The constituent order of late Old English and early Middle English relative clauses

This study examines constituent order in Old and Middle English relative clauses and how this was altered by Anglo-Scandinavian language contact. Modern English has a fixed word order in which the finite verb directly follows the subject. In Old English, however, this was much more flexible. One possible explanation for this change is the language contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians between the 8th and 10th centuries. During this period, following initial raids by the Scandinavians, settlements were established, particularly in the north-east of England. In the area that later became known as the Danelaw, a society developed in which Anglo-Saxons and Scandinavians lived together and communicated. It is argued that linguistic contact between the Anglo-Saxons and the Scandinavians settling in northern England led to a simpler word order. Tomlin demonstrates that languages with certain sentence structure principles are cognitively easier to grasp. This is achieved primarily through the SVO constituent order used in English today. Stockwell and Minkova argue that SVO order first appeared in subordinate clauses and was only later adopted in main clauses. They attribute this to a reanalysis whereby the finite verb came to be associated with the subject rather than with the end of the sentence. Earlier studies by the author showed that relative clauses adopted the modern sentence structure earlier than other sentence types, particularly in Northern England. The empirical section demonstrates that, during the period under investigation, the tendency towards SVO constituent order was primarily found in the north-east of England, the region where Scandinavians settled and where language contact occurred. To this end, a corpus of prose texts from the years 950–1150, drawn from various regions of England, was analysed. A total of 280 relative clauses were analysed. It was found that 48% of the relative clauses have the finite verb in the final position (V-F), 24% exhibit an SVO order (V-3) and 16% can be assigned to both structures. The relative clauses were examined for various linguistic factors that might influence constituent order (relative pronouns, restrictiveness, length). It appears that the only variable that seems to influence the constituent order of relative clauses is the region in which the texts were produced. In the area of the former Danelaw, the constituent order commonly used today is found more frequently (33% V-F, 31% V-3, 17% both) than in the other regions (61% V-F, 19% V-3, 15% both). This suggests that language contact is a decisive factor.