokens are negated. (13) to (15) may be taken as
representative examples.
(13) Jerome returned to the Prince, and did not fail to repeat the message in the
very words it had been uttered.(Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, Chapter 3)
(14) Such an unexpected visit could not fail to affect me with surprise and con-
sternation.(Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Chapter LXXXI)
(15) Such evils as these will not fail to render us miserable, though they have
little tendency to diminish pride.
 (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Part IV, Sect. VI)
(13) instantiates the “effort” sense of ‘ fail to’, shading into the “neglect” sense. It is
clearly objective in that Jerome is encoded as having made a conscious effort to
convey the message. (14) and (15), on the other hand, are subjective in sense. No
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

4.5
4

3.5
3
2.5
2
1.5
1
0.5 non-negated
0 negated
1710–1780 1780–1850 1850–1920

Figure 2.  Negated and non-negated tokens per 100,000 words of ‘ fail to’ in CLMET
1710–1780, 1780–1850 and 1850–1920

effort has been expended by the visit in the former or the evils in the latter. They
thus differ from the Chaucerian examples in (1) and (2), which are both objective.
The subjective reading seems to have developed in the course of the sixteenth
century and accounts for some two thirds of the tokens in CLMET 1710–1780.
In the second period of CLMET, 1780–1850, 37 of 147 tokens are negated.
This represents a reduction in the proportion of negated tokens from over 90 per-
cent to some 75  percent. (16) and (17) represent the still predominant negated
form, (18) its increasingly popular non-negated counterpart.
(16) The duke himself shot admirably, and never failed to hit the bulls-eye.
 (Ainsworth, Windsor Castle, Chapter III)
(17) The attacks of illness which arise from miasma never fail to appear most
mysterious. (Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter XVI)
(18) Thrice she attempted to speak, and thrice her voice failed to penetrate
the folds of the heavy door.
 (Bulwer-Lytton, The Last Days of Pompeii, Chapter XIV)
(16) resembles (13), both in being negated and in being subject to an objective
construal. (17) resembles (14) and (15) in being negated and subjective. (18) is an
example of the type of usage that is on the increase in the early nineteenth cen-
tury. It is not negated and it is to be construed objectively, the voice being linked
metonymically to its owner, who made an effort to be heard through the door.
It is from the second to the third period of CLMET, from before to after 1850,
that we find the most significant change in the ratio of negated to non-negated
 Thomas Egan

tokens (P = 0.0000: Pearson’s chi-sq. = 87.35). In the first half of the nineteenth
century, roughly three-quarters of all tokens are negated. Towards the end of the
century the reverse is the case, with just 47 of a total of 196 being now negated, as
may be seen in Figure 2. Examples (19) to (21) may be taken as typical of usage
around the turn of the century.
(19) Only a few of the Polygonal Class fail to pass the Final Test or Leaving
Examination at the University. (Abbott, Flatland, Part 1, Section 6)
(20) I fail to see why Mr. Short should be privileged.
 (Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody, Chapter XIX)
(21) Let us not dwell on it, on all the average civilized man still fails to achieve;
 (Wells, Mankind in the Making, Chapter V)
(19) instantiates the “effort” sense. Students try to pass examinations. In this case
most of them are successful. (20) and (21), on the other hand, are subjective. In
(20) there is no reason to assume that the speaker has made a serious effort to
understand the reasons behind Mr. Short’s position of privilege. It could be para-
phrased aptly by ‘I do not see why Mr. Short should be privileged’. Similarly in
(21), Wells regrets that the civilized man does not live up to his (Wells’) expecta-
tions, not that the civilized man has not reached his own goals.
The decline in the use of the negated form was most marked in the nineteenth
century, and it has continued to the present day, as may be seen in Figure 1. The dif-
ference in Figure 1 between the percentages for LOB and Brown may indicate that
the change was more advanced in American English in the 1960s, with 15 of 74 to-
kens being negated in the British corpus as opposed to only 6 of 91 in its American
counterpart. However, the degree of conformity between the results for the British,
American, Australian and New Zealand corpora shows that we are here witness to a
change in all major varieties of English. By the last decades of the twentieth century,
the average proportion of instances that was negated ranged from two percent in the
case of the Frown corpus of American English to five percent in the case of the FLOB
corpus of British English. Moreover this development would seem to have reached a
climax in the early twenty-first century, when, as we have seen, the only negated to-
kens returned by WebCorp were biblical quotations. In the next section we will look
more closely at the nineteenth century since it witnessed the most significant fall-off
in the use of negated ‘ fail to’ and rise in the use of its non-negated counterpart.

4. Some new sorts of failure

The decline in the use of the negated form in the nineteenth century affected all
uses of the form to a similar degree. They all declined but none of them disappeared
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

altogether. All four semantic types in Table  1 continue to occur. In CLMET

1780–1850 the three most common forms could not fail, cannot fail and never fail
account for some 70 percent of all tokens. In CLMET 1850–1920 the same three
forms account for 60 percent. Other forms, such as will not fail to, would not fail
to, did not fail to and seldom fail to also continue to be used, though with ever
declining frequency, right up to the end of the twentieth century.
The situation for the non-negated form is rather different in that, while estab-
lished uses become more widespread, the nineteenth century also sees ‘ fail to’
being used to encode new sorts of failure. Both subjective and objective forms
increased, as may be seen in Figure 3.
To begin with the subjective readings, one area in which there is a marked
increase is in the use of ‘ fail to’ with predicates of perception and understanding.
We have seen one such token in (20). Performative uses such as (20) and (22) to
(23) become common in the late nineteenth century.
(22) “I fail to see the connection,” said Leonard, hot with stupid anger.
 (Forster, Howards End, Chapter XVI)
(23) “I am afraid I fail to follow you, Mr. Bruff,” I said, modestly.
 (Collins, The Moonstone, Chapter III)
Although I have placed (22) and (23) with (20) at the subjective end of the objec-
tive-subjective cline described in Section 2, an analysis along the lines of Traugott
& Dasher (2002) would go further and classify all three examples as intersubjective.

2.5

1.5

0.5
objective
0 subjective
1780–1850 1850–1920

Figure 3.  Subjective and objective tokens of non-negated ‘ fail to’ per 100,000 words
 Thomas Egan

Traugott & Dasher state that, in their view “intersubjective meanings crucially
involve social deixis (attitude toward status that speakers impose on first per-
son – second person deixis)” and that “what is said implies more is meant”
(Traugott & Dasher 2002: 23). In (22) the speaker not only says that he finds it
impossible to see the connection, but he implies that no such connection exists.
In (23) the speaker not only says that he cannot understand his addressee, but
implies that such understanding would be difficult to achieve, at the same time
hedging this objection by superficially attributing its cause to himself. Simi-
larly, in (24), when the speaker instructs the addressee to fail to see the point, he
is not advocating a form of cognitive inability but rather one of intersubjective
behaviour.
(24) When he says anything laughable, fail to see the point and don’t smile,
and speak of Him before those who will report your talk as “that fantasti-
cal man,” or “that Sergeant What’s-his-name.”
 (Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd, Chapter XXIX)
(25) “Of course,” said the troop horse, “everyone is not made in the same way,
and I can quite see that your family, on your father’s side, would fail to
understand a great many things.”
 (Kipling, The Jungle Book, “Her Majesty’s Servants”)
Not all instances of fail to see/follow/understand are intersubjective, however. (25)
is an example in which the construction functions subjectively rather than inter-
subjectively. Figure 4 contains normalized frequencies for non‑negated ‘ fail to’
with “predicates of seeing and understanding” in the three subcorpora of CLMET.
Together, these account for over a third of the subjective tokens in the period
1850–1920.
As may be seen in Figure 3, the increase in the number of objective tokens is
less than that of subjective ones. This increase takes two forms. In the first place,
there is an increase in the number of tokens encoding what one might call more
“local” failure, by which I mean failure in the carrying out of a specific task or
achieving a specific result on a particular occasion. This sort of failure is instanti-
ated in (18) and (19) above and (26) to (29) below.
(26) I failed to find Lord Hilton at his house, but I was told he was expected
from London by the six o’clock train from Waterloo.
 (Wells, The War of the Worlds, Chapter Three)
(27) It appeared that when Prince Otto met me after my interview with Prince
Ernest, he did his best to provoke a rencontre, and failing to get anything
but a nod from my stunned head, betook himself to my University.
 (Meredith, The Adventures of Harry Richmond, Chapter XXXII)
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2

0.1
fail to + perception
0 fail to + understanding

1710–1780 1780–1850 1850–1920

Figure 4.  Tokens of ‘ fail to’ per 100,000 words with predicates of perception/under-
standing in CLMET 1710–1780, 1780–1850 and 1850–1920

In (26) the subject attempts to see Lord Hilton on a specific occasion. This attempt
was unsuccessful. Similarly in (27) the subject did not succeed in provoking a
rencontre on a specific occasion. (26) and (27) differ from (19) in that the failed
endeavour is not competitive in nature. Failure in competition would seem to be
a new use, instantiated in (19) and (28) to (29).
(28) It is from these specimens of the refuse of our Nobility that the great
Tumults and Seditions of past ages have generally derived their leaders;
and so great is the mischief thence arising that an increasing minority of
our more progressive Statesmen are of opinion that true mercy would
dictate their entire suppression, by enacting that all who fail to pass the
Final Examination of the University should be either imprisoned for life,
or extinguished by a painless death. (Abbott, Flatland, Part 1, Section 6)
(29) Erotic had failed to win the Lancashire Cup.
 (Galsworthy, The Man of Property, Chapter VII)
While horse-racing dates back to the Restoration, public examinations only became
common in the nineteenth century. We would therefore not expect to encounter a
token like (28) in an earlier era. It is, however, not only in the academic world that
we now witness more people failing. There is a marked general increase in the inci-
dence of animate subjects during the period, as may be seen in Figure 5, which
contains normalized frequencies for (both negated and non‑negated) ‘ fail to’.
 Thomas Egan

4.00

3.50

3.00

2.50

2.00

1.50

1.00

0.50
animate
0.00 inanimate
1710–1780 1780–1850 1850–1920

Figure 5.  Tokens of ‘ fail to’ per 100,000 words with animate and inanimate subjects in
CLMET 1710–1780, 1780–1850 and 1850–1920

The sort of failure we have looked at thus far is local, restricted to a specific occa-
sion. What is new in the latter half of the nineteenth century is the predication of
failure by people on a more global scale, as in (21) and (30) to (32).
(30) The professional has not, he might well say, the leisure and freedom from
money anxieties which will let him devote himself to his art in singleness
of heart, [...]; he has got to square everyone all round and will assuredly fail
to make his way unless he does this; if, then, he betrays his trust he does so
under temptation. (Butler, Notebooks, “Amateurs and Professionals”)
(31) But if by some miracle we could use the Casual Wards as a means of provid-
ing for all those who are seeking work from day to day, [...] they would utterly
fail to have any appreciable effect upon the mass of human misery with which
we have to deal.    (Booth, In Darkest England and the Way Out, Chapter 9)
(32) It is very doubtful if these most favourable conditions fall to the lot of
more than a quarter of the children born to‑day even in England, where
infant mortality is at its lowest. The rest start handicapped. They start
handicapped, and fail to reach their highest possible development.
 (Wells, Mankind in the Making, Chapter III)
Neither (21) nor (30) to (32) encodes failure on one particular occasion. Rather
the subjects are seen to fail comprehensively. All four tokens are concerned with
the question of possible improvement to the human condition, either on an indi-
vidual or collective level. In (32), for instance, we see how whole lives may be
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

portrayed as failures, an idea we also see reflected in the uses of the noun failure
in (33) to (38).
(33) “I consider my life to some extent a failure,” said Knight again after a
pause. (Hardy, A Pair of Blue Eyes, Chapter XIX)
(34) And as to her life. Failure, failure through headstrong blindness and
self‑will, resulting in the agony of the innocent.
 (Yonge, The Clever Woman of the Family, Chapter XX)
(35) He earned enough for his actual needs, and was under no pressing fear
for the morrow, so long as his faculties remained unimpaired; but there
was no disguising from himself that his life had been a failure.
 (Gissing, New Grub Street, Chapter VII)
There are no instances prior to 1850 in either the OED or in CLMET in which
failure is predicated of people’s lives. After 1850 we find that not only people’s lives
but also individuals themselves may be considered “failures”, as in (36) to (38).
(36) It is nearly certain that as a rule they make less agreeable boys and girls,
but to me at any rate it is not nearly so certain that they make adult fail-
ures. (Wells, Mankind in the Making, Chapter IV, sec. 3)
(37) ‘Of course, Edwin, if you make up your mind that you are a failure, you
will end by being so. (Gissing, New Grub Street, Chapter IV)
(38) “I have been a failure,” said Miss Bartlett, as she struggled with the straps
of Lucy’s trunk instead of strapping her own.
 (Forster, A Room with a View, Chapter VII)
This use of failure is new in the late nineteenth century and reminiscent of the late
twentieth century use of loser in a global sense.3 Not only do these new uses of the
noun failure parallel the new uses of the ‘ fail to’ construction, the noun also expands
in incidence at a similar rate to non‑negated ‘ fail to’, as may be seen in Figure 6.
To sum up, while it is impossible at this stage to advance an explanation for
the growth in the use of non‑negated ‘ fail to’ in the nineteenth century, we have
noted three developments. The period witnessed
– an increase in formulaic intersubjective utterances (I fail to see/understand)
– an increase in animate subjects
– an increased focus on personal failure (failed lives and individuals).
Whatever the reasons for these changes, the increase in the use of the non‑negat-
ed form has continued to the present day, to the extent that one may ask whether

3. I am grateful to Juliet Munden for pointing out this parallel to me.

 Thomas Egan

6.00

5.00

4.00

3.00

2.00

1.00
fail to (non-negated)
0.00 failure
1710–1780 1780–1850 1850–1920

Figure 6.  Tokens of non‑negated ‘ fail to’ and failure per 100,000 words in CLMET
1710–1780, 1780–1850 and 1850–1920

‘ fail to’ is in the process of grammaticalizing as a negation marker. This question

is addressed in the next section.

5. Is ‘ fail to’ grammaticalizing?

We have now seen that there has been a general increase in the use of non‑negated
‘ fail to’ in the last two centuries. We have also noted that one of the four main uses
of the form is to encode negation pure and simple, as in examples (4), (11), (22) and
(23). In these and similar instances there is no suggestion of the subject’s having
made an effort to achieve some goal or having neglected to perform some duty.
Given the amount of semantic bleaching involved in the “negation sense” compared
to the original “effort sense”, instantiated in (1) and (2), the question naturally aris-
es as to whether the ‘ fail to’ construction is in the process of grammaticalizing.
Much has been written about grammaticalization since Hopper & Traugott
(1993) produced the standard introduction to the topic. Traugott & Dasher (2002)
describe grammaticalization as being “properly conceived as the change whereby
lexical material in highly constrained pragmatic and morphosyntactic contexts is
assigned functional category status, and where the lexical meaning of an item is as-
signed constructional meaning” (Traugott & Dasher 2002: 81). According to Boye &
Harder (2009) the assumption of functional category status by a full lexical item is a
change in which “lexical elements go from being used to convey primary information
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

to being used predominantly to encode secondary information. [...] Grammaticali-

zation resides basically in the coding of secondary information status” (Boye &
Harder 2009: 32). Boye & Harder’s formulation in terms of primary and secondary
information has the advantage that it is easy to operationalize. In order to investigate
the extent to which ‘ fail to’ encodes primary or secondary information I searched
WebCorp for tokens of ‘ fail to’ followed by did. Tokens in which did functioned as an
anaphoric pro‑form were extracted. In some of these, such as (39) to (41), the matrix
verb failed is “discursively secondary” to the predicate in the complement clause.
(39) When they launched it, everyone from engineers to Communist Party
big shots failed to realize its importance. Only Korolyov did.
(http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/10/07/Space-re-
mains-a/)
(40) The simpler N,N’-bis(salicylidene)-ethylenediaminocobalt(II) [Co(Salen)2]
(16) failed to catalyze deoxygenations in THF but did in DMF.
(http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/els/00404039/1999/00000040/
00000050/art01880)
(41) Zidane spearheaded the semi‑final assault on Croatia, and although he
failed to score, Thuram did twice to Suker’s one – and booked the hosts
a place in the final against the World Champions.
 (http://www.travelnotes.org/Football/WorldCup/France.htm)
In the three examples the pro‑form did refers to the complement predicates real-
ize, catalyze and score rather than the matrix verb failed. This reference is sig-
nalled by only in (39), but in (40) and although in (41). Note that while (39) and
(40) involve bleaching, this is not the case to the same extent for (41), which en-
codes an objective effort on the part of the footballers. However, although the
meaning of fail in (41) is not as bleached as it is in the two other examples, it is still
backgrounded compared to the meaning of score.
The material downloaded from WebCorp also included tokens such as (42)
and (43), in which failed is not backgrounded.
(42) The bomb, however, failed to explode, and so did three others planted on
vehicles he chose at random.
 (http://www.newsregister.com/news/story_print.cfm?story_no=213941)
(43) Sites that failed to generate STOC did so consistently, while those at the
remaining sites generated STOC without failure.
 (http://ajpcell.physiology.org/cgi/content/short/287/6/C1577)
In (42) and (43), the pro‑form did refers to failed rather than to explode and gener-
ate. This interpretation is signalled in both examples by (and) so. If we were to
replace and so in (42) by but, the natural reading would be that did would then
 Thomas Egan

refer to explode rather than failed. Moreover, if ‘ fail to’ had grammaticalized in
(42), so would have to be replaced by neither, as in (44) to (46).
(44) Even Albeau failed to make final and neither did Pritchard as the event
lead was left on a knife‑edge.
 (http://www.gazettelive.com/features/feature_1.htm)
(45) The ref who was well behind the ball, failed to see anything, and neither did
the linesman. (http://www.merseyworld.com/rearguard/11com98.html)
(46) The young writer hired to update her work never visited the places in
question, but had used websites or phone calls, failed to double check –
and neither did the publishers.
 (http://www.nomadtours.co.za/guidebooksdontbelieveeverythi.html)
In all three of these examples the pro‑form did does not refer to fail but to the
complement predicates. In this respect they resemble examples (39) to (41) rather
than (42) and (43). We would therefore seem to be faced with a situation in which
‘ fail to’ has grammaticalized in some contexts, but not in others, and we are de-
pendent on the immediate co‑text for information on which to base our choice
between the two interpretations.
If  ‘ fail to’ is partly grammaticalized, the next question is when this process start-
ed. The criterion of semantic and syntactic backgrounding, which serves to distin-
guish (39) to (41) from (42) and (43) is less easy to operationalize in the case of his-
torical corpora. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that tokens in which
the construction is followed by a pro‑form or by ellipsis are relatively rare. Even
WebCorp only returns a handful of relevant tokens. The second reason is the pres-
ence in the historically dominant ‘not fail to’ construction of two morphemes encod-
ing non‑realization of the complement situation. In such cases, a contrastive con-
junction or conjunct would serve to indicate the cancellation of the most external
negation marker, of not/never/seldom rather than either fail or the complement pred-
icate. In the absence of historical tokens which could furnish us with syntactic evi-
dence of discursive foregrounding/backgrounding, we are thrown back on our in-
tuition and other text‑linguistic evidence. (47) to (49) are from CLMET 1710–1780.
(47) In our arrangement of bodies we never fail to place such as are resem-
bling, in contiguity to each other, or at least in correspondent points of
view. (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, part IV, Sect. V)
(48) Nations, accordingly, seldom fail to retaliate in this manner.
 (Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Chapter II)
(49) [...] the young gentleman, taking the advantage of being alone with the
physician, recapitulated all the affronts he had sustained from the painter’s
petulance, aggravating every circumstance of the disgrace, and advising
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

him, in the capacity of a friend, to take care of his honour, which could not
fail to suffer in the opinion of the world, if he allowed himself to be in-
sulted with impunity, by one so much his inferior in every degree of con-
sideration. (Smollett, The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Chapter LXIII)
How much in the way of meaning would be lost if we replaced never fail to place in
(47) with always place, seldom fail to retaliate in (48) with almost always retaliate and
could not fail to suffer in (49) with must needs suffer? The less one feels is lost by the
substitution the more one interprets fail as semantically bleached and the more one
would be inclined to view ‘ fail to’ as grammaticalized. Note too that, if one con-
cludes that ‘ fail to’ is grammaticalized in these examples, this leads to the conclusion
that the process of grammaticalization is not directly related to the loss of negation.
Given that bleaching is by definition most evident in subjective tokens one could
also ask whether the ratio of these to objective tokens has altered over the last several
hundred years. Figure 7 contains details of this ratio in CLMET and a selection of
contemporary corpora. From the data in the figure we can conclude that the ratio of
subjective to objective tokens of ‘ fail to’ has remained much the same over the last
three centuries. There has always been a sufficient critical mass of objectively‑con-
strued usages in both Late Modern and Present‑Day English to resist the gravita-
tional pull towards subjectification and intersubjectification that often accompany
grammaticalization. One should of course add that there is no vacuum in the system
of English negation at present to motivate the recruitment of a new negation marker.

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10 objective
0 subjective
1850–1920

FLOB

Frown

ACE

Wellington
1780–1850
1710–1780

Figure 7.  Ratio of objective to subjective tokens of ‘ fail to’ in CLMET, FLOB, Frown,
ACE and Wellington corpora (percentages)
 Thomas Egan

6. Summary and conclusion

This paper has shown that there has been a steady reduction in the use of the ne-
gated ‘ fail to’ construction over the past three hundred years. This reduction has
been accompanied by an increase in the use of non‑negated ‘ fail to’. We have seen
that there was a corresponding increase in the use of the noun failure in the nine-
teenth century, when both the verb and the noun were increasingly used to en-
code failure on a global scale. We have also noted that the negated form has prac-
tically disappeared from present‑day usage and that the now dominant
non‑negated form has grammaticalized in at least some uses to the extent that it
can function as a marker of negation. As pointed out in the previous section we
have at present no need of such a marker in English. Should one ever be required,
however, ‘ fail to’ would fit the job description to a tee.

Sources

ACE = Australian Corpus of English. The ICAME Corpus Collection on CD-ROM, version 2
(1999). Bergen: Aksis.
BNC = British National Corpus: on CD-Rom (2001). Oxford: Oxford University Computing
Services.
Brown = Corpus of Present-Day Edited American English (1979 [1964]). The ICAME Corpus
Collection on CD-ROM, version 2 (1999). Bergen: Aksis.
CLMET = Corpus of Late Modern English Texts. See De Smet & Cuyckens (2005).
Corpus de la Littérature Médiévale des Origines au 15e Siècle. See
http://www.classiques-garnier.com/
CEECS = Corpus of Early English Correspondence Sampler (1998). The ICAME Corpus Collec-
tion on CD-ROM, version 2 (1999). Bergen: Aksis.
FLOB = The Freiburg – LOB Corpus of British English (1998). The ICAME Corpus Collection on
CD-ROM, version 2 (1999). Bergen: Aksis.
Frown = The Freiburg – Brown Corpus of American English (1999). The ICAME Corpus Collec-
tion on CD-ROM, version 2 (1999). Bergen: Aksis.
Helsinki = Helsinki Corpus of English Texts (1996). The ICAME Corpus Collection on CD-
ROM, version 2 (1999). Bergen: Aksis.
LOB = Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen Corpus of British English (1978). The ICAME Corpus Collection
on CD-ROM, version 2 (1999). Bergen: Aksis.
WebCorp (1999–2009): Birmingham City University. See http://www.WebCorp.org.uk/.
Wellington = Wellington Corpus of Written New Zealand English (1993). The ICAME Corpus
Collection on CD-ROM, version 2 (1999). Bergen: Aksis.
 The ‘ fail to’ construction 

References

Benson, Larry D., ed. 1988. The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd edn. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Boye, Kasper & Peter Harder. 2009. “Evidentiality: Linguistic Categories and Grammaticali-
zation”. Functions of Language 16:1.9–43.
De Smet, Hendrik & Hubert Cuyckens. 2005. “Pragmatic Strengthening and the Meaning of
Complement Constructions”. Journal of English Linguistics 33:1.3–34.
Hopper, Paul J. & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 1993. Grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
OED. 1994. The Oxford English Dictionary: On Compact Disc. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Pearsall, Judy & Patrick Hanks. 1998. The New Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs & Richard B. Dasher. 2002. Regularity in Semantic Change.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 The interplay of modal verbs and adverbs
A history of mæg eaþe

Jerzy Nykiel*
University of Silesia

As Hoye (1997) points out, harmonic combinations of modal verbs and modal
adverbs are not uncommon in Present-Day English. The present paper explores
semantic and syntactic aspects of one of such combinations, namely mæg eaþe
‘may easily’, from a diachronic perspective. The collocation is attested at the
earlier stages of the development of the language, that is, in Old English and
Middle English. I aim to show that as early as in Old English, the adverb eaþe
‘easily’ helps to reinforce possibility-based meanings of mæg ‘may’, including
epistemic possibility. The Middle English range of contexts in which mæg eaþe
‘may easily’ occurs is more limited, which ultimately leads to the demise of
the combination toward the end of the Middle English period. I also examine
the issue of the extent to which the collocation is lexicalized in the respective
periods, especially with evidence from such factors as decomposition of
meaning, productivity and substitutability.

1. Introduction

In this article I seek to look into the history of the short-lived collocation mæg
eaþe ‘may easily’ found in Old English and Middle English texts. The nature of
the collocation, that is, the fact that it is composed of a pre-modal verb1 and a
modal adverb, invites comparisons with Hoye’s (1997) account of modal verb –
adverb constructions in Present-Day English. He shows that the meanings of

* I wish to thank the editors of this volume and two anonymous referees for their valuable
comments and suggestions. All errors and inadequacies remain, of course, mine.
1. I follow Lightfoot (1979, 1991) and Traugott (1992) and use the term “a pre-modal verb”
which stands for “a predecessor of a PDE modal auxiliary”. The term has syntactic, rather than
semantic, significance in that it implies that the Old English and Middle English ancestors of the
PDE modals, e.g. cann ‘can’, mæg ‘may’, sceal ‘shall’, are not full-fledged auxiliaries. The same
verbs are attested with both modal and non-modal semantics in Old and Middle English.
 Jerzy Nykiel

modals are often subject to modification, achieved through the use of an accom-
panying adverb. It is, however, Lyons (1977: 807) who first casts a wider theoreti-
cal net over similar expressions. He classifies them as “harmonic” or “non-har-
monic”, depending on whether the two members of the modal verb – modal
adverb collocation are semantically compatible or not. In modally harmonic col-
locations two distinct modal forms, in harness with each other, converge to pro-
duce a single modal meaning. In
(1) Now it may easily happen that the activation energy is large compared
with the transition temperature. (W.9.9.153, quoted in Hoye (1997: 167))
may and easily both contribute to one meaning of possibility. The fusion of com-
patible modalities supplied by an adverb and a modal verb in one clause is called
“semantic harmonization” by Shibasaki (2004: 392). These tenets resonate in both
synchronic (e.g.  Hoye 1997 and Wärnsby 2006) and diachronic (e.g.  Molencki
2003; Shibasaki 2004, 2009) studies of cases of the modal adverb – modal verb
co-occurrence.
Non-harmonic combinations, on the other hand, by virtue of their internal
modal incompatibility, receive a two-clausal interpretation. Thus, sentence (2)
(2) Certainly it may rain in the evening.
can be paraphrased as
(2) a. It is certainly the case that it may rain in the evening.
This interpretation follows from Lyons’ (1977: 808) observation that “no simple
utterance may contain more than a single subjective epistemic modality [...]”.
This study, with its focus being on mæg eaþe ‘may easily’, is also a study of
possibility, both epistemic and non-epistemic. This paper follows the conceptu-
alization of possibility offered by van der Auwera & Plungian (1998). The result-
ant terminology and divisions implemented in my considerations of possibility
follow in Table 1.

Table 1.  The modal meaning of possibility according to van der Auwera & Plungian
(1998: 82)

Non-epistemic possibility

Participant-internal Participant-external possibility

possibility (ability,
dynamic possibility, Non-deontic Deontic possibility Epistemic possibility
capacity) possibility (permission)
 Mæg eaþe 

According to this approach, possibility branches into two major areas: non-epis-
temic and epistemic possibility. Within non–epistemic possibility, participant-
internal possibility (henceforth PI possibility) corresponds to the traditionally
acknowledged notions of ability, dynamic possibility and capacity, as in (3):
(3) Your brother can run faster than you.
Participant-external possibility is divided into non-deontic possibility and deon-
tic possibility or permission. The former comes into play when enablement is con-
tingent upon some more or less nebulous Agent-external circumstances, e.g.
(4) You can see this painting in the local museum.
The fact that the painting is displayed in the museum opens up the possibility for
the participant to see the painting. A context of deontic possibility (permission)
calls for the speaker, or optionally some other person of authority or a set of regu-
lations, as the source of enablement. The participant is free to proceed in a given
way, an external source granting the possibility, as in (5):
(5) You can sit down now.
Permission will play no role in this study, however. Finally, epistemic possibility
has to do with a speaker’s assessment of a state of affairs as (un)likely to happen
or be the case, e.g.
(6) Johnny may win the race one day.
When analyzing data, however, one encounters instances which are suggestive of
more than just one type of possibility. Coates (1983: 14ff.) speaks of “indetermi-
nacy” in such cases.
Indeterminacy can take the form of (a) “gradience”, when one meaning of a
modal form shades into another and a given instance does not show the most
characteristic features of either, (b) “ambiguity”, when the context provides too
few clues to deduce the type of possibility meant, or (c) “merger”, when an in-
stance easily lends itself to two interpretations, yet neither has to be chosen as
both are equally viable. Although I have tried to give unambiguous illustrations,
some of the examples of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’, which follow in the remaining
part of this study, show signs of indeterminacy.

2. Etymology

The adverb of manner eaþe (ME eth(e), EME eath) ‘easily’, rich in cognates in
other Germanic languages, e.g. Old Saxon ôðo ‘easily, perhaps’, Old High German
 Jerzy Nykiel

ôdo ‘perhaps’, Old Norse auð‑, as in auð‑gorr ‘easy to do’, was active in English
since the written beginnings of the language but became obsolete in the eight-
eenth century, according to the data given in the OED, s.v. eath. The dictionary
locates the latest example of eath ‘easily’ in 1748. The latest occurrences in Scot-
tish English are about a hundred years older. The only period in which the adverb
in question enjoys respectable frequency is Old English. In the extant Old English
texts collected in the DOE corpus I have identified 247 instances of eaþe ‘easily’,
including all the spelling variants of the adverb as listed by the DOE. Since the
meaning of the adverb remains relatively stable until its demise, I cite the senses
of eaþe ‘easily’ as given by the DOE s.v. eaþe:
Meanings of eaþe (adv) ‘easily’ according to the DOE:
1. easily, with little or no difficulty
2. in comparative: more comfortably, more at ease
3. with equanimity: easily, calmly
4. without hesitation or reluctance, readily, willingly
5. used to denote likelihood or possibility: easily, possibly, likely, well
In the group of the 247 instances of OE eaþe ‘easily’, the adverb can be found in
the company of mæg ‘may’ 178 times. Eaþe ‘easily’ co-occurs with the pre-modal
in all persons and both tenses, i.e. present and past, so I use the Old English
1st/3rd person singular present form mæg ‘may’, rather than the infinitive form
magan, while referring to the collocation in general. Mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ con-
tinues well into Middle English yet fails to survive beyond the fifteenth century.
The latest example I have found is (7):
(7) Oone worde might thou speke ethe, yit might it do the
one word may thou speak easily yet might it do thee
som letht,
some mitigation (a1500(a1460) Towneley Pl. (Hnt HM 1)232/141)
‘You can easily say one word, it might still mitigate your case.’
It seems that the key motivation behind the disappearance of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’
is the appearance of the French loanword esi (OF aaisié, aisé, a past participle of
aiser, aisier ‘to put at ease’ according to the OED s.v. easy; PDE easy) in early Mid-
dle English. The adjective esi ‘easy’ gives rise to the adverb esili ‘easily’, the first in-
stance of which dates back to the year 1300 according to the OED and MED. Eaþe
‘easily’ is ousted from collocating with mæg ‘may’ by the end of the Middle English
period, its function being taken over by esili ‘easily’. This argument finds further
support in Shibasaki’s (2009: Table 5) analysis of the instances of may easily in the
 Mæg eaþe 

University of Virginia Corpus. Beginning with the year 1500 the frequency of the
collocation may easily is shown to grow apace with each subsequent century.
The other collocate, that is the pre-modal verb mæg ‘may’, is a member of the
preterite-present class, a common Germanic inheritance which is a result of reinter-
pretation of Proto-Indo-European perfective and stative forms of verbs as present
forms (see Prokosch 1939; Lass 1994; Kotin 2008). As shown by, for instance, Kytö
1991 and Nykiel 2010, Old English meanings of mæg ‘may’ center around the notion
of PI and non-deontic possibility. The former type, that is PI possibility (general
capacity residing in the Agent, ability), is illustrated in example (8):
(8) oððe hwa is swa heardheort þæt ne mæg wepan swylces
or who is so hardhearted that not may weep of-such
ungelimpes?
misfortune (ChronE 1086.11)
‘or who is so hardhearted as not to weep at such misfortune?’
where hardheartedness as a feature of the participant’s character can prevent
them from weeping. In (9) the possibility to earn eternal bliss is contingent upon
participants-external factors, which could be described as the nature of the
Christian doctrine, thus the example represents non-deontic possibility:
(9) Hwæt we nu gehyraþ þæt we magon mid þære soðan
what we now hear that we may with that true
hreowe ece blisse geearnian.
penitence eternal bliss earn (HomS 8 197)
‘We have now heard that we can earn eternal bliss with true penitence.’
At the same time, already in Old English mæg ‘may’ shows signs of encroachment
upon the territory of epistemic possibility and permission, a trend which contin-
ues in the later periods (see, for example, Tellier 1962, Goossens 1987, Bybee et
al. 1994, Nykiel 2010). Since the clearest cases of epistemic mæg ‘may’ are among
examples of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’, I consider it feasible to exemplify epistemic
possibility of mæg ‘may’ while discussing the epistemic use of mæg eaþe ‘may eas-
ily’ in Old English in Section 4.

3. Framework and the origin of the collocation

Instances of eaþe may ‘easily may’ are readily available throughout the Old Eng-
lish period, which makes it difficult to establish the genesis of the collocation. As
a starting point, it can be safely assumed that the sense ‘possibly, perhaps’ of eaþe
 Jerzy Nykiel

‘easily’ is diachronically later than the other meanings of the adverb. This assump-
tion is in accordance with Hanson’s (1987) insight into the semantic development
of epistemic and evidential adverbs such as possibly or apparently, which enter the
language in the Middle English period. As a rule, an epistemic extension of an
adverb follows an earlier non-modal meaning.2 Eaþe ‘easily’ is, thus, initially an
adverb of manner meaning ‘easily, with little difficulty’ (cf. sense 1 of eaþe ‘easily’
in Section 2), which comes to frequently modify the verbal complement of mæg
‘may’ of PI and non-deontic possibility. As a result, two meanings emerge: ability
to perform an action effortlessly and Agent-external possibility to perform an ac-
tion effortlessly. The ideas of PI/non-deontic possibility and ease are harmonic,
they complement each other, which is reflected in the fact that eaþe ‘easily’ does
not consistently co-occur with any other pre-modal in Old and Middle English.
Due to common co-occurrence eaþe ‘easily’ comes to be associated more with
mæg ‘may’ than with its complement and starts to reinforce the possibility of mæg
‘may’. The co-occurrence continues even though the meaning of mæg ‘may’ treads
along the path toward epistemicity. When mæg ‘may’ starts to lend itself to an
interpretation in terms of epistemic possibility, infrequently as it happens in Old
English, eaþe ‘easily’ is still collocated with the pre-modal. In this context eaþe
‘easily’ becomes a truly modal adverb in that it is an emphasizer of the epistemic
possibility of mæg ‘may’ in the sense of Lyons (1977) and Hoye (1997).
Two formal issues are noteworthy in connection with the development of
mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ sketched above. Firstly, the shift in the function of eaþe
‘easily’ from a modifier of the complement of mæg ‘may’ to a modifier of mæg
‘may’ itself can be seen as a transition of eaþe ‘easily’ from, using Huddleston &
Pullum’s (2002: 576) terminology, a “VP-oriented adjunct” to a “clause-oriented
adjunct”. This trajectory of change partly coincides with that attested by Traugott
(1995) in the case of adverbs which evolve into pragmatic markers. The first shift
on the trajectory, that is, “Internal Adverb > Sentential Adverb”, is the one expe-
rienced by eaþe ‘easily’ in that the adverb can no longer be associated with the VP.
The second issue concerns the mechanism behind the shift of eaþe ‘easily’. It
seems that we have to do with generalization of invited inferences as formulated
by Traugott & Dasher (2005). The contexts of PI and non-deontic possibility,
where eaþe emphasizes the ease with which an action can be performed, produce
the inference that the action is likely to happen. The inference comes closest to
being generalized when eaþe accompanies epistemic mæg.

2. Fischer (2007: 276) shows, however, that there are exceptions to this rule. Presumably, for
example, came to be used as a sentential/modal adverb without being first used as a VP ad-
verb. It is argued that it is analogy that is responsible for this development.
 Mæg eaþe 

The first instances of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ can be traced back to early Old
English and then they are scattered all over the Old English and Middle English
periods. Some illustrations follow in examples (10) through (13):
(10) Oððe eft ðæt he ryhtlice 7 stiðlice wrecan sceolde,
or else when he justly and sternly avenge should
ðæt he ðæt ne forielde, ðylæs se ryhtwislica anda
that he that not delay lest that good zeal
acolige, ðæt he hit eft sua eaðe wrecan ne mæge
weaken that he it again so easily avenge not may
 ((ca880) CP 20.149.24)
‘Or else when he should justly and sternly take revenge, let him not delay,
lest the good zeal should weaken so that he is not able to avenge the dam-
age so easily any more.’
(11) ac we sceolon secgan and forswigian ne durron þa
but we should say and keep-quiet-about not dare that
halgan lare, þe se hælend tæhte: Seo lare mæg
holy teaching, which the lord taught that teaching may
eaðe unc emlice seman.
easily us equally bring-about-agreement ((950–1050) ÆLet 5 8)
‘But we should talk and we dare not keep quiet about the holy teaching that
the Lord gave us. The teaching can easily settle our dispute in a fair way.’
(12) “Seli wif, what eilleþ þe?” “Bote eþe mai I sori be:
poor woman what ails thee but easily may I sorry be
Ich heuede a douter feir and fre, Feiror ne
I had a daughter lovely and gracious lovelier not
miggtte no mon se.
might no man see ((c1272–83) Dame Sirith 340)
‘“Poor woman, what ails you?” “But I can easily be sorry. I had a daugh-
ter, lovely and gracious, no one could see a lovelier one.’
(13) þe kyng hade too fewe Ageyn so monie schrewe
the king had too few against so many villains
So fele myhten eþe [Cmb: yþe] bringe þre to deþe.
so many might easily bring three to death
 ((c1325) Horn (Hrl2253) 61)
‘The king had too few against so many villains, so many could easily
bring three to death.’
 Jerzy Nykiel

Tellier (1962: 90) calls the collocation a stereotyped expression in Old English,

although, on top of giving a few examples, he does not elaborate on the matter.
The stereotyped character hints at lexicalization of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’, which
turns out to be generally weak, with the notable exception of the contexts where
the expression is used epistemically or to gloss Latin forte ‘by chance, acciden-
tally’ and forsitam ‘perhaps, probably’ in the Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels.
The extent to which mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ is lexicalized is the focus of Section 6.
In Sections 4 and 5 I discuss the semantics of the collocation in Old and Middle
English respectively.

4. Mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ in Old English

It is most plausible, and chronologically justified, to start an analysis of the seman-

tics of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ with the Old English examples as it is the period when
the collocation has the richest range of uses and Middle English stops short of
bringing any innovation. In accordance with Hoye’s (1997:  73ff.) and Nuyts’s
(2001: 200) assessments, in a modal verb – modal adverb collocation, the verb is
central in that it determines the meaning of the construction while the adverb plays
the role of the verb’s “satellite”. It follows that the examples of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’
in my analysis will be arranged according to the relevant meaning areas of mæg
‘may’, that is, PI possibility, non-deontic possibility, and epistemic possibility. The
area of PI possibility, that is possibility contingent on a conscious Agent, is abun-
dantly represented in the examples below. In (14), as well as in (15), the Agent is God
and his divine power to work miracles stands behind the PI possibility. If eaþe ‘eas-
ily’ is not adjacent to the pre-modal, which is the case in (14), it is not possible to say
whether the adverb is still a VP-oriented adjunct or a clause-oriented adverb.
(14) Swa Dryhten mæg, ana ælmihtig, eadigra gehwone wið
as Lord may one almighty blessed each against
earfeþum eaðe gescildan.
tribulations easily shield ((960–990) GuthA 554)
‘As the Lord, the one Almighty, can easily shield each blessed one against
tribulations.’
With much probability the meaning intended is ‘The Lord can shield each blessed
soul easily ...’, with eaþe ‘easily’ functioning as a VP modifier, but there is an in-
vited inference which suggests another reading, namely ‘The Lord can easily
shield ...’, with eaþe ‘easily’ emphasizing mæg ‘may’.
Example (15) has mihte ‘might’ and eaðe ‘easily’ used next to each other,
which clearly casts the adverb in the role of the emphasizer of the verb:
 Mæg eaþe 

(15) He gesceop ealle menn, and sume arærde, se ðe eaðe

he created all men and some raised that who easily
mihte ealle gif he wolde deade aræran þurh his
might all if he would dead raise through his
drihtenlican mihte;
divine power ((c1000) ÆHom 6 126)
‘He created all men and brought some back to life, he who could easily
bring everyone back to life if he wished to through his divine power;’
In (16), however, the VP has its own adjunct, i.e. genoh ryhte ‘well enough’. Given
this, eaðe ‘easily’ can only modify mæg ‘may’.
(16) Swiðe eaðe mæg on smyltre sæ ungelæred scipstiera
very easily may on calm sea unlearned steersman
genoh ryhte stieran, ac se gelæreda him ne getruwað on
enough well steer but that learned him not trusts on
ðære hreon sæ 7 on ðæm miclan stormum.
that rough sea and in those great storms ((c880) CP 9.57.25)
‘An unskilled steersman can very easily navigate well enough when the
sea is calm but a learned steersman does not trust him on the rough sea
or in violent storms.’
Also common is the type where the enabling conditions stay outside the Agent and
can be related to some existing states of affairs, which makes the type a straight-
forward case of non-deontic possibility. Illustrations follow in (17) through (19):
(17) Hi þa ealle glædmode begunnon to ceorfenne þone heagan
they then all cheerfully began to cut-down that high
pinbeam, and he wæs ahyld on ane healfe þæt man eaðe
pine-tree and he was bent on one side that man easily
mihte witan hwider he sigan wolde, and hi setton Martinum
might know whither he fall would and they set Martin
þær foran ongean, þæt he hine offeallan sceolde.
there in-front against that he him fall-upon should
 ((993–998) ÆLS (Martin) 406)
‘Then they cheerfully began to cut down the high pine-tree and it was
bent on one side so that one could easily know where it would fall. They
placed Martin opposite the tree so that it would fall upon him.’
In (17) eaþe mihte ‘might easily’ comes in a clause of purpose. The action of cut-
ting down a tree was carried out by a group of idolaters in such a way as to make
 Jerzy Nykiel

it quite possible for them to know where the tree would fall. The enablement of
knowing arises outside the subject man ‘one’ of eaðe mihte ‘might easily’, it stems
from the way in which the cutting is performed. Along similar lines, the possibil-
ity for the Agents to take refuge in the cave in example (18) stems from the loca-
tion of the cave on the hill, hence this is also a case of non-deontic possibility:
(18) Betere we ahreddon us sylfe of ðissere burhware;
better we save us self from these townspeople’s
gehlyde; faran us into þam mycclan scræfe her geond on
clamor go us into that big cave here through on
Celian dune, and ðær we magon full eaðe on genere wunian
Celius hill and there we may full easily on refuge stay
oððæt eft se casere into þissere birig fare;
until again that emperor into these people’s town come
 ((c 1000) LS 34 (SevenSleepers) 180)
‘We had better save ourselves from the clamor of the townspeople and go
through here to the big cave on the hill called Celius ... we can very easily
take refuge there until the emperor comes back to their town.’
In (19) we find eaðe mæg ‘may easily’ interpretable as ‘it is objectively possible in
this reality (for a human to find out how to kill themselves)’, it is the nature of the
reality that brings it within the confines of possibility.
(19) Eaðe mæg se mann findan hu he hine sylfne amyrre ac
easily may that man find how he him self kill but
we sceolan witan þæt nan sylfcwala, þæt is agenslaga, ne
we should know that no self-killer that is self-slayer not
becymð to Godes rice.
comes to God’s kingdom (ÆAbusMor 10)
‘One can easily find out how to kill oneself but we should be aware that
those who commit suicide do not go to God’s kingdom.’
If the location of the source of the possibility outside the Agent is responsible for clas-
sifying the above examples as expressing non-deontic rather than PI possibility, the
fact that the speakers make the judgments based on the generally shared knowledge
rather than on their individual beliefs rules out any epistemic interpretation. Eaþe
‘easily’ each time seems to have the effect of enhancing the possibility, yet, crucially,
not in the sense that the possibility that an action will take place is increased. Rather,
it is the ease and smoothness with which the action can proceed that are highlighted.
If the adverb eaþe ‘easily’ is ever mentioned in linguistic literature, it is in connec-
tion with the emerging epistemic sense of mæg ‘may’ in Old English. Goossens
 Mæg eaþe 

(1982: 78) and Kytö (1991: 150) argue that the first instances of epistemic mæg ‘may’
can be found among those of mæg eaþe. Warner (1993) cautions, however, that the
collocation does not guarantee the presence of an epistemic meaning. This research
supports this conclusion. Both in Old English and Middle English the epistemic sens-
es of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ are in the minority, always outnumbered by instances of
PI and non-deontic possibility. Obviously, any far reaching assumptions indicating
that epistemicity of mæg ‘may’ has a source in mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ have to be aban-
doned given that epistemic mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ virtually disappears with the end of
Old English while may still functions only marginally as an epistemic throughout the
Middle English period, as Goossens (1982) claims. Rather, mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ is
one of a number of means through which mæg ‘may’ flirts with an epistemic flavor.
If eaþe ‘easily’ is actually paired with epistemic mæg ‘may’, it serves to give the
pre-modal a stronger epistemic import, that is, to make the possibility higher. The
two clearest epistemic examples that I have identified follow in (20) and (21). These
two show strongly subjective assessments of possibility by the speaker. The second
speaker in (20) gives his opinion about the statement about fate made by the first
speaker. Note that the clause with eaþe ... mæge ‘may easily’ is preceded by Ic wene þæt
‘I think that’, one of the earliest epistemic markers in English (see Goossens 1982) and
an ancestor of first-person epistemic parentheticals (see Brinton 1996), while in the
following clause the verb takes the epistemicity-marking subjunctive form þynce
‘seem’. The collection of the three epistemic signals on the one hand helps dispel any
doubts about the epistemic possibility meaning of (20), but on the other hand shows
that mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ itself is not a firmly established marker of epistemicity.
(20) ða cwæð he: Ic wille secgan þæt ælc wyrd bio good,
then said he I will say that each fate is good
sam hio monnum good þince, sam hio him yfel þince
whether she to-men good seem or she them evil seem
ða cwæð ic: Ic wene þæt hit eaðe swa bion mæge, þeah
then said I I think that it easily so be may though
us hwilum oðer þynce.
us at-times otherwise seem ((c880) Bo 40.137.4)
‘Then he said, “I want to say that every fate is good, whether men con-
sider it good or bad.” I said to this, “Methinks it may easily be so, though
we may at times deem otherwise.”’
Example (21) shows a piece of a conversation between Antiochus and Achaius,
who are not certain whether the man whom they have just met is their friend
Eustace or not. An assessment of epistemic possibility based on the evidence
available, that is after examining the man, is made by one of them through the
use of eaþe mihte ‘may easily’:
 Jerzy Nykiel

(21) Hi þa geornlice hine beheoldon and hine be dæle

they then eagerly him examined and him by part
oncneowan and cwædon, gelic is þæs man þam men
recognized and said similar is this man that man
þe wit secað, eaðe he hit mihte beon. Ða cwæð
which we-two seek easily he it may be then said
se oðer, Ic wat þæt he hæfde ane dolhswaðe on his
that other I remember that he had one scar on his
hneccan þæt him gelamp iu on gefeohte.
neck that him occurred formerly on fight((c1000) LS 8 (Eust) 265)
‘They examined him eagerly, to some extent recognized him and said,
“This man is similar to the one we are seeking, it may easily be him.” The
other man said, “I remember that he had a scar on his neck which he had
once gained in battle.”’
A discussion of epistemic possibility of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ would not be com-
plete without mentioning the use of the collocation in glosses capturing the
meaning of Latin forte ‘by chance, accidentally’ and forsitam ‘perhaps, probably’
in the Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels. This is the only context in which mæg
eaþe ‘may easily’ is consistently used with an epistemic function and the two col-
locates are inseparable, invariably followed by a clause. Overall, there are seven-
teen such instances, two of which are given below as examples (22) and (23):
(22) L: iube ergo custodiri sepulchrum usque in diem tertium ne forte ueni-
ant discipuli eius et furentur eum et dicant plebi surrexit a mortuis
OE: gehat forðon gehalda vel þætte sie gehalden
command therefore hold-secure or that be held-secure
byrgenn oð ðone ðirde doege eoðe mæg þæt hia cyme
tomb until that third day easily may that here come
ðegnas his 7 hia forstela hine 7 cuoða ðæm folce
disciples his and here steal him and tell those people
arisa vel aras from deadum (...)
risen or rose from dead ((960) MtGl (Li) 27.64)
‘Therefore command that the tomb be kept secure until the third day;
his disciples may easily go and steal him away, and tell the people,
“He has risen from the dead.”’
(23) L: Cum autem uadis cum aduersario tuo ad principem in uia da operam
liberari ab illo ne forte trahat te apud iudicem et iudex tradat te exac-
tori et exactor mittat te in carcerem
 Mæg eaþe 

OE: miððy uutedlice ðu gast vel gegað mið wiðerworde

when indeed thou go or go with adversary
ðinum to aldormen on woeg sel geornlice þætte ðu se
thy to magistrate on way give eagerly that thou be
gefreod from him eaðe mæg vel ðylæs genime ðec mið
liberated from him easily may or lest take thee against
doema vel gelædæ ðec to dome 7 se doemere seleð.
judge or lead thee to judgment and that judge gives
ðec ðæm æfgroefe 7 se æfgroefa sendað ðec in carcern
thee that officer and that officer sends thee in prison
 ((960) LkGl (Li) 12.58)
‘Thus, when you go with your adversary before a magistrate, on the
way make an effort to be liberated from him, or you may easily be
taken before the judge, and the judge sends you to the officer, and the
officer sends you to prison.’
Interestingly, the Gospels contain ðylæs ‘lest’, side by side with mæg eaþe ‘may
easily’, as an optional gloss for ne forte ‘lest by chance, accidentally’ in fourteen
cases. This can be seen in example (23). A possible reason for the optional use of
ðylæs ‘lest’ is that the epistemic possibility here concerns a proposition whose
realization is not desired by the speaker. It is a possibility that something unpleas-
ant will happen, which does not fit in with the epistemic possibility of mæg eaþe
‘may easily’ in the majority of examples where the speaker hopes that the proposi-
tion will be realized or is, at least, indifferent. López-Couso (2007: 14) calls lest as
used here an “adverbial subordinator [...], introducing clauses of NEGATIVE
PURPOSE with the meaning ‘so that ... not, for fear that’”.
It should also be noted that throughout the Old English period mæg eaþe
‘may easily’ has a competitor in the form of the collocation mæg eaþelice ‘may
easily’. The adverb eaþelice ‘easily’ (ME ethelich) is derived from the adjective
eaþelic ‘easy’, itself a derivative of the adverb eaþe ‘easily’ (cf.  BT, s.v. æðelic).
According to the DOE, eaþe and eaþelice are synonyms and the latter also enters
the collocation with mæg ‘may’. A check of the DOE corpus data indicates that
eaþelice ‘easily’ is attested 46 times in the vicinity of mæg, which accounts for
29 per cent of all the appearances of eaþelice in Old English – overall eaþelice,
with different spelling variants included, has 160 attestations.3

3. It can be added that four Middle English instances of mai ethelich ‘may easily’ can be
found in the MED, the last one dating back to the year 1398. Nevertheless, given the scarcity
of the examples and the fact that no new semantic or syntactic developments are attested, no
mention is made of the collocation in Section 5, which is devoted to Middle English.
 Jerzy Nykiel

Mæg eaþe and mæg eaþelice ‘may easily’ occur in very similar contexts to the ex-
tent that in the area of PI possibility they seem virtually interchangeable. In example
(24) Hwi hingrað ðe: gif ðu godes sunu sy. wend þas
why hungers-it you if thou God’s son be change these
stanas to hlafum. and et; Eaðe mihte God se ðe awende
stones to loaves and eat easily might God that that changed
wæter to wine. and se ðe ealle gesceafta of nahte
water to wine and that that all creatures from nothing
geworhte: eaðelice he mihte awendan þa stanas to hlafum:
made easily he might change those stones to loaves
ac he nolde nan ðing doon be ðæs deofles tæcunge;
but he would-not no thing do by that devil’s order
 ((990–995) ÆCHom I, 11 267.47)
‘‘‘Why are you starving? If you are the Son of God, turn these stones to
bread and eat.” God could easily, he who turned water into wine and the
one who created all creatures out of nothing, he could easily have turned
the stones to bread but he would do nothing by the Devil’s direction;’
Ælfric uses eaðelice he mihte as a stylistic variant of eaðe mihte God, probably in
order to avoid repetition of the latter. Mæg eaþelice ‘may easily’, not unlike mæg eaþe
has a leaning toward contexts in which a PI possibility reading follows from the
designation of a powerful deity as the subject and the focus on his capacity to act.
The same context was addressed with reference to examples (14) and (15) above.
Instances of non-deontic possibility with mæg eaþelice ‘may easily’ also oc-
cur. Example (25) is a case in point
(25) Heo (...) sæde, þæt heo wolde gesecan þone ealdormann and
she said that she would seek that ruler and
hine gewissian to his agenum willan, hu he eaðelice mihte
him instruct to his own will how he easily might
þæt manncynn berædan butan frecednysse his
that nation take-by-treachery without danger his
agenes folces.
own people’s ((ca 1000) ÆHomM 15 239)
‘She (...) said that she wanted to seek the ruler and show him, with his
permission, how he could easily take that nation by treachery without
any danger for his own people.’
in that the possibility to take the nation by treachery is shown to originate outside
the subject/Agent.
 Mæg eaþe 

As regards an epistemic function, mæg eaþelice ‘may easily’ is not used in that
way. Mæg eaþelice ‘may easily’ may never really extend to epistemic possibility as
such but it develops a use which produces an inference of epistemicity. In Bybee’s
(1988) view, root (non-deontic) possibility of may invites an inference of epis-
temic possibility when the modal has a wide scope, that is, when the Agent is not
expressed or is generic. This is exactly the case with example (26):
(26) Ne sy þis on nanum gamete gedyrstleht fram
not be this on no measure undertaken from
mynecenehades manna, forði of þam mæg swiðe
monastic-state’s men because from that may very
mycel saca yðelice arise.
great scandal easily arise ((950–1050) BenRW 69.141.23)
‘Do not let it (a monk defending another monk) be undertaken in any
measure by men of the monastic state, because grave scandal can easily
arise from that.’
In summary, mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ shows a variety of uses in Old English. It goes
a long way toward expressing three types of possibility, namely PI possibility,
non-deontic possibility and epistemic possibility. In the context of PI possibility
eaþe ‘easily’ tends to be employed as a VP-oriented adjunct, which invites an in-
ference of clausal orientation. When non-deontic possibility is involved, the in-
ference is stronger while the epistemic examples only allow an interpretation of
eaþe ‘easily’ as a clause-oriented adjunct, that is an emphasizer of epistemic mæg
‘may’. The adverb eaþe ‘easily’ itself develops the meaning of epistemic possibility
in the process. The epistemic function of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ may be attested
rarely but it is fairly uncontroversial to the extent that this collocation is selected
to render the epistemic meaning of Latin forte ‘by chance, accidentally’ and forsi-
tam ‘perhaps, probably’ in the Old English gospels.

5. Semantics of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ in Middle English

Over the course of Middle English instances of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ are rare,
with the Helsinki Corpus offering none and the MED adducing twenty seven. It is
the areas of PI and non-deontic possibility that still exercise a strong hold over the
collocation as illustrated in examples (27) and (28) respectively.
(27) þou art mi man, & al mi trest is þe vpan.
thou are my man and all my trust is thee upon
 Jerzy Nykiel

Nou þou migt wel eþe Arede me fram þe deþe.

now thou may well easily save me from the death
 ((c1330) Floris (Auch))
‘You are my man, and all my trust is in you. Now you can easily save me
from death.’
(28) Here byfore he myghte ethe [Cmb: eyth] Sone hafe mad me
here before he might easily soon have made me
asethe.
compensate ((c1440) Degrev. (Thrn) 489)
‘Heretofore he could easily have made me compensate.’
It is, however, significantly more difficult to stumble upon a case of epistemic pos-
sibility. The best instance I have found is that shown in (29):
(29) Hie iseð bineðen hem deflen þe hem gredeliche kepeð.
they see beneath them devils who them greedily keep
and beð swiðe of grisen; and ful eaðe mugen.
and are very afraid and full easily may
 ((a1225(?a1200)) Trin.Hom. (Trin-C B.14.25) 173)
‘They will see beneath them devils, who will greedily seize them, and
they will be greatly terrified and very easily may be.’
and still it is controversial as it blends an epistemic reading with a non-deontic
possibility reading. It is not entirely clear whether and ful eaðe mugen ‘and very
easily may’ indicates possibility resulting from the disposition of the circum-
stances or an epistemic judgment. Since the two interpretations do not exclude
each other, the example can be taken to be a case of merger as formulated by
Coates (1983: 16). With neither option being ruled out, the sentence is still com-
prehensible. It is noteworthy, however, that eaþe ‘easily’ itself is not instrumental
whatsoever in differentiating between a non-epistemic and epistemic meaning of
mæg ‘may’. What is more, given that among the Middle English instances of mæg
eaþe ‘may easily’ one does not find any clearer epistemic examples than (29) and
even this sentence comes from a Middle English version of Old English homilies,
it must be concluded that the most innovative usage of eaþe mæg ‘may easily’ in
Old English, that is epistemic, is lost first in Middle English, just in time for the
collocation to fall out of use by the end of Middle English.
As was mentioned in Section 2, in Middle English eaþe ‘easily’ is gradually re-
placed with esili ‘easily’ in the collocation with mæg ‘may’. The new collocation
makes its first written appearance in 1384 and has only nine attestations in the Mid-
dle English texts found in the Helsinki Corpus and MED. None of these attestations
 Mæg eaþe 

conveys an epistemic judgment, which suggests that the lexical replacement blocks
the development of the epistemic use of the collocation. Obviously, this assessment
can only be tentative given the overall low number of occurrences of eaþe ‘easily’
and esili ‘easily’ collocated with mæg ‘may’ in Middle English.

6. To what extent is it lexicalization?

As Hoye (1997: 164ff.) points out, some harmonic combinations of modal verbs and
modal adverbs in Present-Day English, e.g. may easily or may well, develop an idio-
matic status. In this section I look into traces of lexicalization present already in Old
and Middle English in the case of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’. While offering a typology of
lexicalization, Himmelmann (2004: 27) points to idiomatization and univerbation as
kinds of lexicalization applicable to collocations. As the two elements in mæg eaþe
‘may easily’ remain morphologically free and they are never univerbated, the type of
lexicalization involved here would be idiomatization. Features associated with idi-
omatization are usually loss of compositional meaning, loss of productivity and loss
of substitutability, as noted by Brinton & Traugott (2005: 55). There is no decrease in
productivity and substitutability in the case of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’. The collocation
occurs in all persons and tenses and the adverb eaþe ‘easily’ can assume comparative
(example (30)) and superlative forms (example (31)) when paired with mæg ‘may’:
(30) þe þe Godes wille [?deð], ðe eiðer he mai
that which God’s will does the more-easily he may
him finde
him find ((?c1250) PMor. (Eg 613(1)) 88)
‘the one who acts according to God’s will can more easily find him.’
(31) þa wæs nergendes þeowen þrymful, þearle gemyndig hu
then was savior’s servant strong very mindful how
heo þone atolan eaðost mihte ealdre benæman.
she that terrible-one most-easily might of-life deprive
ær se unsyfra, womfull, onwoce
before that impure evil awake (Jud 73)
‘[The lady], the strong servant of the Savior, was very mindful of how she
could most easily deprive the most terrible one of life, before that wicked
and evil man awoke.’
This is a clear indication that the adverb does not lose productivity, it sits well in
the class of gradable adverbs and behaves like one. What is more, it is not uncom-
mon that eaþe ‘easily’, when operating in mæg eaþe ‘may easily’, is modified both
 Jerzy Nykiel

in Old and Middle English. In Old English the modifiers are adverbs such as swa
‘so’, swiðe ‘very’, ful(l) ‘very’, and naht ‘not’ while the set of Middle English modi-
fiers comprises ful ‘very’ and wel ‘well’. All these forms with the exception of naht
‘not’ can be classified, following Hoye (1997: 169ff), as amplifiers, or, following
Paradis (2008:  321) as boosters. They have the effect of enhancing the quality
which they modify. When paired with eaþe ‘easily’, naht ‘not’, through occur-
rence in negative clauses, is a downtoner, or a diminisher in Paradis’s (2008: 321)
terminology, that is, it weakens the meaning of eaþe ‘easily’, as in example (32):
(32) uah and racha sind ebreisce interiectiones, and ælc
uah and racha are Hebrew interjections and each
þeod hæfð synderlice interiectiones, ac hi ne magon
language has particular interjections but they not may
naht eaðe to oðrum gereorde beon awende.
not easily to other languages be translated((c1000) ÆGram 279.18)
‘uah and rach are Hebrew interjections, and every language has special
interjections but they cannot be easily translated into other languages.’
Mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ does not show any deficiency with regard to substitutabil-
ity, either. The synonymous adverb eaþelice ‘easily’ can be used in lieu of eaþe
‘easily’, the order of the two collocates can alternate between eaþe mæg and mæg
eaþe, and the two collocates can be separated.
As for decomposition of meaning, the process does apply when OE mæg eaþe
‘may easily’ is used epistemically. In the company of epistemic mæg ‘may’, eaþe
‘easily’ loses its original semantics in favor of the inference of possibility or likeli-
hood derived from the use of mæg ‘may’. In such examples eaþe ‘easily’ comes to
indicate possibility, or it simply emphasizes the possibility of mæg ‘may’. This can
be seen as decomposition of meaning.
Concurrently, this assessment of lexicalization fails to reflect the extent of
lexicalization pertaining to the use of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ in the glosses in the
Lindisfarne and Rushworth Gospels, as illustrated in examples (22) and (23). In
this case loss of both productivity and substitutability takes place in as far as this
use of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ requires the fixed order of the collocates and does
not tolerate different forms of the verb or modification of the adverb. Obviously,
the fact that such consistency can be found only in the glosses makes one ap-
proach these occurrences of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ with caution. On the other
hand, the authors of the glosses selected this collocation, and not any other, to
render epistemic possibility, which may indicate that mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ was
much more lexicalized in everyday communication than what we can see in the
extant Old English texts.
 Mæg eaþe 

7. Conclusion

With this study, I hope to have shown the evolution path of the collocation mæg
eaþe ‘may easily’ in Old and Middle English. Occurrences of the collocation are
already widespread in early Old English and the data available make it impossible
to trace the exact stages through which mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ comes into being. I
suggested that the juxtaposition of the pre-modal verb mæg ‘may’ and the adverb
eaþe ‘easily’ results from reinterpretation of the VP-oriented adverb eaþe ‘easily’
as a clause-oriented adverb. The reinterpretation of the adverb has an inferential
basis. So does the development of the epistemic possibility meaning of eaþe ‘eas-
ily’, which enables the adverb to emphasize the epistemic possibility of mæg ‘may’.
In this way mæg ‘may’ and eaþe ‘easily’, already harmonic in the area of PI and
non-deontic possibility, become harmonic when it comes to epistemic possibility
as well. The only meaning of mæg ‘may’ not conveyed by mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ is
permission. The evolution of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ in Middle English slows down
and comes to a halt by the end of the period as eaþe ‘easily’ is gradually replaced
with esili ‘easily’. The overall popularity of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ decreases and
clearly epistemic examples are nowhere to be found.
Especially in the Old English data there are clues pointing to some idiomatiza-
tion of mæg eaþe ‘may easily’: the adverb undergoes decomposition of meaning
when paired with epistemic mæg ‘may’. At the same time, however, there can be no
denying that we have to do with a lexicalization process at a very early stage as mæg
‘may’ and eaþe ‘easily’ behave like a productive pre-modal and a productive adverb
respectively and there is no loss of substitutability. Mæg eaþe ‘may easily’ as used in
the glosses to capture the meaning of Latin forte ‘by chance, accidentally’ and forsi-
tam ‘perhaps, probably’ in the Old English Gospels has been singled out, as idioma-
tization in this case also involves loss of productivity and loss of substitutability.

Dictionaries

Bosworth, Joseph & T. Northcote Toller, eds. = BT. 1898. An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary. 1921.
Supplement by T. Northcote Toller. 1972. Enlarged Addenda and Corrigenda by Alistair
Campbell. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Cameron, A., A. Crandell Amos, Antonette diPaolo Healey, J. Holland, D. McDougall, I. Mc-
Dougall, N. Speirs & P.Thompson, eds. = DOE. 2003. The Dictionary of Old English on
CD-ROM. The University of Toronto. Available on-line at: <http://www.doe.utoronto.ca>
Kurath, Hans & S. Kuhn, eds. = MED. 1956–2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Simpson, J. A., E. Simon & C. Weiner, eds. = OED. 1989. Oxford English Dictionary. Second
Edition. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
 Jerzy Nykiel

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 Current change in the modal system of English
A case study of must, have to and have got to

Joanne Close & Bas Aarts*

University of Leeds & University College London

This paper takes the variation between must, have to and have got to as a
window through which to view changes in the modal system in Present-Day
British English (1960s–1990s). The results from this study show a dramatic
decrease in frequency of the core modal must and a significant increase in
frequency of the semi-modal have to in the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day
Spoken English (DCPSE). Changes in the modal system affect both epistemic
and root uses of must, although have to is only an active rival to root must;
epistemic instances of have to (and have got to) are rare in the corpus. We
suggest that a tendency to avoid expressions of strong commitment is the cause
of the decline in must. This is supported by similar falls in the frequency of
should and ought found by Leech et al. (2009).

1. Introduction

The class of English modal verbs have undergone a number of important changes
in the history of English, and continue to change in Present-Day English (PDE).
Studies on current change suggest that the modals are decreasing in frequency,
becoming monosemous, and are facing possible competition from rival semi-
modals which are increasing in frequency (see Krug 2000; Leech 2003; Smith
2003; Mair & Leech 2006; Mair 2006; Leech et al. 2009).
This paper investigates the variation between the core modal must and the
semi-modals have to and have got to in the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day

* This research was carried out as part of the project The changing verb phrase in Present-
Day British English at the Survey of English Usage, UCL, funded by the UK Arts and Hu-
manities Research Council (grant number AH/E006299/1). We gratefully acknowledge the
AHRC’s support.
 Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

Spoken English (see Section 3.1).1 We use the label “semi-modal” for have to and
have got to in order to highlight that these forms share some of the properties
common to must, a member of the class of core modals.2
The questions we address in this paper are: (i) is the core modal must decreas-
ing in frequency? (ii) is there evidence for “competition” between must and the
semi-modals have to and have got to? (iii) is must becoming monosemous?, and
(iv) what is the motivation for the change(s)?
The variation between the three forms is a window onto the changing modal
system and, while the results cannot necessarily be generalized to other modals,
the study will offer an insight into areas of the modal system susceptible to change
and identify possible motivating factors behind these changes.
This paper is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews some of the existing work
on current change in the modal system; Section 3 presents the corpus and describes
the data collection method, including decisions taken on which data to exclude
from the current study; Section 4 discusses the main findings and investigates pos-
sible motivations for the changes that have occurred; Section 5 is the conclusion.

2. Current change in the modal system of English

2.1 Observing current change

Throughout the history of English, the modal verbs have undergone a number of
significant changes, resulting in a class of verbs characterized by a number of
syntactic properties which are not shared by main verbs (see Traugott 1989;
Lightfoot 1991; Warner 1993). More recently, there has been a growing interest in
current change in the modal system of English (Krug 2000; Leech 2003; Smith
2003; Mair 2006; Leech et al. 2009), as well as more generally. It is hoped that re-
search into this phenomenon will lead to a greater understanding of the trigger(s)
and pathway(s) of language change.
We might expect instances of current change to be subtle in comparison to
changes measured over a longer period. While recent changes in the language

1. We do not include in this study the reduced form gotta or the form got to not preceded by
an auxiliary. We exclude these from this paper because the phonologically reduced gotta does
not appear in the corpus and got to occurs only once.
2. For Quirk et al. (1985: 141–146) have to is a modal semi-auxiliary, while have got to is a
modal idiom. These combinations are not identical in their syntactic behaviour: have to takes
do-support, while inversion is not possible for most speakers. It can occur as a non-finite form
and be preceded by an auxiliary verb. By contrast, have got (to) is always finite, and therefore
cannot be preceded by auxiliary verbs. It can invert with a subject.
 Current change in the modal system of English 

may not appear as dramatic as some of the earlier changes such as the levelling of
the English inflectional system from Old to Middle English, the shift from OV to
VO or the appearance of do‑support, they could be equally significant. There ex-
ist instances of historical language changes which involve a change in the under-
lying grammar of the language (see Kroch 1989; Lightfoot 1979; Warner 1993;
Pintzuk 1995, among others). Current change has been linked to grammar change
only very recently in this way. According to Leech (2003: 223), “if we understand
such [grammatical] changes to include changes of frequency, significant gram-
matical changes do take place within a generation.”
The nature of current change is such that it is more difficult to observe than a
change which has occurred over a longer period of time, e.g. several centuries. In
the study of a long-term change, the end-point of the change has typically been
reached, and it is often possible to track the change through the period in which
it occurred. A change measured over a shorter period of thirty years or so, how-
ever, will not necessarily be completed in the time period, and it is impossible to
know how, when, or even if a particular change will complete. The danger of at-
tempting to predict these is illustrated by the subjunctive which was believed to be
decreasing to the point of extinction (Fowler 1965), but has been shown more re-
cently to be undergoing a revival (Övergaard 1995; Hundt 1998; Leech et al. 2009).
It is, of course, possible to track a change as it occurs, but it will often be necessary
to observe the phenomenon at a later period (see Bauer 2002; Mair 2008).

2.2 Core modal frequency in Present-Day English

One of the observed changes in the modal system of Present-Day English is a

decrease in frequency of the core modals (see Krug 2000; Leech 2003; Smith
2003; Leech et al. 2009). Leech (2003) investigates modal usage in the Brown
quartet of corpora. The term ‘Brown quartet’ refers to four comparable corpora:
the Brown Corpus and Frown (Freiburg-Brown) Corpus from 1961 and 1991–2,
respectively, and two matching corpora of British English, LOB (Lancaster-
Oslo/Bergen) and FLOB (Freiburg-Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen), again from 1961
and 1991–2, respectively. These corpora each contain a million words in fifteen
written text types. He observes that the decrease in modal usage is apparent in
13 out of 15 categories ranging from a decline of 31.2% (D, Religion) to a decline
of 0.5% (H, Miscellaneous). In the remaining two categories, there is a small and
non-significant increase; in J (Learned) of 2.4% and L (Mystery Fiction) of 8.4%.
Furthermore, the British and American corpora show a decrease over time
(from 1961 to 1991) in the case of every modal (individual modals differ in fre-
quency), except can and could which show an increase of 2.2% and 2.4%, respec-
tively, in British English. Leech’s results also show that the infrequent modals
 Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

shall, ought to, and (in British English) need have decreased drastically, and a
similar decline has taken place in the mid-frequency modals may and must,
while would and should have decreased less drastically. Finally, will, can, could
and might have not significantly changed. The results presented by Leech et al.
(2009) also confirm that the modals which show the steepest decline are the less
common modals.

2.3 Core modals vs. semi-modals

Mair & Leech (2006) point out that although many changes involve a competing
construction or constructions, there is not necessarily a correlation between the
form(s) losing ground and those gaining. On discovering a decrease in the fre-
quency of the core modals in the Brown family of corpora, Leech (2003:  229)
suggests that perhaps the semi-modals are “gradually usurping” the functions of
the core modals, but concludes that this is not the case. The reason for his conclu-
sion is that, although semi-modal usage is increasing overall, some semi-modals
are actually declining (for example be to, (had) better, (have) got to and be going to
in FLOB), and most semi-modals are much less frequent than the core modals
(for example, will is about ten times more frequent than be going to). These results
are supported by Krug (2000), and also by Smith (2003: 249) who states that “the
rise of [have to] ... by no means makes up for the shortfall in must.”
Mair (2006: 105) also investigates modal frequency using the Santa Barbara
Corpus of Spoken American English and the spoken component of the British
component of the International Corpus of English (ICE-GB). His results indicate
that have to is the most common form in both varieties, followed by have got to
and must in British English and need to and must in American English. On the
possibility of have to taking over the functions of must, he comments that “epis-
temic must is secure in spoken British English, as have to in this function has a
marginal status at best” (Mair 2006: 105).
It seems, then, that if there is competition between must and have to/have got
to this is in the expression of obligation or necessity, i.e. root meaning. In their
investigation of modality in British dialects, Tagliamonte & Smith (2006) find
exactly this; their findings indicate that “[m]ust is obsolescent and there is an
unanticipated resurgence of have to alongside pan-dialectal grammatical reor-
ganization” (Tagliamonte & Smith 2006: 341).

2.4 Monosemy of modals

Leech (2003) carries out a semantic analysis of should and every third instance of
may and must found in the Brown corpora to discover whether a decline in
 Current change in the modal system of English 

frequency can be attributed to one particular sense of a modal. He provides some

evidence that the decline in frequency of the modals is linked to the tendency for
modals to become “more monosemous”, but points out that this is not always the
case. In fact, a different pattern can be observed for each of the three modals in-
vestigated. Must, the modal we are interested in here, shows a decline in both root
(event modality; obligation) and epistemic (logical necessity) senses between the
1960s and the 1990s, particularly in the SEU-mini and ICE-GB-mini corpora of
spoken English,3 but the root sense has shown the largest decrease in frequency.4
Leech warns that the results of the study as a whole are tentative because of un-
certainties in sampling and coding procedures. It is also important to bear in
mind that comparing the results of semantic analyses across studies is difficult,
due to the challenging nature of the task of semantic coding.

3. Corpus and data collection

3.1 Current change and the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English

There are a number of “pitfalls of anecdotal observation” as far as current change

is concerned, most notably “[t]he spread of salient new uses is exaggerated, while
the less salient persistence of older forms is not noted or [...] a diachronic trend is
read into a situation which merely shows variable or fluctuating usage” (Mair
2008: 1111). For this reason, studies on current change are carried out more reli-
ably using corpora.
One of the strengths of the methodology we have adopted is that it uses a
corpus of spoken English. This is particularly important for the study of the semi-
modals as “these forms, being typically colloquial, are not likely to show up in
their true colours in the written language” (Leech 2003: 230).
The Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spoken English (DCPSE) contains
421,362 words from the British component of the International Corpus of English
(ICE-GB) collected in the early 1990s and 464,074 words from the London-Lund

3. The SEU-mini corpus used by Leech (2003) contains 80,000 words (16 texts) from conver-
sation, BBC discussions and news, sports and other commentaries, broadcast talks, etc., all
dated between 1959–65. The ICE-GB-mini corpus contains 80,000 words from text categories
chosen to match those of the SEU-mini corpus, the only difference being the date: texts are
dated 1990–92.
4. Leech’s (2003) results show that the epistemic reading of may has increased in the written
corpora, but all other meanings have shown a decline. With should the root sense of “weak
obligation” is shown to be gaining at the expense of other senses, particularly the epistemic
sense of “weak inference.”
 Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

Corpus (LLC) collected between the late 1960s and early 1980s (for more
information about the LLC and ICE-GB see Svartvik (1990) and Nelson et al.
(2002), respectively). The period of time between LLC and ICE-GB is within the
range of what is considered ideal for studying current change. In designing the
Brown family of corpora a decision was made to have an interval of approxi-
mately thirty years between the Brown and LOB corpora (1960s) and the Frown
and FLOB corpora (1990s) because “the interval of one generation or so [...] is
usually considered the minimum sufficient to clearly identify and document lin-
guistic change in real time” (Mair 1998: 140).
With over 800,000 words of spoken English, DCPSE is the largest available
single collection of parsed and checked orthographically transcribed spoken ma-
terial. All of the sentences in DCPSE have been grammatically analysed and have
been given detailed parse trees which contain functional information (subject,
direct object, noun phrase head, etc.), categorial information (part-of-speech,
phrase, clause, etc.), and optional additional features (intransitive (verb), com-
mon (noun), main (clause), etc.).
The corpus can be explored by using the International Corpus of English Cor-
pus Utility Program (ICECUP) software developed at the Survey of English Usage.
ICECUP offers a facility called Fuzzy Tree Fragments (FTFs; see Aarts et al. 1998
and Nelson et al. 2002).5 An example FTF which searches for all verb phrases
(VPs) in the corpus is shown in Figure 1.1. This FTF is a partial tree diagram,
which can be constructed by users. FTFs are “fuzzy” in the sense that users can
specify for themselves the level of detail that they are interested in. For example, if
the user adds “intr” to the lower section of the FTF in Figure 1.1, the software will
search for all intransitive verb phrases in the corpus. This is shown in Figure 1.2.
More complex FTFs can contain grammatical structures, words, lexical wild
cards, etc. In the context of the present research, the FTF in Figure 2 searches the
corpus for the string got to with the position for have left unspecified (indicated
by the symbol ‘¤’). This FTF will find cases of ’ve/’d got to as well as have/has/had

VP
Figure 1.1.  An FTF which instructs the
search software to find all the verb phrases
in the corpus
VP
intr
Figure 1.2.  An FTF which instructs the
search software to find all the intransitive
verb phrases in the corpus

5. See also www.ucl.ac.uk/english-usage/resources/ftfs for further information on conduct-

ing experiments using FTFs.
 Current change in the modal system of English 

VB VP AUX
¤

AUX
got

AUX
to

Figure 2.  FTF for (have) got to

got to, and even cases where an adverb intervenes between have and got.6 This is be-
cause in Figure 2 the arrows between the nodes are set so that something may inter-
vene between the nodes. This is an example of user choice. Users can change this
setting if they wish to specify that the nodes should follow each other immediately.

3.2 Data

In order to ensure reliability of results, it is important to identify contexts in

which the forms being investigated may alternate. In the case of have to, have got
to, and must there are a number of syntactic environments in which there is only
one option, and these have been excluded from the study (see Tagliamonte &
Smith 2006; Depraetere & Verhulst 2008). All exclusions are listed below, and are
not included in the statistical tests in Section 4.
First, negated forms were excluded because the meanings are not
equivalent:7
(1) a. You mustn’t go (the modal is outside the scope of the negation: ‘It is
necessary for you not to go’).
b. You don’t have to go (the modal is inside the scope of the negation: ‘It
is not necessary for you to go’).

6. This FTF will only retrieve instances of got to which are preceded by an auxiliary verb
(always have); cases of got to (gotta) will not be captured with this FTF. Cases in which got is a
main verb followed by the preposition to would also not be retrieved using this FTF.
7. Depraetere and Verhulst (2008: 16) also exclude negative uses of must and have to based
on the observation that “the scope of negation is different for have to (absence of necessity, ‘not
necessarily’) and must (prohibition, ‘necessarily not’).”
 Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

c. You haven’t got to go (the modal is inside the scope of the negation: ‘It
is not necessary for you to go’).
Secondly, interrogative contexts were excluded because interrogative forms with
must did not occur at all in the later period, and only one example occurred in the
early period:
(2) Must Wordsworth speak for us in his intimations of immortality?
 (DCPSE:DL-J01 #0129: 2:B)
Finally, also excluded were infinitival have to (including future forms) because
equivalent forms of must or have got to do not exist; and the past form had to
because must cannot refer to past time, so would not be an option here.
It is important to point out that tokens of must have been or must have V-ed
have not been excluded. Although there are no tokens of have (got) to have been
or have (got) to have V-ed in the corpus, a search of the web using WebCorp il-
lustrates that both of these forms are possible.8 An example of have to have been
is given in (3):
(3) Just my tuppence worth, but 2007 has to have been the absolute worst X
Factor ever.9

3.3 Semantic coding

A number of claims have been made in the literature about the frequency of the
modals and semi-modals relating to their meaning(s). For instance, Coates (1983)
states that have to and have got to are infrequent as epistemic modals and Leech
(2003) claims that must is one of a few modals not becoming monosemous. In or-
der to test these claims using DCPSE, each instance of must, have got to and have
to was manually classified according to the type of modality that they express.
Modal meaning has been dealt with in a number of ways. The present study
uses the coding system advocated by Leech & Coates (1980) and Coates (1983), in
which modals are divided into two semantic classes, root and epistemic. In this
approach modal meaning is dealt with in a gradience model where each class has
both core and peripheral members. This can account for the fuzziness in modal
meaning without the need for postulating additional classes.

8. There are two plausible reasons why these forms are not present in DCPSE: (i) they are
very infrequent, or (ii) they are a post 1992 innovation. It is impossible to determine which, if
either, of these is correct.
9. Example retrieved using WebCorp on 22/09/08. Web address: http://www.webcorp.org.
u k /cgi‑bin/v iew.nm?url=http://w w w.unrea lit y t v.co.u k /x‑factor/t he‑worst‑x‑fac-
tor‑ever/&term=has%20to%20have%20been&case=case.
 Current change in the modal system of English 

According to Palmer (2001: 9) “with deontic modality the conditioning fac-

tors are external to the relevant individual, whereas with dynamic modality they
are internal”. As outlined below, we do not classify the source of the obligation for
the instances of must, have to and have got to. For this reason, we prefer the term
root over deontic, as this does not imply a contrast with dynamic. Our approach
to semantic coding is described in more detail in Sections 3.3.1–3.3.4.

3.3.1 Root modality

Coates argues that root modality is fuzzy with a cline from strong obligation
(‘It is imperative/obligatory that x’) to weak obligation (‘It is important that x’),
although the basic meaning of root must is ‘It is necessary for ...’. Examples of root
meaning are given in (4):
(4) a. My boss had said you must read those books.
 (DCPSE:DI-B12 #0171:1:E)
b. I’ve got to go, I’m afraid, in an hour. (DCPSE:DI-B37 #0216:2:B)
c. Actually you have to be much more honest about what you’re doing.
 (DCPSE:DI-A02 #0124:2:B)

3.3.2 Epistemic modality

Epistemic must “conveys the speaker’s confidence in the truth of what he is say-
ing, based on a logical process of deduction from facts known to him (which may
or may not be specified)” (Coates 1983: 41). Coates divides epistemic must into
core (confident inference) and peripheral (logical necessity) meanings:
i. confident inference: ‘I confidently infer that x’
ii. logical necessity: ‘In light of what is known, it is necessarily the case that x’
Epistemic examples of must, have got to and have to are given in (5) below:
(5) a. I am coming to conclude that it must be because I get too much water
in it or something. (DCPSE:DI-B47 #0166:1:B)
b. Loose shirts over jeans has got to be a sort of temporary prejudice.
 (DCPSE:DI-B44 #0161:1:B)
c. I mean good guidebooks really are full of impressions, aren’t they,
whereas imaginative works or works of fiction often do blend facts in
a distorted form. If you think of Hardy’s use of landscape as a curious
blend of the identifiable, which people who research in that find inter-
esting, and something which has to be an impression there, wouldn’t
you agree? (DCPSE:DL-A06 #0310:1:E)
 Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

3.3.3 Performative modality

Performative or speech act modals occur where the speaker is carrying out the
action denoted by the verb. These occur frequently with verbs like admit, say,
confess, as shown in (6).
(6) a. There’s a piece here called Spring Fire which takes my interest, I must
say. (DCPSE:DI-D12 #0141:1:A)
b. When you switched to the emphasis being on Architecture <,,> did
you initially think that you wanted to go into that as a career or were
you doing it just as a degree because you enjoyed the subject
 (DCPSE:DI-A07 #0093:1:A)
Pretty much yeah I’ve got to admit. (DCPSE:DI-A07 #0094:1:B)
c. I have to confess an often irking thought of am I really really two
pounds less than Kate Hamilton. (DCPSE:DI-B07 #0224:2:B)
Although performative modality is considered to be a type of root modality, these
examples were coded and counted separately because of their specialized meaning.10

3.3.4 Ambiguity
Coates (1983: 47) asserts that “there is no overlap between the two fuzzy sets rep-
resenting Root and Epistemic must” and “[c]ases where it is not possible to decide
which meaning is intended are therefore ambiguous”, as illustrated in (7) taken
from Coates (1983: 47, her example (35)):11
(7) And anyway, I think mental health is a very relative thing. I mean, mental
health must be related to the sort of general mentality, or whatever other
word you use of the community you’re living in. (S.2.14.73)
The root meaning here is ‘it’s essential that mental health is related to ...’, while the
epistemic reading is ‘it’s inevitably the case that mental health is related to ...’.
It might be expected that ambiguous cases would be relatively frequent. How-
ever, from the Lancaster and Survey corpora, Coates classes only 11 examples out
of a total of 436 as ambiguous.12 In the ambiguous cases “syntactic features which
could disambiguate such [ambiguous] utterances are either not present or are
themselves ambiguous” (Coates 1983: 47).

10. Tagliamonte & Smith (2006) exclude these cases from their data based on the fact that
they occurred exclusively with must, but in DCPSE have got to and have to can have performa-
tive meaning.
11. Coates’s original mark-up has been removed from the example as it is not relevant here.
12. This could be viewed as indirect support for the coding system chosen by Coates; we might
expect that the better the coding system is, the fewer indeterminate examples there will be.
 Current change in the modal system of English 

In coding the data from DCPSE, it was assumed that the speaker had an in-
tended meaning when producing the utterance, and an attempt was made to clas-
sify each example, keeping ambiguous cases to a minimum. Despite this, there
exist a number of examples which are impossible to disambiguate for two main
reasons: (i) the utterance is compatible with both root and epistemic meanings
and/or (ii) the modal is followed by ellipsis or unclear words. The numbers for
ambiguous cases are shown in Table 2.

4. Results and discussion

4.1 Overall frequencies

In order to examine a possible trend for declining core modal usage and to inves-
tigate the theory of competition between core modals and semi-modals, the over-
all frequency of core modal must is compared with the frequencies of the semi-
modal forms in DCPSE. As shown in Table 1, during the thirty-year period the
frequency of must has declined by over 55% while the frequency of have to has
significantly increased by nearly 32%.

Table 1.  Overall frequencies of must, have got to and have to in DCPSE (figures in bold
are significant at p < 0.01)

(Semi-) modal LLC frequency ICE-GB frequency Change in frequency

raw per 100,000 raw per 100,000 % χ2 score
words words

must 427   92.01 172   40.82 –55.64 36.29

have got to 187   40.30 156   37.02   –8.14   3.10
have to 188   40.51 225   53.40 +31.82 31.94
Total 802 172.82 553 131.24 –24.06 71.32

Table 2.  Distribution of semantic types of must in DCPSE

Source Epistemic Root Performative Ambiguous Total

corpus N % N % N % N % N

LLC 43.96 47.78 36.63 39.81   9.48 10.30 1.94 2.11   92.01
ICE-GB 21.12 51.74 16.14 39.53   2.37   5.81 1.19 2.91   40.82
Total 65.08 48.99 52.77 39.73 11.85 8.92 3.13 2.35 132.83
 Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

Somewhat surprisingly, have got to decreases in frequency by 8%. It is impossible

for us to be sure whether have got to has reached its peak and is showing a decline
in the 1990s data prior to “levelling out” in the future, or whether the decrease is
simply fluctuating usage in the corpus. To be certain, it will be necessary to meas-
ure the frequency of have got to at a point later than 1992. Unfortunately, the lack
of available corpora makes this impossible at this point in time.

4.2 Root and epistemic modality

One of the aims of this study is to determine whether must is becoming monose-
mous. Using the semantic coding carried out on the data (see Section 3.3 above
for details), the frequencies of epistemic, root and performative uses were calcu-
lated. The results are presented in Table 2.
To discover if the decline in root and/or epistemic must is related to the use of
the semi-modals, root and epistemic uses of the three forms were compared. The
results for root and epistemic uses are presented in Tables 3 and 4, respectively.
Table 3 illustrates that as expressions of root obligation, must, have got to and
have to combined have decreased by 12.98%. Again, the decrease in must and the
rise in have to are found to be significant, and have got to shows a decline.

Table 3.  Frequencies of root must, have got to and have to in DCPSE (figures in bold are
significant at p < 0.01)

(Semi-) modal LLC frequency ICE-GB frequency Change in frequency

raw per 100,000 raw per 100,000 % χ2 score
words words

must 174 37.49   70   16.61 –55.69 23.61

have got to 184 39.65 151   35.84   –9.61   0.12
have to 185 39.86 208   49.36 +23.83 12.32
Total 543 117 429 101.81 –12.98 36.05

Results for epistemic use in Table 4 show that, although epistemic must has de-
creased by over 50% must is the still the preferred form for expressing epistemic
necessity; epistemic have got to and have to are very rare in DCPSE.13
The general view in the literature is that the decline of the core modals cannot
be attributed directly to an increase in the semi-modals (Krug 2000; Leech 2003;

13. The frequencies for epistemic have to and have got to are low which may lead to questions
about the reliability of the chi-square test here, but log likelihood calculations confirm low
significance scores: must 0.19, have got to 3.05, have to 1.67 (total 4.92).
 Current change in the modal system of English 

Table 4.  Frequencies of epistemic must, have got to and have to in DCPSE

(Semi-) modal LLC frequency ICE-GB frequency Change in frequency

raw per 100,000 raw per 100,000 % χ2 score
words words

must 206 44.39 91 21.60   –51.34 0.19

have got to    2   0.43  4   0.95 +120.93 3.36
have to    2   0.43  3   0.71   +65.12 1.83
Total 210 45.25 98 23.26   –48.60 5.38

Smith 2003; Mair & Leech 2006). This conclusion was reached by studying fre-
quencies in written language where, on the whole, core modals are more frequent
than semi-modals. The situation with respect to the spoken data is quite different.
In root contexts (see Table 3), have to is already more frequent than must in the
1960s (frequencies are 39.86 per 100,000 words for have to and 37.49 for must). By
the 1990s, the frequency of have to is almost three times that of must (the fre-
quencies are 16.61 and 49.36, respectively). This suggests that there may be a link
between core modal decline and semi-modal increase.

4.3 Motivating factors

The frequency shift in the expression of root modality suggests a possible correla-
tion between the decline of must and the rise of have to. The question, of course,
is what is the motivation for the shift away from must and towards have to in root
meaning? A number of suggestions to explain the decline in must have been made
in the literature, many of which refer to the “authoritarian” nature of must. Myhill
(1995: 202), for instance, attributes the decline in must (= ‘obligation’) and the rise
of should (= ‘weak obligation’) around the time of the American Civil War to a
growing tendency to avoid overt claims to authority by the speaker/writer. He
calls this “democratisation”. He claims that the “old” modals were linked with
people controlling the actions of other people while the “new” modals are more
personal, and are used to give advice to an equal, and the like. Smith (2003) shares
a similar view, and makes the following remark:
It seems probable that must is a casualty of a changing society where increas-
ing emphasis is being placed on equality of power, or at least the appearance
of equality of power, and the informality of discourse found in private conver-
sation is becoming more acceptable, even usual, in official types of discourse.
Just as these conditions are likely to disfavour the use of must, they should cor-
respondingly favour other forms which express obligation less directly (Smith
2003: 259).
 Joanne Close & Bas Aarts

The problem with the suppositions by Myhill and Smith, however, is that epis-
temic must has also decreased, and this verb is not related to power and authority.
Leech et al. (2009: 88) suggest that the “partial decline [of epistemic must] could
be due to contamination by the dramatic fall of deontic must”. This is perhaps a
questionable explanation because the root and epistemic meanings of must do
not intersect, so it is not clear how a fall in one would cause a fall in the other
(cf. Coates’s (1983: 170) treatment of the meanings of will which do intersect). In
their data, root must declines more drastically than epistemic must, which Leech
et al. suggest is because “neither have to nor any other form has become widely
adopted as an alternative expression of strong epistemic necessity”. In the spoken
data from DCPSE, however, the fall of epistemic must is almost equal to that of
root must, although it is true that there is no rise in epistemic have to or have got
to. It is, of course, possible that there are independent explanations for the fall of
root must on the one hand, and epistemic must on the other. However, we suggest
that the cause is the same.
The data from DCPSE cannot tell us which occurred first, the fall of root
must or the rise of root have to. The figures for epistemic must suggest the former,
otherwise it is difficult to explain why epistemic must has declined, but epistemic
have (got) to has not increased.
As an explanation for the decrease in must, we appeal to what Huddleston &
Pullum et al. (2002: 175) refer to as “strength of commitment” where “necessity
involves a strong commitment”. We suggest that the decline in must is a result of
a decline in forms expressing strong commitment. In the root sense, have to is
favoured over must. The difference between the two forms is illustrated in (8)
where the conjoined clause is not possible with must, because the commitment is
stronger and does not permit resistance (example from Sweetser (1988: 54), quot-
ed in Hopper & Traugott (1993: 79)):
(8) I have to/??must get this paper in, but I guess I’ll go to the movies
instead.
This explanation can be extended to epistemic must because this also expresses
necessity (and hence involves strong commitment), although, as pointed out in
Section 4.2, have to is not a rival to epistemic must.
If there is a move away from forms which express a stronger commitment,
then we would also expect other forms which express necessity to show a de-
crease. This is in fact the case: should and ought to, both classified by Coates (1983)
as modals of necessity and obligation, show a decrease in frequency in DCPSE
and in written corpora (see Leech (2003) and Leech et al. (2009) for results from
the Brown family of corpora).
 Current change in the modal system of English 

5. Conclusion

This study has investigated variation between the core modal must and the semi-
modals have to and have got to using the Diachronic Corpus of Present-Day Spo-
ken English. By considering only syntactic environments in which the forms are
variable, any possible competition between must and the “rival” semi-modal al-
ternates can be reliably observed. The results from the study show that even in the
1960s data, the frequency of root have to has surpassed that of root must. The
continued decline of must and the rise in have to in the 1990s data suggests that
have to is being used in contexts where previously we would have found must.
Surprisingly, have got to, the most recent marker of root modality, has decreased.
This does not appear to be a reflection of the DCPSE sampling, as Tagliamonte
(2006) and Tagliamonte & Smith (2006) found that this was also the case in a
number of English dialects.
The semantic coding carried out on must, have to and have got to in DCPSE
has led to a number of interesting results. Firstly, although both epistemic and
root senses of must have declined, as proportions of the total number of instances
of must they have remained fairly constant. This supports Leech’s (2003) claim
that must is not becoming monosemous. Further study of the semantic senses of
other modals in DCPSE is necessary in order to determine if this fact is peculiar
to must. Secondly, have to is the most frequent marker of root modality, which is
remarkable because we might expect the newer form have got to to be more fre-
quent. And finally, the use of epistemic must has decreased, but the use of epis-
temic have to has not increased. This highlights the importance of using corpora
to investigate language change, as simple “anecdotal observation” might have led
to a prediction that this form is on the increase.

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John Benjamins.
 Current change in the modal system of English 

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Linguistics, 66). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
part iii

Developments in the English noun phrase

 Discontinuous quantificational
structures in Old English

Artur Bartnik*
John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin

The paper deals with discontinuous quantificational structures in Old

English. It concludes that quantificational constructions in Old English are
heterogeneous because they can result from movement, that is separation of
the quantifier and the rest of the phrase, or base-generation when the separated
nominal elements are generated in places in which they occur. Essentially,
structures which display full morphological agreement result from movement.
The movement types included in the paper are topicalization, scrambling,
extraposition and NP (Noun Phrase) shift. By contrast, base-generated
constructions do not show morphological agreement. Quantifiers in such
structures are adverbial in nature.

1. Introduction

This paper deals with discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English.

The term “quantificational” suggests that the construction involves a quantifier,
such as ealle ‘all’, and the word “discontinuous” indicates that the quantifier that
qualifies the noun or pronoun is not adjacent to it. A classic example of such a
structure is the so-called Quantifier Floating (QF) structure, well documented in
the syntactic literature (Sportiche 1988; Bobaljik 1995; cf. also Benmamoun 1999;
Bošković 2004). An example of QF in Old English is given in (1):

* I am deeply indebted to three anonymous reviewers and the editors whose insightful and
critical remarks helped me avoid some mistakes. I would also like to thank the participants of
the 15th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (Munich, Germany,
August 2008) for their constructive comments and advice. My heartfelt thanks are also due to
Prof. Adam Pasicki, who kindly commented on an earlier draft of this paper and helped me
with the historical data. However, all the people mentioned above are not to blame for the re-
maining errors.
 Artur Bartnik

(1) Þonne læweþ broþer oþerne hæþnum on deaþ &

Then will-betray brother another heathen-dat to death and
sunu se læweþ his fæder & þa gingran arisaþ
son he will-betray his father and the youngers will-rise
wiþ þam yldrum & hie mid deaþe geswencaþ &
against the elders, and them to death will-torture and
hie beoþ on feounge ealle for minum naman
they-nom will-be in hatred all-nom because my-dat name-dat
 (coblick, LS_32_[PeterandPaul[BlHom_15]]:171.17.2167)1
‘Then the brother will betray the brother to the heathen to death, and the
son will betray his father, and the younger ones will rise against the elders,
and will torture them to death; and they will all be in hatred because of
my name’
Although the pronoun hie is separated from ealle, both these elements must form
a constituent at some point of the syntactic derivation because they agree mor-
phologically. Old English offers a larger spectrum of floated quantificational
forms than Modern English, where besides all, only both and each can be found.
Consider the following examples, where quantifiers such as ælc ‘each’, æghwylc
‘each one’ or sum ‘some’ seem to float:
(2) and hi beoð geendebyrde ælc be his geearnungum, and
and they are set-in-order each by his merit and
eac gewuldrode on þam micelan wurðscipe, be ðam ðe hi
also glorified in the great worship according to they
on life lufodon heora Scyppend
in life loved their Lord (coaelhom, ÆHom_11:545.1771)
‘and each of them is set in order by his merit and glorified in the great
worship, according to how they loved their Lord in life’
(3) Nu com tid & cymð þæt ge tofaron æghwylc to
Now has come time, and comes that you scatter, each to
his agenon & forlæton me anne
his own and leave me alone (cowsgosp, Jn_[WSCp]:16.32.7121)
‘there comes the time, and (indeed) it has come, when you will be scat-
tered, each (one) to his own, and you will leave me alone’

1. All the examples taken from The York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English
Prose (YCOE) are quoted by the title and page number of the electronic text. This is followed
by information containing the original coding conventions used in YCOE.
 Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English 

(4) Ac hit is sum swa gerad þæt his nis nan nedþearf,
but it is some so arranged, that his is-not no necessary,
& þeah ne dereð no þeah hit geweorðe
and yet not hurt no if it should-happen
 (coboeth, Bo:41.144.17.2880)
‘but some of it is so arranged that it is not necessary and yet it does not
hurt if it should happen’
(5) Hi habbað sume synderlice gyfe fram heora scyppende
They have some separate gift from their Lord
& þeahhwæþere heora wurðscipe him bið eallum gemæne
and yet their worship them is all common
 (cocathom1, ÆCHom_I,_24:376.169.4768)
‘and some of them have a separate gift from their Lord, and yet their wor-
ship is shared by all of them’
In the relevant literature, such examples are either derived by movement2
(cf. Sportiche 1988, for example), that is separation of the bold elements, or they
are base-generated in their surface positions. In the former case, the pronoun
raises, stranding the quantifier (Q) down in the clause. In the latter case, both the
constituents are generated in the positions in which they occur. On this view,
quantifiers resemble adverbials, as evidenced by the data from other languages
(cf. Bobaljik 1995 and example (17) below). Such divergent approaches point to
heterogeneity of quantifier properties crosslinguistically.
In what follows I will take a closer look at other combinations of discontinu-
ous quantifier structures in Old English and further support the hypothesis about
heterogeneous properties of these elements. I will show that the split in the deri-
vation of QF in other languages is also reflected in the discontinuous structures
in Old English. In particular, I will argue that some of these structures are the
result of movement (separation) of relevant elements when they display overt or
covert morphological agreement, i.e. the presence or absence of overt inflectional
markings. Other separated constructions where there is no full morphological
agreement between the split elements are base-generated. In such cases the quan-
tifiers resemble adverbials.
The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, I will analyse quantificational
structures that involve movement. It will be seen that there is a great syntactic
variety in these sequences. In Section 3, I will examine constructions that cannot

2. In this paper we assume that agreement is subject to locality. In other words, the agreeing
quantifiers and their nominal associates must form a constituent at some point of the syntac-
tic derivation.
 Artur Bartnik

involve movement despite the fact that they are separated. Section 4 briefly con-
siders other structures that are base-generated. Section 5 concludes the article.

2. Movement structures

Apart from classic examples of QF illustrated in (1) to (5), Old English offers more
structures that involve discontinuous quantifiers. The first type of discontinuous
quantificational structures is the structure in which the floated element (the sepa-
rated element) is higher than the personal pronoun in the subject position. Pro-
nominal subjects are important because they mark the left periphery for the sub-
ject position.3 Therefore, anything higher than the personal pronoun must be
fronted (Haeberli 2000; van Kemenade 2002; Pintzuk & Traugott 2005; cf. also
Fischer et al. 2000). This fronted element can be a noun, a pronoun or the quanti-
fier itself. In the literature, this type of structure is labelled topicalization. This is
illustrated in (6) to (8):
(6) Wið ealle wundela genim þas wyrte zamalentition wel
Against all wounds take the plant zamalentition well
mid rysle gecnucude butan sealte, lege to ðam wundum.
with fat pounded without salt, lay to the wound.
Ealle heo hy gehæleþ
All-acc she them-acc cures (coherbar, Lch_I_[Herb]:167.1.2435)
‘For all wounds, take the zamalentition plant powdered thoroughly in un-
salted lard, put (it) to the wound. She [the plant] cures all of them [wounds]’
(7) Đas niwan spel ic þe ealle in cartan
This-acc new-acc story-acc I you all-acc in document
awrite (coalex, Alex:6.4.26)4
write
‘All this new story I will write for you in a document’
(8) Ac þonne þa fif þing swa we ær cwædon eall
But when these five things, as we before said, all
gegadorede bioð þonne bið hit eall an þing & þæt an
collected are, then is it all one thing and that one

3. Linguists working on adverbs in the Old English clause generally agree that a particular
class of “high” adverbs split the subject position into two slots: the lower slot is occupied by
nominal subjects while pronominal subjects reside in the higher slot of the subject position
(cf. Kemenade 2002; Haeberli 2000).
4. The Latin equivalent reads has nouas explicaturas historias omnia cartis commendabo.
 Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English 

ðing bið God & he bið anfeald untodæled þeah he

thing is God and he is single undivided though they
ær on mænig tonemned wære ða andsworede ic &
before in many, named were then answered I and
cwæð: þisses ic eom ealles geþafa
said this-gen I am all-gen supporter (coboeth, Bo:33.76.10.1422)
‘But when these five things, as we before said, are all collected together,
then is it all one thing, and that one thing is God; and he is single and
undivided, though they before were in many, separately named. Then I
answered and said, all of this I approve’
The reason for this split might be textual cohesion in the above examples: the
topicalized elements appear to be thematic as they contain familiar information
in a given context.
The second type of discontinuous quantificational construction is the struc-
ture in which the floated element is lower than the subject personal pronoun.
Again, this element can be a noun, a pronoun or a quantifier. In the literature,
this type of structure is dubbed scrambling. This is exemplified in (9) to (11):
(9) Wolde swa cepan þære cristenra lare, forðan þe heo
Wished so to-keep the Christians’ teaching because she
næfde on ðære byrig nænne geleaffulne mann þe
did-not-have in the town not-any faithful man who
hi læren cuþe, forðan Philippus aflygde þa
her teach could because Philip expelled the-acc-pl
cristenan of Alexandrian ealle on ær.
Christian-acc-pl from Alexandria all-acc-pl before
 (coaelive, ÆLS_[Eugenia]:30.208)
‘so [she] wished to keep the teaching of Christians because she did not
have in the town any faithful person who could teach her because Philip
had expelled all the Christian people from Alexandria before’
(10) mid his micclan cyste he forgeaf us gemænelice
with his great generosity he gave us-dat generally
eallum, ricum & heanum, þe heora hentan magon
all-dat rich-dat and poor-dat who them catch can
 (coaelhom, ÆHom_1:204.120)
‘with his great generosity/goodness, he gave [that] in general to us all,
both to the rich and to the poor, who can catch/pursue them [animals]’
 Artur Bartnik

(11) Hy ahlyttriað þone stut of heora liðe mid seohhann and

they purify the gnat of their drink with strainer and
hy ealne forswelgað þone olfend gehalne.
they all-acc swallow the-acc camel-acc whole-acc
 (coaelhom, ÆHom_14:162.2091)5
‘they use a sieve to strain a gnat out of their drink, but they swallow up
the whole camel’
Examples (6) to (11) show a striking distributional similarity: topicalized and scram-
bled noun phrases/pronouns float away from quantifiers (examples (7)–(8) and
(9)–(10), respectively), and, conversely, quantifiers float away from pronouns/noun
phrases (examples (6) and (11)). The only difference lies in the landing site of these
elements. Topicalized phrases are higher than subject personal pronouns, while
scrambling requires separated constituents to land lower than personal pronouns.
Moreover, both types of movement can appear in the same sentence. Consider:
(12) & his suna swa ilce ælcne hi hæfdon for god
and his sons-gen likewise each-acc they had for Gods
 (coboeth, Bo:38.115.27.2300)
‘and likewise each of his sons they held for Gods’
In sentence (12), the constituent ælcne his suna is topicalized as it lands higher
than the personal pronoun hi. Then the NP his suna scrambles over the adverb
swa ilce leaving the quantifier below.
Notice also that examples (6) to (11) must involve movement as the separated
constituents display morphological agreement: ambiguous, as in (7), where quan-
tifiers are syncretic forms or unambiguous, as in (11), where they display the lack
of inflectional syncretism. Example (12) does not involve agreement between the
two bold constituents because his suna is plural while ælcne is clearly singular.
Still, it supports the movement analysis since ælcne selects the genitive represented
by suna. Thus, the resulting split constructions must be the effect of separation.
The reason for this split in scrambled structures might be syntactic. Some lin-
guists claim that scrambling is triggered by some kind of specificity features.
Other scholars argue that scrambling is needed to license appositive relations (cf.
Bošković & Takahashi 1998; Vikner 1994; Hinterhölzl 2006).
There are also less clear-cut structures with separated quantifiers that can be
subsumed neither under topicalization nor scrambling. Quantifiers can modify
relative clauses (example 13) or nominal phrases modified by relative clauses
(example 14). Consider:

5. The Latin version reads Liquantes culicem et glutientes camelum.

 Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English 

(13) Nis þis na gesæd be manna sawlum, ac be

Not-is this not said about men-gen souls-dat but about
manna lichaman þe formolsniað to duste, and eft
men-gen bodies which crumble to dust and again
sceolan on domes dæg ðurh ures Drihtnes mihte
shall on doom-gen day through our-gen Lord-gen power
ealle of eorðan arisan þe æfre cuce wæron, swa swa
all-nom from earth arise, who ever alive were just as
ealle treowa cuciað æfre on Lenctenes timan
all trees come-alive always in Lent-gen time
 (coaelive, ÆLS[Ash_Wed]:27.2717)
‘this is not said about men’s souls but about men’s bodies which crumble
to dust and again shall on doomsday through our Lord’s power all from
earth arise, all [those] who ever were alive, just as all trees always come
alive in the spring time’
(14) þæt seo ea, seo þe floweþ be þam burhwealle,
that the river which flows around the city-wall,
forhergiende wære his land, & oft gedonre yþunge se
ravaging were his land and often caused fluctuation the
stream mid his rynum & mid his uppgange gewunode þæt
stream with its flow and with its surge continued that
he togoten wæs geond his æceras, & þa
it spread was through its fields and the-acc
geplantedan wingeardes, þa þe he gemette, ealle he
planted-acc vineyards-acc which it met all-acc it
þa oferfleow
then overflowed (cogregdC, GDPref_and_3_[C]:9.192.14.2448)
‘[one of the wonders that was regarded as the most famous by all those
who dwelt there was] that the river which flows around the city walls,
ravaged his land and often in an inundation the stream with its flow and
its surge would overflow his fields and all the planted vineyards which it
met – all (that) it overflowed’
In example (13), the quantifier is separated from the relative clause, a heavy ele-
ment that is extraposed to the end of the clause. Relative clauses do not have to be
extraposed: as shown by (14), they can appear at the front edge of the clause.
Technically, ealle and the nominal phrase modified by the relative clause are not
separated in (14). However, since quantifiers normally precede nominal phrases,
 Artur Bartnik

the structure might involve movement (cf. Benmamoun 1999 on such construc-
tions in Arabic). An anonymous reviewer remarks that quantifiers in (13) and (14)
could be read as adverbs modifying verbs in view of example (15) below, where
the adverbial eall(e) also modifies the participle:
(15) Æfter þysum worde he wearð eall gehæled
After these words he was all cured
 (coaelive, ÆLS_[Sebastian]:299.1391)
‘after these words he was all (=completely) cured’
Note, however, that eall(e) in (13) and (14) is construed with the plural nominal
phrase: in (13) ealle refers back to manna lichaman ‘men’s bodies’ while in (14) the
quantifier modifies þa geplantedan wingeardes ‘the planted vineyards’. This is
quite distinct from (15), where eall is preceded by the singular subject he. Hence
the adverbial meaning is more likely (cf. Bobaljik 1995, who introduces so-called
completive all meaning ‘entirely, wholly’ with its singular associate).
Let us finally consider example (16):
(16) Hit gelamp þa sona æfter litlum fyrstum, þæt se halga
It happened then soon after some time that the holy
deacon gewat of worlde to Gode mid sigefæstum
deacon departed from world to God with victorious
martirdome, oferswiðdum deofle, to þam ecan wuldre mid
martyrdom, overcoming devil, to the eternal glory with
þam welwillendan Drihtene, þæt þæt he þam behet
the benevolent Lord that that he them-dat promised
eallum þe hine lufiað and þam þe his geleafan
all-dat who him love and them-dat who his faith
healdaþ oð ende
hold until end (coaelive, ÆLS_[Vincent]:226.7946)
‘it happened then soon after some time that the holy deacon departed
from the world to God in victorious martyrdom, overcoming the devil, to
the eternal glory with the benevolent Lord which he promised all those
who love him and those who stay faithful to him until the end’
In (16), eallum seems to refer to both þam þe hine lufiað and to þam þe his gelea-
fan healdaþ oð ende. Because the italicized structure is a subordinate clause, I
assume an underlying OV order that shifts the quantifier part of the heavy NP
over the verb. This is just followed by the topicalization of the first þam.
To sum up this section, I have shown that apart from regular QF structures pre-
sented in Section 1, discontinuous quantificational structures can be accounted for by
 Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English 

movement, either topicalization or scrambling or both. In such examples, the sepa-

rated constituents display morphological agreement. I have also considered other
structures with separated quantifiers that involve movement. In such cases, quanti-
fiers usually modify relative clauses or nominal phrases modified by relative clauses.

3. Base-generated constructions

This section shows discontinuous quantificational structures that cannot result

from movement. One of the requirements of separation by movement is morpho-
logical agreement in the separated phrases. Thus in (11), both the quantifier and
the rest of the noun phrase are unambiguously specified for accusative, mascu-
line, singular. However, in some cases, the separated elements do not agree with
each other at all. Consider (17), where eall agrees neither with the plural pronoun
nor with the italicized Prepositional Phrase:
(17) Ge furðum þæt ic cweðe sie sio soðe gesælð þe
And also that I say is the true happiness which
an ðissa fifa mæg fullice forgifan, forðæm þe on
any these-gen five-gen can fully bestow because in
ælcum anum hi sint eall
each-dat one-dat they are all (coboeth, Bo:33.78.13.1467)
‘and moreover, I say that is the true happiness which any of these five can
fully bestow: because in each one they all are’
Lack of agreement is indicative of adverbial nature of quantifiers. For example, some
adverbial (uninflected) quantifiers such as eall in (18), which modifies the participle,
do not display agreement (example (15) is repeated here as (18) for convenience). The
translation shows that the adverbial reading of eall is possible here. Since adverbs are
base-generated it seems that adverbial quantifiers should be base-generated as well.
(18) Æfter þysum worde he wearð eall gehæled
After these words he was all cured
 (coaelive, ÆLS_[Sebastian]:299.1391)
‘after these words he was all (=completely) cured’
Examples such as (18) show that some occurrences of eall are paradigmatically
the same as adverbs in that they occupy the same positions. Interestingly, quan-
tifiers such as eall can be syntagmatically related to some adverbs. For example,
in (19) below, the uninflected eall, which can be rendered as ‘exactly’, is syntacti-
cally related to swa. Although eall and swa are separated, the movement analysis
is not possible because no agreement obtains between the elements in question:
 Artur Bartnik

(19) ða he cild wæs, eall hine man fedde swa man oðre
when he child was all him man fed as man other
cild fedeð.
children feeds (cowulf, WHom_6:164.347)
‘when he was a child he was fed exactly as other children are fed’
In sum, it seems that the lack of inflection is crucial for determining the adver-
bial nature of quantifiers, though inflected quantifiers can be adverbial when they
replace adverbials.

4. Remnant constructions

In this section, I will present two other cases of discontinuous quantificational

structures, in which the movement analysis is less appealing. First, consider the
following sentence:
(20) And feale þe ic hæfde to me atogen, bisne and healte,
And many who I had to me drawn, blind and lame,
lame and reoflen, ealle he heo fram me ateah.
weak and leprous, all he them from me drew
 (conicodC, Nic_[C]:235.234)
‘and many of those whom I had drawn to me, blind and lame, weak and
leprous, all he them drew away from me’
In example (20), there appears an obligatory pronoun heo that repeats the information
expressed by the associate (in our case, italicized) noun phrase. Such recapitulatory or
resumptive pronouns make the movement analysis problematic, since the apparent
gap left by movement of the complex nominal phrase is refilled by the pronoun, which
is banned in syntax. In effect, the quantifier is base-generated rather than moved to
the left in example (20) (cf. Benmamoun 1999 for a similar analysis in Arabic).
Second, some discontinuous quantificational structures superficially resem-
ble so-called split genitives. Consider examples (21) and (22):
(21) & þæs oþres eorles broþor Ohteres
and the-gen other-gen earl-gen brother-gen Ohter-gen
 (ASC(A) 914.13)
‘and the brother of Ohter, the other earl’
(22) & Theodosius hæfde þone wind mid him þæt his fultum
and Theodosius had the wind with him that his help
mehte mæstra ælcne heora flana on hiora
could most-gen each-acc their-gen arrows-gen on their
 Discontinuous quantificational structures in Old English 

feondum afæstnian.
enemies fix (coorosiu, Or_6:36.155.7.3293)6
‘Theodosius had the wind with him so that his help could fix most of their
arrows on their enemies’
Allen (2002: 58) argues that discontinuous possessive structures such as (21) are
split around the head noun. She marshals some evidence that the head noun broþor
does not have to case-mark the post-head position of the split genitive, that is
Ohteres. Instead, she suggests that this position is an adjunct within the noun
phrase, although she does not attempt a more detailed analysis of these construc-
tions. In other words, Allen analyses split genitives as appositives, that is base-gen-
erated elements. Our example is superficially similar to the split genitive structure:
the intervening head in the accusative is flanked by the split genitive. However,
there are two differences between (21) and (22). The first obvious difference lies in
the presence of the quantificational element in example (22) and its absence in the
split genitive construction. Second, Ohteres being an adjunct is an optional element
in (21) and it is not case-marked by the head. By contrast, heora flana in (22) is ob-
ligatory and, consequently, seems to be a complement case-marked by the
quantificational head. This contrast, however, does not appear to affect the analysis
in both cases, which favours base-generation. Hence, no movement is involved.
In sum, this section provides further evidence for base-generated discontinu-
ous structures with quantifiers. In particular, resumptive constructions, and split
genitival phrases indicate that quantifiers, though separated from their associates
occur in their surface positions in the clause.

5. Conclusion

In this article, I discussed discontinuous quantificational structures in Old

English. The catalogue of structures in Sections 2 to 4 shows that quantifier struc-
tures are not a homogeneous group. More precisely, there are structures clearly
derived by movement (Section 2). The constituents in such structures can be top-
icalized, when they occur above the personal pronoun, or scrambled, when they
land below the personal pronoun. Strikingly, the elements affected by these two
movement operations are the same, namely quantifiers, noun phrases and pro-
nouns. Other constructions that involve movement from the quantifier include
relative clauses, preposed or extraposed, and nominal elements that are NP-shift-
ed. All the structures mentioned in Section 2 display morphological agreement,

6. Alternatively, mæstra could be read as an adverb with a comparative ending, as suggested

by a reviewer.
 Artur Bartnik

either ambiguous or unambiguous, which furnishes further support for the move-
ment analysis. Sections 3 and 4 present constructions that cannot be derived by
movement. They are discontinuous from the very beginning and no separation
takes place. Section  3 discusses uninflected adverbial quantifiers. As shown in
this section, quantifiers have both paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations with
adverbs. Finally, I briefly mention resumptive pronouns and discontinuous geni-
tival phrases resembling split genitives. In both cases, the data show that the
movement analysis is problematic and the base-generation option is favoured.

References

Allen, Cynthia. 2002. “Case and Middle English Genitive Noun Phrases”. Syntactic Effects of
Morphological Change ed. by David Lightfoot, 57–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bartnik, Artur. 2008. Noun Phrase Structure in Old English: Quantifiers and Other Functional
Categories. Ph.D. dissertation, John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.
Benmamoun, Elabbas. 1999. “The Syntax of Quantifiers and Quantifier Float”. Linguistic In-
quiry 30.621–642.
Bobaljik, Jonathan D. 1995. Morphosyntax: The Syntax of Verbal Inflection. Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT Press.
Bošković, Željko. 2004. “Be Careful Where You Float Your Quantifiers”. Natural Language
and Linguistic Theory 22.681–742.
Bošković, Željko & Daiko Takahashi. 1998. “Scrambling and Last Resort”. Linguistic Inquiry
29.347–366.
Haeberli, Eric. 2000. “Adjuncts and the Syntax of Subjects in Old and Middle English”. Dia-
chronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms ed. by George Tsoulas, Susan Pintzuk & Anthony
Warner, 109–121. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hinterhölzl, Roland. 2006. Scrambling, Remnant Movement, and Restructuring in West
Germanic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kemenade, Ans van. 2002. “Word Order in Old English Prose and Poetry: The Position of Fi-
nite Verbs and Adverbs”. Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial
Perspective ed. by Donka Minkova & Robert Stockwell, 355–373. Berlin & New York:
Mouton de Gruyter.
Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman & Wim van der Wurff. 2000. The Syntax
of Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pintzuk, Susan & Elizabeth Closs Traugott. 2005. “The Discourse Function of Object Topi-
calization in English”. Paper presented at the 4th Holland-York Symposium on the His-
tory of English Syntax, Leiden, May 2005.
Sportiche, Dominique. 1988. “A Theory of Floating Quantifiers and its Corollaries for Con-
stituent Structure”. Linguistic Inquiry 19.425–449.
Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk & Frank Beths, eds. 2003. The York-Toronto-
Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. Oxford: Oxford Text Archive.
Vikner, Sten. 1994. “Scandinavian Object Shift and West Germanic Scrambling”. Studies on
Scrambling: Movement and Non-Movement Approaches to Free Word Order Phenomena ed.
by Norbert Corver & Henk van Riemsdijk, 487–517. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
 Genitive variation in letters, history
writing and sermons in Late Middle
and Early Modern English

Teo Juvonen
University of Helsinki

This paper analyzes genitive variation from about 1420 to 1640 in three genres,
letters, history writing and sermons. The corpus material is selected from the
Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition (PPCME2),
the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME) and
the Corpus of Early English Correspondence (CEEC). The occurrences of
the genitive variants, the s‑genitive and the of‑genitive, are quantified and
categorized according to the factors of possessor weight, topicality and genitive
relation. The corpus analysis shows that these factors have a significant impact
on genitive variation in all the genres. The analysis also shows that the genres
differ significantly from each other. However, the study shows no clear change
over time, neither within the genres nor over the period as a whole.

1. Introduction

This study analyzes genitive variation, the relative frequency of the s‑genitive versus
the of‑genitive, in Late Middle and Early Modern English with the focus on genre.
Previous research has suggested that the s‑genitive increased in relation to the
of‑genitive from the early fifteenth century to the seventeenth century. However, the
corpus analysis presented here shows that there does not seem to be any patterned
change over time from 1420 to 1640. There are, however, significant differences
among the genres. The s‑genitive is most frequent in the letter genre, which here has
been selected for informal, natural text. The of‑genitive, on the other hand, is most
frequent in sermons, particularly those in a highly stylized, formal register.
The corpus material is selected from the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Mid-
dle English, second edition (PPCME2), the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early
Modern English (PPCEME) and the Corpus of Early English Correspondence
(CEEC), and consists of three genres: letters, history writing and sermons. The
 Teo Juvonen

main argument is that the s‑genitive is the natural, unmarked genitive variant
with human possessors throughout this period. The of‑genitive is used where the
s‑genitive is least favoured, or to achieve stylistic effect. The main factor influenc-
ing genitive variation is genre. The effects of the linguistic factors of possessor
weight, topicality, givenness and genitive function are also analyzed to see if there
is any clear difference in the way they operate between genres. The analysis shows
that there are some minor differences, mostly between letters and sermons.

2. Previous research

Before the paper by Rosenbach, Stein & Vezzosi (2000) the only quantified data on
the variation between the s‑genitive and the of‑genitive in earlier varieties of English
were the study by Russel in 1931 (described in Mustanoja 1960: 75) and Altenberg’s
(1982) study on genitive variation in the seventeenth century. The general consensus
seems to have been that the relative genitive distribution reached the level of what it
is today by about the beginning of the Early Modern period (cf. Rissanen 1999: 201).
Rosenbach, Stein & Vezzosi (2000) argue in their corpus study on genitive
variation that there was a significant increase in the use of the s‑genitive relative
to the of‑genitive from 1400 to 1630. Their study shows that the most important
factor in the selection of the genitive variant was animacy. Throughout the period
the s‑genitive rarely occurred with inanimate possessors. The increase in the use
of the s‑genitive happened with animate, human possessors. The next most im-
portant factor was topicality, and then the prototypicality of possession (see
Rosenbach 2002: 193–201 for a more detailed analysis of the interaction of topi-
cality and genitive function). The results of their study show that in the early
1400s the s‑genitive mostly occurred in its most favourable context, i.e., with
highly topical possessors and in the prototypical genitive functions (see below).
Even there it was quite infrequent compared to the of‑genitive. In fact, they sug-
gest that the s‑genitive in this period was almost a relic, used with only a limited
set of possessors, such as “god”, “king” and “man”. By the later sixteenth century
the s‑genitive had superseded the of‑genitive as the more typical genitive variant
in the possessive and subjective relations with human possessors.
This study contrasts with Rosenbach, Stein & Vezzosi’s (2000) to show that
the most significant factor affecting genitive variation is genre. Additionally, it
aims to show that the s‑genitive was not a relic, or a marginalized structure, but
rather the natural, unmarked genitive variant with human possessors. The opera-
tion of the linguistic factors of topicality and genitive function are looked at in
detail to show that they affect, as Rosenbach et al. (2000) suggest, genitive varia-
tion in all the genres.
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

3. Factors influencing genitive variation

Many factors have been shown to affect genitive variation, such as possessor
length, a final sibilant ending, economy of text, style, genre, topicality and geni-
tive function (Altenberg 1982; Anschutz 1997; Rosenbach 2002; Hinrichs &
Szmrecsanyi 2007 among others). This study will focus particularly on topicality,
genitive function and genre.
Topicality is a primary aspect of the function of the s‑genitive. From the per-
spective of Present-Day English, the s‑genitive can be described as a special type
of determiner, according to Taylor (1996). In Taylor’s analysis it is a grammatical
tool enabling definite reference, i.e., it is a way of leading the hearer from a known
entity to an unknown, or less prominent, entity. In Present‑Day English this oc-
curs naturally with the known entity preceding the unknown entity, as is the case
with the s‑genitive, with the word order of possessor (known) – possessum
(unknown). In contrast, the of‑genitive has the opposite order. The studies cited
above have looked at the effect of topicality on genitive variation to show that the
s‑genitive is favored with more topical possessors.
The other linguistic factor governing genitive variation that is looked at here
is the genitive function. It is in terms of genitive function that the s‑genitive has
become most constrained over time from Old English to Present‑Day English. By
the Late Middle English period the s‑genitive retained mostly only those genitive
relations that are available to it today. For the purposes of the corpus analysis the
genitive function has been divided into three: the possessive, subjective and ob-
jective functions. The subjective and objective functions are those where the pos-
sessum is an action and the possessor is the agent or the object of the action, re-
spectively, as in examples (1) and (2).
(1) the king’s return [subjective]
(2) the king’s murder [objective, if the king is being murdered]
The so-called possessive function seems to allow for a wide range of possible se-
mantic relations between the possessor and the possessum. The possessive rela-
tions of kinship, part-whole and concrete possession are usually seen as most
basic or prototypical (cf. Taylor 1996; Heine 1997; Rosenbach 2002). This is dis-
cussed further in Section 4.3.
Altenberg’s (1982) study on genitive variation in the seventeenth century
shows that the variation is very sensitive to genre. Genitive variation has also
been linked to levels of formality, although indirectly through genre or text type
evidence (Altenberg 1982: 254; Biber et al. 1999: 302; Rosenbach 2002: 38–40).
What is very important for the following corpus analysis is that also the absolute
frequency of total genitive constructions (s‑genitives and of‑genitives together) is
 Teo Juvonen

tied to genre, as is shown in Tables 1 to 3.1 For this reason, in the corpus analysis
presented below, the selection of occurrences is based on quota sampling, i.e.,
selecting the first 300 tokens from each genre within each period, to enable a
more balanced comparison of genres and overall change over time.

4. Genitive variation in the letter, history and sermon genres

4.1 Selection of corpus

The corpus texts were selected with the main aim of showing the differences among
the genres.2 This corpus selection is not a comprehensive representation of total
genre differences, but it covers the range from informal, speech-like texts, i.e., letters,
to highly stylized texts, i.e., sermons (cf. Biber 1988; Biber & Finegan 1992; Nevalain-
en & Raumolin-Brunberg 2003 and others). The texts are categorized into three pe-
riods: Period I (1420–1500), Period II (1500–1570) and Period III (1570–1640).
The letter sub-corpus (see Appendix A) was selected from the Corpus of Early
English Correspondence (CEEC). The selection of material aimed for continuity in
the background of the writers in terms of region, social rank and occupation. The
emphasis was on informal letters. London and East Anglia were chosen since
both regions had a reasonable number of writers with a comparatively large word
count in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries.
The genres of history and sermons were chosen as representative of more for-
mal writing (see Appendix A).

4.2 Selection of genitive variants

All s‑genitives3 and of‑genitives were searched for in the corpus texts. These oc-
currences were then analyzed to see where there was indeed a possibility for var-
iation. Identifying the contexts in which the s‑genitive and the of‑genitive are
truth-propositionally equivalent and where there is real choice between the

1. The data in Altenberg (1982: 254) can also be re-calculated to show a similar distribution
among the genres he analyses.
2. There are significant differences among the texts within the genres. This aspect is, how-
ever, beyond the scope of this article.
3. The s‑genitives, the so-called his‑genitives, e.g., “the king his daughter”, and the s‑less
genitives, e.g., “the erle of Sowthefolke brothyr” (CHRLOND, p. 164.855) were initially classi-
fied separately, but on closer examination they appear to be socio-regionally conditioned or-
thographic variants of the same morpho-syntactic construction (cf. Allen 2008 for the his-
genitives and their relation to the s-genitives).
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

variants was problematic. The problems had to do with both theoretical concerns
and with the nature of the historical material where native speaker intuition can-
not be relied on and where stylistic rules are different from today.
Only specifying genitives (see examples (3) and (4)) were included, as they are
the only s‑genitives that allow for variation at all or in sufficient frequency for
quantitative analysis. In these the possessor can be a proper or common noun,
animate or inanimate, but it needs to be referential, i.e., it needs to refer to a spe-
cific entity or a set of specific entities. Both possessor and possessum need to be
full lexical NPs:
(3) the king’s daughter
(4) the daughter of the king
Thus all classifying genitives (e.g., an iron ram’s horn), double genitives (e.g., a
servant of the king’s), absolute genitives (e.g., the book that was my brother’s) and
all elliptic occurrences were excluded. Subjective gerunds (e.g., the king’s coming)
were included, but not objective gerunds.4 Locative s‑genitives were also excluded
(e.g., at the Johnsons’).
With of‑genitives, only those with definite possessums were included. In the
following two examples, the referent of daughter is different, and thus they can-
not be considered equivalent:
(5) the king’s daughter
(6) a daughter of the king
The problem with the two examples above is that in example (5) the daughter is
definite and specified, while in (6) the daughter can be any one of the possible
daughters of the king. There is no s‑genitive construction that is equivalent to (6).
The of‑genitive equivalent to (5) would be the daughter of the king. A similar prob-
lem exists with determiners such as some and no, and these instances were also
excluded. In the corpus material there were a number of instances where the pos-
sessum was not overtly marked for definiteness, in a way that would be ungram-
matical in Present-Day English.
(7) þis was the laste yere of raygne of the fadyr, and the fyrste yere of the
raygne of the sone, Kyng Harry the v.5 (CHRLOND, p. 107.287)6

4. There were no s-genitive objective gerunds in the corpus texts.

5. The possessor and genitive marker of the genitive construction, either the s-genitive or
the of‑genitive, is in bold type in all the quotes taken from the corpus analysis.
6. The sources for the quotes from the corpus analysis are in Appendix A. The first word
identifies the book the quote is from. In letters, the name of the author and the year the letter
was written or sent is also given.
 Teo Juvonen

In example (7) the first reign is unmarked for definiteness. However, from the
context and the second use of reign it becomes apparent that overt marking was
not required. Attestations like these are thus included.
There are also a number of instances in which one or the other genitive vari-
ant occurs very rarely. These cases are excluded and are discussed below.
S‑genitives with inanimate possessors were rare (about two to four percent of
all s‑genitives depending on the writer and text). Because they only occur in a
limited set of relations (see examples (8) to (10)) and the factors governing their
variation seem to be different from those with human possessors, all inanimate
possessors were left out from the corpus analysis.
(8) for scant ij yere’s disbursing ther monney
 (Johnson, p. 1182; John Johnson, 1551)
(9) the schypys namys (Cely, p. 81; Richard Cely Jr, 1480)
(10) at deaths doore (Chamberlain, part II, p. 241; John Chamberlain, 1619)
Likewise excluded are animals and collective nouns as possessors. Animal pos-
sessors were extremely rare, and collective nouns as possessors in the s‑genitive
mostly occurred with one writer, John Chamberlain:
(11) the counsailes letters
 (Chamberlain, part I, p. 139; John Chamberlain, 1602)
Genitive constructions with long and complex possessors are included. This is
contrary to the practice of some of the other studies because, on the whole, s‑gen-
itives rarely occur with long possessors. This is also the case with this corpus,
where there were few examples of the s‑genitive with long or complex possessors,
with the exception of titles in the form of:
(12) as for the matter of my Lord of Canterbery ys cortte
 (Cely, p. 141; William Maryon, 1482)
(13) sent by John the Abottys man of Seynt Benet.
 (Paston, part I, p. 584; John III Paston, 1472?)
Example (12) is a group genitive, while (13) is a split genitive. Both forms occur
throughout the period, although split genitives become increasingly rare after the
fifteenth century.
Compare with Present-Day English where, for example, it is possible to split
the s‑genitive, although it is stylistically marked:
(14) has allayed people’s fears who’ve been used for those residential home
agreements (quoted in Denison et al. 2008: 6)
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

Similar constructions were used, rarely, by one of the writers in Letters Period I
(1420–1500) and one in History Period I. Example (15) is from the history genre:
(15) and in that furynys they wente, as they sayde, for the comyn wele of the
realme of Ingelonde, evyn strayght unto a marchaunte ys place i-namyd
Phylyppe Malpas of London. (CHRLOND, p. 191.1463)
Due to the possibility for long possessors as in example (15) it was seen better to
be more inclusive than not.
Since the focus of this study is on the change and variation in the use of
genitive variants, only instances of productive use are included. Thus fixed ex-
pressions, titles, place names, feast days and names of institutions, such as the
King’s Bench were excluded since they form unvarying lexical units. Likewise, the
expressions god’s grace and the grace of god were excluded. Although these show
variation, the variation is not affected by topicality or genitive relation in the
same sense as with productive variation.
Similarly, in the Bacon letter collection, there are s‑genitives that function as
a polite equivalent of the second person singular or plural pronoun, which are
excluded. Example (16) shows a typical use, where the s‑genitive is functionally
equivalent to the pronoun your:
(16) your lordship’s well doinge (Bacon, part I, p. 41; Nathaniel Bacon, 1572)
The genitive variants were chosen according to these criteria from the corpus
texts. The overall results are displayed in Tables 1 to 3. Each period for each genre
contains a total of 300 tokens. The normalized frequency (occurrences/1,000
words) is based on this combined genitive count.
Table 1 shows that letters contain a high relative frequency of s‑genitives. The
normalized frequency of total genitive constructions is lower than in the history
or sermons genre:

Table 1.  Genitive constructions in the letter genre

Period Word count Normalized s‑genitive of‑genitive

frequency N % N %

Period I (1420–1500)   77,991 3.8 236 79% 64 21%

Period II (1500–1570)   72,077 4.2 265 88% 35 12%
Period III (1570–1640)   50,515 5.9 242 81% 58 19%
Letters 200,583 4.5 743 83% 157 17%
 Teo Juvonen

Table 2.  Genitive constructions in the history genre

Period Word Normalized s‑genitive of‑genitive

count frequency N % N %

Period I (1420–1500)   38600 7.8 141 47% 159 53%

Period II (1500–1570)   34717 8.6 167 56% 133 44%
Period III (1570–1640)   41240 7.3 116 39% 184 61%
History 114557 7.9 424 47% 476 53%

Table 3.  Genitive constructions in the sermons genre

Period Word Normalized s‑genitive of‑genitive

count frequency N % N %

Period I (1420–1500) 25081 12.0 121 40% 179 60%

Period II (1500–1570) 30850   9.7 110 37% 190 63%
Period III (1570–1640) 29460 10.2 102 34% 198 66%
Sermons 85391 10.5 333 37% 567 63%

Table 2 shows that history writing has proportionally more of‑genitives than the
letter genre and also a higher normalized frequency of total genitive constructions.
Table 3 shows that the sermons genre has the highest use of the of‑genitive
and the most total genitive constructions.
Tables 1 to 3 show that the absolute frequency of genitive constructions varies
according to genre. This is the reason for controlling genre by token count rather
than word count: If word count were used, when the genres were combined to look
at overall change over time, sermons would dominate over the other genres, in fa-
vour of the of‑genitive. This is also possibly the major reason why the results of this
study differ so markedly from those of Rosenbach et al. (2000), since in their selec-
tion sermons and other texts from religious registers predominate in the earlier pe-
riods. These texts are also the ones in which the s‑genitive appears most fossilized.

4.3 Classification of genitive variants

The genitive variants were classified according to length of possessor, topicality,

givenness and genitive function.
Long possessors are those that have four or more words or are compounds or ap-
positives (e.g., his brother John’s) or contain a prepositional phrase or relative clause.
Topicality, here, is based on the idea of how prominent a possessor is. More
topical information is that which can be seen as being part of global knowledge,
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

while less topical information is that which is contextually derived. In practice,

proper nouns and titles of prominent people, such as the king or bishop are classified
as more topical, or “global”, while other definite common nouns are classified as
less topical, or “local”. This practice follows that of Rosenbach et al. (2000). Indefi-
nite and generic (e.g., man in man’s law) possessors were classified as “indefinite”.
Global and local possessors were further divided into “given” and “new” based
on whether the same referent had appeared in the text within 50 words or before
a text boundary (cf. Hinrichs and Szmrecsanyi 2007 for a similar method).
Genitive relations were divided into the subjective gerund, possessive, subjec-
tive and objective relations. Of these, the objective relation is excluded from the
corpus analysis, because in practice it is extremely rare in the s‑genitive (seven
clear objective uses out of 1500 tokens)7. The possessive relation was divided into
six types (following Rosenbach et al. 2000 and using their terminology):
1. Kinship (17) the kinges doughter of Spain (Moreric, p. 60.181)
2. Body parts (18) Crysten mennes handes (Paston, part I, p. 446;
John II Paston 1472)
3. Ownership (19) poore mennes goodes (Moreric, p. 31.111)
4. Social relations (20) the Kings souldiers (Stow, p. 555.88)
5. States (21) saynt Payles authoryte (Fisher, p. 314.11)
6. Abstract possession (22) Kyng Henryes marryage (Hayward, p. 4.18)
Kinship, body parts and ownership are most often seen in the literature as “pro-
totypical” of the possessive function. To this it was decided to add social rela-
tions, because in the cultural context of this period servants and other similar
referents were part of the household (cf. Juvonen 2009). All the other categories,
i.e. states, abstract possession, subjective and subjective gerund, were categorized
as “non-prototypical”. This differs from the categorization of Rosenbach et
al. (2000), who divide prototypical patterns into kinship, body parts and owner-
ship and non-prototypical ones into social relations, states and abstract posses-
sion and analyze subjective relations separately. The reason for treating subjective
relations together with non-prototypical relations was to simplify the analysis
into a two-way rather than three-way distinction. The effect of my decisions in
categorization is to heighten the difference between prototypical and non-proto-
typical genitive function.8

7. In the initial selection of 300 first tokens (Tables 1 to 3) occurrences with the objective gen-
itive function were included. However, since it became apparent that the objective genitive func-
tion was a virtual knockout factor, they are excluded from the corpus analysis (Tables 4 to 10).
8. The variation of each individual genitive function was looked at separately, but no clear
pattern emerged that differed from the general prototypical/non-prototypical pattern. The
 Teo Juvonen

4.4 Corpus analysis

The data from the three genres were combined to provide an overall diachronic
picture from 1420 to 1640.
Table 4 shows that no obvious change happened with the relative frequency
of the s‑genitive from 1420 to 1640. The differences between genres, on the other
hand, are striking.

Table 4.  Genitive variation 1420–1640 in three periods: share of the s‑genitive out of all
s‑ and of‑genitives

s‑genitive Total
% N N

Period I (1420–1500) 56% 491 879

Period II (1500–1570) 62% 542 879
Period III (1570–1640) 53% 460 862

Table 5 shows that genre has a clear impact on genitive variation. The differences
among all the genres are statistically significant (Yates’ chi-square p < 0.0019 be-
tween all).

Table 5.  Genitive variation in the letter, history and sermon genres 1420–1640: share of
the s‑genitive out of all s‑ and of‑genitives

s‑genitive Total
% N N

Letter 84% 743 887

History 49% 422 861
Sermon 38% 328 872

4.4.1 Comparison of genres

The linguistic factors of possessor length, genitive function, topicality and given-
ness are all significant in genitive variation in all the genres.

divisions are of necessity somewhat arbitrary, and fail to capture many of the nuances of the
writers. The way the word soul is used, for example, would make an interesting case study.
9. All the following calculations of statistical significance use the chi-square test with the
Yates’ correction.
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

Table 6 shows that the length of the possessor is a highly significant factor in
genitive variation in all the genres.10 Long possessors tend to favor the of‑genitive,
even in the letter genre.

Table 6.  Genitive variation in the letter, history and sermon genres according to length
of possessor: share of the s‑genitive out of all s‑ and of‑genitives

Short possessors Long possessors

s‑genitive Total s‑genitive Total
% N N % N N

Letter 88% 703 801 47% 40 86

History 57% 381 663 21% 41 198
Sermon 40% 327 811 2% 1 61

The prototypicality of the genitive function is also a significant factor, as shown by

Table 7. The difference between prototypical and non-prototypical possessors is sta-
tistically significant within all the genres (p < 0.001, except p < 0.01 in sermons).11

Table 7.  Genitive variation in the letter, history and sermon genres according to proto-
typicality of the genitive function: share of the s‑genitive out of all s‑ and of‑genitives

Prototypical Non-prototypical
s‑genitive Total s‑genitive Total
% N N % N N

Letter 95% 391 412 74% 352 475

History 67% 245 364 36% 177 497
Sermon 44% 145 327 34% 183 545

Table 8 shows while there is clear difference among the genres according to topi-
cality, the differences within genres are small.12 Most of the occurrences are

10. The difference in the relative frequency of the s‑genitive between long and short posses-
sors is statistically significant (p < 0.001) within all the genres. The differences between genres
are also significant (p < 0.001) in both long and short possessors.
11. With the prototypical relation the difference is significant both between letters and his-
tory and history and sermons (p < 0.001). In the case of the non-prototypical relation the dif-
ference is significant between letters and history and letters and sermons (p < 0.001), but not
between history and sermons (p > 0.20).
12. Letters and history show a significant difference between global and local topicality
(p < 0.01 and p < 0.001 respectively). Sermons shows a significant difference between global and
indefinite topicality (p < 0.01). The letter genre differs significantly from history and sermons
 Teo Juvonen

Table 8.  Genitive variation in the letter, history and sermon genres according to topi-
cality: share of the s‑genitive out of all s‑ and of‑genitives

Global Local Indefinite

s‑genitive Total s‑genitive Total s‑genitive Total
% N N % N N % N N

Letter 86% 612 714 74% 94 127 80% 37   46

History 52% 325 623 35% 53 150 50% 44   88
Sermon 35% 219 633 43% 35   82 47% 74 157

of global topicality, and thus it is this category which has the most impact on the
overall results.
Table 9 shows that givenness is a significant factor in genitive variation in all
the genres.13
All genres show a significant preference for the s‑genitive with short, given pos-
sessors in the prototypical genitive function. The only clear difference among gen-
res is in topicality. Here letters and history favour global topicality with the s‑geni-
tive, while sermons favour indefinite topicality with the s‑genitive. All the genres
have a high proportion of globally topical possessors. This is especially the case in
letters, where possessors in genitive constructions usually refer to a person who is
of interest to both the sender and the recipient. The content is often news or gossip,
with little extended narrative. In sermons, the most common possessors are God,
Christ and man. The possessor man is mostly used generically (e.g., man’s law). A

Table 9.  Genitive variation in the letter, history and sermon genres according to given-
ness: share of the s‑genitive out of all s‑ and of‑genitives14

Given New
s‑genitive Total s‑genitive Total
% N N % N N

Letter 90% 141 156 82% 565 685

History 64% 164 256 41% 214 517
Sermon 43% 137 316 29% 117 399

in global, local and indefinite topicality (p < 0.001 in all except between letters and history in
indefinite, where p < 0.01). History differs from sermons only in global topicality (p < 0.001).
13. The difference between prototypical and non-prototypical possessors is statistically sig-
nificant within all the genres (p < 0.001, except p < 0.025 in letters). With both given and new
possessors the difference is significant among all the genres (p < 0.001).
14. Indefinite possessors are not included.
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

prominent feature of sermons is the use of generic possessors for rhetorical pur-
poses and the limited use of the s‑genitive compared with the other two genres.
The interaction of prototypicality of the genitive relation and givenness is
analyzed further to show the most and least favoured contexts for the s‑genitive.
Table 10 shows that in each genre the prototypical genitive function with
given possessors is the favoured linguistic context for the s‑genitive, while the
non-prototypical genitive function with new possessors is the least favoured (all
differences p < 0.001). In letters and history prototypicality is the determining
factor, followed by givenness, while in sermons givenness is the determining fac-
tor.15 Table 10 also shows that the s‑genitive is the clearly preferred variant, and
thus the unmarked choice, in all the linguistic contexts in the letter genre. In his-
tory, the factor of prototypicality seems to be the dividing line, while in sermons
the of‑genitive seems to be more the unmarked variant.
All of these factors were further analyzed in interaction with each other to
see if any discernible change over time could be found, but there were no clear
and significant changes that formed a continuous pattern.

Table 10.  Genitive variation in the letter, history and sermon genres according to inter-
action of prototypicality of the genitive relation and givenness: share of the s‑genitive
out of all s‑ and of‑genitives

Prototypical Prototypical Non-Prototypical Non-Prototypical

Given New Given New
s‑gen. Total s‑gen. Total s‑gen. Total s‑gen. Total

% % % %
(N) N (N) N (N) N (N) N
Letter 99% 94% 84% 72%
(67)   68 (306) 324 (74)   88 (259) 361
History 79% 62% 53% 26%
(85) 108 (139) 225 (79) 148 (75) 292
Sermon 50% 34% 40% 26%
(59) 119 (53) 155 (78) 197 (64) 244

15. In letters, the differences between prototypical new and non-prototypical given and new
are significant (p < 0.01 and p < 0.001 respectively). In the prototypical given context there is
only one of‑genitive, so in letters this is almost exclusively s‑genitive territory. In history, only the
difference between prototypical new and non-prototypical given is not significant (prototypical
given to new is p < 0.01, others are p < 0.001). In sermons, the differences between prototypical
given and new (p < 0.025) and non-prototypical given and new (p < 0.01) are significant.
 Teo Juvonen

5. Conclusion

All the genres show a significant preference for the s‑genitive with short, given
possessors in the prototypical genitive function. Furthermore, in all the genres,
the prototypical genitive function with given possessors is the most favoured
context for the s‑genitive, while the non-prototypical genitive function with new
possessors is the least favoured. However, genre does affect the relative weight of
the linguistic factors. In letters and history writing it is the prototypicality of the
genitive relation that is the determining factor, while in sermons it is givenness.
Particularly in letters, the s‑genitive is the natural, unmarked variant. In ser-
mons, on the other hand, the of‑genitive is more common. Overall, this study
shows that while genre has a significant impact on genitive variation, there ap-
pears to be no patterned change over time within the period 1420 to 1640.

References

Allen, Cynthia. 2008. Genitives in Early English: Typology and Evidence. Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Altenberg, Bengt. 1982. The Genitive v. the of‑Construction: A Study of Syntactic Variation in
17th Century English. Lund: Gleerup.
Anschutz, Arlea. 1997. “How to Choose a Possessive Noun Phrase Construction in Four Easy
Steps”. Studies in Language 21:1.1–35.
Biber, Douglas. 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Biber, Douglas & Edward Finegan 1992. “The Linguistic Evolution of Five Written and Speech-
based English Genres from the 17th to the 20th Centuries”. History of Englishes: New
Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics ed. by Matti Rissanen, Ossi
Ihalainen, Terttu Nevalainen & Irma Taavitsainen, 688–704. Berlin & New York: Mouton
de Gruyter.
Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad & Edward Finegan. 1999. Long-
man Grammar of Spoken and Written English. London: Longman.
Denison, David, Alan Scott & Kersti Börjars. 2008. “What’s Wrong with Possessive ‘s?” Paper
presented at the First Triennial Conference of the International Society for the Linguis-
tics of English (ISLE1), University of Freiburg, 8–11 October 2008. <http://www.humani-
ties.manchester.ac.uk/medialibrary/llc/files/possessives/ISLE1_Freiburg.pdf>.
Heine, Bernd. 1997. Possession: Cognitive Sources, Forces, and Grammaticalization. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hinrichs, Lars & Benedikt Szmrecsanyi. 2007. “Recent Changes in the Function and Frequen-
cy of Standard English Genitive Constructions: A Multivariate Analysis of Tagged Cor-
pora”. English Language and Linguistics 11:3.473–474.
Juvonen, Teo. 2009. “Everyday Possessions: Family and Identity in the Correspondence of John
Paston II”. The Language of Daily Life in England (1400–1800) ed. by Arja Nurmi, Minna
Nevala & Minna Palander-Collin, 253–277. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: Benjamins.
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

Kytö, Merja. 1996. Manual to the Diachronic Part of the Helsinki Corpus of English Texts: Cod-
ing Conventions and Lists of Source Texts. (3rd Edition). Helsinki: Helsinki University
Printing House.
Lambrecht, Knud. 1994. Information Structure and Sentence Form: Topic, Focus and the Men-
tal Representations of Discourse Referents. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mustanoja, Tauno. 1960. A Middle English Syntax. Part I. Parts of Speech. (= Memoires de la
Société Néophilologique de Helsinki, XXIII.) Helsinki: Société Néophilologique.
Nevalainen, Terttu & Helena Raumolin-Brunberg. 2003. Historical Sociolinguistics: Language
Change in Tudor and Stuart England. London: Longman.
Rissanen, Matti. 1999. “Syntax”. The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. III: Ear-
ly Modern English 1476–1776 ed. by Roger Lass, 187–331. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
Rosenbach, Anette, Dieter Stein & Letizia Vezzosi. 2000. “On the History of the s‑genitive”.
Generative Theory and Corpus Studies (A Dialogue from 10 ICEHL) ed. by Ricardo Ber-
múdez-Otero, David Denison, Richard M. Hogg & C. B. McCully, 183–210. Berlin & New
York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Rosenbach, Anette. 2002. Genitive Variation in English: Conceptual Factors in Synchronic and
Diachronic Studies. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Taylor, John. 1996. Possessives in English: An Exploration in Cognitive Grammar. Oxford:
Clarendon.
Vezzosi, Letizia. 2000. “S‑genitive and of‑genitive: Competitors or Complementary Strategies?
A Diachronic Analysis”. English Diachronic Pragmatics ed. by Gabriella Di Martino &
Maria Lima, 399–432. Napoli: CUEN.

Appendix A: Sources for the genre corpus material

1. Letters (From CEEC)

(http://www.helsinki.fi/varieng/CoRD/corpora/CEEC/index.html)
1.1 Period I
Cely: Hanham, Alison, ed. 1975. The Cely Letters 1472–1488. (= Early English Text
Society, 273.) London, New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press.
Paston: Davis, Norman, ed. 1971 & 1976. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fif-
teenth Century. Parts I-II. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
1.2 Period II
Johnson: Winchester, Barbara, ed. 1953. The Johnson Letters, 1542–1552. Unpub-
lished doctoral dissertation, University of London.
1.3 Period III
Chamberlain: MacClure, Norman Egbert, ed. 1939. The Letters of John Chamber-
lain. Parts I-II. (= American Philosophical Society, Memoirs, 12.) Philadelphia:
American Philosophical Society.
 Teo Juvonen

Bacon: Smith, A. Hassel, Gillian M. Baker & R.W. Kenny, eds. 1978, 1979, 1982,
1983, 1987 & 1988. The Papers of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey. (= Norfolk Record
Society, 46, 49 & 53.) Norwich: Norfolk Record Society.
2. History (From PPCME2 and PPCEME)
(http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/)16
2.1 Period I
CAPCHR (pp. 32–160, 209–217, 238–249), CHRLOND (pp. 95.21–128, 138–143,
148–149, 156–239)
2.2 Period II
FABYAN (pp. 556.46–583.8), MORERIC (pp. 15.26–65.12, 76.12–80.24)
2.3 Period III
HAYWARD (pp. 1.1–47.30, 60.11–64.9, 86.28–90.29), STOW (pp. 543.1–549.28,
549.35–585.3, 589.8–594.4)
2.4 Extras
Hayward: Hayward, John. 1599. The First Part of the Life and Raigne of King Henrie
the IIII. Extending to the End of the First Yeare of his Raigne. Written by I.H.
London: E. Allde and T. Judson (pp. 1–10). <http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home>
Stow: Stow, John. 1580. The Chronicles of England from Brute unto this Present
Yeare of Christ. London: Ralphe Newberie. (pp. 518–543)
http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home
3. Sermons (From PPCME2 and PPCEME)
(http://www.ling.upenn.edu/hist-corpora/)
3.1 Period I
MIRK (pp. 1.4–5.36, 82.9–85.10), FITZJ (pp. A2R.1–C1R.20), CAPSER (pp. 143.1–
148.28), INNOC (pp. 1.1–13.4), GAYTR (pp. 1–15), ROYAL (pp. 9.3–12.17, 16.2–
19.34, 251.22–261.21)
3.2 Period II
FISHER (pp. 314.4–348.5, 388.1–403.6), LATIMER (pp. 17.1–38.37, 22.1–43.12,
55.1–57.32)
3.3 Period III
HOOKER (pp. 1.14–29.10, 31.13–35.30, 36.1–56.31), SMITH (pp. 1.1–47.19, B1R.1–
F4V.13)

16. The sources for the history and sermon texts are presented in their abbreviated titles as
printed in the Helsinki Corpus Manual (Kytö 1996). The full bibliographical information is
available online at http://khnt.hit.uib.no/icame/manuals/HC/KHWTITLE.HTM.
 Genitive variation in late Middle and Early Modern English 

3.4 Extras
Fisher: Mayor, John  E.B., ed. 1876. The English works of John Fisher, Bishop of
Rochester, Part I. (= EETS ES, 27.) Berlin, New York & Philadelphia: Asher, Scrib-
ner, Lippincott. (pp. 268–277)
Smith: Smith, Henry. 1591. A Preparatiue to Mariage The Summe whereof was
Spoken at a Contract, and Inlarged After. Whereunto is Annexed a Treatise of the
Lords Supper, and another of Vsurie. By Henrie Smith. London: R. Field. (pp. 47–
52) <http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home>
part iv

Syntactic variation and change

through contact
 On the use of beon and wesan in Old English

Ilse Wischer
Potsdam University

This paper commences by characterizing the exceptionality of the Old English

double paradigm of s‑ and b‑forms of the verb ‘to be’ in the present tense
among the (West) Germanic languages, followed by an analysis of the use of
beon and wesan in the Old English section of the Helsinki Corpus with a focus
on the linguistic contexts of these verbs in their indicative, subjunctive and
imperative forms and on their dialectal distribution. A comparison of my
findings with parallel forms and their uses in the Celtic languages supports the
assumption that the emergence of the double paradigm in Old English, with
wesan expressing current relevance and beon referring to habitual or future
events, can only be assigned to Insular Celtic influence.

1. Introduction

In Old English there existed two parallel forms of the verb to be in the present
tense. One of them derived from an IE s‑root (eom, eart, is, sindon), and the
other from a b‑root (beo, bist, biþ, beoþ), the latter originally meaning ‘become’.
Additionally there were parallel forms in the infinitive and imperative, one hav-
ing also derived from the b‑root (beon, beo/beoþ) and the other from an IE
w‑root (wesan, wes/wesaþ). According to the general tradition, in the following
the verbs originating in b‑roots shall be called beon, and the verbs derived from
s‑roots and w‑roots will be referred to as wesan, even though the term is not
fully correct.
Although beon‑forms also entered the paradigms of other West Germanic
languages, only in Old English did they develop a parallel paradigm in relation to
wesan, both being semantically distinct. The standard/handbook treatments of
Old English morphology and syntax (see below) agree that beon refers to future
events and statements of general truth, while wesan is used for immediate present
relevance (cf. (1)), although it is admitted that this is just an affinity.
 Ilse Wischer

(1) þu byst æfter fæce þæt ic nu eom.

thou beon–2sg.prs after while that I now wesan–1sg.prs
 (Blickling Homilies, p. 113)
‘you will be after a while what I am now.’
Towards the end of the Old English period this distinction blurred and a new
mixed paradigm emerged in Middle English.
This functional distinction in the use of beon and wesan in Old English seems
to be taken for granted by most scholars. The descriptions in the handbooks are
rather vague, though. Brunner (1951: 258) argues that the b‑forms are often, but
not always, used with a future sense. He also refers to some dialectal differences.
Campbell (1991 [1959]: 351) also mentions dialectal variation, especially with re-
gard to the imperative and the subjunctive. Hogg (1992) and Traugott (1992) in
the Cambridge History of the English Language only briefly refer to the present
topic, Mitchell (1985) mainly agrees with Campbell’s position. The only detailed
analyses of the uses of beon and wesan are some early twentieth century studies,
such as Karl Jost’s (1909) or Otto Exter’s (1911) dissertations, and more recently
Kilpiö’s (1992) entry for beon in the Dictionary of Old English and his analysis of
the present indicative forms of beon in the Old English part of the Helsinki Corpus
(1993) as well as his (1997) investigation of the development of b‑ and non‑b‑forms
from Old to Modern English, which rely on empirical data analyses. The question
of a possible Celtic origin of the b‑paradigm in Old English was already addressed
by Keller in 1925 and has more recently been discussed at length by Lutz (2009).
In my contribution I will present results from my detailed corpus investiga-
tion of the use of beon and wesan in the Old English section of the Helsinki Cor-
pus. I will focus on the linguistic contexts of beon and wesan in their indicative,
subjunctive and imperative forms as well as on their dialectal distribution. From
this I will try to draw some conclusions about a possible origin of this unique
formal and functional pattern of Old English.

2. The Old English double paradigm

The b‑forms in the present tense paradigms of the verb to be have their origin in
an Indo-European (IE) root *bheu-,*bhu- with the meaning ‘become’ (Schumach-
er 2007: 193). They can be found in other Old Germanic languages as well, but
only in West Germanic. Lass (1994:  171) argues that the “incorporation of the
b‑root into this group seems to be a West Germanic innovation”. However, it is
only in Old English that we find a complete double paradigm of s‑ and b‑forms in
the present tense, see Figure 1.
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

Indicative Subjunctive Imperative Infinitive

Sg. 1 ēom bēo sīe bēo wesan bēon

2 eart bist sīe bēo sīe/wes bēo
3 is biþ sīe bēo
Pl. sind(on)/āron bēoþ sīen bēon wesaþ bēoþ

Figure 1.  Parallel Paradigms of beon and wesan in Old English

The other West Germanic languages have mixed paradigms, see Figures 2 and 3.
This situation has been known for a long time. As early as in 1900 Bethge
(1900: 390) claims that in West Germanic there appear forms of a root *bheu‑, but
concedes that a complete present of *bheu‑ exists only in Old English. Similarly
Dieter (1900) maintains that b‑forms exist neither in Gothic nor Old Norse. Old
English, on the other hand, has complete parallel paradigms in present indicative
and subjunctive, imperative and infinitive.

Indicative Subjunctive Imperative Infinitive/Gerund

Sg. 1 bium, biun, bion sī sīn, uuesan/uuesanne

2 bis, bist sīs uuis, uues
3 ist, is sī
Pl. sind(un), sindon sīn uuesađ

Figure 2.  Mixed Paradigms of beon and wesan in Old Saxon*

Indicative Subjunctive Imperative Infinitive/Gerund

Sg. 1 bim, bin sī, uuese uuesan, sīn/sīnne,

uuesanne
2 bist, bis sīs(t), uuesēs(t) uuis, bis
3 ist sī, uuese
Pl. 1 birum, birun sīm, sīn, uuesēm
2 birut, birent sī, sīnt, uuesēt uueset
3 sint, sindun sīn, uuesēn

Figure 3.  Mixed Paradigms of beon and wesan in Old High German†

* The data have been compiled from Streitberg (1974 [1896]: 316), Holthausen (1900: 199),
Dieter (1900), Robinson (1992: 115).
† The data have been compiled from Streitberg (1974 [1896]: 316), Wright (1906: 88), Dieter
(1900), Robinson (1992: 115), Besch et al. (2000: 1192).
 Ilse Wischer

In the other West Germanic languages, the paradigms are not only mixed in
the sense of being suppletive, but they may even be called contaminated1 (cf. forms
like bim in Old Saxon or bium in Old High German). Schumacher (2007: 194–195)
relates the existence of these mixed and contaminated paradigms in a convincing
way to a very early language contact between West Germanic and Celtic tribes on
the continent. His hypothesis, however, that the Old English double paradigm is
an archaic feature2 that was inherited from earlier West-Germanic and preserved
through the contact situation with the Celtic languages is rightly criticized by
Lutz (2009). Lutz is certainly right in stating that the West Germanic dialects
rather had mixed paradigms from the beginning and that the Old English double
paradigm is a result of Insular Celtic influence after the Germanic settlement on
the British Isles. This influence is also confirmed by Schumacher (2007: 201–202),
who provides evidence that in the Celtic languages, especially in the earlier at-
tested languages on the British Isles, there is a clear dichotomy between the use of
an unmarked s‑stem and a marked b‑stem for the verb to be in the present in-
dicative (for the occurrence of subjunctive, imperative and verbal noun b‑forms
in the Celtic languages, see below).
The functional distinction between s‑ and b‑forms in Old English is described
by Campbell (1991: 350–351) in the following way: “[eom refers to a present state]
provided its continuance is not especially regarded”; beo is used to express an
“invariable fact”, a future event, or an “iterative extension into the future”.
Traugott (1992: 182) observes that “there seems to be no absolute distinction be-
tween ‘beon’ ... and ‘wesan’ when time reference to the future is concerned.” She
also stresses the fact that beon “seems to be preferred for reference to habitual,
repetitive, and therefore pluralized, situations”, while wesan “is favoured for sin-
gular situations ... or situations regarded as eternal, and therefore singular ...”
(1992: 183). As evidence, she refers to Ælfric, who, in his grammar, describes the
use of sum/ic eom in a similar way as a word of existence that in particular be-
longs to God, since God is eternal without beginning and end: “Sum i c e o m is
edwistlic word and gebyrað to gode anum synderlice, forðan þe god is æfre unbe-
gunnen and ungeendod on him sylfum and ðurh hine sylfne wunigende.”
(Zupitza 1880: 201, ‘Sum i c e o m is a substantive word and belongs especially to
God alone because God is always without beginning and end, existing in himself
and by himself.’). However, Ælfric does not distinguish in that respect between

1. In Schumacher‘s (2007:  202) words: “... und die beiden Paradigmen wurden zu einem
einzigen kontaminiert.” – ‘... and the two paradigms were contaminated to a single one.’
2. “... der Gegensatz zweier distinktiver Verbalstämme im Altenglischen [ist] ein Archais-
mus und keine Neuerung ...” (Schumacher 2007: 197f) – ‘...the opposition of two distinctive
verbal stems in Old English is an archaism and not an innovation ...’
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

wesan and beon. He only lists the forms of beon as translations of Latin future,
imperative and optative/hortative forms (ero/ic beo, sis/beo ðu, sit/beo he, simus/
beon we, estote/beon ge, sunto/beon hi) (1880: 201f.).3 Hogg (1992: 164) only very
vaguely refers to the divided usage claiming that “[t]he Anglo–Saxons appear to
have distinguished in meaning between the two sets of forms more often than not
(but not, alas, always)”.
In one of the early more detailed investigations, Jost (1909), who studied the
use of beon and wesan mainly in Beowulf and the Cura Pastoralis, comes to the
conclusion that the future use of beon is only attested for a small number of ex-
amples. This is supported by Exter’s (1911) findings, who analyzed the Alfredian
translation of Boethius and of St. Augustine’s Soliloquies. Both authors, instead,
maintain that wesan predominates in so‑called “concrete” sentences, where it de-
notes a present state or a general state without focusing on the duration of the
state. On the other hand, they argue that beon is instead used in so‑called “ab-
stract” sentences referring to a state which from the perspective of the speaker
will happen in the future or which already exists in the present, but whose con-
tinuation in the future is especially emphasized, or which takes place repeatedly.
Although their division into concrete and abstract is somewhat arbitrary and
theoretically not very well founded, the affinity to the statements by Traugott,
Schumacher and other scholars on a distinction between actual and habitual
events becomes clearly obvious.
Kilpiö (1993) provides the most detailed and empirically founded analysis of
the two forms in the present indicative. His results do not disagree with the previ-
ous observations, yet they are more exact and based on quantitative data. He
concludes that although there is no sharp demarcation between the uses of the
b‑ and s‑forms, there are clear tendencies for the use of beon to be preferred with
future reference, in contexts where the verb is given a durative interpretation, in
generic contexts and in actional passive constructions. Furthermore it is the only
form to be used when the verb is given an iterative interpretation. Wesan, on the
other hand, is preferred with reference to the present moment or situation as well
as with statal passives.
We will see that all these interpretations are in line with Schumacher’s
(2007: 186) observation for the present indicative paradigms of the verb to be in
the Celtic languages. He claims that the unmarked s‑stem in the Insular Celtic
languages, especially in the earlier attested languages Irish and Welsh, is used
with reference to the actual present, while the marked Celtic b‑stem has prima-
rily a habitual meaning, and sometimes refers to future events.

3. Cf. Laing (this volume), who also refers to Ælfric’s grammar and the role that a contem-
porary grammarian may play for our understanding of the future tense in Old English.
 Ilse Wischer

3. Analysis of the examples

3.1 Indicative

There were altogether 6,551 be‑forms in the Old English part of the Helsinki Cor-
pus, of which 65 percent occurred in the s‑ and 35 percent in the b‑forms, which
corresponds – not surprisingly – to Kilpiö’s (1993) data, since they are based on
the same corpus. The distribution of s‑ and b‑forms according to person and
number distinctions can be seen in Figure 4:

1st Pers Sg 2nd Pers Sg 3rd Pers Sg Plural

s‑form 229 (81%) 176 (85%) 3,032 (65%)   810 (58%)

b‑form   55 (19%)   32 (15%) 1,630 (35%)   587 (42%)
Σ 284 (100%) 208 (100%)   4,662 (100%) 1,397 (100%)

Figure 4.  Distribution of indicative s‑ and b‑forms according to person and number
distinctions in the Old English part of the Helsinki Corpus

3.1.1 1st Person Singular

In my database, there were 284 examples of be‑verbs in the 1st person singular
indicative. 229 (81 percent) belonged to the s‑paradigm (eom/eam) and 55 exam-
ples (19 percent) were b‑forms. Among the latter there are 31 (56 percent) con-
taminated forms (biom/beom), which appear almost exclusively in Mercian
(Vespasian Psalter, Rushworth Gospels) and Northumbrian (Durham Ritual, Lin-
disfarne Gospels) texts, i.e. in the Anglian dialects. A few examples are recorded
in Old English poetic texts, particularly in some of the Riddles, which are transla-
tions of earlier, probably Anglian, versions. The contaminated forms closely cor-
respond to the Old Saxon forms, with Old Saxon being a language which had
derived from one of the source dialects of Old English.
The main difference between the use of the s‑ and the b‑form in the 1st person
singular indicative is that between present tense and future. The majority of the
b‑forms (67 percent) occur in translations from Latin, usually rendering Latin
futures, as in example (2):
(2) L:
respondens autem iesus dixit o generatio infidelis et peruersa usque
quo ero [1 Ps Sg. Fut.] apud uos et patiar uos ...
OE: se hælend cuoeð la cneoreso ungeleafull & wohfull hu longe ic biom
[1 Ps Sg. Prs. b‑form] mið iuh & ic ðola iuih ...
 (Lindisfarne Gospels, Luke 9.41)
‘And Jesus, answering, said: O faithless and perverse generation,
How long shall I be with you and suffer you? ...’
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

Latin present tense, sum, is generally translated by eom/eam, as in (3):

nam et ego homo sum [1 Ps Sg Prs.] sub potestate constitutus habens
(3) L:
sub me milites ...
OE: wiotudlice & ic monn eam [1 Ps Sg. Prs. s‑form] under mæhti geseted
hæbbende under me cempa ...
 (Rushworth Gospels, Matthew 8.9)
‘For I am a man under authority; having soldiers under me ...’
However, not in every case was the glossator absolutely sure how to translate
the Latin form, as examples such as (4) illustrate, where both s‑ and b‑form,
eam and beom, are alternatively used (see Latin vel ‘or’) to render the Latin
future ero:
dicebat enim intra se si tetigero tantum uestimentum eius salua ero
(4) L:
[1 Ps Sg. Fut.]
OE: heo cwæþ forþon in innan hire gif ic gehrine efne vel swa micel
hrægl his hal ic eam [1 Ps Sg. Prs. s‑form] vel ic beom [1 Ps Sg. Prs.
b‑form]. (Rushworth Gospels, Matthew 9.21)
‘For she said within herself, if I may but touch his garment, I shall be
whole.’
As mentioned before, in addition to the present–future distinction, Old English
makes use of the same stems to refer to different aspectual types of present states.
The s‑stem, like in (3), expresses a general or current state, often combined with a
past participle to indicate a stative passive (cf. also Kilpiö 1993). The b‑form in-
stead focuses on a temporary state, a duration which may extend into the future,
or can be understood as repetitive or habitual, see example (5).
(5) Saga hwæt ic hatte, oþþe hwa mec rære, þonne ic restan ne mot, oþþe hwa
mec stæðþe, þonne ic stille beom [1 Ps Sg. Prs. b‑form]. (Riddles 3.72)
‘Tell me my name, and who it is rouses me when I may not rest or who
restrains me when I remain silent.’
Sentence (3) is an example of what Jost (1909: 13) and Exter (1911: 20) characterize
as a “concrete” sentence. The first person is a concrete being and the situation is
expressed as a real fact. Sentence (5) would be considered as “abstract” according
to their theory since the event is only a hypothetical one.
It is interesting to note that in the 1st person singular the percentage of
b‑forms is considerably lower (19 percent) than that of s‑forms (81 percent) in Old
English, although in Old Saxon, which is so closely related to Old English, there
are only contaminated b‑forms attested. Such contaminated b‑forms do appear in
Old English as well, but are almost exclusively restricted to Northumbrian and
 Ilse Wischer

Mercian texts. They seem to represent the oldest layer of 1st person singular
be‑verbs. In contrast, the s‑form (eom/eam) must be an innovation, which has its
origin most likely in the South. In the earliest attested Old English texts, it is al-
ready the dominant form. Nevertheless, the b‑form is still in use and a functional
distinction, especially between present tense (s‑form) and future reference
(b‑form), is clearly observable. Laing (this volume) provides a detailed account on
how b-forms as markers of future reference continue to be used in different dia-
lects of early Middle English.

3.1.2 2nd person singular

In my database there were 208 examples of 2nd person singular constructions

with the verb to be in the present tense indicative. Of these examples 85 percent
(176) appeared in the s‑form (eart/earð), and 15 percent (32) in the b‑form (bist).
In their distribution, I could not observe any particular preferences with regard
to the different dialects, genres or historical subperiods.
Like with the 1st person singular indicative, the s‑form is used to refer to a
present or general state, as for instance a characteristic property or an identi-
fication, such as in example (6). Here Christ is directly addressed, and he is
identified as a particular being, which exists now, at the time of speaking, and
in general:
(6) ðu eart [2 Ps Sg. Prs. s‑form] cyninga cyningc cwicera gehwilces, ðu eart
[2 Ps Sg. Prs. s‑form] sigefest sunu and soð helend ofer ealle gesceft angla
and manna. (The Kentish Hymn, 87.15)
‘you are the king of all living kings, you are the victorious son and true
saviour of all creatures of angels and men.’
In example (7), both s‑ and b‑forms appear in the same sentence:
(7) ðu eart [2 Ps Sg. Prs. s‑form] soðlice simle halig, and ðu eart [2 Ps Sg. Prs.
s‑form] ana æce dryhten, and ðu ana bist [2 Ps Sg. Prs. b‑form] eallra
dema cwucra ge deadra, ... (The Kentish Hymn, 88.36)
‘you are truly always holy, and you alone are the Lord forever, and you
alone will be the judge over the living and the dead ...’
Eart assigns a property to the Lord that holds now and forever (simle ‘always’, æce
‘eternally’), while bist may refer to the role of the Lord in future, when the Last
Judgement is supposed to take place.
The general function of bist in contrast to eart is clearly to mark future tense.
This becomes most obvious in translations from Latin, where eart regularly trans-
lates Latin es, but bist translates Latin eris or future passives, as in (8) and (9):
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

Ecce tu pulchra es [2 Ps Sg. Prs.] amica mea ecce tu pulchra occuli

(8) L:
tui columbarum
OE: heono ðu feger arð [2 Ps Sg. Prs. s‑form] mego min heonu ðu feger
ego ðino culfra. (The Durham Ritual, 3.6)
‘How beautiful you are, my maid, how beautiful you are with your
dove eyes.’
(9) L: Et ecce eris [2 Ps Sg. Fut.] tacens et non poteris loqui usque in diem ...
OE: & heono ðu bist [2 Ps Sg. Prs. b‑form] suigendæ & ne mæge ðu ge-
sprece oðð on doege ... (Lindisfarne Gospels, Luke 1.20)
‘And behold, thou shalt be dumb and shalt not be able to speak until
the day ...’
The 2nd person singular forms show a similar distribution as the 1st person sin-
gular forms. The s‑forms (eart) clearly predominate with 85 percent over the
b‑forms (bist) with only 15 percent, although in Old Saxon the only attested form
is the b‑form. The origin of the 2nd person s‑form (eart), like that of the 1st person
(eam) may be attributed to a very early North Germanic influence, maybe already
on the Old Anglian and Jutish dialects. Krause (1948: 100) lists the forms am (1sg)
and est/ert (2sg) as the only forms for Old West Norse. However, a functional
distinction between s‑ and b‑forms can be attested for all Old English dialects
and all subperiods.

3.1.3 3rd person singular

The 3rd person singular is by far the most frequent type of construction in
the data. There are altogether 4,662 examples with a form of the verb to be in
the present tense indicative. 65 percent of these (3,032 examples) are attested
with an s‑form and 35 percent (1,630 examples) with a b‑form. Both forms
occur in almost all of the texts and there is no particular preference with re-
gard to the dialect or the time period, nor does the distribution across genres
(as distinguished in the Helsinki Corpus) appear to follow a clear pattern of
usage, see Figure 5 (next page).
The preponderance of bið‑forms in medical texts may be due to frequent
statements about future or general consequences of particular medical treat-
ments. It can be observed that the b‑form (bið), which Schumacher (2007: 201–
202) calls the “marked” form, is regularly used when the author predicts a con-
sequence of something which may have future or habitual implications, as in
(10) and (11):
 Ilse Wischer

Genre 850–950 950–1050 1050–1150

Documents is is is
Verse 0‡ is –§
Law bið is is
Medicine bið bið –
Philosophy is – bið
Religion bið is is
Preface is – is
History is bið is
Bible is is –
Astronomy – is bið
Homily – is is
Rule – is is
Geography – is –
Travelogue – is –
Biography – is is
Fiction – is –
‡ No 3rd person singular indicative present tense used.
§ No texts of that genre included.

Figure 5.  Dominance of bið‑ or is‑forms in the various genres

(10) Wifgemanan to donne, nim drige fearres sceallan, wyrc to duste, oððe
elcor gnid on win, & drince gelome. He bið [3 Ps Sg. Prs. b‑form] þy
gearwra to wifþingum. (Quadrupedibus, 752)
‘To have intercourse, take dry testicles of a bull, crumble them into dust,
or else crumble on wine, and drink it frequently. Consequently, he will be
better prepared for intercourse.
(11) Gif XXX, he bið [3 Ps Sg. Prs. b‑form] lange seoc, þæhweðere ariseð.
 (Prognostications, 30)
‘If 30 (the 30th night of the month), he (consequently) will be sick for a
long time, yet nevertheless he will get well.’
In (12) the state of remembering something is not a current state, but is expressed
as depending on a particular situation in future or generally:
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

(12) He sorgað ymb ða, & bið [3 Ps Sg. Prs. b‑form] ðara suiðe gemyndig, &
forgiett his selfes, ðonne he suiðor his mod gebint to ðam unnyttran
weorcum ðonne he ðyrfe. (Alfred’s Cura Pastoralis, 4.37.19)
‘He cares for them, and remembers them a lot, and forgets himself, when
he directs his mood to the useless works more than he should.’
Furthermore, the b‑form is often used in the protases of conditional clauses,
which also have a future or repetitive implication. Such constructions are typical
in law texts. Since the situation described is a hypothetical one, bið can vary here
with the subjunctive sie, see examples (13) and (14):
(13) Gif se nægl bið [3 Ps Sg. Ind. b‑form] ofaslegen, ðam sculon V scillinga to
bote. (Laws (Alfred), 56.1)
‘If the nail is cut off, he shall be paid 5 shillings as compensation.’
(14) Gif se midlesta finger sie [3 Ps Sg. Subj. s‑form] ofaslegen, sio bot bið [3 Ps
Sg. Ind. b‑form] XII scillinga. (Laws (Alfred), 58)
‘If the middle finger is cut of, the compensation shall be 12 shillings.’
In (14) the subjunctive sie is probably preferred to avoid a repetition of bið, which
occurs in the apodosis of the same sentence.
The “unmarked” s‑form (is) is found in simple statements where a term or a
concept is explained, as in (15) and (16):
(15) þy læs cild sy hreosende, þæt is [3 Ps Sg. Ind. s‑form] fylleseoc, ...
 (Quadrupedibus, 434)
‘lest a child be falling, that is epileptic, ...’
(16) æt ærestan we lærað, þæt mæst ðearf is [3 Ps Sg. Ind. s‑form], þæt æghwelc
mon his að & his wed wærlice healde. (Laws (Alfred), 1)
‘first we teach that the most important necessity is that each person truly
keeps his oath and pledge.’
The b‑form in the 3rd person singular is clearly an innovation in Old English. It has
no parallel in any other West‑ or North Germanic language. There is, however, a
similar form in Cymric, which is used in habitual contexts (cf. Keller 1925: 58).
Thus, it is possible that this form was borrowed from Insular Celtic and integrated
into the Old English b‑paradigm, or, it was formed in analogy to the inherited 1st
and 2nd person singular b‑forms. Considering that this form is an innovation in
Old English, it is even more remarkable that the percentage of its use (35 percent)
in relation to that of the s‑form (65 percent) is even higher than that of the inher-
ited 1st (19 percent) and 2nd person singular b‑forms (15 percent). This means that
the borrowing or creation of the form bið together with the formation of the double
paradigm must have happened very early after the settlement on the British Isles.
 Ilse Wischer

3.1.4 Plural

The highest percentage of b‑forms compared to s‑forms could be found among

the plural forms.4 Of all 1,397 examples, 58 percent (810 items) occurred in the
s‑form and 42 percent (587 items) in the b‑form. Most of the s‑forms are variants
of sind/sindon (781 examples). The form aron is comparatively rare (only 29 ex-
amples) and is restricted to Northumbrian texts. Northumbrian texts also con-
tain the form biðon instead of beoð. Otherwise the distinction between the use of
sind and beoð seems not to depend on the dialect or subperiod.
The s‑form is used for the intransitive verb meaning ‘exist’, as in (17), but in the
same contexts, even in the same text, we can alternatively find beoð, as in (18).
(17) ðonne syndan [3 Ps Pl. Ind. s‑form] oþere wif þa habbað eoferes tuxas &
feax oð helan side, & oxan tægl on lendunum. (Marvels, 27.1)
‘Then there are/exist other women, who have boar’s teeth and hair to
their heels, and an ox tail at their loins.’
(18) þonne syndon [3 Ps Pl. Ind. s‑form] oþere ealond suð from brixonte on
þon beoð [3 Ps Pl. Ind. b‑form] men buton heafdum. þa habbað on hyra
breostum heora eagan & muð. Hy seondon [3 Ps Pl. Ind. s‑form] eahta
fota lange & eahta fota brade. ðar beoð [3 Ps Pl. Ind. b‑form] dracan
cende, þa beoð [3 Ps Pl. Ind. b‑form] on lenge hundteontiges fotmæla
lange & fiftiges. Hy beoð [3 Ps Pl. Ind. b‑form] greate swa stænene sweras
micle. (Marvels, 15.1–16.2)
‘Then there are / exist other islands south of the Brixonte in which there
are / exist men without heads. They have their eyes and mouth in their
chests. They are eight feet tall and eight feet wide. There are (usually) drag-
ons born which are 150 feet long. They are as big as huge stone pillars.’
In (18) it is difficult, if at all possible, to identify a functional or contextual differ-
ence between the uses of the b‑ and s‑forms.5 The first two forms, syndon and
beoð, both mean ‘exist’ and are used in almost the same contexts. Then seondon
and beoð are similarly used as copula to link the subject with a complement de-
scribing the size of the subject. Only in the construction ðar beoð dracan cende
the use of the b‑form can be accounted for in terms of a dynamic passive, which
again has a repetitive or habitual sense.

4. Due to lack of time I treated the three persons in plural together. For data on the indi-
vidual persons see Kilpiö (1993: 98).
5. A comparison with the Latin original is not very helpful either (‘Est etiam in Brixonte
insula, in qua nascuntur homines sine capitibus qui in pectore oculos et ora habent. altitudine
novem pedum. et latitudine octo. hos epifagos vocamus. Nascuntur autem ibi et dracones
longitudine centum quinquaginta pedum grossitudine columnarum’ (Graff 1827: 196)).
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

The plural form beoð is, like the 3rd person singular bið, an innovation in Old
English. Again, there is no parallel in the other North Sea Germanic dialects.
And still its use was firmly established when the first Old English texts appeared.
With 42 percent of all be‑verbs in plural its percentage frequency is even higher
than that of bið. As in the case of bið, we can again assume direct borrowing from
Insular Celtic, since in Cymric we can find parallel forms to the one attested in
the Northumbrian dialect, biðon. On the other hand, analogical formation on the
basis of the inherited 1st and 2nd person forms might be even more likely to ac-
count for the phonological form beoð. The functional distinction, however, in the
use of s‑ and b‑forms has clear parallels in Insular Celtic.

3.2 Subjunctive

It is interesting to note that in Old English the b‑forms also entered the sub-
junctive paradigm, while in all other West Germanic languages, the s‑form
remained the only one for the subjunctive. In English, be later even replaced
the old subjunctive form sie(n), which was still the dominant one in Old Eng-
lish. Of a total of 1,476 subjunctive constructions with the verb ‘to be’, 87 per-
cent (1,277 items) are expressed with s‑forms, while only 13 percent (199 items)
contain b‑forms:

1st Pers Sg 2nd Pers Sg 3rd Pers Sg Plural Σ

s‑form 9 (56%) 33 (80%) 986 (89%) 249 (79%) 1,277 (87%)

b‑form 7 (44%) 8 (20%) 117 (11%) 67 (21%) 199 (13%)
Σ 16 (100%) 41 (100%) 1,103 (100%) 316 (100%) 1,476 (100%)

Figure 6.  Distribution of subjunctive s‑ and b‑forms according to person and number
distinctions in the Old English part of the Helsinki Corpus

These data support Brunner’s (1951: 259) observation on the frequency distribu-

tion of “optative” forms. He claimed that in Old West Saxon and in poetic texts
beo/beon is used much more rarely than sie/sien. Brunner further points out that
in Northumbrian and West Mercian the b‑form is not found at all. For Northum-
brian this can be confirmed by my studies, as I could not find any single subjunc-
tive b‑form in my Northumbrian data (cf. Figure 7).
In the Mercian texts, however, which I was not able to subdivide clearly into
West and East Mercian,6 I could find both s‑ and b‑forms, as in example (19):

6. It is not clear which texts Brunner refers to when he claims that in West Mercian the
b‑form is not found at all.
 Ilse Wischer

Northumbrian Mercian Kentish West Saxon

beo(n) sie(n) beo(n) sie(n) beo(n) sie(n) beo(n) sie(n)

   –850 0 50 0 86 – – – –
850–950 – – 1 21 0 25 2 44
950–1050 0 30 5 17 – – 5 21
1050–1150 – – 3 20 – – 4 16

Figure 7.  Average use of subjunctive beo(n)/sie(n) according to dialect and time (nor-
malized figures, per 10,000 words)

(19) & ðis sio [3 Ps Sg. Subj. s‑form] gelæst to sancte Michaelæs tide. & bio
[3 Ps Sg. Subj. b‑form] he ælces wites wyrðe. & gif hwilc forwyrht man
hiowan gesæce bio [3 Ps Sg. Subj. b‑form] se ðingað swa hit medlic sia
[3 Ps Sg. Subj. s‑form] be ðæs geltes meðe.
 (Documents 3 (Robertson) 60, 8/9)
‘& this (shall) be done to St. Michael’s time. & he (shall) deserve any
punishment. & if any ruined man comes to visit people of a religious
house, the agreement (shall) be as it may be befitting according to the
size of the crime.’
For East Mercian, with reference to the Rushworth Gloss, Brunner (1951:  259)
states that subjunctive sie does not occur at all. This again could not be verified by
my data. I found both forms in the Rushworth Gloss (28 examples with sie and 4
with beo), as in examples (20) and (21):
(20) gif þu godes sunu siæ [3 Ps Sg. Subj. s‑form] gecwæþ þæt þas stanes hlafes
beon [infinitive b‑form] vel gewærþe. (Rushworth Gospels, Matthew 4.3)
‘if thou be the Son of God, command that these stones will be or become
bread.’
(21) (\sic ergo uos orabitis pater noster qui es in caelis sanctificetur nomen tuum\)
þus ge þonne eow gebiddað fæder ure þu þe in heofunum earð beo [3 Ps Sg.
Subj. b‑form] gehalgad þin noma. (Rushworth Gospels, Matthew 6.9)
‘after this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hal-
lowed be thy name.’
The difference seems to be that while the s‑form has a present relevance here, the
b‑form refers to a future event, usually with the original sense of this verb, name-
ly ‘become’. So in the Rushworth Gospels, beon is in all other occurrences, just like
in (20), equated with the verb weorþan ‘become’ (beon vel ‘or’ gewærþe).
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

As we can see, there is no dialect in which subjunctive beo(n) clearly dominates.

Its use, however, is very limited in Northumbrian and Kentish.7 Thus, it will probably
not have had its origin in these dialects. The texts in which subjunctive b‑forms pre-
dominate over subjunctive s‑forms can almost all be assigned to Ælfric: Ælfric’s Cath-
olic Homilies, Ælfric’s Preface to Catholic Homilies I, Ælfric’s Preface to Genesis, Ælfric’s
First and Second Letters to Wulfstan, The Old Testament (translated partly by Ælfric);
additionally there is Byrhtferth’s Manual (on astronomy) (950–1050), and finally The
Life of St. Chad (1050–1150), whose author is unknown. All texts are Westsaxon8 and
date from the late tenth to early eleventh century. Nevertheless, if we consider all texts
in our corpus, we must admit that sie is still the prevailing form of the subjunctive at
the end of the Old English period. It is not clear on what evidence Brunner (1951: 259)
based his conclusion when he says that in late West Saxon beo/beon advances more
and more, and that it had almost completely displaced sie/sien from the eleventh cen-
tury on. My corpus findings do not corroborate this development.

3.3 Imperative and infinitive

Other than with the subjunctive, the dominant form for the imperative and the
infinitive in Old English is the b‑form. Here, Old English again behaves in a
unique way compared to the other West Germanic languages.9 Only in English
the imperative and infinitive is formed with the b‑stem. And this has its origin
early in Old English. Although there are only 60 imperatives in our corpus,
68 percent of the singular and 94 percent of the plural constructions are formed
with beo. The infinitive beon is used in 91 percent of the 358 examples. In the rest
of the examples we find mainly forms of wesan, like in Old Saxon, and a few in-
stances of the imperative with sie, like in Old High German, see Figure 8:

Imp. Sg. Imp. Pl. Infinitive

s‑form 14 (32%) 1 (6%) 32 (9%)

b‑form 30 (68%) 15 (94%) 326 (91%)
Σ 44 (100%) 16 (100%) 358 (100%)

Figure 8.  s‑forms and b‑forms in the imperative and infinitive

7. There is, unfortunately, only one Kentish text in the Helsinki Corpus, but Campbell also
lists Kentish as a dialect for which sie was typical.
8. The Life of St Chad is probably a West Saxon copy of an earlier Mercian text, although this
issue is much disputed (cf. Vleeskruyer 1953).
9. Lucia Kornexl (personal correspondence) made me aware of the fact that there exists an
imperative form bi in Bavarian. But this is mainly used in one collocation: Bi schdaad! “Be
quiet” (cf. Merkle 1996). Renn & König (2006: 77) assume an origin of this form in analogy to
the 2nd person singular indicative du bist.
 Ilse Wischer

As there appear no imperatives in the Northumbrian texts of our data, I can-

not verify the general assumption that in Northumbrian there are only wes‑im-
peratives (cf. Brunner 1951: 259; Campbell 1991: 351). It would, however, make
sense, if we consider that in this dialect beo‑forms are not used for the subjunctive
either. The same is true for the infinitive. Here I could confirm Brunner’s findings
that in Northumbrian the infinitive is only wesa or wosa. So we might assume
that there is the same conservatism with the imperative in Northumbrian.
Brunner (1951:  259) further claims that the wes‑imperative, as well as the
wesan‑infinitive, on the other hand, were missing in Older West Saxon. If this is
true, we must assume a very early replacement of wes/wesan, which had been the
regular imperative and infinitive in Old Saxon, by beo/beon under Celtic influ-
ence. In the Celtic languages, the verb to be in the subjunctive, imperative and the
verbal noun is only based on one stem, so that the forms all have an initial b‑ and
are etymologically related to the b‑forms of the indicative. See the forms in Middle
Welsh as given in Figure 9:

Subjunctive Imperative Verbal noun

Sg. 1 bwyf
2 bych byd
3 bo bit bot
Pl. 1 bom bydwn
2 boch bydwch
3 bont bint

Figure 9.  The forms of the subjunctive, imperative and verbal noun in Middle Welsh10

In our data the 11 wes(aþ)‑imperatives occur mainly in Old English verse, which
are all West Saxon translations from earlier versions in other dialects, mainly
Anglian. The only plural wesaþ‑imperative could be identified in the Rushworth
Gospel, which is a Mercian text. In this dialect probably both wes‑ and beo‑imper-
atives were in use (cf. also Campbell 1959: 351), since in example (22) the glossator
translates Latin estote with the two alternating forms.

10. I would like to thank Stefan Schumacher (personal correspondence) for the information
on the subjunctive, imperative and verbal noun forms of the verb to be in the Celtic languages,
and particularly in Middle Welsh.
 The use of beon and wesan in Old English 

Ecce ego mitto uos sicut oues in medio luporum estote [pl. impera-
(22) L:
tive] ergo prudentes sicut serpentes et simplices sicut columbe.
OE: henu ic sende eow swa swa scep in midde uulfum bioþ [pl. impera-
tive b‑form] vel wesaþ [pl. imperative s‑form] forþon snottre swa swa
nedra & bilwite swa swa culfra. (Rushworth Gospels, Matthew 10.16)
‘Look, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be[beon] or
be[wesan] therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’
A similar alternation can be found in the same text between beon and wesan as
infinitive forms, as in example (23):
prohibebat autem eum iohannis dicens ego a te debeo baptizari
(23) L:
[passive infinitive] et tu uenis ad me?
OE: iohannes þonne werede him cweþende ic sceal from þe beon
[infinitive b‑form] vel wesa [infinitive s‑form] deped vel fullwihted
& ðu cymest to me? (Rushworth Gospels, Matthew 3.14)
‘but John didn’t allow it, saying, I shall be[beon] or be[wesan] dipped or
baptized by you & and you are coming to me?’
So Brunner is not right when he argues that in Mercian the only infinitive is beon.
In my data wesa(n) is found in all dialects except for the Kentish one, although it
has to be admitted that there is only one single Kentish document in the Old
English part of the Helsinki Corpus. Beon, on the other hand, is found in all dia-
lects except Northumbrian. The b‑form for the infinitive as well as for the im-
perative is quite obviously a very early innovation, which did not originate in the
Northern dialect area.

4. Conclusion

In the light of the findings presented above, it can be claimed that the 1st and 2nd
person singular b‑forms in the Old English present indicative paradigm are in-
herited from Proto‑West Germanic. While in the other West Germanic languag-
es they form a mixed paradigm with s‑forms, in Old English alone a double para-
digm emerged, which can only be assigned to Celtic influence. The 3rd person
singular form bið and the plural form beoð, which have no parallels in the other
North Sea Germanic dialects, had been firmly established as parts of the Old
English double paradigm by the time of the earliest Old English texts. The differ-
ence in use between beon and wesan is one between future and present, and part-
ly, parallel to the Celtic languages, one between habitual present and current
present. Further investigations will be needed to confirm these observations.
 Ilse Wischer

In Old English, as the only West Germanic language, b‑forms also penetrated
into the subjunctive paradigm and eventually even displaced the inherited
sie(n)‑forms. This process originated most likely in the South (West), not in the
North, again as a contact phenomenon, based on similar b‑verbs in the Celtic
languages. The same is true for beon in the imperative and infinitive. The dis-
placement of the original wes‑forms must have taken place at a very early time,
possibly right after the settlement, which again did not affect the North.

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Sprachgeschichte: ein Handbuch zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und ihrer Er-
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 The reflexes of OE beon as a marker
of futurity in early Middle English

Margaret Laing*
University of Edinburgh

In Old English the finite forms of the b‑root for ‘be’ (beo, bist, bið, etc.) were
more likely to appear in contexts involving futurity than the s‑root (eom,
eart, is, etc). The use of the b‑root for future continues into Middle English.
During the compilation of LAEME, we have observed that the complex and
variable Old English distinction can become simplified and systematized. In
early Middle English the use of b‑forms in the present indicative singular is
in some text languages1 restricted entirely to future senses. In the areas where
the b‑root is the norm for present indicative plural, this system is confined
to the singular. But in the North and to a certain extent the North Midlands,
where ar-/er‑forms are available, the system is extended into the plural. Ilse
Wischer’s contribution to this volume offers fascinating and detailed insights
into the different forms of the verb ‘to be’ in Old English and their distinctive
functions. This paper looks mainly at subsequent developments. It therefore
only briefly summarizes the Old English distinctions as background to a
micro-dialectal study of three subsystems that emerge during early Middle
English. Their identification gives rise to further questions that might reward
investigation in the future.

* These observations arise from work on early Middle English manuscript texts undertak-
en at the Institute for Historical Dialectology, Linguistics and English Language, School of
Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, University of Edinburgh towards the compi-
lation of A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME). This research project was sup-
ported from 2000-2006 by AHRC for which gratitude is here expressed. I also thank Roger
Lass, Keith Williamson, the anonymous reviewers and the volume editors for very helpful
comments on earlier drafts.
1. The term “text language” is adopted from Suzanne Fleischman (2000: 34), who used it to
refer in general to historical languages for which our only informants are written texts. In this
paper the term is used as it is in Laing & Lass (2008: see esp. Introduction, Chapter 1) as the
surviving written English of some particular scribe. A text language may represent the writ-
ten dialect of the scribe who perpetuates it; or (in the case of a literatim copyist), that of the
exemplar from which he copies. In the first case, a single text language can comprise the usage
of any number of surviving texts, either composed by a particular scribe, or translated by him
 Margaret Laing

1. Background

1.1. Futurity in Old English

As in Present-Day English, morphological tense markers in Old English are con-

fined to past and present (or non-past). Temporal relations may be signed more
fully by context and/or by temporal adverbs and conjunctions. Present (or non-
past) can also express the future:
(1) & ic arise of deaðe on þam þriddan dæge
and I will-arise from death on the third day
 (quoted from Traugott 1992: 180-182)
The verb to be appears to be at least a partial exception to this rule. It is one of the so-
called “anomalous verbs” in Old English, being both irregular and defective. Its full
conjugation in English (from Old English to Present-Day English) is made up from a
union of the surviving forms of three originally distinct and independent verbs:
a. the s‑root, i.e. the original IE substantive verb with stem *h1es‑, Skr. as‑, ′s‑,
Gr. εσ‑, L. es‑, ′s‑, PGmc. *es‑, *′s‑. This has no surviving past tense in Indo-
European languages.
b. the b‑root, i.e. IE *bheu‑ Skr. bhū‑, bhaw‑, Gr. ϕυ‑, L. fu‑, PGmc. *βeu‑, *βeo‑,
OE bēon ‘to become, come to be’. This also has no surviving past tense.
c. the w‑root, i.e. the verb with stem *wes‑, Skr. vas‑ ‘to remain’, PGmc. *wes‑
Gothic wis‑an ‘to remain, stay, continue to be’, OS, OE, OHG wesan, OFris.
wes‑a, ON ver‑a. This provides the past tense in English. Other parts of wesan
fell out of use during the Old English period when it was a defective strong
verb of Class V, subject to Verner’s Law: ind. sg. 1st and 3rd wæs, 2nd w󰀳xre,
pl. w󰀳xron, subj. w󰀳xre(n) (Campbell 1959: §768).
Only roots (a) and (b) are relevant to the present discussion.

from an exemplar or exemplars whose language he translates into his own dialect. In the sec-
ond case, a single literatim copyist may provide us with more than one text language. A text
language may be homogeneous dialectally or mixed.
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

1.2 The OE bēon paradigm

(Taken from Campbell 1959: §768 (d))

the s- root the b- root

Indicative
Present
Sg. 1 eom I am bēo I shall be2
2 eart bist
3 is biþ
Pl. sindon, sint bēoþ
[Anglian erun, arun]
Subjunctive
Present
Sg. sīe bēo
Pl. sīen bēon
Imperative
Sg. bēo3
Pl. bēoþ
Infinitive
bēon
The present forms of weorþan are also sometimes used in Old English and in
early Middle English to express the future.4 The verb weorþan is not discussed in
this paper, but a more detailed study of futurity in Old and early Middle English
would certainly need to take account of it.5

2. These are Campbell’s glosses. See further the quotation from Mitchell (1985) in §1.3 be-
low, qualifying the implication that there was a clear-cut present/future distinction.
3. Wischer (this volume) also lists the rare s-root and w-root imperatives sie and wes, wesaþ.
4. Weorþan is a strong verb of Class III, which also has the senses ‘become, happen’. It is also
used, in combination with forms of wesan, to provide the passive voice.
5. Cf. e.g. Hwa wæs æfre, oþþe is nu, oððe hwa wyrþ get æfter us ‘Who always was, or is now,
or who shall be yet after us’ (Ælfred’s translation of Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy 11.I.)
and Ich shal mid one bare worde Do þat þi speche wrht forworþe ‘I shall with one single word
make it that thy speech shall be destroyed’ (London, British Library, Cotton Caligula A ix, The
Owl and the Nightingale lines 547–48, Language 1, Worcs, C13b2).
 Margaret Laing

1.3 OE beon and the expression of futurity

In Old English the finite forms of the b‑root for ‘be’ were more likely to appear in
contexts involving futurity than the s‑root e.g. eom, is. Mitchell (1985:§659ff)
notes considerable semantic complexity, but essentially follows Campbell’s
(1959:§768) conclusions:6
[...] bēo expresses what is (a) an invariable fact, e.g. ne bið swylc cwenlic þeaw
‘such is not a queenly custom’, or (b) the future, e.g. ne bið þe wilna gad ‘you will
have no lack of pleasures’, or (c) iterative extension into the future, e.g. biþ stor-
ma gehwylc aswefed ‘every storm is always allayed’ [...]; eom expresses a present
state provided its continuance is not especially regarded, e.g. wlitig is se wong
‘the plain is beautiful’.7

1.4 The grammarian’s view

Amongst his numerous other works in English, the great homilist and hagiogra-
pher Ælfric of Eynsham also produced a Grammar. It is a grammar of the Latin
language, and is rich in Latin examples, but the text itself is couched in Ælfric’s
late-tenth-century West-Saxon English. This work appears to have had consider-
able contemporary popularity, since it still survives in ten Old English manu-
scripts (often accompanied by Ælfric’s Latin-English Glossary). There are also a
number of fragments of the text surviving in other manuscripts, as well as some
later copies.8 It is clearly of great interest for our perception of the “future tense”
in Old English to see how its expression was understood by a contemporary
grammarian. Ælfric’s examples indicate that the simple future in Latin is ex-
pressed in Old English by present indicative forms, with or without adverbial
support, e.g. to merjen ‘tomorrow’ (quoted from Zupitza 1880 [2001]: 131):

6. Cf. a similar summary in Traugott (1992: 182-183). Traugott follows Mustanoja (1960: 583; cf.
Jost 1909) in using wesan (non-historically) as the citation form for the s‑root as well as the w‑root.
7. These basic handbook summaries are perhaps sufficient to provide the background for
the present study of early Middle English data. There has been a great deal of more recent work
on the double paradigm for ‘be’ in Old English. See for instance Kilpiö (1992, 1993, 1997).
Kilpiö (1997: 89) observes the general tendency for b‑forms rather than s‑forms to be used
with the future, and that “conversely, deictic locatives or temporals linking the state or action
to the present moment or situation are more common with non‑b‑forms than b‑forms”. For a
convincing account of ‘the Celtic hypothesis’, that the double paradigm and its contrasting
functions is the result of sub-stratal Celtic influence on Old English, see Lutz (2008) and works
there cited. Cf. Wischer (this volume), who also offers a syntactic and dialectal survey.
8. For details of all the manuscript copies see Zupitza (1880 [2001]: iv-ix) and references
there to Ker (1957).
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

(2) futuro tempore on toweardre tide amabo ic lufige gyt to dæg oððe to mer-
jen, amabis þu lufast, amabit he lufað et pluraliter amabimus we
lufjað, amabitis ge lufjað, amabunt hi lufjað.
‘ futuro tempore in future tense amabo “I love yet today or tomorrow”,
amabis “thou lovest”, amabit “he loveth”; and in the plural amabimus
“we love”, amabitis “ye love”, amabunt “they love”.’

1.5 Old English forms of the verb to be as a marker of futurity

For the verb to be, we find in Ælfric’s Grammar clear illustration of the relation-
ships of the s‑root and the b‑root to the expression of futurity in Old English
under the section headed De Verbo Passivo (‘Concerning the Passive Verb’). Com-
pare the s‑root usage (3) with the b‑root usage (4), where adverbial support is
nevertheless still supplied (quoted from Zupitza 1880 [2001]: 139-140):
(3) Amor ic eom gelufod ys passivvum, swa swa we ær cwædon, amaris þu
eart gelufod, amatur he ys gelufod; et pluraliter amamur we synt ge-
lufode, amamini ge synd, amantur hi synd.
‘Amor “I am loved” is passive as we said before, amaris “thou art loved”,
amatur “he is loved”; and in the plural amamur “we are loved”, amamini
“ye are”, amantur “they are”.’
(4) tempore fvtvro amabor ic beo gelufod gyt, amaberis ðu bist, amabitur
he byð; et pluraliter amabimur we beoð gelufode gyt, amabimini ge
beoð, amabuntur hi beoð gelufode.
‘in future tense amabor “I [shall] be loved yet”, amaberis “thou [shall] be”,
amabitur “he [shall] be”; and in the plural amabimur “we [shall] be loved
yet”, amabimini “ye [shall] be”, amabuntur “they [shall] be loved”.’9

2. Late Middle English

2.1 Survival of ‘be’ as a marker of futurity

Mustanoja (1960: 583) summarizes the Old English division between the use of
the s‑root10 and the b‑root, and further observes: “Traces of this old use of the

9. In these glosses I use shall throughout the paradigm to express simple future, as was most
commonly the practice in late Middle English with all verbs, and also in early Middle English with
verbs other than be. No deontic sense is here implied. The practice of using shall in the first person
and will in second and third persons to imply simple future, with the reverse usage in each case
implying obligation, is a tradition that emerged later in the history of English. In Scots, the future
versus deontic paradigms of shall and will are commonly the reverse of those in Standard English.
10. Which he refers to as wesan, cf. note 6 above.
 Margaret Laing

b‑forms to express futurity occur in early ME and to some extent even later in the
period” (cf. also Fischer 1992: 241).

2.2 Late Middle English grammars

Ælfric’s Grammar was designed to explain the morphology and syntax of Latin
by means of examples translated into Old English. Unfortunately, we have noth-
ing of this kind for early Middle English. Post 1066, until the late fourteenth
century, French and not English was the medium of instruction in the schools:
After the Norman Conquest, English fell out of use as the language of elementary
instruction in Latin grammar, and no grammatical texts in Middle English sur-
vive from before the closing years of the fourteenth century. Ranulf Higden, who
died c. 1363, was still able to complain in his Polychronicon that “pueri in scholis
contra morem caeterarum nationum a primo Normannorum adventu, derelicto
proprio vulgari, construere Gallice compelluntur.” [‘Since the first arrival of the
Normans, contrary to the custom of other nations, boys in schools are obliged to
abandon their own language and to construe in French. i(Thomson 1984: xi).]

As we know from John Trevisa’s interpolation into his translation of Higden’s

Polychronicon, by 1385 (the time Trevisa was writing): “in al þe gramerscoles of
Englelond childern leueþ Frensch and construeþ and lurneþ an Englysch” (quot-
ed from Sisam 1970: 149). Once English began again to be used as the language of
instruction and of the construal of Latin in schools, Latin grammars couched in
English also started to reappear. Compared with Ælfric’s splendidly full treat-
ment, the Middle English grammatical texts that emerged in the late fourteenth
and fifteenth century (Thomson 1984) are very slight, and tend to be hardly more
than checklists. Those that deal fully with the verbal conjugations agree that Latin
simple future tense is expressed in English by the periphrastic use of shall: e.g.
“Qwerby knowyst þe future tens? For it spekyth of tyme þat is to come, and hath
þis Englysch wurd ‘schal’, as amabo ‘I schal louyn’” (Thomson 1984: 26 – Acedence
text C line 429–31, from Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS F. 26 (163), fols.
1r–12r). There is rarely mention in these grammars of esse, sum or the other
anomalous verbs in Latin, and therefore no Middle English examples useful for
our present discussion on the forms of the verb to be are given.
How, then, was the simple future expressed in English between these two pe-
riods for which we have evidence from contemporary grammarians, and how are
we to interpret the early Middle English evidence for the forms of the verb to be?
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

3. Early Middle English

3.1 The grammarian’s view

Although there are no new grammars in Middle English much before 1400, the
early Middle English Tremulous Scribe of Worcester made a copy of Ælfric’s
Grammar in the early thirteenth century (Worcester Cathedral, Chapter Library
F 174, fols. 1r–63r). He updated the spellings of the English parts of the text, in-
cluding the exemplary material, to those of his own thirteenth-century Worces-
tershire language. He often curtailed the English examples where there was de-
ducible repetition, and also truncated the Latin, giving just the endings when the
repeated root could be inferred. The passages from Ælfric quoted in (2) to (4)
above appear in the Tremulous Scribe’s version as (5) to (7) below (transcribed
from a microfilm of the manuscript):
(5) futuro tempore . amabo . ic lufie get to-dai . oþer tomorwen \ amabis .
amabit . & pluraliter amabimus bitis . bunt
(6) [A]mor . ic am ilufod is passiuum so we ær cweþon . amaris . þu ert ilufod
. amatur . he is ilufod . & pluraliter amamur . we beoþ ilufod . amamini .
amantur .
(7) tempore . futuro amabor ic beo ilufed get . amaberis . þu bist amabitur he
biþ . & pluraliter amabimur we beoþ amabimini . amabuntur .
It can be seen that the Tremulous Scribe copied the structure of Ælfric’s English with
minimal formal updating. Did he make his copy of the Grammar only from anti-
quarian interest, or did the content still hold for thirteenth-century English usage?

3.2 A Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME)

The evidence from the LAEME corpus of tagged texts (CTT) is that the Old Eng-
lish practice of using the s‑root for “a present state” and the b‑root for (among
other things) futurity continues in at least some dialects of early Middle English.
Of the 167 text languages in the CTT, 49 show at least some examples of be-future.
The process of tagging itself turned out to be a powerful heuristic.

3.2.1 Tagging of ‘be’ with future sense

Consider the following from the version of Ancrene Riwle in Cambridge, Gonville
and Caius 234/120:
 Margaret Laing

(8) O þen an half adomesdai shulen ure swarte sunnen

On the one side on doomsday shall our black sins
strongliche biclepien us of ure sawle murþre. O þer oþer
strongly accuse us of our soul’s murder. On the other
half stont rich-wisnesse þe nan rewþe is wid. dredful &
side stands righteousness whom no mercy is with, dreadful &
grislich. & grure-ful to bi-holden. Buuen us þe orre deme.
grisly & gruesome to behold. Above us the angry judge.
for ase softe as he is her; ase hard he bid þer. Ase
For as soft as he is here, as hard he shall be there; as
milde ase he is nu; ase sturne þenne. Lomb her; leon þar
mild as he is now, as stern then; lamb here, lion there.
The Ancrene Riwle11 was probably written in the first quarter of the thirteenth
century (C13a1) in South Salop or North Herefords. The Gonville and Caius
manuscript (G) dates from the third quarter of the century (C13b1) and belongs
in N Worcs. It follows closely the structure of the original here as attested by a
combination of the Cleopatra text (C) and the author’s revised version represent-
ed by the Corpus text (A). The Nero (N) and Titus (T) versions are also similar.
All four of these copies probably date from C13a2. The example above is a para-
phrase and expansion of the first part of a Latin quotation from “seint Anselme”
which immediately precedes it in the text: Hinc erunt peccata accusancia . Illinc
terrens iusticia supra iratus Iudex (‘On this side shall be the accusing sins. On the
other side [shall be] terrifying justice. Above us the angry judge.’). The English
version freely adapts the Latin, but it does show a strict response to the Latin tense
structure. The overtly expressed simple future erunt ‘shall be’ combined with
present participle accusancia ‘accusing’ is here expressed with periphrastic shall
plus infinitive: shulen biclepien ‘shall accuse’. The Latin parallel construction has
present participle terrens ‘terrifying’ presumably with erit ‘shall be’ understood.
Here the Middle English does not supply the necessary future shal form that
would create strict parallelism. Instead the Latin is paraphrased, the missing fi-
nite verb and the present participle terrens being rendered respectively by two
present indicatives: stont rich-wisnesse þe nan rewþe is wid ‘stands righteousness
whom no mercy is with’. Stont here could be taken as present indicative implying

11. The surviving early Middle English versions are found in Cambridge, Corpus Christi
College 402 (A), London, British Library, Cotton Cleopatra C vi (C), London, British Library,
Cotton Nero A xiv (N), London, British Library, Cotton Titus D xviii (T), and Cambridge,
Gonville and Caius College 234/120 (G). The passage illustrated here does not form part of the
tagged sample in the LAEME CTT for any of the texts except G.
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

future tense, or possibly as a state that exists at the moment of writing, while is
expresses a general truth. With the next two instances of the verb to be (for which
corresponding Latin is lacking) there is a contrast between present indicative ex-
pressing a state that exists at the moment of writing: is her ‘is here’ and what is,
judging from the context, a clear expression of future time: bid þer ‘shall be there’.
The A, C and N texts (all like G from the South-West Midland area) have the same
syntactic structure as G, contrasting is and bið, but the N text also repeats bið
before ‘then’ reinforcing the distinction between ‘is now’ and ‘shall be then’. The
T text, which belongs further north, in Cheshire, preserves the distinction
between the s‑root and b‑root but has the northerly form beos rather than the bid/
bið of the other texts.
The sample from the G version of Ancrene Riwle used in the CTT was tagged
for LAEME following our usual tagging procedures (LAEME, Introduction,
Chapter 4). Parts of the above example are illustrated below, (a) in the tagged text
format and (b) in the format (including tags) that is retrievable using the con-
cordancing programme on the LAEME TASKS page.
(a) Tagged text format (b) Concordance format12
$for/cj_FOR as/av>=soft/aj as/av /P13NM be/vps13 here/av
$as/av>=_ASE ASE SOFTE AS HE IS HER
$soft/aj_SOFTE
$as/av_AS so/cj<= hard/aj /P13NM
$/P13NM_HE ASE HARD HE
$be/vps13_IS
$here/av_HER BID [be/v-fut13 (C13b1) # 276 caiusart.tag]
{.’}
$so/cj<=_ASE there/av as/av>= mild/aj as/av /P13NM
$hard/aj_HARD
{\} yER *ASE MILDE ASE HE
$/P13NM_HE
$be/v-fut13_BID be/vps13 now/av so/cj<= stern/aj
$there/av_yER IS NU ASE STURNE
From these illustrations it can be seen that the tags assigned to the finite verb
forms is and bid from our short example are different: $be/vps13 and $be/v-fut13.
The beginning of a tag is signalled by $. The lexical element (lexel) appears
between $ and / and is here the modern English citation form be. The grammati-
cal element (grammel) comes between / and _ after which follows the manuscript

12. To save space, examples from now on will be given in “normal” rather than internal
LAEME format, and without the tagging being included.
 Margaret Laing

form, here illustrated in “internal format” in capitals, viz IS and BID. The gram-
mel for IS is vps13: v = verb; ps = present indicative; 1 = singular; 3 = third person.
The grammel for BID substitutes ‑fut for ps. The ‑fut tag label is used only for
forms of the verb to be and I have tried to confine it to examples where clear fu-
ture is intended; though the dividing line between this and Campbell’s (see §1.2
above) “iterative extension into the future” is fuzzy. Often cases could be argued
either way, though sometimes there are rather strong clues when Latin exempla
in a text are (more or less) translated into Middle English, as in this example from
the same text as above:
(9) Quid confusionis. quid ignominie erit quando dissipatis
What of confusion, what of ignominy shall be when, scattered
foliis & dispersis. Vniuersa nudabitur turpitude
leaves and dispersed, all shall be laid bare foulness
sanies apparebit. hwuch schendlac. & hwuch sorhe
filth shall appear. what ignominy and what sorrow
bið þer hwenne alle þe leaues schulen beon towarpled.
shall be there when all the leaves shall be scattered,
& al þat fulþe schawen him & wringed
and all that filth [shall] show itself and wrings/shall wring
ut þat wursum biuoren alle wide world
out that corruption before all [the] wide world
Here the singular bið directly translates Latin erit ‘shall be’. Thereafter, the Middle
English paraphrases the Latin text. The Latin ablative absolute dissipatis foliis et
dispersis ‘the leaves having been scattered’ and singular future tense nudabitur
and apparebit (‘shall be laid bare’ and ‘shall appear’) are combined in the Middle
English periphrastic expression in the plural, schulen beon plus a past participle
towarpled ‘shall be scattered’, followed by an infinitive schawen ‘show itself’.13 The
text then continues with an expansion, for which there is no equivalent Latin text,
with a present tense wringed ut ‘wrings/shall wring [itself] out’.14 In this text

13. The G version (which is a much shortened and reordered text of Ancrene Riwle) differs
here syntactically from the other early Middle English texts of Ancrene Riwle. This seems to be
the only plausible interpretation of its syntax in this context. In G’s language, schawen cannot
be plural indicative (which is always expressed by the ‘–eth’-type ending). Formally it can only
be infinitive or plural subjunctive. I take it to be infinitive depending on schulen in a zeugma
construction.
14. The A, C, N and T texts (after whatever form of towarpled they have) all proceed with a ver-
sion of the structure: & al $ fulþe schaweð him . & wringeð ut $ wursum biuoren alle þe wide world.
The T version has the NWML -es variants for 3sg pres ind: scheawes and wringes. The G version’s
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

language there is no distinctive simple verbal form available to differentiate

present from future sense of ‘be’ in the plural, b‑root beoð‑type spellings being
the norm for the present plural indicative ‘are’. Using periphrastic schulen beon
was therefore the only way for the scribe to translate the Latin simple future with
an English equivalent that was distinctively future in expression.

3.2.2 Shall as a marker of tense or of obligation?

By the early Middle English period shall has begun to emerge as a regular marker
for the expression of futurity (Fischer 1992: 241, 250), especially with verbs other
than to be, because for those verbs there is no formal distinction available. How-
ever, alongside this emergent function for future expression, shall in the present
tense can still be used deontically in Middle English, in general statements of
what is right or becoming, to mean ‘ought, should’. Sometimes therefore the use
of shall can be ambiguous. Consider the following example from British Library,
Egerton 613, Poema Morale (e text - C13a2-b1):
(10) Ac drihte ne demð nanne man æfter his
But the Lord not judges no man according to his
bi-ginning ac al his lif sceal beo sich se buð his endinge
beginning, but all his life shall/must be such as is/shall be his ending
When tagging, we have to decide whether the periphrastic expression sceal beo
implies merely futurity (future ‘shall’) or whether sceal here retains at least some
of the sense of obligation it had in Old English (deontic ‘shall’). If sceal here rep-
resents future ‘shall’, we would have to supply an underlying ‘judged’ to make
sense of the expression: a man’s life will be judged not according to how he begins
it but according to how he ends it. If sceal beo implied future sense only, this
might suggest that the finite simplex buð was not normally used for this purpose
in this text language, and that its appearance in the second clause should be
tagged as present indicative: $be/vps13 meaning ‘is’. If buð were taken to be a pos-
sible variant for the temporal expression of ‘shall be’ and tagged $be/v-fut13, it
would imply in the writer a conscious avoidance of a strictly parallel expression
of what would appear to be parallel (though inverted) senses: ‘his life shall be’ and
‘shall be his ending’. Of course the demands of metre have to be taken into account
as well: it may be that the periphrastic variant was chosen merely to fill up the
line. That aside, if we take sceal beo here to represent deontic ‘shall be’, both the
semantic context and its formal contrast suggests that buð may be analysed as
implying future ‘shall be’.

wringed is clearly also intended to be 3sg pres ind. In this text language <d> and <ð> are fre-
quently interchangeable: cf. bid for bið in example (8) and see further Lass & Laing (2009).
 Margaret Laing

3.2.3 The importance of comparison

In practice of course we rarely have to treat such a short example in isolation. The
text of the Egerton (e) version of Poema Morale ends imperfectly, but it still runs to
368 lines of verse. It is vital when making analytical decisions, whether for tagging
or other purposes, to look at variant usages within and across text languages as
whole systems. There are six other surviving copies of Poema Morale, originating
from different parts of the country and dating from between the late twelfth century
to about 1300. The two verse lines above and the two lines following are set out here
from all seven versions for (admittedly limited) comparison, and also to illustrate
some of the variation in use of be and shall in different places and at different times.
T = Cambridge, Trinity College B.14.52, fols. 2r–9v. C12b2. W Essex.
L = London, Lambeth Palace Library 487, fols. 59v–65r. ca 1200. NW Worcs.
D = Oxford, Bodleian Library, Digby 4, fols. 97r–110v. C13a1. W Kent.
e = London, British Library, Egerton 613, fols. 64r–70v. C13a2-b1. SW Worcs.
E = London, British Library, Egerton 613, fols. 7r–12v. C13a2-b1. SW Worcs.
J = Oxford, Jesus College 29, fols. 169r–174v. C13b2. E Herefords.
M = Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, McClean 123, fols. 115r–120r. ca 1300. Gloucs.
(11) T: Ac drihte ne demeð noman after his biginninge
L: Ah drihten ne demeð nenne .M. efter his biginnigge
D: Drihte ne demeð nenne man. bi his biginninge
e: Ac drihte ne demð nanne man æfter his bi-ginning
E: Ac drithte ne demeð nanne man after his bi-ginninge
J: Ne schal nomon beon ydemed. after his bigynnynge.
M: Ac crist ne demeþ nanne man after his ginnigge
(12) T: Ac al his lif sal ben teald after his endinge
L: Ah al his lif scal bon suilch boð his endinge
D: Al his lif sel ben iteald bi his endinge
e: ac al his lif sceal beo sich se buð his endinge
E: ac his lif scal beo swulc se bued his endinge
J: Ah dom schal þolyen vych mon. after his endinge .
M: Ac al scal beo his lif iteld suich is his endigge
(13) T: gief þe endinge is god al hit is god. & euel gief euel is þe ende
L: gef $ is uuel al hit is uuel. & God gefe god his ende
D: Ef se ende is euel hit is al euel & god ef god is se ende
e: Ac gif þe ende is uuel eal hit is uuel. & gód gif gód is þenne
E: Ac õif þe ende is euel al it is uuel & al god õif god is ende
J: If þe ende is vuel. al hit is vuel. god yef vs god ende.
M: Õef his ende is euel al hit is euel & god õef god beoþ his ende
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

(14) T: God gieue þat ure ende be god & gieue þat he us lende
L: God geue $ ure ende bo god . & wite $ he us lende
D: God geue $ ure ende bi god . & wite hwet he us lende
e: god gyue $ ure ende beo gód . & wit þét hé us lenne
E: god õuue þat ure ende beo god . & wite þet he us lende
J: God yef vs vre ende god . hwider þat he vs lende
M: Iesucrist leue þat ure ende beo god & witie þat he us lende
Apart from J, which has a free paraphrase very different from the rest, there are a
few minor differences of lexis and word order between the texts that give minor
differences also in sense. But it is clear from the examples in (13) (confirmed from
examination of the text dictionaries derived from the complete LAEME samples
for these text languages) that is is the normal form for the present indicative 3rd
person singular ‘is’. Confirming this gives us more licence to interpret the b-root
forms in L, e and E as implying future. T, D and M illustrate a variant textual tra-
dition, and have the past participle ‘told, judged’ that we supplied as understood
for the e version above; they therefore lack the context for the b-root future form.
The M version, however, displays an interesting variation in its deployment of
s-root and b-root forms. It has is where L, e and E have b-forms and beoþ for the
third example of ‘is’ in (13). It looks as if in the M scribe’s system the s-root and
b-root forms are simply variants for ‘is’ and he could write either to represent what
was probably is in his exemplar.15 This variation would also mean that he could
read exemplar bið-type forms as simple present indicative and substitute his is
variant for them if he wished. Examination of his practice across the whole of his
text confirms this: he uses is, beoþ and beþ for the 3rd singular present indicative
where present sense is certainly implied, and there are no clear contexts in his
output where b-forms must imply future sense. Clearly the v-fut13 tag cannot be
sensibly applied to this scribe’s forms for ‘is’. The free paraphrase of the J scribe
shows that he has opted to express the future with periphrastic ‘shall’, which here
has no implication of obligation. Note too the survival in all seven texts of sub-
junctive b(e)o, bi for the optative expression ‘grant that our end be good’.

3.2.4 Classifying the variation

During the tagging process there emerged three early Middle English b‑root “sys-
tems” for expression of futurity. These systems are possible because of the availability
of both s‑root and b‑root forms in the present tense. In early Middle English this is
true for the singular in all dialects and also for the plural in non-southerly dialects.

15. The order of the lines of the Poema Morale in M differs greatly from that in the other versions.
Paues (1907: 225) conjectures that M’s text may therefore have been written down from memory.
The point here holds whether or not the ‘exemplar’ was in front of the M scribe or in his head.
 Margaret Laing

TYPE 1: Southerly mixed — the Old English system continued?

Text languages of this type show s‑root spellings of the am art is type for the
present indicative singular of ‘be’ and b‑root spellings of the be(o)þ type for
present indicative plural. Subjunctive is expressed by be(o) singular and be(o)n
plural. b‑root spellings are also found to express the future, more commonly in
the singular (biþ type) than in the plural be(o)þ type. Biþ-type spellings may also
be used in the singular for present tense without future sense. More work would
be needed to look at the contexts of b‑root spellings that do not imply futurity to
see if they are all or mostly of the “general truth” type that could imply a con-
tinuation of the Old English system.
The following examples are from London, Lambeth Palace Library 487,
Lambeth Homilies, language 1 (ca 1200, North-West Worcestershire). Compare
the following similar constructions:
(15) gif þet ege ablindað ne bið naut þe hond wel lokinde
If the eye becomes blind the hand shall not be well-seeing
(16) Gif god bið his ifulsta ne bið his mehte nowher forsegen
If God is/shall be his helper his might nowhere shall be despised
The first example illustrates a present single occurrence followed by a future oc-
currence and is expressed by the 3rd person singular indicative ablindað followed
by a b-root form of ‘be’ to express future. The second example has bið in both
halves of the expression. The second bið is used, as in the first example, to express
a future occurrence. The first bið may be interpreted as an invariable fact or as an
example of the present continuous or as implying future. Any of these interpreta-
tions would show a continuation of Old English usage.
TYPE 2: Southerly discrete
Text languages of this type show s‑root spellings of the am art is type for the
present indicative singular of ‘be’ and b‑root spellings of the be(o)þ type for
present indicative plural. Subjunctive is expressed by be(o) singular and be(o)n
plural. This leaves the singular be, bist, biþ type spellings “free” to express future
sense. If be(o)þ types are used to express the future in the plural they are formally
indistinguishable from the present forms, making the system defective. Recourse
may then be had to ‘shall’ periphrasis as in the G Ancrene Riwle example in sec-
tion 3.2.1 above. The illustrations of the Southerly discrete system below are from
Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 34: Hali Meiðhad (S Salop C13a2).
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

(17) Singular is = present; beo = subjunctive; bið = future:

Meiðhad is $ tresor . $ beo hit eanes forloren; ne
Maidenhood is that treasure, that be it once lost, not
bið hit neauer funden
shall be it never found
(18) Plural beoð = present (parallel to singular is):
Hwen þus is of riche; hwet wenest tu of þe poure.
When thus it is of the rich, what thinkest thou of the poor,
þe beoð wacliche iõeuen
who are unworthily given
(19) Plural beoð = formally identical to present, but perhaps implying future,
parallel to ‘shall sing’ in the second part of the sentence. If so, the system
is formally defective:
For õef ha þus beoð acwiket [..] ha beoð
For if they thus are/shall be revived [..] they are/shall be
in widewene reng & schulen in widewene reng biuore þe
in widows’ rank and shall in widows’ rank before the
iweddede. singen in heouene
wedded, sing in heaven
TYPE 3: Midland system
As with TYPE 1, text languages of this type show s‑forms of the am, art, is type
for the present indicative singular, leaving be, bist, biþ or bes type spellings avail-
able to express future sense. Subjunctive singular is be(o) (or less common si(e),
se). Present indicative plural is s‑root sinden and/or arn/are type with be(o)n for
the plural subjunctive. Inflected be(o)þ type spellings are available to be reserved
for plural future sense. The example below is from Oxford, Bodleian Library,
Laud Misc 108, Havelok (West Norfolk C14a1). Bernard reports to Ubba how
Havelok fought and slew 60 ruffians single-handed and is a bit worse for wear.
(20) Singular is = present; bes = future:
But it is of him mikel scaþe \ I woth þat he bes
But he is badly wounded \ I believe that he shall be
ded ful raþe
dead very soon
The second example is from London, British Library, Cotton Titus D.xviii,
Ancrene Riwle (S Cheshire C13a2).
 Margaret Laing

(21) Plural arn = present (parallel to singular is); beoð = future; beon = sub-
junctive:
Þis is a swiðe dredliche word to wepman & to wimmen $ swiðe sone schea-
wen ham to hwase wile . õe arn bitacnet þe vnwrihene put . $ is owre feire neb
owre hwite swire . owre lihte ehe . owre honde õif õe ham scheawen . õet beoð
owre wordes put . bote ho beon þe betere biset .
‘This is a very dreadful saying to men and to women who are quick to
show themselves to whoever desires. Ye are a symbol of the uncovered pit:
that is, your fair face, your white neck, your bright eye, your hands, if ye
show them. Even your words shall be a pit unless they be better directed.’
TYPE 4: Northern system
Text languages of this type are confined to the northern counties. They have for
the present indicative singular am, er(t)/es, es/is and for the plural er/es/ar; sub-
junctive singular and plural be. The inflected b‑root forms are available to express
futurity and are the same for singular and plural: the bes-type.
For early Middle English very few texts survive from the North and the LAEME
time-span had to be expanded beyond 1300 in order to have any coverage there at
all. So the texts in LAEME that show this system are from the first quarter of the
fourteenth century. They are therefore nearer in both time and space than the rest
of the LAEME corpus to the Older Scots materials displayed in LAOS, whose finite
forms for ‘be’ are also of great interest. The example below is from Edinburgh, Roy-
al College of Physicians, MS of Cursor Mundi, Hand A (Yorks East Riding C14a1).
Much of the context is future in sense, being about what is to occur at doomsday at
the end of the world. As the numerous examples in the text show, the simple future
is expressed here with periphrastic sal ‘shall’. Contrast, however, er present indica-
tive plural (line 1, cf. singular es line 5) with bes future plural (line 12).
(22)
1 Mani wenis þat er vnwis Many think, who are unwise,
Þat tat fleis hal suld neuer ris That the flesh whole should never rise.
Nou I sal te resun rede Now I shall thee reason read,
And out of mistrouning you lede And out of misbelieving you lead.
5 Wit ye wel it es na rihtt Know ye well, it is not right
For-to mistroun in godes miht To misbelieve in God’s might
... ...
Sua halli sal tai risin þar So wholly shall they rise there,
Þaim sal noht want an hefdis har To them shall not want a head’s hair,
Ne noht a nail of fot or hand Nor not a nail of foot or hand.
 Reflexes of OE beon as a marker of futurity 

10 Þohqueþir we sal wnderstand However, we shall understand

Þat nail and har þat hauis ben
schorn
Bes noth al quar þai war biforn
Bot als potter wit pottes dos
Quen his new vessel fordos
15 He castis it al in a bal
A better forto mak wit-al
Of noht he lokes quilk was quilk
Bot makes anoþer of þat ilk
Wel fairer þan þe first was wroth
20 Riht sua sal crist ne dout þou noht
That nail and hair that have been
shorn
Shall be not all where they were
before.
But as a potter with pots does,
When [he] his new vessel destroys,
He makes it all into a ball
To make a better [one] with it.
Of none [of it] he considers which
[bit] was which,
But makes another of the same stuff,
Much fairer than the first was made;
Right so shall Christ [do], doubt thou
not.

4. Prospect

This paper has drawn attention to the continuation into early Middle English of a
variable Old English grammatical distinction, and its apparent exaptation for use
in different subsystems in early Middle English. More work is needed before we
can assess the extent and duration of these temporary subsystems. Questions
about ‘be’ and futurity in Middle English that would reward investigation are:
1. Does TYPE 1 above simply continue an Old English system?
2. What part does the verb weorþan play in the story of ‘be’ futurity in Old and
Middle English?
3. How does the rise of the expression of futurity with ‘shall’ (especially the
‘shall be’ type) interact with TYPES 1-4 above?

References

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 Margaret Laing

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 Stylistic fronting in the history of English

Masayuki Ohkado*
Chubu University

Stylistic fronting is an operation which moves elements generally occupying

the position to the right of the finite verb such as adjectives, past participles,
and adverbs to the position immediately preceding it in clauses with a subject
gap. The operation is typically observed in Modern Icelandic and in earlier
stages of the Scandinavian languages. In this article I will extensively examine
Old and Middle English texts and show that word order patterns arguably
attributed to stylistic fronting are widely observed both in Old and Middle
English and are not confined to texts which are likely to have been heavily
influenced by Old Norse speakers. This is contrary to Trips (2002), who
attributes the presence of the stylistic fronting patterns in the Ormulum to the
Scandinavian invasions. Taking into consideration the wide distribution of
relevant examples, I will conclude that the process of stylistic fronting was a
genuine property of Old and Middle English.

1. Introduction

The aim of this article is to show that stylistic fronting, which is typically ob-
served in Modern Icelandic and earlier stages of the Scandinavian languages in
general, is also extensively attested in Old and Middle English. This analysis ena-
bles us to account for word order differences between clauses with a full NP sub-
ject on the one hand and those with a personal pronoun subject or those with a
subject gap on the other. An interesting consequence of the present study is that
we cannot attribute the origin of stylistic fronting to the Scandinavian influences
as claimed in Trips (2002).

* This research was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research, Grant No.
18320076, from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. I am deeply grateful to the
editors and anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on an earlier version of this
paper. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Richard Ingham for helping me
at the conference, giving helpful comments on and correcting stylistic errors of the final ver-
sion of this paper. All remaining inadequacies are of course mine.
 Masayuki Ohkado

The organization of the present article is as follows. In Section 2 I will briefly

introduce the characteristics of stylistic fronting. In Section 3 and Section 4, Old
and Middle English data are analyzed. In Section 5, I will discuss the origin of
stylistic fronting in the English language.

2. Stylistic fronting in Icelandic

Stylistic fronting is an operation typically observed in Modern Icelandic subordi-

nate clauses, which moves elements (past participles, adjectives, some adverbs,
particles, etc.) generally occupying the position to the right of the finite verb to the
position immediately preceding it. Examples involving stylistic fronting are given
in (1) to (3), which Maling (1990: 74) cites from a story by Gestur Pålsson (1970).
(1) Clauses with Fronted Past Participles
a. Honum mætti standa á sama, hvað sagt væri um
him.dat might stand on same what said was about
hann
him (“Tilhugalíf”, Chapter 5)
‘It might be all the same to him what was said about him.’
b. og hann léti þá vita, að hann ... kæmi
and he would-let them know that he ... would-come
ekki heim, eins og ráðgert hafði verið
not home as planned had been (“Tilhugalíf”, Chapter 1)
‘and he would let them know that he wouldn’t be coming home as had
been planned’
(2) Clauses with Fronted Adjectives
a. Hann raulaði þá vísuna sína nokkuð hærra en
he hummed then tune his somewhat louder than
venjulegt var.
usual was (“Hans Vöggur”)
‘Then he hummed his tune somewhat louder than usual.’
b. Engum datt í hug, að vert væari að reyna til að
No‑one.dat fell to mind that worth was to try P to
kynnast honum.
know him (“Hans Vöggur”)
‘It didn’t occur to anyone that it was worth trying to get to know him.’
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

(3) Clauses with Fronted Adverbs1

a. og nú eigum við að vita ... hvort ekki finnst meira
and now ought we to know ... whether not finds more
þýfi hjá piltinum.
stolen-goods on the-boy (“Tilhugalíf”, Chapter 4)
‘and now we are supposed to find out whether any more stolen goods
can be found where the boy lives.’
b. Hún ]horfði á þennan stóra sterka mann, sem aldrei hafði
She looked at this big strong man that never had
beygt lund sína fyrir nokkrum kvenmanni.
bent will his for any woman (“Tilhugalíf”, Chapter 1)
‘She looked at the big, strong man who had never changed his mind
because of a woman.’
Notable properties of stylistic fronting pointed out in Maling (1990) are that its
application observes two constraints: (i) the Subject Gap Condition and (ii) the
Accessibility Hierarchy.
The Subject Gap Condition requires that stylistic fronting applies only to
clauses with a subject gap, and Maling (1990) assumes that the fronted elements
occupy the empty subject position, as illustrated in (4).
(4) Clauses with Fronted Past Participles
a. Honum mætti standa á sama, hvað [ ] væri sagt um hann
him might stand on same what was said about him
=> Honum mætti standa á sama, hvað [sagt] væri um hann
b. og hann léti þá vita, að hann ... kæmi
and he would-let them know that he would-come
ekki heim, eins og [ ] hafði ráðgert verið
not home as had planned been
=> eins og [ráðgert] hafði verið
Subject gaps are created (i) through extraction of the subject NP by unbounded
transformational rules such as relativization, question formation, comparative

1. An anonymous reviewer points out that the function of ekki is often not equivalent to that
of other adverbs. Here I simply follow Maling’s (1990) treatment of ekki, leaving aside its pos-
sible differences from other fronted elements.
 Masayuki Ohkado

clause formation, topicalization, and clefting; (ii) through use of impersonal passives
or lexically impersonal predicates; and (iii) through indefinite-NP postposing.2
The Accessibility Hierarchy is given in (5), which states that if a given clause
has more than one potential candidate for stylistic fronting, only the leftmost ele-
ment in the hierarchy can undergo the process.
(5) Accessibility Hierarchy
ekki ‘not’ > predicate adjective > past participle/verbal particle
For instance, a predicate adjective cannot be fronted in clauses with ekki ‘not’ as
the contrast between (6a) and (6b) illustrates.
(6) a. Þetta er nokkuð, sem ekki er hægt að gera við.
this is something that not is possible to fix PRT
b. *Þetta er nokkuð, sem hægt er ekki að gera við.
this is something that possible is not to fix PRT
In this paper, due to the limited number of relevant examples in our corpus, I will
focus on the first property of stylistic fronting: the Subject Gap Condition.
Although stylistic fronting is not observed in contemporary Mainland Scan-
dinavian languages, it is attested in their older stages, as illustrated in (7) to (9).
(7) Old Danish (1200–1325)
vatn hvært, ær æi ær mæþ damme fæst
water every which not is with dam closed
 (Falk & Torp (1900: 296)/Hrafnbjargarson (2004: 182))
‘every water that is not closed off with a dam’
(8) Middle Danish (1325–1550)
som sagd er ved Propheten
as said is with prophet-the
 (Falk & Torp (1900: 296)/Hrafnbjargarson (2004: 182))
‘as is told by the prophet’

2. Reflecting the recent development of the structural analysis, Maling’s (1990) “subject po-
sition” where the fronted elements occupy is interpreted in three ways. In the analysis of
Platzak (1987) and Rögnvaldsson & Thráinsson (1990), the position is the specifier of IP. In
Cardinaletti & Roberts (2002), fronted elements are analyzed as being moved into [Spec,
Agr1P] via [Spec, Agr2P]. In Jónsson (1991), and Poole (1996), they are analyzed as head-ad-
joined to I0. For details of these analyses and their advantages and disadvantages, see Trips
(2002: Section 7.3) and also Hrafnbjargarson (2004).
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

(9) Old Swedish (1250–1500)

En ... som likir war enom hofman
one ... that alike was a courtier (Falk (1993: 178)/Trips (2002: 276))
‘one ... that resembled a courtier’
Stylistic fronting is also found in Old Norse, as illustrated in (10).
(10) Old Norse (early ninth century to late fourteenth century)
lágu hestarnir á kafi annat skeið, svá at draga varð upp
lay horses-the on snow other time so that pulled became upw
 (1330 Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar 260.23/Faarund (2004: 237))
‘The horses sank into the drifts now and again, so that they had to be
pulled out.’

3. Stylistic fronting in Old English

In this section I will examine Old English data and demonstrate that phenome-
na which will best be analyzed as the result of stylistic fronting are observable in
Old English.

3.1 Theoretical assumptions

I assume that the underlying structure of Old English is double-based in the

sense that both head-initial and head-final structures can be base-generated
(Double-Base Hypothesis). 3 I also assume that the ratio of head-final structures
to head-initial structures of a given construction is constant across contexts
(Constant Ratio Hypothesis). The underlying word order patterns are affected
by various operations, notably the following two classes of operations: (i) topic
movement and V-to-C movement that apply in main clauses and (ii) extraposi-
tion or rightward movement of heavy elements that applies both in main and
subordinate clauses.4 Under this analysis both head-initial and head-final
clauses are basically ambiguous in structural interpretation: They can be either
base-generated or derived by movement. For instance, subordinate clauses

3. For discussions about the underlying structure of Old English and how various word
order patterns are derived, see, for instance, Fischer et al. (2000), Ohkado (2005), and
Pintzuk (1999).
4. Other notable operations proposed in the literature are Verb Raising and Verb Projection
Raising. Ohkado (2005: Chapter 1) proposes that the latter should be interpreted as an in-
stance of extraposition.
 Masayuki Ohkado

illustrated in (11a) may reflect the underlying SVO pattern or they may have
been derived from the underlying SOV structure, which is illustrated in (11b),
by extraposition.5
(11) a. þæt God lufode Iacob
that God loved Jacob (ÆCHom I. 7: 236)
‘that God loved Jacob’
b. buton Iohannes attor drunce
unless John poison drank (ÆCHom I. 4: 213.212.818)
‘unless John drank poison’
It is impossible to say whether the word order of a given case reflects the underly-
ing structure or is derived by movement. However, we can estimate the ratio of
head-initial and head-final structures of a given construction by examining the
frequencies of the two competing patterns in a case that is unlikely to be affected
by movement operations. For explanatory purposes, let us call such constructions
“Genuine Constructions” in the sense that they are likely to reflect the underlying
word order patterns. Under the assumption that elements undergoing movement
operations are typically finite verbs and heavy elements, one candidate for Genu-
ine Constructions is a VP headed by a nonfinite verb with a non-heavy NP object,
as illustrated in (12).
(12) Đa het se cyngc scipa gegearcian
then ordered the king ships prepare (ApT: 8.1.118)
‘Then the king ordered that the ships be prepared.’
Heavy NP objects may undergo extraposition so that VPs involving them might
not reflect the underlying order. Likewise, VPs with personal pronoun objects,
quantified objects, and negative objects might not show the underlying order
since they may undergo leftward movement (cf. Pintzuk & Taylor 2006). Let us
examine the situation by searching the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of
Old English.
The result of the search for VPs containing only a nonfinite verb and a one-
word object NP is given in Table 1.
The search was conducted by using the program CorpusSearch 2, developed
by Beth Randal.6 The command lines used for the present study (for Old English

5. The reference system is the one adopted in the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of
Old English (YCOE), the corpus used for the present research.
6. CorpusSearch 2 can be downloaded at: http://corpussearch.sourceforge.net/.
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

Table 1.  OV and VO patterns in VPs headed by nonfinite verbs with a single-word full
noun object

OV pattern VO pattern total

13 (65%) 7 (35%) 20

data) are given in the appendix.7 The figures in Table 1 show that VPs with an
accusative object in Old English are 65 percent OV and 35 percent VO.
Needless to say, this is a broad approximation since in Table 1 the figures of
all the texts are put together. Although separate treatment of individual texts is
ideal, the restrictions imposed by the database significantly reduce the number of
relevant examples. In the present case, there are 314 examples of VPs headed by
infinitives with accusative NPs. The restrictions on the number of constituents
reduce the relevant occurrences to 20, as shown in Table 1.
Now suppose that we have constructions comparable to Genuine Construc-
tions (e.g., VPs headed by an infinitive with a single-word NP object). If the ratio
of the two competing patterns in the former is significantly different from that in
the Genuine Constructions, the difference will be accounted for in terms of (an)
additional operation(s) that affect(s) the underlying ratio of the two patterns. As
an example, consider a case where VPs headed by an infinitive contain an object
composed of three or more words, as illustrated in (13), which is comparable to
the Genuine Construction we have just seen in Table 1.
(13) Ða het he for þi acwellan ealle þa hysecild
then ordered he for that kill all the male-children
þære burhscire fram twywintrum cilde oð anre nihte
of-the city from two-years children till one night
 (ÆCHom I, 5: 219.72.957)
‘Then, because of this, he ordered that all the male children in the city,
from two years to one night old be killed.’
The result of the search for such examples in the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed
Corpus of Old English is given in Table 2.

7. As argued in Ohkado (2005: 12–14), for the “true development” of historical linguistics

and other related fields, it is essential for researchers using corpora to spell out the exact pro-
cedures used to retrieve the relevant data so that interested readers may examine the relevant
data. The command lines in the appendix are given in this spirit.
 Masayuki Ohkado

Table 2.  OV and VO patterns in VPs headed by nonfinite verbs with an NP object con-
taining three or more words

OV pattern VO pattern total

0 (0%) 10 (100%) 10

The figures in Table 2 are in sharp contrast with those in Table 1: While more
than half of the examples are OV in Table 1, there is not a single instance of OV
patterns in Table 2. The difference is accounted for by assuming that in the case
where VPs contain accusative NP objects with more than three words, extraposi-
tion applied and all the underlying OV examples have become VO.
The basic assumptions discussed above are summarized in (14).
(14) Basic assumptions
a. Both head-initial and head-final patterns can be base-generated in
Old English.
b. The ratio of head-initial and head-final patterns in a given construc-
tion is constant across contexts. (The Constant Ratio Hypothesis)
c. The ratio of the two competing patterns at the surface structure may
differ from the underlying ratio due to movement operations.

3.2 Database and the constructions analyzed

The database for Old English is the York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old
English, which we have already used in the preceding subsection. The construc-
tions analyzed in this paper are the subordinate clauses listed in (15).
(15) a.
adjective + BE (AB)/BE + adjective (BA)
b.
past participle + BE (VB)/BE + past participle (BV)
c.
infinitive + modal (VM)/modal + infinitive (MV)
d.
NEG + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb, and BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb
+ NEG8
e. adverb (non NEG) + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb, and BE/HAVE/mo-
dal verb/verb + adverb (non NEG)
If stylistic fronting was available in Old English, we would expect that the first
patterns given in (15a) to (15e) (AB, VB, VM, NEG-BE, etc. and adverb-BE, etc.)
are attested with higher frequencies in clauses with a subject gap than in clauses
without a subject gap. This is because the nonfinite predicates in (15a) to (15c) and

8. The negating particle ne, which is regarded as cliticized to the finite verb, is excluded.
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

adverbs in (15d) to (15e) may undergo stylistic fronting and move into the subject
gap, leading to the higher frequencies in the two cases.
Note that in clauses with a personal pronoun subject, the subject is analyzed
as being cliticized to the C position, creating a subject gap as schematically illus-
trated in (16).
(16) complementizer-subject [ ] ...
Therefore, clauses with a personal pronoun subject are expected to behave in par-
allel fashion to clauses with an empty subject.
Although infinitives in Modern Icelandic do not undergo stylistic fronting,
they do in Old Icelandic, as illustrated in (17).
(17) Ertu Gísli sá er finna vildir Grettir Ásmundarson?
are-you Gísli that who find wanted Grettir Ásmundarson
 (Willson (2001: 134))
‘Are you the Gísli that was looking for Grettir Ásmundarson?’
To examine whether Old English is of the Old Icelandic or Modern Icelandic type,
clauses with infinitives accompanied by modals are included in the present search.
In analyzing the constructions in (15a) to (15c) we should take into account
that, as demonstrated in Ohkado (2001), in constructions with multiple predi-
cates, the presence or absence of extra elements affects the choice between head-
initial and head-final patterns. For instance, clauses with modal verbs and infini-
tives tend to show higher frequencies of head-initial MV patterns if they involve
object NPs or PPs.9
(18) a. Clauses with No Extra Element
(Subject) Adjective BE (AB)
(Subject) [Past Participle] BE (VB)
(Subject) Verb Modal (VM)
b. Clauses with Extra Elements
(Subject) O/PP Adjective BE → (Subject) BE
Adjective (BA)
(Subject) O/PP [Past Participle] BE → (Subject) BE [Past
Participle] (BV)
(Subject) O/PP Verb Modal → (Subject) Modal Verb
(MV)

9. In Ohkado (2001) the tendency is accounted for in terms of the well-known tendency of Old
English that heavy elements are likely to undergo rightward movement: VPs involving extra ele-
ments such as object NPs and PPs are heavy in comparison with VPs with no extra elements and
they tend to undergo extraposition, leading to the higher frequencies of head-initial patterns.
 Masayuki Ohkado

To avoid these possibilities, the first three constructions in (15) analyzed here are
restricted to cases with (i) the subject (including a subject gap), (ii) the finite verb
(BE, HAVE, or a modal), and (iii) the nonfinite predicate (an adjective, past partici-
ple, or infinitive) and clauses involving other elements are excluded from the data.
As an illustration, examples with BE and past participle are given in (19).
(19) Clauses with BE and past participle
a. “past participle-BE” order with a full NP subject
... gif heora lar onfongen wære, ...
if their teaching accepted were (Bede_1: 13.56.6.521)
‘... if their teaching were accepted ...’
b. “past participle-BE” order with a personal pronoun subject
... ær þan þe he acenned wære: ...
before he born was (ÆHom_2: 95.295)
‘... before he was born ...’
c. “past participle-BE” order with an empty subject
... þæt gedon is, ...
that done is (ÆLS_[Christmas]: 43.29)
‘... that which is done ...’
d. “BE-past participle” order with a full NP subject
... syððan se dolh wæs geopenod ...
since the wound was opened (ÆLS_[Æthelthryth]: 65.4181)
‘... since the wound was opened ...’
e. “BE-past participle” order with a personal pronoun subject
... þeah þe he beo gehæled, ...
although he be healed (ÆHom_2: 105.300)
‘... although he will be healed ...’
f. “BE-past participle” order with an empty subject
... and se þe beo tosliten, ...
and those who will-be torn (ÆHom_21: 324.3241)
‘... and those who will be torn, ...’
The examples in (19a) to (19c) show head-final order and those in (19d)-(19f) show
head-initial order.
The NEG in (15d) is either a negative adverb na/no, or næfre or nawiht ‘not.’
(20) NEG in (15d)
na/no, næfre, nawiht
Note that the finite verb in (15d) can be without ne as shown in (21a), or it can be
with ne as in (21b) and (21c).
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

(21) a. NEG + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb without ne

... þæt hi na mihton incumen.
that they neg might in-come
 (ChronE_[Plummer]:1070.20.2585)
‘... that they might not come in.’
b. NEG + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb with the contracted ne
... þæt hit na nære on ðæm dagum mid Romanum
that it neg neg.were in the days with Romans
buton gewinne, ...
without conflict (coorosiu, Or_3: 10.75.15.1476)
‘... that in those days it was not without conflict with the Romans, ...’
c. NEG + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb with the independent ne
... ða ðe hi na ne cuðon, ...
those that they NEG NEG knew (ÆHom_11: 229.1611)
‘... those that they did not know, ...’

3.3 The results

The results of the search are given in Tables 3 to 9. In order to see whether there is
a statistically significant difference between the figures concerning examples with
full NP subjects and those concerning examples with personal pronoun subjects
or empty subjects, Fisher’s exact probability test was conducted.10 The results of
the test are given below each Table. The italicized parts indicate that there is a
statistically significant difference between the relevant figures. Table 3, for exam-
ple, shows that there is a statistically significant difference (i) between the figures
concerning examples with full NP subjects and those concerning personal pro-
noun subjects and (ii) between the figures concerning examples with full NP sub-
jects and those concerning examples with empty subjects.

Table 3.  Adjective-BE (AB) and BE-Adjective (BA) patterns

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

AB BA total AB BA total AB BA total

62 105 167 347 167 514 152 65 217

(37%) (63%) (68%) (33%) (70%) (30%)

Full NP vs. personal pronoun: P value < 0.0001, extremely significant

Full NP vs. empty: P value < 0.0001, extremely significant

10. For the calculation, InStat 3 for Macintosh was used.

 Masayuki Ohkado

Table 4.  Past participle-BE (VB) and BE-past participle (BV) patterns

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

VB BV total VB BV total VB BV total

206 137 343 195 79 274 56 22 78

(60%) (40%) (71%) (29%) (72%) (28%)

Full NP vs. personal pronoun: P value = 0.0050, very significant

Full NP vs. empty: P value = 0.0696, NOT QUITE significant

Table 5.  Infinitive-modal (VM) and modal-infinitive (MV) patterns

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

VM MV total VM MV total VM MV total

13 9 22 101 63 164 35 10 45
(59%) (41%) (62%) (38%) (78%) (22%)

Full NP vs. personal pronoun: P value = 0.8197, NOT significant

Full NP vs. empty: P value = 0.1506, NOT significant

Table 6.  NEG-BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb and BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb-NEG

(NEG = na/no)

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

NEG-V V-NEG total NEG-V V-NEG total NEG-V V-NEG total

1 32 33 8 50 58 3 23 26
(3%) (97%) (14%) (86%) (12%) (89%)

Full NP vs. personal pronoun: P value = 0.1480, NOT significant

Full NP vs. empty: P value = 0.3113, NOT significant

Table 7.  NEG-BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb and BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb-NEG

(NEG = næfre)

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

NEG-V V-NEG total NEG-V V-NEG total NEG-V V-NEG total

2 8 10 30 15 45 12 7 19
(20%) (80%) (67%) (33%) (63%) (37%)

Full NP vs. personal pronoun: P value = 0.0115, significant

Full NP vs. empty: P value = 0.0502, NOT significant
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

Table 8.  NEG-BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb and BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb-NEG

(NEG = nawiht)

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

NEG-V V-NEG total NEG-V V-NEG total NEG-V V-NEG total

0 27 27 22 68 90 7 30 37
(0%) (100%) (24%) (76%) (19%) (81%)

Full NP vs. personal pronoun: P value = 0.0019, very significant

Full NP vs. empty: P value = 0.0180, significant

Table 9.  Adverb (non NEG)-BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb and BE/HAVE/modal verb/

verb-adverb (non NEG)

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

adverb-V V-adverb total adverb-V V-adverb total adverb-V V-adverb total

134 488 622 810 1207 2017 508 696 1204

(22%) (79%) (40%) (60%) (42%) (58%)

Full NP vs. personal pronoun: P value < 0.0001, extremely significant

Full NP vs. empty: P value < 0.0001, extremely significant

The pattern observed in Tables 3, 8, and 9 is clear: Clauses with a personal pro-
noun subject or those with an empty subject consistently show higher frequencies
of head-final patterns than clauses with a full NP subject. The differences are
statistically significant. In these cases we can safely conclude that the higher fre-
quencies of head-final patterns are due to stylistic fronting which fronted adjec-
tives, nawiht, and adverbs to the empty subject slot.
In Tables 4 and 7 statistical significance is observed only between the figures
concerning examples with full NP subjects and those concerning examples with
personal pronoun subjects. Yet, the percentages of head-final patterns are higher
in examples with empty subjects than those with full NP subjects. Thus, we ten-
tatively conclude that the account in terms of stylistic fronting applies to these
cases as well.
In Tables 5 and 6 statistical significance is not observed in both pairs, so we
should conclude that stylistic fronting is irrelevant in these cases. Note that in-
applicability of stylistic fronting to infinitives is identical with the situation in
Modern Icelandic and different from that in Old Icelandic (cf. Willson
2001: 134).
These considerations suggest that in clauses with a subject gap, stylistic front-
ing was able to apply to adjectives, past participles, NEG (nawiht), and adverbs
and led to the higher frequencies of head-final patterns.
 Masayuki Ohkado

a. [adjective] BE

b. [past participle] BE

c. [NEG (nawiht)] BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb

d. [adverb] BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb

4. Stylistic fronting in Middle English

4.1 Theoretical assumptions

In Middle English the underlying order is predominantly VO, as the analysis of

Genuine Constructions (VPs containing only a nonfinite verb and a one-word
object NP) reveals, as illustrated in Table 10.

Table 10.  OV and VO patterns in VPs headed by nonfinite verbs with a single-word
NP object

OV pattern VO pattern total

2 (12%) 15 (88%) 17

An example of each pattern is given in (23).

(23) a. OV pattern
... he ne ssel naŠt ariŠt conne god louie ...
he not shall not rightly can god love
 (CMAYENBI, 117.2249)
‘... he shall not know how to love god ...’
b. VO pattern
oðer is bodien fulcninge
other is preach baptism (CMTRINIT, 139.1874)
‘The second is to preach baptism’
The situation shown in Table 10 is in accordance with the traditional analysis of
word order change in English within the framework of generative grammar: Ca-
nale (1978), Lightfoot (1979) and Van Kemenade (1987) among others assume
that English underwent underlying word order change from SOV to SVO in the
Early Middle English period.
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

4.2 Database and the constructions analyzed

The database used for the present study is the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of
Middle English, second edition (PPCME2) (Kroch & Taylor 2000). Examples ex-
amined are subordinate clauses showing the patterns given in (24).
(24) a. adjective + BE (AB)/BE + adjective (BA)
b. past participle + BE (VB)/BE + past participle (BV)
c. infinitive + modal (VM)/modal + infinitive (MV)
d. NEG + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb, and
BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb + NEG
e. adverb (non NEG) + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb, and
BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb + adverb (non NEG)
A sample of each pattern is given in (25) to (29).
(25) a. adjective + BE (AB)
Wif wolde þat hire louerd dead ware
woman wanted that her lord dead were
 (CMTRINIT, 165.2246)
‘The woman wanted her lord to be dead’
b. BE + adjective (BA)
... gief þe licame beð euel ...
if the body is evil (CMTRINIT, 183.2521)
‘... if the body is evil ...’
(26) a. past participle + BE (VB)
And whan this folk togidre assembled weren, ...
and when this folk together assembled were
 (CMCTMELI, 218.C2.55)
‘And when this folk was assembled together, ...’
b. BE + past participle (BV)
His wyf and eek his doghter hath he left inwith his
his wife and also his daughter has he left inside his
hous, of which the dores weren faste yshette
house of which the doors were fast shut
 (CMCTMELI, 217.C1b.7)
‘He has left his wife and his daughter within his house, the doors of
which were shut fast.’
 Masayuki Ohkado

(27) a. infinitive + modal (VM)

Sey what men seye wil
say what men say will (CMCLOUD, 81.405)
‘Say what men want to say.’
b. modal + infinitive (MV)
... it is þe schortest werke of alle þat man may ymagyn
it is the shortest work of all that man can imagine
 (CMCLOUD, 17.86)
‘... it is the shortest work of all that man can imagine’
(28) a. NEG + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb
... þat Seint Ruffus not be-gan þis ordr, ...
that Saint Ruffus not began this order  (CMCAPSER, 147.42)
‘... that Saint Ruffus did not begin this order, ...’
b. BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb + NEG
... he asked why sche came not to soper
he asked why she came not to supper (CMCAPCHR, 49.534)
‘... he asked why she did not come to supper’
(29) a. adverb (non NEG) + BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb
... þat Coryn pryuyly shuld gon out ...
that Coryn privily should go out (CMBRUT3, 10.241)
‘... that Coryn should go out secretly ...’
b. BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb + adverb (non NEG)
... þat Richard, þe son of Wiliam, schuld frely holde
that Richard the son of William should freely hold
al Normandy (CMCAPCHR, 93.1852)
all Normandy
‘... that Richard, the son of William should hold all Normandy freely’
If stylistic fronting is involved, it is expected that the head-initial patterns or pat-
terns with fronted negatives or adverbs are observed with higher frequencies in
clauses with a subject gap than in clauses without a subject gap.

4.3 The results

The results are given in Tables 11 to 15. Taking into account possible dialectal dif-
ferences, the figures in the Tables are broken down by dialects. Note that the Or-
mulum text, which is contained in the corpus, is excluded from the data because
it is a poetic text. Just as in the analysis of Old English data, Fisher’s exact proba-
bility test was conducted to see whether there is a statistically significant difference
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

Table 11.  Adjective-BE (AB) and BE-Adjective (BA) patterns

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

AB BA total AB BA total AB BA total

EAST MIDLANDS
4 238 242 16 285 301 12 313 325
(1.7%) (98.3%) (5.3%) (94.7%) (3.7%) (96.3%)
KENTISH
0   28   28  1   46   47  5   52   57
(0.0%) (100.0%) (2.1%) (97.9%) (8.8%) (91.2%)
NORTHERN
0   28   28  0 285 285 11 313 324
(0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%) (3.4%) (96.6%)
SOUTHERN
0   77   77  0   75   75  3   77   80
(0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%) (3.8%) (96.3%)
WEST MIDLANDS
0 174 174 12 238 250 16 239 255
(0.0%) (100.0%) (4.8%) (95.2%) (6.3%) (93.7%)

Table 12.  Past participle-BE (VB) and BE-past participle (BV) patterns

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

VB BV total VB BV total VB BV total

EAST MIDLANDS
2 434 436  6 420 426 3 418 421
(0.5%) (99.5%) (1.4%) (98.6%) (0.7%) (99.3%)
KENTISH
1   20   21  5   32   37 1   30   31
(4.8%) (95.2%) (13.5%) (86.5%) (3.2%) (96.8%)
NORTHERN
0   79   79  0 113 113 0   72   72
(0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%)
SOUTHERN
0 138 138  0 111 111 0 198 198
(0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%)
WEST MIDLANDS
0 258 258 12 309 321 7 306 313
(0.0%) (100.0%) (3.7%) (96.3%) (2.2%) (97.8%)
 Masayuki Ohkado

Table 13.  Infinitive-modal (VM) and modal-infinitive (MV) patterns

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

VM MV total VM MV total VM MV total

EAST MIDLANDS
4 393 397 26 890 916 12 231 243
(1.0%) (99.0%) (2.8%) (97.2%) (4.9%) (95.1%)

KENTISH
0   17   17  2   65   67  0   37   37
(0.0%) (100.0%) (3.0%) (97.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%)

NORTHERN
0   60   60  1 241 242  0   80   80
(0.0%) (100.0%) (0.4%) (99.6%) (0.0%) (100.0%)

SOUTHERN
0   92   92  0 176 176  1   58   59
(0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%) (1.7%) (98.3%)

WEST MIDLANDS
0 180 180 12 548 560  3 166 169
(0.0%) (100.0%) (2.1%) (97.9%) (1.8%) (98.2%)

Table 14.  NEG-BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb and BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb-NEG

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

NEG-X X-NEG total NEG-X X-NEG total NEG-X X-NEG total

EAST MIDLANDS
1 180 181 9 406 415 5 179 184
(0.6%) (99.4%) (2.2%) (94.7%) (2.7%) (97.3%)
KENTISH
1    4    5 0   27   27 6   30   36
(20.0%) (80.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%) (16.7%) (83.3%)
NORTHERN
1   25   26 1 153 154 2   69   71
(3.8%) (96.2%) (0.6%) (99.4%) (2.8%) (97.2%)
SOUTHERN
0   56   56 0   88   88 0   48   48
(0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%) (0.0%) (100.0%)
WEST MIDLANDS
0   64   64 8 154 162 4   72   76
(0.0%) (100.0%) (4.9%) (95.1%) (5.3%) (94.7%)
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

Table 15.  Adverb (non NEG)-BE/HAVE/modal verb/verb and BE/HAVE/modal verb/

verb-adverb (non NEG)

full NP subject personal pronoun subject empty subject

ADV-X X-ADV total ADV-X X-ADV total ADV-X X-ADV total

EAST MIDLANDS
26 240 266 59 492 551 151 221 372
(9.8%) (90.2%) (10.7%) (89.3%) (40.6%) (59.4%)
KENTISH
6   20   26  6   54   60   37   58   95
(23.1%) (76.9%) (10.0%) (90.0%) (38.9%) (61.1%)
NORTHERN
5   43   48 11 150 161   27   65   92
(10.4%) (89.6%) (6.8%) (93.2%) (29.3%) (70.7%)
SOUTHERN
3   45   48  2   76   78   12   72   84
(6.3%) (93.8%) (2.6%) (97.4%) (14.3%) (85.7%)
WEST MIDLANDS
33 157 190 91 349 440 255 132 387
(17.4%) (82.6%) (20.7%) (79.4%) (34.1%) (65.9%)

between the figures concerning examples with full NP subjects and those con-
cerning examples with personal pronoun subjects or empty subjects.11 The itali-
cized parts indicate that there is a statistically significant difference between the
relevant figures. Table 11, for instance, indicates that there is such a statistically
significant difference between the figures concerning the following examples: (i)
examples with full NP subjects and those with personal pronoun subjects in the
East Midlands dialect; (ii) examples with full NP subjects and those with per-
sonal pronoun subjects in the West Midlands dialect; (iii) examples with full NP
subjects and those with empty subjects in the West Midlands dialect.
The situation observed in Tables 11 to 15 is summarized in Table 16. Table 16
suggests that stylistic fronting was operative in all the dialects except the South-
ern dialect in Middle English. It should be noted that, although the result is not
statistically significant, the Southern dialect also shows the “stylistic fronting
pattern”, that is, the pattern in which examples with empty subjects shows higher
frequencies of head-final order than those with full NP subjects in three of the
five constructions (cf. Tables 11, 13, and 15). This seems to indicate

11. Again, the calculation was done by using InStat 3 for Macintosh.
 Masayuki Ohkado

Table 16.  Number of constructions showing the “stylistic fronting” patterns with statis-
tical significance

Number of constructions showing the “stylistic fronting” patterns

Dialect Clauses with a personal pronouns subject Clauses with a subject gap
East Midlands 2 of the 5 constructions 2 of the 5 constructions
Kentish 1 of the 5 constructions 0 of the 5 constructions
Northern 0 of the 5 constructions 1 of the 5 constructions
Southern 0 of the 5 constructions 0 of the 5 constructions
West Midlands 3 of the 5 constructions 3 of the 5 constructions

that we might be able to draw an even stronger conclusion that stylistic fronting
was operative in all the dialects of Middle English.

5. Scandinavian influences?

Examining the Middle English text of Ormulum, Trips (2002) argues that the
“stylistic fronting pattern” is observable in this text and that the “existence” of the
pattern is due to Scandinavian influence. Likewise, demonstrating that the simi-
lar phenomenon is found in the Old English interlinear glosses to the Lindisfarne
Gospels, which are written in the Northern variety of Old English, Ohkado (2006)
suggests that Scandinavian influence on syntax is already visible in the Old Eng-
lish period. If the presence of stylistic fronting in Old and Middle English is due
to language contact with Old Norse as these authors suggest, it is expected that
the “stylistic fronting pattern” is attested in the dialects heavily influenced by the
Scandinavian invaders (Northern and East Midlands) and not attested in the
other dialects (Southern, Kentish, and West Midlands) (cf. Thomason and
Kaufman 1988: 263–342).
The data presented in Section 3 and 4 show that the “stylistic fronting pat-
tern” is widely observed in texts which are unlikely to have been influenced by the
Scandinavian invaders so that the existence of stylistic fronting in Old and Mid-
dle English cannot solely attributed to the influence of Old Norse. Therefore, I
conclude that the process of stylistic fronting was a genuine property of Old and
Middle English.
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

References

Canale, Michael. 1978. Word Order Changes in OE: Base Re-analysis in Generative Grammar.
Ph.D dissertation, McGill University.
Faarlund, Jan Terje. 2004. The Syntax of Old Norse: With a Survey of the Inflectional Morphol-
ogy and a Complete Bibliography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, Olga, Ans van Kemenade, Willem Koopman & Wim van der Wurff. 2000. The Syntax
of Early English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hrafnbjargarson, Gunnar Hrafn. 2004. Oblique Subjects and Stylistic Fronting in the History
of Scandinavian and English: The role of IP-spec. Ph.D dissertation, University of Aarhus.
Kroch, Anthony & Ann Taylor. 2000. The Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English,
second edition (PPCME2). Philadelphia: Department of Linguistics, University of Penn-
sylvania.
Lightfoot, David. 1979. Principles of Diachronic Syntax. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Maling, Joan. 1990. “Inversion in Embedded Clauses in Modern Icelandic”. Modern Icelandic
syntax. (= Syntax and semantics, 24) ed. by Joan Maling & Annie Zaenen, 71–91. New
York: Academic Press.
Ohkado, Masayuki. 2001. Old English Constructions with Multiple Predicates. Tokyo:
Hituzi Syobo.
Ohkado, Masayuki. 2005. Clause Structure in Old English, Ph.D dissertation, University of
Amsterdam.
Ohkado, Masayuki. 2006. “On Word Order in Constructions with Two Predicates in Old English
Interlinear Glosses”. Textual and Contextual Studies in Medieval English: Towards the Reunion
of Linguistics and Philology ed. by Michiko Ogura, 127–145. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Pintzuk, Susan. 1999. Phrase Structures in Competition: Variation and Change in Old English
Word Order. New York: Garland.
Pintzuk, Susan & Ann Taylor. 2006. “The Loss of OV Order in the History of English”. The
Handbook of the History of English ed. by Ans van Kemenade & Bettelou Los, 249–278.
Oxford: Blackwell.
Taylor, Ann, Anthony Warner, Susan Pintzuk & Frank Beths. 2003. The York-Toronto-Helsin-
ki Parsed Corpus of Old English Prose. York: University of York.
Thomason, Sarah Grey & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language Contact, Creolization, and Ge-
netic Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Trips, Carola. 2002. From OV to VO in Early Middle English. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John
Benjamins.
Van Kemenade, Ans. 1987. Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English.
Dordrecht: Foris.
Willson, Kendra. 2001. “Old Icelandic Topicalization and the Emergence of Stylistic Front-
ing”. Proceedings of the 18th Scandinavian Conference of Linguistics, Vol. 2 ed. by Arthur
Holmer, Jan-Olof Svantesson, & Åke Viberg, 127–137. Lund: Lund University.
 Masayuki Ohkado

Appendix: Command lines used for the present study

This appendix gives the command lines for CorpusSearch 2 used for obtaining the
Old English data in the present study. To obtain the Middle English data, the com-
mand lines should be slightly modified because of the differences in the annota-
tion systems in the two corpora. For the relevant information, see the “The major
ways in which the YCOE differs from the PPCME2” file which is available at: http://
www-users.york.ac.uk/~lang22/YCOE/doc/annotation/ppcme2-to-ycoe.htm
The command used for searching OV patterns in Table 1 is given in (i).
(i) Command for searching OV patterns
node: IP-INF
query: (IP-INF iDomsTotal 2)
AND (IP-INF iDominates NP-ACC)
AND (NP-ACC iDomsOnly N^A|NR^A)
AND (IP-INF iDominates VB)
AND (NP-ACC Precedes VB)
AND (VB iDominates![1]¥**)
For examples with VO patterns, the sixth line in (i) is replaced by “AND
(VB Precedes NP-ACC).”
The command in (ii) is for OV patterns in VPs headed by nonfinite verbs with
an NP object containing three or more words in Table 2.
(ii) Command for searching OV patterns
node: IP-INF
query: (IP-INF iDomsTotal 2)
AND (IP-INF iDominates NP-ACC)
AND (NP-ACC iDomsTotal> 3)
AND (NP-ACC iDominates N^A|NR^A)
AND (IP-INF iDominates VB)
AND (NP-ACC Precedes VB)
AND (VB iDominates![1]¥**)
For corresponding examples with VO patterns, the seventh line in (ii) is replaced
by “AND (VB Precedes NP-ACC).”
The command in (iii) is for clauses with “adjective + BE (AB)” patterns with
full NP subjects in Table 3.
 Stylistic fronting in the history of English 

(iii) Command for searching AB patterns with full NP subjects

node: IP-SUB*
query: (IP-SUB* iDomsTotal 3)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates NP-NOM)
AND (NP-NOM iDominates N^N|NR^N)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates *BED*|*BEP*)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates ADJP-NOM-PRD)
AND (ADJP-NOM-PRD iDomsOnly ADJ^N)
AND (NP-NOM Precedes ADJP-NOM-PRD)
AND (ADJP-NOM-PRD Precedes *BED*|*BEP*)
AND (*BED*|*BEP* iDominates![1]\**)
AND (ADJP-NOM-PRD iDominates ![2]\**)
For clauses with personal pronoun subjects, the fourth line “AND (NP-NOM iD-
ominates N^N|NR^N)” is replaced by “AND (NP-NOM iDominates PRO^N).”
Likewise, for clauses with empty subjects the fourth line is replaced by “AND
(NP-NOM iDominates \*con\*|\*exp\*|\*pro\*|\*T\**).” For clauses with BE
and past participles in Table 4, “ADJP-NOM-PRD” in (iii) is replaced by
“*VBN.” For clauses with modals and infinitives in Table 5, “*BED*|*BEP*” and
“ADJP-NOM-PRD” in (iii) are replaced by “*MDD*|*MDP*” and “*VB.” For
clauses with NEG in Tables 6 to 8, the basic command is the one given in (iv).
(iv) Command for searching clauses with NEG (for clauses with full NP subject
with NEG preceding the finite verb)
node: IP-SUB*
query: (IP-SUB* iDominates NP-NOM)
AND (NP-NOM iDominates N^N|NR^N)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates *BED*|*BEP*|*HVD*|*HVP*|*
MDD*|*MDP*)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates ADVP)
AND (ADVP iDominates NEG + ADV)
AND (NP-NOM iPrecedes ADVP)
AND (ADVP iPrecedes *BED*|*BEP*|*HVD*|*HVP*|*MDD *|*MDP*)
AND (*BED*|*BEP*|*HVD*|*HVP*|*MDD*|*MDP* iDominates![1]\**)
For clauses with NEG preceding the finite verb, the command in (v) is also neces-
sary to retrieve examples with the negating particle ne not contracted with the
finite verb.
 Masayuki Ohkado

(v) Command for searching clauses with NEG with ne not contracted (for claus-
es with full NP subject with NEG preceding finite verb)
node: IP-SUB*
query: (IP-SUB* iDominates NP-NOM)
AND (NP-NOM iDominates N^N|NR^N)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates *BED*|*BEP*|*HVD*|*HVP*|*
MDD*|*MDP*)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates ADVP)
AND (ADVP iDominates NEG + ADV)
AND (IP-SUB* iDominates NEG)
AND (NEG iDominates ne)
AND (NP-NOM iPrecedes ADVP)
AND (ADVP iPrecedes NEG)
AND (NEG iPrecedes *BED*|*BEP*|*HVD*|*HVP*|*MDD *|*MDP*)
AND (*BED*|*BEP*|*HVD*|*HVP*|*MDD*|*MDP* iDominates![1]\**)
The third line in (iv) and (v) is replaced by “AND (NP-NOM iDominates PRO^N)”
for clauses with personal pronoun subjects and by “AND (NP-NOM iDominates
\*con\*|\*exp\*|\*pro\*|\*T\**)” for clauses with empty subjects. For clauses with
NEG following the finite verb, the seventh line in (iv) is replaced with “AND
(NP-NOM iPrecedes *BED*|*BEP*|*HVD*|*HVP*|*MDD*|*MDP*)” and the or-
der of the elements sandwiching “iPrecedes” in the eighth line in (iv) is reversed.
After obtaining examples with negative adverbs, I searched for na/no, næfre, and
nawiht separately to retrieve relevant examples in Tables 6 to 8.
For clauses with non NEG adverbs in Table 9, the sixth line in (iv) and (v) is
replaced by “ AND (ADVP* iDominates !NEG*).”
 Subject and Word index
A C
A Representative Corpus of
Historical English Registers
(ARCHER)  79–93
accessibility hierarchy  257, 258
accusative  4, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17–26,
80, 193, 195, 260, 261
accustomed  4, 29–43
ACE; see Australian Corpus of
English
active  13, 15n., 48, 65, 66
adjective  5, 7, 13, 29–43, 75,
95–119, 146, 155, 255–274
adverb  7, 55, 143–161, 171, 188,
192, 193, 195n., 196, 238,
255–274
adverbials  17, 70, 74, 185, 187,
192–194, 240, 241
Ælfric’s Grammar  240–243
agreement  6, 13, 14n., 15, 18,
26n., 185, 187, 190, 193, 195
American English  29–43, 45–48,
82n., 130, 168
analogy  95, 97, 115, 119, 148n.,
227, 229, 231n.
Ancrene Riwle  243, 244–246,
250, 251
ARCHER; see A Representative
Corpus of Historical English
Registers
article  87, 88, 91
Australian Corpus of English
(ACE)  123–140
B (FLOB)  45–47, 80, 82, 92,
be  63–77, 217–234, 237–253
benefactive  80
bleaching  89, 92, 136, 137, 139
BNC; see British National
Corpus
British National Corpus
(BNC)  45–60, 79n., 123–140
Brown Corpus  45–47, 123–140,
167–170, 178
CB; see Collins COBUILD
Corpus
CEEC; see Corpus of Early
English Correspondence
Celtic  3, 6, 7, 217–234, 240n.
cigan (OE)  19, 20
clefting  258
CLMET; see Corpus of Late
Modern English texts
Collins COBUILD Corpus
(CB)  46, 50, 95–119
collocation  1, 2, 5, 6, 74, 89n.,
143–161, 231n.
collostructional analysis  98, 99,
106, 111, 118
commitment  165, 178
complementation
of adjective  4, 5, 29–43,
95–119
of verb  4, 11–28, 45–60,
124–126, 137, 138, 148
Constant Ratio Hypothesis  259,
262
construction  1, 3–5, 79–92,
95–119
copularity  4, 11–28
Corpus of Early English Cor-
respondence (CEEC)  124,
197–210
Corpus of Late Modern English
texts (CLMET)  98, 111–115,
123–140
Cursor Mundi  252
D 123–140, 167–170, 178
dative  11, 12, 15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 25,
80, 91
DCPSE; see Diachronic Corpus
of Present-Day Spoken English
deixis/deictic  101, 132, 240
deontic; see also modality; shall,
deontic; root (uses)  5, 6,
95–119, 144, 145, 147, 148, 150,
153, 157, 161, 173, 178, 241n., 247
descriptivism  63, 64, 66, 76
Diachronic Corpus of
Present-Day Spoken English
(DCPSE)  165–179
ditransitive  15n., 17, 19–21, 23, 89
Double Base Hypothesis  259
E
Early Modern English  5, 6, 85,
97, 98, 114, 118, 119, 197–210
eaþe (OE)/eaþelice (OE)/esili
(ME)  143–161
Emergent Grammar  118
entrenchment  2, 41, 43, 49, 89,
99, 118
epistemic; see also modality  6,
101, 143–161, 165–179
Extraction Principle  29, 32, 34,
35, 42
extraposition  5, 95–119, 185, 191,
195, 259, 260, 262, 263n.
F
fail  5, 123–140
Fisher’s Exact Test  99, 103, 104,
107n., 114, 265, 270
FLOB; see The Freiburg-LOB
Corpus of British English
The Freiburg-Brown Cor-
pus of American English
(Frown)  45–47, 123–140,
167–170, 178
The Freiburg-LOB Cor-
pus of British English
French  3, 91, 92, 124n., 146, 242
Frown; see The Freiburg-Brown
Corpus of American English
future (tense)/futurity; see also
shall, future  6, 7, 217–234,
237–253
 English Historical Linguistics 2008
G læran (OE)  20, 23, 25
genitive  6, 12n., 15, 16n., 17, 18,
20, 21, 46, 190, 194, 195, 196,
197–210
split  194–196, 202
genre(s); see also letters; his-
tory writing  6, 68, 197–210,
224–226
give  79–92
good  5, 95–119
grammars, late Middle Eng-
lish  242
grammaticalization  2, 3, 5, 89n.,
123, 125, 136–140
Great Complement Shift  29,
32, 42
H Linguistic Atlas of Early Mid-
habitual  6, 217, 220, 221, 223,
225, 227, 228, 233
Hali Meiðhad  250
hatan (OE)  13, 19, 20
have  63–76
have got to  165–179
have to  165–179
Havelok  251
HC; see Helsinki Corpus of
English Texts
Helsinki Corpus of English
Texts (HC)  79–93, 124, 157,
158, 217–234
history writing; see also
genre(s)  197, 204, 210
I
Icelandic  255–258, 263, 267
idiomatization  79–92, 159, 161
imperative  7, 38, 40, 217–221,
231–234, 239
inference, invited  148, 150, 157,
160
infinitive  7, 34, 70, 113n., 124n.,
217, 219, 231–234, 261‑272
to-infinitive  4, 5, 29–43, 73,
98–101, 104–108, 110–113
K Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of
KAK pattern/knowledge/acqui-
sition of knowledge  95–119
L negation/negative  5, 7, 70, 74,
LAEME; see Linguistic Atlas of
Early Middle English
Lambeth Homilies  250
The Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen
Corpus (LOB)  45–47,
123–140, 167– 170, 178
LAOS; see Linguistic Atlas of
Older Scots
Late Modern English  63–76,
82n., 95, 97, 98, 114, 115, 118,
127, 128
Latin  3, 26, 91, 150, 154, 157, 161,
221–224, 232, 240, 242–247
letters; see also genre(s)  4, 6,
63–76, 197, 198, 200, 203,
207n., 208–210
lexicalization  5, 89, 143, 150,
159–161
dle English (LAEME)  237,
243–252
Linguistic Atlas of Older Scots
(LAOS)  252
LOB; see The Lancaster-Oslo-
Bergen Corpus
locative/locative pattern  5, 73,
95–119, 201, 240n.
M ought  116n., 165, 168, 178
mæg (OE)  5, 6, 143–161
mandative  5, 95–119
Mercian  222, 224, 229–233
Middle English  4–7, 64, 80, 82,
83, 90–92, 98, 112, 113n., 115,
143, 146, 148–150, 153, 155n.,
157–161, 167, 197–210, 218,
237–253, 255, 256, 268–274
modal/modality; see also de-
ontic; epistemic; modal verb;
verb, pre-modal  5, 6, 143–161,
165–179
modal verb; see also modal/mo-
dality  5, 6, 101, 116n., 143–161,
165–179, 262–273
multiple distinctive collexeme
analysis  98–100, 105–107,
110, 111
must  165–179
N Early Modern English (PP-
na (OE)  264, 266
ne (OE)  262n., 264, 265
123–140, 160, 171, 172, 260,
262n., 264, 270
nemnan (OE)  19, 20
no (OE)  264, 266
nominative  4, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16n.,
17, 18, 20, 21, 24, 25, 26
Northumbrian  222, 223,
228–233
noun, deverbal  85, 86n., 89n.,
92
nouniness  34, 79, 86–88, 92
NP shift  195
O
object  5, 11, 13, 15–18, 23–26, 38,
45, 46, 49, 50, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60,
79–92, 260–263, 268
eventive  84, 85, 92
obligation  125, 126, 168, 169, 173,
176–178, 241n., 247, 249
oblique  11, 17, 18, 19
Old English  4–7, 11–28, 63,
80, 89n., 90, 98, 112, 115, 118,
143–157, 159–161, 185–196, 199,
217–234, 237–243, 259–268, 274
Old Norse; see also Scandinavi-
an  3, 7, 146, 219, 225, 255–274
Older Scots  252
Ormulum  255, 270, 274
OV; see also SOV; word or-
der  167, 192, 261, 262, 268
P
partially filled construction  5,
95–119
participle  7, 108, 111, 114, 117, 244
ing-participle  50, 54, 57, 58,
60, 109
past participle  12n., 25n.,
63–76, 146, 191, 193, 223,
246, 255–258, 262–271, 276
particle  256, 258, 262, 277
passive  12, 15, 16n., 18, 23–28,
38, 39, 47, 48, 64–66, 221–224,
239n., 241, 257
Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of
Middle English (PPCME)  98,
111–115, 197–210, 269–274
CEME)  98, 111–115, 197–210
perception  105–111, 114–131, 133
Poema Morale  247–249
possessive  46, 87, 88, 109, 195,
198, 199, 205

possibility  6, 143–161
PPCEME; see Penn-Helsinki
Parsed Corpus of Early Mod-
ern English
PPCME; see Penn-Helsinki
Parsed Corpus of Middle
English
prescriptivism  60, 63, 64, 67, 75
prevent  45–60
Priestley, Joseph  4, 5, 63–76
productivity  80, 86, 89, 92, 143,
159–161, 203
pronoun
personal  12, 50, 83, 91,
185–190, 193–195, 203, 255,
260, 263–267, 271–274
resumptive  194, 196
Q subject control  29–33, 36, 39,
quantifier  6, 13, 185–196, 260
quantifier floating  185–196
R 217–220, 227, 229–232, 234,
root (uses); see also deontic  165,
168, 169, 172–179
S SVO; see also VO; word
Scandinavian; see also Old
Norse  67, 255, 258, 259, 274
scrambling  6, 185, 189, 190,
193, 195
semi-modal; see also modal/
modality  165–179
sermons; see also genre(s)  6,
197–210
shall  143, 168, 241n., 242, 244,
245, 247–250, 252, 253
deontic  247, 249
future  244, 245, 247, 250,
252, 253
should  101, 116n., 165, 168, 169n.,
177, 178
SOV; see also OV; word or-
der  260, 268
status  4, 11, 17, 19
structures, discontinuous  6,
185–196
stylistic fronting  7, 255–274
subject
derived  15, 18
empty  7, 257, 263–274
inserted  17, 28
raised  18, 28
42, 43
subject gap  7, 255–274
subjunctive  7, 101, 153, 167,
239, 249–252
subordination  155, 256, 259,
262, 269
order  260, 268
T Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Old
text language  237, 243, 247–252
that-clause  95–119
TIME corpus  2, 4, 29–43
to -ing complement  29–43
to-clause  95–119
Subject and Word index 
to-infinitive; see infinitive
topicality  6, 197–199, 203–208
topicalization  6, 14n., 34–36,
185, 188–190, 192,193, 195, 258
transitivity; see also ditransi-
tive  4, 11, 17, 19, 65
þyncan (OE)  12, 13, 17
V
variation, syntactic  6, 7, 28
verb, mutative intransi-
tive  63–76
verb, pre-modal; see also modal/
modality  143–161
VO; see also SVO; word or-
der  167, 261, 262, 268
W
WebCorp  123–140, 172
Wellington Corpus  123–140
weorþan (OE)  12, 17, 230, 239,
253
Worcester Tremulous
Scribe  243
word order  7, 83, 199, 249, 255,
259, 260, 268
Y
YCOE; see York-Toronto-
English
York-Toronto-Helsinki Parsed
Corpus of Old English
(YCOE)  98, 111–115, 185–196,
260–268
 CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

E. F. K. Koerner, Editor
Zentrum für Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie
und Universalienforschung, Berlin
efk.koerner@rz.hu-berlin.de

Current Issues in Linguistic Theory (CILT) is a theory-oriented series which welcomes contributions from
scholars who have significant proposals to make towards the advancement of our understanding of lan-
guage, its structure, functioning and development. CILT has been established in order to provide a forum
for the presentation and discussion of linguistic opinions of scholars who do not necessarily accept the
prevailing mode of thought in linguistic science. It offers an outlet for meaningful contributions to the
current linguistic debate, and furnishes the diversity of opinion which a healthy discipline must have.
A complete list of titles in this series can be found on the publishers’ website, www.benjamins.com

315 COLINA, Sonia, Antxon OLARREA and Ana Maria CARVALHO (eds.): Romance Linguistics 2009.
Selected papers from the 39th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Tucson, Arizona,
March 2009. xiv, 421 pp. + index. Expected November 2010
314 LENKER, Ursula, Judith HUBER and Robert MAILHAMMER (eds.): English Historical Linguistics
2008. Selected papers from the fifteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL
15), Munich, 24-30 August 2008.. Volume I: The history of English verbal and nominal constructions. 2010.
vii, 282 pp.
313 ARREGI, Karlos, Zsuzsanna FAGYAL, Silvina A. MONTRUL and Annie TREMBLAY (eds.): Romance
Linguistics 2008. Interactions in Romance. Selected papers from the 38th Linguistic Symposium on
Romance Languages (LSRL), Urbana-Champaign, April 2008. 2010. vii, 266 pp.
312 OPERSTEIN, Natalie: Consonant Structure and Prevocalization. 2010. x, 234 pp.
311 SCALISE, Sergio and Irene VOGEL (eds.): Cross-Disciplinary Issues in Compounding. 2010. viii, 382 pp.
310 RAINER, Franz, Wolfgang U. DRESSLER, Dieter KASTOVSKY and Hans Christian LUSCHÜTZKY
(eds.): Variation and Change in Morphology. Selected papers from the 13th International Morphology
Meeting, Vienna, February 2008. With the assistance of Elisabeth Peters. 2010. vii, 249 pp.
309 NICOLOV, Nicolas, Galia ANGELOVA and Ruslan MITKOV (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural
Language Processing V. Selected papers from RANLP 2007. 2009. x, 338 pp.
308 DUFRESNE, Monique, Fernande DUPUIS and Etleva VOCAJ (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2007. Selected
papers from the 18th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, 6–11 August 2007. 2009.
x, 311 pp.
307 CALABRESE, Andrea and W. Leo WETZELS (eds.): Loan Phonology. 2009. vii, 273 pp.
306 VIGÁRIO, Marina, Sónia FROTA and M. João FREITAS (eds.): Phonetics and Phonology. Interactions
and interrelations. 2009. vi, 290 pp.
305 BUBENIK, Vit, John HEWSON and Sarah ROSE (eds.): Grammatical Change in Indo-European
Languages. Papers presented at the workshop on Indo-European Linguistics at the XVIIIth International
Conference on Historical Linguistics, Montreal, 2007. 2009. xx, 262 pp.
304 MASULLO, Pascual José, Erin O'ROURKE and Chia-Hui HUANG (eds.): Romance Linguistics 2007.
Selected papers from the 37th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Pittsburgh, 15–18
March 2007. 2009. vii, 361 pp.
303 TORCK, Danièle and W. Leo WETZELS (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2006. Selected
papers from ‘Going Romance’, Amsterdam, 7–9 December 2006. 2009. viii, 262 pp.
302 FERRARESI, Gisella and Maria GOLDBACH (eds.): Principles of Syntactic Reconstruction. 2008.
xvii, 219 pp.
301 PARKINSON, Dilworth B. (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium
on Arabic linguistics. Volume XXI: Provo, Utah, March 2007. 2008. x, 206 pp.
300 VAJDA, Edward J. (ed.): Subordination and Coordination Strategies in North Asian Languages. 2008.
xii, 218 pp.
299 GONZÁLEZ-DÍAZ, Victorina: English Adjective Comparison. A historical perspective. 2008. xix, 252 pp.
298 BOWERN, Claire, Bethwyn EVANS and Luisa MICELI (eds.): Morphology and Language History. In
honour of Harold Koch. 2008. x, 364 pp.
297 DOSSENA, Marina, Richard DURY and Maurizio GOTTI (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006.
Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14),
Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume III: Geo-Historical Variation in English. 2008. xiii, 197 pp.
296 DURY, Richard, Maurizio GOTTI and Marina DOSSENA (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006.
Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14),
Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume II: Lexical and Semantic Change. 2008. xiii, 264 pp.
295 GOTTI, Maurizio, Marina DOSSENA and Richard DURY (eds.): English Historical Linguistics 2006.
Selected papers from the fourteenth International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL 14),
Bergamo, 21–25 August 2006. Volume I: Syntax and Morphology. 2008. xiv, 259 pp.
294 FRELLESVIG, Bjarke and John WHITMAN (eds.): Proto-Japanese. Issues and Prospects. 2008.
vii, 229 pp.
293 DETGES, Ulrich and Richard WALTEREIT (eds.): The Paradox of Grammatical Change. Perspectives
from Romance. 2008. vi, 252 pp.
292 NICOLOV, Nicolas, Kalina BONTCHEVA, Galia ANGELOVA and Ruslan MITKOV (eds.): Recent
Advances in Natural Language Processing IV. Selected papers from RANLP 2005. 2007. xii, 307 pp.
291 BAAUW, Sergio, Frank DRIJKONINGEN and Manuela PINTO (eds.): Romance Languages and
Linguistic Theory 2005. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’, Utrecht, 8–10 December 2005. 2007.
viii, 338 pp.
290 MUGHAZY, Mustafa A. (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on
Arabic linguistics. Volume XX: Kalamazoo, Michigan, March 2006. 2007. xii, 247 pp.
289 BENMAMOUN, Elabbas (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on
Arabic Linguistics. Volume XIX: Urbana, Illinois, April 2005. 2007. xiv, 304 pp.
288 TOIVONEN, Ida and Diane NELSON (eds.): Saami Linguistics. 2007. viii, 321 pp.
287 CAMACHO, José, Nydia FLORES-FERRÁN, Liliana SÁNCHEZ, Viviane DÉPREZ and María José
CABRERA (eds.): Romance Linguistics 2006. Selected papers from the 36th Linguistic Symposium on
Romance Languages (LSRL), New Brunswick, March-April 2006. 2007. viii, 340 pp.
286 WEIJER, Jeroen van de and Erik Jan van der TORRE (eds.): Voicing in Dutch. (De)voicing – phonology,
phonetics, and psycholinguistics. 2007. x, 186 pp.
285 SACKMANN, Robin (ed.): Explorations in Integrational Linguistics. Four essays on German, French, and
Guaraní. 2008. ix, 239 pp.
284 SALMONS, Joseph C. and Shannon DUBENION-SMITH (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2005. Selected
papers from the 17th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Madison, Wisconsin, 31 July - 5
August 2005. 2007. viii, 413 pp.
283 LENKER, Ursula and Anneli MEURMAN-SOLIN (eds.): Connectives in the History of English. 2007.
viii, 318 pp.
282 PRIETO, Pilar, Joan MASCARÓ and Maria-Josep SOLÉ (eds.): Segmental and prosodic issues in
Romance phonology. 2007. xvi, 262 pp.
281 VERMEERBERGEN, Myriam, Lorraine LEESON and Onno CRASBORN (eds.): Simultaneity in Signed
Languages. Form and function. 2007. viii, 360 pp. (incl. CD-Rom).
280 HEWSON, John and Vit BUBENIK: From Case to Adposition. The development of configurational syntax
in Indo-European languages. 2006. xxx, 420 pp.
279 NEDERGAARD THOMSEN, Ole (ed.): Competing Models of Linguistic Change. Evolution and beyond.
2006. vi, 344 pp.
278 DOETJES, Jenny and Paz GONZÁLEZ (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2004. Selected
papers from ‘Going Romance’, Leiden, 9–11 December 2004. 2006. viii, 320 pp.
277 HELASVUO, Marja-Liisa and Lyle CAMPBELL (eds.): Grammar from the Human Perspective. Case,
space and person in Finnish. 2006. x, 280 pp.
276 MONTREUIL, Jean-Pierre Y. (ed.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol. II: Phonetics,
Phonology and Dialectology. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages
(LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. x, 213 pp.
275 NISHIDA, Chiyo and Jean-Pierre Y. MONTREUIL (eds.): New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics. Vol.
I: Morphology, Syntax, Semantics, and Pragmatics. Selected papers from the 35th Linguistic Symposium on
Romance Languages (LSRL), Austin, Texas, February 2005. 2006. xiv, 288 pp.
274 GESS, Randall S. and Deborah ARTEAGA (eds.): Historical Romance Linguistics. Retrospective and
perspectives. 2006. viii, 393 pp.
273 FILPPULA, Markku, Juhani KLEMOLA, Marjatta PALANDER and Esa PENTTILÄ (eds.): Dialects
Across Borders. Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Methods in Dialectology
(Methods XI), Joensuu, August 2002. 2005. xii, 291 pp.
272 GESS, Randall S. and Edward J. RUBIN (eds.): Theoretical and Experimental Approaches to Romance
Linguistics. Selected papers from the 34th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Salt Lake
City, March 2004. 2005. viii, 367 pp.
271 BRANNER, David Prager (ed.): The Chinese Rime Tables. Linguistic philosophy and historical-
comparative phonology. 2006. viii, 358 pp.
270 GEERTS, Twan, Ivo van GINNEKEN and Haike JACOBS (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic
Theory 2003. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2003, Nijmegen, 20–22 November. 2005. viii, 369 pp.
269 HARGUS, Sharon and Keren RICE (eds.): Athabaskan Prosody. 2005. xii, 432 pp.
268 CRAVENS, Thomas D. (ed.): Variation and Reconstruction. 2006. viii, 223 pp.
267 ALHAWARY, Mohammad T. and Elabbas BENMAMOUN (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics.
Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic linguistics. Volume XVII–XVIII: Alexandria, 2003 and
Norman, Oklahoma 2004. 2005. xvi, 315 pp.
266 BOUDELAA, Sami (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic
linguistics. Volume XVI: , Cambridge, March 2002. 2006. xii, 181 pp.
265 CORNIPS, Leonie and Karen P. CORRIGAN (eds.): Syntax and Variation. Reconciling the Biological and
the Social. 2005. vi, 312 pp.
264 DRESSLER, Wolfgang U., Dieter KASTOVSKY, Oskar E. PFEIFFER and Franz RAINER (eds.):
Morphology and its demarcations. Selected papers from the 11th Morphology meeting, Vienna, February
2004. With the assistance of Francesco Gardani and Markus A. Pöchtrager. 2005. xiv, 320 pp.
263 BRANCO, António, Tony McENERY and Ruslan MITKOV (eds.): Anaphora Processing. Linguistic,
cognitive and computational modelling. 2005. x, 449 pp.
262 VAJDA, Edward J. (ed.): Languages and Prehistory of Central Siberia. 2004. x, 275 pp.
261 KAY, Christian J. and Jeremy J. SMITH (eds.): Categorization in the History of English. 2004. viii, 268 pp.
260 NICOLOV, Nicolas, Kalina BONTCHEVA, Galia ANGELOVA and Ruslan MITKOV (eds.): Recent
Advances in Natural Language Processing III. Selected papers from RANLP 2003. 2004. xii, 402 pp.
259 CARR, Philip, Jacques DURAND and Colin J. EWEN (eds.): Headhood, Elements, Specification and
Contrastivity. Phonological papers in honour of John Anderson. 2005. xxviii, 405 pp.
258 AUGER, Julie, J. Clancy CLEMENTS and Barbara VANCE (eds.): Contemporary Approaches to
Romance Linguistics. Selected Papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL),
Bloomington, Indiana, April 2003. With the assistance of Rachel T. Anderson. 2004. viii, 404 pp.
257 FORTESCUE, Michael, Eva Skafte JENSEN, Jens Erik MOGENSEN and Lene SCHØSLER (eds.):
Historical Linguistics 2003. Selected papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11–15 August 2003. 2005. x, 312 pp.
256 BOK-BENNEMA, Reineke, Bart HOLLEBRANDSE, Brigitte KAMPERS-MANHE and Petra
SLEEMAN (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’,
Groningen, 28–30 November 2002. 2004. viii, 273 pp.
255 MEULEN, Alice ter and Werner ABRAHAM (eds.): The Composition of Meaning. From lexeme to
discourse. 2004. vi, 232 pp.
254 BALDI, Philip and Pietro U. DINI (eds.): Studies in Baltic and Indo-European Linguistics. In honor of
William R. Schmalstieg. 2004. xlvi, 302 pp.
253 CAFFAREL, Alice, J.R. MARTIN and Christian M.I.M. MATTHIESSEN (eds.): Language Typology. A
functional perspective. 2004. xiv, 702 pp.
252 KAY, Christian J., Carole HOUGH and Irené WOTHERSPOON (eds.): New Perspectives on English
Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume II: Lexis and
Transmission. 2004. xii, 273 pp.
251 KAY, Christian J., Simon HOROBIN and Jeremy J. SMITH (eds.): New Perspectives on English
Historical Linguistics. Selected papers from 12 ICEHL, Glasgow, 21–26 August 2002. Volume I: Syntax and
Morphology. 2004. x, 264 pp.
250 JENSEN, John T.: Principles of Generative Phonology. An introduction. 2004. xii, 324 pp.
249 BOWERN, Claire and Harold KOCH (eds.): Australian Languages. Classification and the comparative
method. 2004. xii, 377 pp. (incl. CD-Rom).
248 WEIGAND, Edda (ed.): Emotion in Dialogic Interaction. Advances in the complex. 2004. xii, 284 pp.
247 PARKINSON, Dilworth B. and Samira FARWANEH (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers
from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XV: Salt Lake City 2001. 2003. x, 214 pp.
246 HOLISKY, Dee Ann and Kevin TUITE (eds.): Current Trends in Caucasian, East European and Inner
Asian Linguistics. Papers in honor of Howard I. Aronson. 2003. xxviii, 426 pp.
245 QUER, Josep, Jan SCHROTEN, Mauro SCORRETTI, Petra SLEEMAN and Els VERHEUGD (eds.):
Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2001. Selected papers from 'Going Romance', Amsterdam, 6–8
December 2001. 2003. viii, 355 pp.
244 PÉREZ-LEROUX, Ana Teresa and Yves ROBERGE (eds.): Romance Linguistics. Theory and Acquisition.
Selected papers from the 32nd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Toronto, April 2002.
2003. viii, 388 pp.
243 CUYCKENS, Hubert, Thomas BERG, René DIRVEN and Klaus-Uwe PANTHER (eds.): Motivation in
Language. Studies in honor of Günter Radden. 2003. xxvi, 403 pp.
242 SEUREN, Pieter A.M. and Gerard KEMPEN (eds.): Verb Constructions in German and Dutch. 2003.
vi, 316 pp.
241 LECARME, Jacqueline (ed.): Research in Afroasiatic Grammar II. Selected papers from the Fifth
Conference on Afroasiatic Languages, Paris, 2000. 2003. viii, 550 pp.
240 JANSE, Mark and Sijmen TOL (eds.): Language Death and Language Maintenance. Theoretical, practical
and descriptive approaches. With the assistance of Vincent Hendriks. 2003. xviii, 244 pp.
239 ANDERSEN, Henning (ed.): Language Contacts in Prehistory. Studies in Stratigraphy. Papers from the
Workshop on Linguistic Stratigraphy and Prehistory at the Fifteenth International Conference on Historical
Linguistics, Melbourne, 17 August 2001. 2003. viii, 292 pp.
238 NÚÑEZ-CEDEÑO, Rafael, Luis LÓPEZ and Richard CAMERON (eds.): A Romance Perspective on
Language Knowledge and Use. Selected papers from the 31st Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages
(LSRL), Chicago, 19–22 April 2001. 2003. xvi, 386 pp.
237 BLAKE, Barry J. and Kate BURRIDGE (eds.): Historical Linguistics 2001. Selected papers from the 15th
International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Melbourne, 13–17 August 2001. Editorial assistance Jo
Taylor. 2003. x, 444 pp.
236 SIMON-VANDENBERGEN, Anne-Marie, Miriam TAVERNIERS and Louise J. RAVELLI (eds.):
Grammatical Metaphor. Views from systemic functional linguistics. 2003. vi, 453 pp.
235 LINN, Andrew R. and Nicola McLELLAND (eds.): Standardization. Studies from the Germanic languages.
2002. xii, 258 pp.
234 WEIJER, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van HEUVEN and Harry van der HULST (eds.): The Phonological
Spectrum. Volume II: Suprasegmental structure. 2003. x, 264 pp.
233 WEIJER, Jeroen van de, Vincent J. van HEUVEN and Harry van der HULST (eds.): The Phonological
Spectrum. Volume I: Segmental structure. 2003. x, 308 pp.
232 BEYSSADE, Claire, Reineke BOK-BENNEMA, Frank DRIJKONINGEN and Paola MONACHESI
(eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2000. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 2000,
Utrecht, 30 November–2 December. 2002. viii, 354 pp.
231 CRAVENS, Thomas D.: Comparative Historical Dialectology. Italo-Romance clues to Ibero-Romance
sound change. 2002. xii, 163 pp.
230 PARKINSON, Dilworth B. and Elabbas BENMAMOUN (eds.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics.
Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XIII-XIV: Stanford, 1999 and Berkeley,
California 2000. 2002. xiv, 250 pp.
229 NEVIN, Bruce E. and Stephen B. JOHNSON (eds.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and
information into the 21st century. Volume 2: Mathematics and computability of language. 2002. xx, 312 pp.
228 NEVIN, Bruce E. (ed.): The Legacy of Zellig Harris. Language and information into the 21st century.
Volume 1: Philosophy of science, syntax and semantics. 2002. xxxvi, 323 pp.
227 FAVA, Elisabetta (ed.): Clinical Linguistics. Theory and applications in speech pathology and therapy. 2002.
xxiv, 353 pp.
226 LEVIN, Saul: Semitic and Indo-European. Volume II: Comparative morphology, syntax and phonetics.
2002. xviii, 592 pp.
225 SHAHIN, Kimary N.: Postvelar Harmony. 2003. viii, 344 pp.
224 FANEGO, Teresa, Belén MÉNDEZ-NAYA and Elena SEOANE (eds.): Sounds, Words, Texts and Change.
Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000. Volume 2. 2002. x, 310 pp.
223 FANEGO, Teresa, Javier PÉREZ-GUERRA and María José LÓPEZ-COUSO (eds.): English Historical
Syntax and Morphology. Selected papers from 11 ICEHL, Santiago de Compostela, 7–11 September 2000.
Volume 1. 2002. x, 306 pp.
222 HERSCHENSOHN, Julia, Enrique MALLÉN and Karen ZAGONA (eds.): Features and Interfaces in
Romance. Essays in honor of Heles Contreras. 2001. xiv, 302 pp.
221 D’HULST, Yves, Johan ROORYCK and Jan SCHROTEN (eds.): Romance Languages and Linguistic
Theory 1999. Selected papers from ‘Going Romance’ 1999, Leiden, 9–11 December 1999. 2001. viii, 406 pp.
220 SATTERFIELD, Teresa, Christina TORTORA and Diana CRESTI (eds.): Current Issues in Romance
Languages. Selected papers from the 29th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Ann
Arbor, 8–11 April 1999. 2002. viii, 412  pp.
219 ANDERSEN, Henning (ed.): Actualization. Linguistic Change in Progress. Papers from a workshop held
at the 14th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, B.C., 14 August 1999. 2001.
vii, 250 pp.
218 BENDJABALLAH, Sabrina, Wolfgang U. DRESSLER, Oskar E. PFEIFFER and Maria D. VOEIKOVA
(eds.): Morphology 2000. Selected papers from the 9th Morphology Meeting, Vienna, 24–28 February 2000.
2002. viii, 317 pp.
217 WILTSHIRE, Caroline R. and Joaquim CAMPS (eds.): Romance Phonology and Variation. Selected
papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February 2000.
2002. xii, 238 pp.
216 CAMPS, Joaquim and Caroline R. WILTSHIRE (eds.): Romance Syntax, Semantics and L2 Acquisition.
Selected papers from the 30th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Gainesville, Florida, February
2000. 2001. xii, 246 pp.
215 BRINTON, Laurel J. (ed.): Historical Linguistics 1999. Selected papers from the 14th International
Conference on Historical Linguistics, Vancouver, 9–13 August 1999. 2001. xii, 398 pp.
214 WEIGAND, Edda and Marcelo DASCAL (eds.): Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction. 2001.
viii, 303 pp.
213 SORNICOLA, Rosanna, Erich POPPE and Ariel SHISHA-HALEVY (eds.): Stability, Variation and
Change of Word-Order Patterns over Time. With the assistance of Paola Como. 2000. xxxii, 323 pp.
212 REPETTI, Lori (ed.): Phonological Theory and the Dialects of Italy. 2000. x, 301 pp.
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209 KING, Ruth: The Lexical Basis of Grammatical Borrowing. A Prince Edward Island French case study.
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206 FAWCETT, Robin P.: A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics. 2000. xxviii, 360 pp.
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204 DIRVEN, René, Bruce HAWKINS and Esra SANDIKCIOGLU (eds.): Language and Ideology. Volume 1:
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203 NORRICK, Neal R.: Conversational Narrative. Storytelling in everyday talk. 2000. xiv, 233 pp.
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201 DRESSLER, Wolfgang U., Oskar E. PFEIFFER, Markus A. PÖCHTRAGER and John R. RENNISON
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198 NIEMEIER, Susanne and René DIRVEN (eds.): Evidence for Linguistic Relativity. 2000. xxii, 240 pp.
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196 HANNAHS, S.J. and Mike DAVENPORT (eds.): Issues in Phonological Structure. Papers from an
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195 HERRING, Susan C., Pieter van REENEN and Lene SCHØSLER (eds.): Textual Parameters in Older
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194 COLEMAN, Julie and Christian J. KAY (eds.): Lexicology, Semantics and Lexicography. Selected papers
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193 KLAUSENBURGER, Jurgen: Grammaticalization. Studies in Latin and Romance morphosyntax. 2000.
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191 SIHLER, Andrew L.: Language History. An introduction. 2000. xvi, 298 pp.
190 BENMAMOUN, Elabbas (ed.): Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics. Papers from the Annual Symposium on
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189 NICOLOV, Nicolas and Ruslan MITKOV (eds.): Recent Advances in Natural Language Processing II.
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188 SIMMONS, Richard VanNess: Chinese Dialect Classification. A comparative approach to Harngjou, Old
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186 MIŠESKA TOMIĆ, Olga and Milorad RADOVANOVIĆ (eds.): History and Perspectives of Language
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185 AUTHIER, Jean-Marc, Barbara E. BULLOCK and Lisa A. REED (eds.): Formal Perspectives on Romance
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184 SAGART, Laurent: The Roots of Old Chinese. 1999. xii, 272 pp.
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182 KENESEI, István (ed.): Crossing Boundaries. Advances in the theory of Central and Eastern European
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181 MOHAMMAD, Mohammad A.: Word Order, Agreement and Pronominalization in Standard and
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180 MEREU, Lunella (ed.): Boundaries of Morphology and Syntax. 1999. viii, 314 pp.
179 RINI, Joel: Exploring the Role of Morphology in the Evolution of Spanish. 1999. xvi, 187 pp.
178 FOOLEN, Ad and Frederike van der LEEK (eds.): Constructions in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers
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177 CUYCKENS, Hubert and Britta E. ZAWADA (eds.): Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers
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175 GIBBS, JR., Raymond W. and Gerard J. STEEN (eds.): Metaphor in Cognitive Linguistics. Selected papers
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172 DIMITROVA-VULCHANOVA, Mila and Lars HELLAN (eds.): Topics in South Slavic Syntax and
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171 WEIGAND, Edda (ed.): Contrastive Lexical Semantics. 1998. x, 270 pp.
170 LAMB, Sydney M.: Pathways of the Brain. The neurocognitive basis of language. 1999. xii, 418 pp.
169 GHADESSY, Mohsen (ed.): Text and Context in Functional Linguistics. 1999. xviii, 340 pp.
168 RATCLIFFE, Robert R.: The “Broken” Plural Problem in Arabic and Comparative Semitic. Allomorphy and
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166 LEMMENS, Maarten: Lexical Perspectives on Transitivity and Ergativity. Causative constructions in
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165 BUBENIK, Vit: A Historical Syntax of Late Middle Indo-Aryan (Apabhraṃśa). 1998. xxiv, 265 pp.
164 SCHMID, Monika S., Jennifer R. AUSTIN and Dieter STEIN (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1997. Selected
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163 LOCKWOOD, David G., Peter H. FRIES and James E. COPELAND (eds.): Functional Approaches to
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162 HOGG, Richard M. and Linda van BERGEN (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1995. Volume 2: Germanic
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161 SMITH, John Charles and Delia BENTLEY (eds.): Historical Linguistics 1995. Volume 1: General issues
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160 SCHWEGLER, Armin, Bernard TRANEL and Myriam URIBE-ETXEBARRIA (eds.): Romance
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158 SÁNCHEZ-MACARRO, Antonia and Ronald CARTER (eds.): Linguistic Choice across Genres. Variation
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