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Word Order Change in Acquisition and Language Contact: Essays in honour of Ans van Kemenade
Edited by Bettelou Los and Pieter de Haan
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 243] 2017
► pp. 127–153

Chapter 7
Position-related subject properties change in English

| Radboud University Nijmegen and SIL-International

Subjects in Old English can occur in a number of different positions. Their distribution changes over time, especially during and after the loss of the non-obligatory verb-second word order that characterised Old English. A question that has not been raised is whether the disappearance of subject positions is preceded by a loss of subject-specific properties connected with these positions. This paper investigates two such properties: subject-deletion under coordination, and subject-position related verb type selection. The decrease of the Middle Field and Post Field subject positions is, indeed, preceded by a steeper decline in the former property, while the latter property reveals an increasing specificity in terms of the types of verbs associating with the Post Field position.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Subject positions
  • 3.Subject properties
  • 4.Method
  • 5.The change in subject properties per subject position
    • 5.1Changing subject positions
    • 5.2Subject elision under coordination
      • 5.2.1The global picture
      • 5.2.2The Middle Field position “3”
      • 5.2.3The Post Field position “4”
      • 5.2.4The Post Field position “5”
      • 5.2.5 The Fore Field position “1”
      • 5.2.6The Fore Field position “2”
    • 5.3Subject-verb relations
      • 5.3.1 Subject type distribution in the Fore Field
      • 5.3.2 Subject type distribution in the Middle Field
      • 5.3.3Subject type distribution in the Post Field
      • 5.3.4Subject type specificity
  • 6.Conclusions and discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.243.07kom
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