Case Syncretism and Word Order Change
Case Syncretism and Word Order Change
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大小写融合和词序变化
DOI：
10.1002/9780470757048.ch9
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发表时间：
2006
期刊：
影响因子：
0.3
通讯作者：
C. Allen
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
C. Allen
古英语(OE)和现代英语(PDE)最显著的语法差异之一是，在OE中，词序是相当自由的，因为NP/DPS的句法和语义角色不是通过NP/DPS的顺序来表达的，而是通过它们的格形态来表达的。长期以来，人们把英语中词序的固定(以及介词使用的增加)归因于格标的区分或融合的丧失，这导致(几乎)完全没有格词法(见Kellner(1892：§483 and Passm；Meillet 1949：187-92；Mossé1952：§106等))。然而，这些传统的治疗方法并没有对所涉及的具体机制提供解释，正如Jesperen(1894：§75)指出的那样，固定的词序“介入”以弥补丢失的屈折变化的想法受到这样一个问题的困扰，即“我们应该想象一个中间时期，在这个时期中，词语的相互关系在两种方式中都没有被表明；事实上，在这个时期中，言语将是不可理解的。”杰斯帕森的结论是“一个固定的词序是前缀，也就是原因，语法上的简化是后缀，也就是结果。”最近，在生成框架内，人们对普遍语法中格和语序的相互作用进行了大量的研究，并提出了一些非常精确的机制来将简化的格形态与更固定的词序联系起来；有关有用的概述，请参阅LightFoot(2002)的简介。与传统的讨论相比，这些建议在做出一些可以检验的明确预测方面是一个进步。最近的注意力集中在从OV到VO顺序的转变上，这一主题在本书的其他地方讨论过。在这一章中，我们不会关注格标记的丧失在这一转变中可能起到的作用，而是将重点放在两个语序的消失上，这两个语序出现在OE中，但不是在中世纪英语(ME)时期。第一个问题是双及物动词两个裸体名词性NP/DP宾语的顺序确定。虽然这份订单
One of the most striking grammatical differences between Old English (OE) and Present-day English (PDE) is that in OE, word order was reasonably free in that the syntactic and semantic roles of NP/DPs were not conveyed by the order of those NP/DPs, but rather by their case morphology. There is a long tradition of attributing the fixing of word order (and the increase in the use of prepositions) in English to loss of case-marking distinctions or syncretism which led to a (nearly) complete absence of case morphology (see eg Kellner (1892: § 483 and passim; Meillet 1949: 187–92; Mossé 1952: § 106, etc.). However, these traditional treatments do not offer explanations of the specific mechanisms involved, and as Jespersen (1894: § 75) pointed out, the idea that fixed word order “stepped in” to make up for lost inflections suffers from the problem that “we should have to imagine an intervening period in which the mutual relations of words were indicated in neither way; a period, in fact, in which speech would be unintelligible.” Jespersen concludes that “a fixed word order was the prius, or cause, and grammatical simplification, the posterus, or effect”. More recently, much attention has been devoted within generative frameworks to formal treatments of the interaction of case and constituent order in universal grammar (UG) and some very precise mechanisms have been proposed to link reduced case morphology with more fixed word order; see the introduction to Lightfoot (2002) for a useful overview. These proposals are an advance over the traditional discussions in making some explicit predictions which can be tested.Much recent attention has focused on the shift from OV to VO order, a topic which is dealt with elsewhere in this volume. In this chapter, we will not concern ourselves with the possible role of the loss of case marking in this shift, but will rather focus on the disappearance of two orders which are found in OE but not in the Middle English (ME) period. The first is the fixing of the order of two bare nominal NP/DP objects of ditransitive verbs. While this order