Chapter 8
Split coordination in Early English
Split coordination (e.g.,
the king came and his company
) occurs at a low but robust rate in early English. While similar in some ways to the Present-Day-English (PDE) construction called Bare Argument Ellipsis (BAE), in which the second conjunct (C2) is restricted to clause-final position, in early English C2 frequently occurs clause-internally. As BAE cannot derive such cases, we consider a movement analysis and present empirical evidence for both leftward movement of the first conjunct (C1) and rightward movement of C2. Split coordination is part of a larger pattern of splitting constituents in early English, which is lost by about 1700. BAE continues to be available until the present, however, giving rise to a false appearance of continuity over time.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1What is split coordination?
- 1.2Split coordination over time
- 2.Coordination phrases
- 2.1The structure of coordination phrases
- 2.2
Split coordination
- 3.The structure of early English clauses
- 3.1Subject positions in early English
- 3.2
Object positions in early English
- 4.Arguments for leftward movement of C1
- 4.1
Argument 1: Subject C2s in the middle field
- 4.2Argument 2: Distribution of subject C2s by verb type (transitive vs. passive)
- 4.3Argument 3: Number agreement
- 5.Arguments for rightward movement of C2
- 5.1Argument 1: Clauses with split COs, C2 in the final field
- 5.2Argument 2: AuxV transitive clauses with split CSs, C2 in the final field
- 5.3Argument 3: Clauses with finite main verbs, split COs and C2 in the final field
- 6.Conclusions
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
Corpora
-
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Cited by 3 other publications
Taylor, Ann
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Treebanks in Historical Syntax.
Annual Review of Linguistics 6:1
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Taylor, Ann & Susan Pintzuk
Taylor, Ann & Susan Pintzuk
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