Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Anglo-Norman: New Themes, New Contexts
- 2 Later Anglo-Norman as a Contact Variety of French?
- 3 The Sources of Standardisation in French – Written or Spoken?
- 4 Husbonderie and Manaungerie in Later Medieval England: A Tale of Two Walters
- 5 Bridging the Gap: The (Socio)linguistic Evidence of Some Medieval English Bridge Accounts
- 6 From Apareil to Warderobe: Some Observations on Anglo-French in the Middle English Lexis of Cloth and Clothing
- 7 Languages in the Military Profession in Later Medieval England
- 8 The Language of the English Legal Profession: The Emergence of a Distinctive Legal Lexicon in Insular French
- 9 Mapping Insular French Texts? Ideas for Localisation and Correlated Dialectology in Manuscript Materials of Medieval England
- 10 A Pilot Study on the Singular Definite Articles le and la in Fifteenth-Century London Mixed-Language Business Writing
- 11 Investigating Anglo-Norman Influence on Late Middle English Syntax
- 12 The Transmission of Later Anglo-Norman: Some Syntactic Evidence
- Index
11 - Investigating Anglo-Norman Influence on Late Middle English Syntax
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Contributors
- List of Abbreviations
- 1 Anglo-Norman: New Themes, New Contexts
- 2 Later Anglo-Norman as a Contact Variety of French?
- 3 The Sources of Standardisation in French – Written or Spoken?
- 4 Husbonderie and Manaungerie in Later Medieval England: A Tale of Two Walters
- 5 Bridging the Gap: The (Socio)linguistic Evidence of Some Medieval English Bridge Accounts
- 6 From Apareil to Warderobe: Some Observations on Anglo-French in the Middle English Lexis of Cloth and Clothing
- 7 Languages in the Military Profession in Later Medieval England
- 8 The Language of the English Legal Profession: The Emergence of a Distinctive Legal Lexicon in Insular French
- 9 Mapping Insular French Texts? Ideas for Localisation and Correlated Dialectology in Manuscript Materials of Medieval England
- 10 A Pilot Study on the Singular Definite Articles le and la in Fifteenth-Century London Mixed-Language Business Writing
- 11 Investigating Anglo-Norman Influence on Late Middle English Syntax
- 12 The Transmission of Later Anglo-Norman: Some Syntactic Evidence
- Index
Summary
Introduction
This paper focuses on some word-order developments in the Middle English period and explores whether these developments might have been influenced by contact with Anglo-Norman and/or Continental French. The issues to be considered are related to what has generally been referred to (somewhat misleadingly) as the Verb Second (V2) phenomenon. As extensively discussed in the literature, Old English exhibits frequent subject–verb inversion when a non-subject is in clause-initial position. Such word orders are reminiscent of the V2 phenomenon as found in all the modern Germanic languages with the exception of present-day English. In the Middle English period, the Old English subject–verb inversion syntax is lost to a large extent, but the development exhibits certain peculiarities that have remained unexplained. The aim of this article is to consider whether some or all of these peculiarities could be related to Anglo-Norman/French influence.
The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 provides a brief description of the subject–verb inversion syntax found in Old and Early Middle English. In section 3, the developments in Middle English are discussed and four open issues with respect to these developments are identified. Section 4 then considers the plausibility of addressing these issues with reference to Anglo- Norman/French influence. It is argued that for three of these questions, contact with Anglo-Norman/French may have played a role whereas such an account seems less likely for the fourth issue. Finally, in section 5, some further points are discussed that bear on the question of Anglo-Norman/French influence on Middle English syntax, and section 6 summarises the paper.
Subject–verb inversion in Old and Early Middle English
The V2 property as found in all the modern Germanic languages except present-day English is characterised by the general occurrence of the finite verb right after the clause-initial constituent (i.e. in second position) regardless of what the nature of this constituent is.1 A consequence of this is that when the clause-initial constituent is not a subject the order of the subject and the finite verb is inverted, which leads to the characteristic inversion property of V2 languages.
In Old and Early Middle English, cases of subject–verb inversion can regularly be found when some other constituent is fronted (see for example van Kemenade 1987, Pintzuk 1999). This is illustrated in (1) (fronted constituent in brackets, finite verb in bold print, subject in italics).
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- The Anglo-Norman Language and its Contexts , pp. 143 - 163Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2010
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