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English Historical Linguistics: Change in structure and meaning
Edited by Bettelou Los, Claire Cowie, Patrick Honeybone and Graeme Trousdale
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 358] 2022
► pp. 115–136

Chapter 5
The reanalysis of VO in the history of English

Evidence for a language-internal account

ORCID logo | Università Ca’Foscari Venezia

In this paper, I present empirical data about selected Early Middle English (henceforth eME) texts which show how the reanalysis of VO as the unmarked word order constitutes a uniform development from Old English (henceforth OE). I employ an antisymmetric framework, in which information structural (henceforth IS) and weight interface conditions govern the pre- and post-verbal spell-out of constituents. The dialectal provenance of the texts and their transmission history is considered, to allow for a comparative analysis of the data.

Keywords: word order variation, Early Middle English, information structure, language change
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The debate on OE word order and diachronic change
  • 3.Research questions, methodology and sample
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Author queries
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Sources
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.358.05bas
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