The Middle English Verb-Second Constraint: A case study in language contact and languagechange

摘要: This paper reports the discovery of a syntactic dialect difference between northern and southern Middle English in grammatical implementation so-called "verb-second" constraint argues that this is most likely linguistic contact effect Viking invasions eastern England eighth ninth centuries. In South, V2 behaves as it had Old English; is, variant IP-V2 type, type found modern Yiddish Icelandic. North, however, CP-V2 Mainland Scandinavian German or Dutch. It argued form arises consequence collapse agreement inflection English, which leads to loss V-to-I movement, just happened mainland when was lost there. Once, movement lost, IP can no longer host topic-verb configuration defines verb-second phenomenon. The further result from imperfect second language learning by invaders, who formed large enough proportion population North impose substratum effects on dialect. Investigation available documentary evidence shown support dating both endings appearance word order period invasions. suggested has made only Germanic does not respect constraint, may have resulted extensive speakers lead mixture features characterize Midlands (and London) late period.