Part of
Word Order Change in Acquisition and Language Contact: Essays in honour of Ans van KemenadeEdited by Bettelou Los and Pieter de Haan
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 243] 2017
► pp. 187–212
This chapter builds on various suggestions in the literature that the syntax of the Old English poem Beowulf is constrained by its metre, an inheritance from Common Germanic. The differences are particularly evident in the position of the finite verb. An inventory of how clauses map into the a– and b–verses of the poem revealed that the metre favours clause-final verbs over verbs in first or second position, which might suggest that the metre of Germanic epic poetry predates the emergence of verb movement. With finite verbs mapping onto the non-alliterating fourth stressed position, the metre allowed the poet to choose his verbs freely. As verbs encode the key actions that drive the narrative, this greatly facilitated composition.