Morphosyntactic Variation in Northern English: the Northern Subject Rule, Its Origins and Early History
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Morphosyntactic variation in Northern English: The Northern Subject Rule, its origins and early history 2 Published by LOT phone: +31 30 253 6006 Trans 10 3512 JK Utrecht e-mail: [email protected] The Netherlands http://www.lotschool.nl Cover illustration: detail of limestone pavement at Malham Cove, Yorkshire, by Alfke de Haas ISBN: 978-94-6093-074-4 NUR 616 Copyright © 2011: Nynke K. de Haas. All rights reserved. 3 Morphosyntactic variation in Northern English: The Northern Subject Rule, its origins and early history Een wetenschappelijke proeve op het gebied van de Letteren Proefschrift ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen op gezag van de rector magnificus prof. mr. S.C.J.J. Kortmann, volgens besluit van het College van Decanen in het openbaar te verdedigen op woensdag 14 december 2011 om 15.30 uur precies door Nynke Karola de Haas geboren op 4 oktober 1979 te Leiden 4 Promotor: Prof.dr. A.M.C van Kemenade Copromotor: Dr. B.L.J. Los Manuscriptcommissie: Prof.dr. R.W.N.M. van Hout (voorzitter) Prof.dr. L.C.J. Barbiers (Meertens Instituut) Dr. W.A.M. van der Wurff (Newcastle University) 5 Acknowledgements These acknowledgements have been a long time in the making. More than six- and-a-half years ago, when I was gleefully engaged in doing research for my MA thesis and dragging my feet about writing it all down, my supervisor, Ans van Kemenade, offered me the wonderful opportunity to continue doing research as a PhD candidate. Ans, you have been a steady guide through the sometimes confusing web of options that is research and very pleasant to work with, not to mention a repeated intermediary for job opportunities. Dankjewel! Bettelou, you joined my supervisory team a little later and weren’t involved quite as closely, but you were always there when I needed advice of mental support and your comments were invaluable, especially in the final stages of my writing process. Dankjewel! Gentlemen of the manuscript committee, Roeland van Hout, Wim van der Wurff and Sjef Barbiers, thank you for taking the time to read everything and for your (sometimes minute) comments. Roeland, thank you for your guidance in statistics as well. I’ve been fortunate to have been taught by a number of inspiring, friendly and supportive lecturers; among them, Jan-Wouter Zwart deserves special mention. Dank! A number of people have helped this project along at various stages by providing information, copies of their work or suggestions, among them William Badecker, Michael Benskin, Derek Britton, Marcelle Cole, Karen Corrigan, Graham Isaac, Juhani Klemola, Margaret Laing, Stephen Laker, Roger Lass, Peter Schrijver, Sali Tagliamonte, Keith Williamson, David Willis and Ellen Woolford. Thank you! Lukas Pietsch, thank you for writing your dissertation on the (modern) NSR, thus providing me with invaluable information, and for taking the time to correspond with me and give me the benefit of an outsider’s perspective on my early syntactic analyses. And, of course, danke schön for the sleek version of your map. Eva Pantelakis, thank you for coaching me for a while - you really made a difference. 6 Writing this thesis would have been much less fun if I hadn’t been surrounded by friendly colleagues for most of the time. Eric Kellerman, Thea Steeghs, Sándor Chardonnens, Monique van der Haagen, Pieter de Haan, and other friendly people of the Radboud English department, thank you for being there! Rosanne Hebing and Gea Dreschler, ditto and thanks for all the fun chats. Dear (ex-) office mates (Marion Elenbaas, Monique Tangelder, Michel Verhagen, Anne Ribbert and Griet Coupé, Astrid Bracke, Maarten van Gageldonk, Doris Einsiedler), thanks for being around. Marion, you were my PhD candidate role model when I first started out (and long after). Maarten, it’s good to have you, dinners at your place are especially relaxed, and thank you so much for being a transatlantic photoshop wizard. Astrid, Viking princess, thank you for listening to my rants, worries and inconsequential trivia, and especially for taking care of my manuscripts when they were in need and I was due at the airport. Anne and Griet, you were my work BFFs before Astrid arrived, and general BFFs by now; it’s good to know you’re always there. Griet, you’re the most elegant and warm- hearted human jukebox I know, and our default dinner destination together with Bas (thank you as well, Bas!). Anne, you are at once incredibly empathetic and frequently recalcitrant in your own unparalleled way. You rock :). Ladies, long may the dinner nights continue! Suzanne van der Feest, we only shared work lunches for a brief time, but you’ve become very important to me since and I hope to continue to see a lot of you. You are fiercely sweet and always bring a smile to my face :). Other PhD candidates and junior researchers who have made my life more fun over the years, over talks, dinners or drinks are Dennis Kersten, Rinske Koehorst, Martijn Stevens, Erie Tanja, and the Cultuur Café linguists: Rik van Gijn, Folkert de Vriend, Peter de Swart, Lotte Hogeweg, Sander Lestrade, Karen Keune, and Eric Sanders. Gertjan Tommel, Inge Oudsen, and other fellow PhD representatives, it was a pleasure working with you. Gertjan, it’s good to have you close by! The Diachronic Dialogue group has also been a positive addition, and some of you have become real friends. I’d especially like to thank Pepijn Hendriks (you are a wonderful partner in crime for linguistic, map- 7 related and train-related geekery; I hope we can translate that into a trip sometime soon), Robert Cloutier, Frank Landsbergen, Evie Coussé, Tine Defour and Froukje Henstra. I’m so glad we have facebook, so I can still feel I have you around. Victorina González Diaz, I wish you lived closer by. Hanneke Luth, thanks for the virtual shoulder to cry on during some last-minute stress. Albert Deuzeman, thanks for writing such inspiring acknowledgements; I sometimes miss our breakfasts together. Elise Darmon, thank you for showing me how to defend a thesis in style, and for your continued friendship. Jacob Vosmaer, you were my virtual office mate for a while and are still a really good friend. Your personal development has really been impressive. I’m so glad you opened up! Ivana Brasileiro Reis Pereira, I’m still glad to have you now that you’re a neighbour instead of part of my extended in-laws. I love your ironic sense of humour and look forward to seeing more of it over tea. Dirk Bakker (there’s no one like you, and I’m glad we’re now both done!), Edzo Botjes, Erik Cats, Hidde Kross, Femke Schat (Hotel Femke): thank you for the fun we’ve had so far. Wieke van ‘t Veer, Eliza ten Kate and Koen Sebregts: my day-to-day life wouldn’t be nearly as much fun without you on facebook, and I hope to see a lot of you in real life, too. Diana Groe, your blog helped pull me through a difficult time and I’m grateful to have you as a friend. Dear family members, thank you too! Papa and Janny, thank you for all your support and for being a safe haven. Papa, I love your plan to read this thesis! Mama, thanks for all your love. Alfke and Max, thanks for being there and being fun. Alfke, thank you for proofreading as much as you could! As always, the most important person will be thanked last. Asbjørn, I never thought I would end up with you and our relationship still feels like a bit of a miracle. Thank you for saying gambatte and for being utterly awesome! 8 9 Contents Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................. 13 1.1 The Northern Subject Rule............................................................................................ 13 1.2 What we need to know about the early NSR......................................................... 14 1.3 Method ................................................................................................................................... 19 1.4 Results .................................................................................................................................... 21 1.5 Overview ............................................................................................................................... 23 Chapter 2 – Historical and dialectological background ................................................ 25 2.1 Introduction......................................................................................................................... 25 2.2 Early Northern English: origins and contact with other dialects ................ 25 2.2.1 The origins of the Anglo-Saxons and (Northern) Old English .............. 25 2.2.2 Northumbrian and other Old English dialects ............................................ 30 2.2.3 Northern Middle English and other ME dialects ........................................ 33 2.3 Contact with Brythonic and Old Norse .................................................................... 34 2.3.1 Population size and genetic evidence ............................................................. 35 2.3.2 Contact with Brythonic Celtic ............................................................................. 41 2.3.3 Contact with Old Norse .......................................................................................... 50 2.4 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................ 58 Chapter 3 – The NSR in a diachronic and dialectological perspective ................... 59 3.1 Introduction........................................................................................................................