Open AccessA contribution to the problem of word-order in old and middle English
Author(s) -
Anton Grad
Publication year - 1955
Publication title -
linguistica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.134
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2350-420X
pISSN - 0024-3922
DOI - 10.4312/linguistica.1.1.11-27
Subject(s) - word order , german , inversion (geology) , subject (documents) , linguistics , old english , middle english , phenomenon , word (group theory) , order (exchange) , computer science , psychology , history , natural language processing , philosophy , paleontology , epistemology , finance , structural basin , library science , economics , biology
An interesting, though not very common phenomenon in CurrentEnglish word-order is afforded by the occurrence of the inverted subject(inverted word-order, VS) in declarative sentences1 which is, on the onehand, far less frequent than in German and Scandinavian languages2 —in this respect English goes parallel with French —, and, on the otherhand, also f a r less frequent than in Old and Middle English, both resortingto the inverted word-order in many cases in which it is 110 longeradmitted in Current English.3 Thus we meet — among other cases of itsuse in older English — the inversion of the subject especially in theso-called introduced declarative sentences, e.g.