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10. on the Rise of 'Celtic' Syntax in Middle English*! 10. On the rise of 'Celtic' syntax in Middle English*! Abstract This chapter deals with the loss of the affected possessor construction (external possessor construction, sympathetic dative) in the history of English. First it is shown that Old English made a formal and semantic distinction between coding the possessor noun-phrase externally in the dative and noun-phrase internally in the genitive, as all other old Indo-European languages do, and as German does to the present day. [Sie schlug ihm (dative) den Kopfab 'she cut off his head (he: a living person)' vs. Sie schlug seinen (genitive) Kopf ab (he/it: a corpse, a statue, etc.),. Then the loss of this distinction in Middle English is demonstrated. Several possi­ ble reasons for this development are discussed and rejected, and the fact is pointed out that the only other languages spoken in Europe (beside Lezgian and Turkish) not making the distinction are the Insular Celtic languages. This leads to the con­ clusion that English lost the distinction because the Celtic substrate population did not acquire it in the language shift to Anglo-Saxon. Finally the question how Insular Celtic itself lost the distinction is answered analogously, viz. by the Se­ mitic substrate population's not learning to make the distinction in the language shift to Celtic (which then still made the inherited distinction), all the old Semitic languages only knowing the internal genitive possessor construction. 10.1. Typological change and the periodization of English Linguists studying the history of English from a typological point of view have demonstrated that Old English and Modern English represent two different linguistic types." It follows that Middle English represents a transitional phase during which the language reflected in Old English writing was transformed into Modern English. Indeed, Middle English represents a period of rapid typological reorganization.3 My paper is addressed to the general question of how this typological transformation came about, a transformation which is unexpected on the evidence of written Old English and even written Early Middle English. Indeed, if this 1204 transformation were to be expected, Modern German should be in many ways like Modern English. As is well known, and as will be seen once again in this paper, it is not. Therefore, more must be 148 On the rise of 'Celtic' syntax in Middle English involved in the English typological transformation than normal, inter­ nally motivated language change. The title of this paper suggests where I see this additional motivation. 10.2. The specific topic of this paper Written Old English is a pure West Germanic language. Except for a number of specific sound changes, it was nearly identical to Continental Old Saxon. As for its syntax, students fluent both in English and Ger­ man, when studying Old English never fail to notice that Old English is much more similar to Modern Standard German than to Modern Eng­ lish. The reason is that, whereas Modern German continues essential West Germanic syntactic properties nearly unaltered, Modern English deviates in significant ways from Old West Germanic. The ways in which it devi­ ates make it, generally speaking, more similar to Insular Celtic, the histo­ rical Celtic languages, past and present, of the British Isles (including Ireland). Some of these features have long been identified: They are, as is indeed necessary for such identification, features that occur in Insular Celtic and English but are not reconstructable either for Proto-Celtic or for Proto-Germanic (or for Proto-Indo-European) and do not occur in any other known contact languages of English, such as the other Ger­ manic languages (especially the Scandinavian ones), Latin, and Norman French. In the context of European linguistics these syntactic features are, linguistically speaking, non-Indo-European and, geographically speaking, non-European. The question then is, "When and how did these 'Celtic' syntactic features arise in the history of English?" I will attempt to answer this question by concentrating on a single topic: the loss of noun-phrase-external dative possessors of the Old English type pa sticode him mon pa eagan ut (Orosius, late 9th c.) and their replacement by noun-phrase internal genitive possessors in Mod­ ern English, viz. then someone gouged out his eyes rather than the im­ possible *then someone gouged him the eyes out. This topic was recog­ nized as a scientific problem by Pokorny (1927-30: 16. 253). Pokorny observed that Modern English shared the loss of the external possessor construction with Celtic, as in his Welsh example Mi a dorrais ei ben with its internal possessor ei 'his/her' exactly as in the Modern English equivalent I cut off his head; and he suggested that this constructional identity should not be seen as accidental but as a consequence of lan­ guage contact between Celtic and English. r205 On the rise of 'Celtic' syntax in Middle English 149 10.3. "Celtic" as 'Insular Celtic' Before I begin discussing the question, I would like to draw attention to the meaning of the term "Celtic" in the present study. Unless where specified differently, the word means 'Celtic as developed in the British Isles', or 'Insular Celtic'. An important aspect of the term is that the properties of Celtic that matter in the present context are properties which are, in a strict sense, not Celtic. The original Celtic is a branch of Indo-European, and from what is known about the oldest Celtic on the Continent, and in traces even in the Isles, it was structurally very much an Indo-European language. E.g., Meid (1997: 9, 16) says about Proto­ Celtic: Da die Sprecher der inselkeltischen Sprachen jedoch in vorgeschichtlicher Zeit (spatestens ab dem 6. lahrhundert v. Chr., doch in den Anfangen wahrscheinlich schon frUher) yom europaischen Festland, wo sich das Keltentum ethnisch, kul­ turell und sprachlich bis zum Ende der Hallstadt-Zeit ausgebildet haUe, auf die Britischen Inseln eingewandert sind, mUnden auch die inselkeltischen Dialekte in einem 'Urkeltisch', das nach Lage der Dinge jedenfalls auf dem europaischen Festland und dort - als ein Idiom des spaten Indogermanischen - in nachster Nahe des spateren Germanischen und Italischen beheimatet war. Das 'Urkeltische' war, wie schon bemerkt, ein Dialekt des Spatindoger­ manischen westlicher Pragung, nicht unahnlich jenen Dialekten, aus denen sich spater die italischen Sprachen (Latein, Oskisch-Umbrisch) und das Germanische herausbildeten. 4 It is the Celtic of the Isles, Insular Celtic, which has developed the pecu­ liar properties whose reflexes in English have been the subject of two recent conferences (cf. Tristram led.] 1997, 2000). Genuinely Celtic influences, inasmuch as they would be syntactic influences of one old Indo-European language upon another old Indo-European language, would probably be hard to identify and certainly difficult to prove, be­ cause shared syntactic properties between such languages could easily be interpreted as shared inheritance, or as shared but independent inno­ vations resulting from identical structural dispositions. However, certain syntactic properties shared by English and Celtic are not of this nature, as will be seen in this paper; they are not Indo-European. This makes them identifiable, and r206 this makes it possible to argue in favor of influence of one of the languages upon the other, viz. of Celtic upon English. 150 On the rise of 'Celtic' syntax in Middle English 10.4. External and internal possessor constructions in English As mentioned in § 10.2, English lost the external construction of pos­ sessors, viz. of so-called affected possessors, by means of the dative (the "sympathetic dative"), and generalized the use of noun-phrase internal genitival possessors.s 10.4.1. Illustrating the external possessor construction Compare English sentences such as those in (1) to (5) to their German equivalents: ( 1) The queen cut off the king's head. ? Die Kdnigin schlug des Kdnigs Kopj abo ? Die Konigin schlug den Kopj des Konigs abo Die Kdnigin schlug dem Konig den Kopj abo the queen cut the king (OAT) the head (ACC) off (2) The queen had the king's head cut off. ?Die Konigin liejJ des Kdnigs Kopj abschlagen. ?Die Konigin liejJ den Kopj des Kdnigs abschlagen. Die Kdnigin liejJ dem Konig den Kopj abschlagen. the queen had the king (OAT) the head (ACC) off-cut (3) Mary broke his arm. ?Maria brach seinen Arm. Maria brach ihm den Arm. Mary broke him (OAT) the arm (ACC) 1207 (4) Mary broke her neck. ?Maria brach ihr Genick. Maria brach sich das Genick. MarYi broke herself (OAT)j the neck (ACC) (i = j) Maria brach ihr das Genick. Maryi broke her (OAT)j the neck (ACC) (i ::f. j) (5) Vincent cut off one oj his ears. ?Vincent schnUt eins seiner Ohren abo Vincent schnUt sich ein Ohr abo Vincentj cut himself (OAT)j an ear (ACC) off (i = j) Vincent schnitt ihm ein Ohr abo Vincenti cut him (OAT)j an ear (ACC) off (i::f. j) On the rise of 'Celtic' syntax in Middle English 151 The use of the possessive genitive here appears absolutely normal in a Modern English perspective. But it does not in a German perspective. As a matter of fact, in the intended sense the genitive is impossible in Ger­ man; it would imply that the individual referred to is not an affected possessor of the possessed object. For example, (6) could be used as a pronominalizing variant of (7), the understanding being that corpses and statues are not affected as such if their ears are cut off - only their ears are. (6) Vincent schnitt eins seiner Ohren abo Vincent cut off one of his/its ears. (7) ?Vincent schnitt ein Ohr des Leichnams abo ?Vincent schnitt ein Ohr des Standbilds abo Vincent cut off an ear of the corpse/of the statue.
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