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Article: Negative-initial sentences in Old and Middle English.
- Article from:
- Studia Anglica Posnaniensia: international review of English Studies
- Article date:
- January 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 Adam Mickiewicz University. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Beside other things best left unnamed here, I share with Roger a love for historical puzzles and scenarios. Therefore, a small contribution on a little ripple in the verb syntax of the oldest English seems a fitting tribute in the context of this volume.
There is an intriguing and seemingly minor syntactic difference between Old English and Middle English. (1) In Old English negated main clauses, there are two principal word order patterns: in the first and very dominant pattern, the negated finite verb comes first, as illustrated in (1); in the second, the subject comes first, immediately followed by the negated finite verb, as illustrated in (2). It is, ...