Verb–Obiect Order In Old English: Variation as Grammatical Competition

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines the possible effects of case-marking on constituent order in Old English, and demonstrates that overt morphology does not play any role in determining verb-object order. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 16.2 discusses variation, optionality, and the concept of grammatical competition. Section 16.3 describes the case-marking system of Old English and shows that the language exhibits some of the well-known syntactic effects of morphological case. Section 16.4 shows that neither overt case-marking nor case ambiguity has any effect on verb-object order. Section 16.5 demonstrates that an analysis involving feature strength and leftward movement for case-checking is equivalent to grammatical competition, with no relationship to overt morphology. Section 16.6 provides distributional evidence for grammatical competition.

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