The origins of the Northern Subject Rule
-
Nynke de Haas
Abstract
This paper explores the possible origins of the Northern Subject Rule (NSR). In this morphosyntactic pattern, found in Northern Middle English, present-tense verbal inflection varies according to the type of subject (pronoun or noun) and (non-)adjacency of the subject to the verb. I argue that rather than languageinternal developments in the vein of Pietsch (2005), processes of language contact between early English and the Cumbrian variety of Brythonic Celtic are a likely source for the NSR. I develop a scenario for this change, based on the parallel Brythonic pattern of anti-agreement and early English differential subject positions. The Old English Lindisfarne Glosses and several Northern Middle English texts provide initial evidence in favour of this hypothesis.
Abstract
This paper explores the possible origins of the Northern Subject Rule (NSR). In this morphosyntactic pattern, found in Northern Middle English, present-tense verbal inflection varies according to the type of subject (pronoun or noun) and (non-)adjacency of the subject to the verb. I argue that rather than languageinternal developments in the vein of Pietsch (2005), processes of language contact between early English and the Cumbrian variety of Brythonic Celtic are a likely source for the NSR. I develop a scenario for this change, based on the parallel Brythonic pattern of anti-agreement and early English differential subject positions. The Old English Lindisfarne Glosses and several Northern Middle English texts provide initial evidence in favour of this hypothesis.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Introduction ix
- The early Middle English scribe: Sprach er wie er schrieb? 1
- Essex/Suffolk scribes and their language in fifteenth-century London 45
- Middle English word geography: Methodology and applications illustrated 67
- Northern Middle English: Towards telling the full story 91
- The origins of the Northern Subject Rule 111
- Dynamic dialectology and social networks 131
- The Celtic hypothesis hasn't gone away: New perspectives on old debates 153
- On the trail of "intolerable Scoto-Hibernic jargon": Ulster English, Irish English and dialect hygiene in William Carleton's Traits and stories of the Irish peasantry (First Series, 1830) 171
- Exceptions to sound change and external motivation 185
- Index of subjects 195
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Introduction ix
- The early Middle English scribe: Sprach er wie er schrieb? 1
- Essex/Suffolk scribes and their language in fifteenth-century London 45
- Middle English word geography: Methodology and applications illustrated 67
- Northern Middle English: Towards telling the full story 91
- The origins of the Northern Subject Rule 111
- Dynamic dialectology and social networks 131
- The Celtic hypothesis hasn't gone away: New perspectives on old debates 153
- On the trail of "intolerable Scoto-Hibernic jargon": Ulster English, Irish English and dialect hygiene in William Carleton's Traits and stories of the Irish peasantry (First Series, 1830) 171
- Exceptions to sound change and external motivation 185
- Index of subjects 195
