Richard Ingham
Using a large database of familial correspondence, it is shown that NP positions
in 15th-century English were essentially those of Present-Day English, contrary
to claims that the syntactic structure of Late Middle English still had a position
for preposed object NPs, and that 15th-century English possessed multiple subject
constructions with expletive there. The only form of OV order to remain productive
in familial correspondence of this period occurred in the configuration: finite
verb–negated NP–lexical verb. Neither ordinary NPs nor other quantified
NPs were productive in this configuration. It is also shown that negated subject
NPs, but not ordinary or other quantified subject types, were commonly found
in multiple subject constructions. All these phenomena can be conveniently accounted
for in terms of movement to a Neg projection (Haegeman, 1995). A theoretical
account of noncanonical subject and object positions in terms of Neg movement
thus receives strong empirical support from the distribution of argument NPs
in 15th century English.
[Language Variation and Change (2002), 14:291-322 ]