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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. 137–162

Chapter 6
The role of (the avoidance of) centre embedding in the change from OV to VO in English

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Authors from Colman (1988) to Ogura (2001, 2004) have discussed the role of Relative Clause Extraposition as a means to avoid centre-embedded structures in Old English, and its relevance as a factor in the change from OV to VO word order, but to date no study has addressed the full extent to which clausal embedding is allowed in Old English, the contexts for its application or its quantitative limits. Based on an extensive corpus analysis, this paper provides evidence about the factors (both language internal and external) that interact in the generation of centre-embedded structures in Old English while providing a reassessment of the role the avoidance of this kind of structures played in the change from OV to VO.

Keywords: Change OV to VO, language processing, clausal embedding, centre-embedded relative clauses, Relative Clause Extraposition, dependency length minimisation theories, Dependency Locality Theory, Early Immediate Constituents, Old English, German
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Data, corpus and data retrieval
    • 2.1Database
    • 2.2Methodology
    • 2.3Corpus and data retrieval
  • 3.Analysis
    • 3.1Single centre embedding
      • 3.1.1External factors
      • 3.1.2Internal factors
    • 3.2Multiple centre embedding
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.358.06lor
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