Topicalization and Stress Clash Avoidance in the History of English

Augustin Speyer

Published by De Gruyter Mouton 2010

Topicalization and Stress Clash Avoidance in the History of English

Augustin Speyer

Volume 69 in the series Topics in English Linguistics [TiEL]

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110220247

Overview
Contents

About this book

The book is concerned with the interaction of syntax, information structure and prosody in the history of English, demonstrating this with a case study of object topicalization. The approach is data-oriented, using material from syntactically parsed digital corpora of Old, Middle and Early Modern English, which serve as a solid foundation for conclusions.

The use of object topicalization underwent a sharp decline from Old English until today. In the present volume, a basic prosodic well-formedness condition, the Clash Avoidance Requirement, is identified as the main factor for this change. With the loss of V2-syntax, object topicalization led more easily to cases in which two focalized phrases, the topicalized object and the subject, are adjacent. The two focal accents on these phrases would produce a clash, thus violating the Clash Avoidance Requirement. In order to circumvent this, the use of topicalization in critical cases is avoided.

The Clash Avoidance Requirement is highly relevant also today, as experimental data on English and German show. Further, the Clash Avoidance Requirement helps to explain the well-known syntactic structure of the left periphery in Old English. An analysis positing two subject positions is defended in the study. The variation of these subject positions is shown to depend not on pronominal vs. lexical status of the subject but on information structural properties.

Author / Editor information

Augustin Speyer, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	i
Contents Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
1. Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Topicalization in Middle and Modern English – A prosodically induced change in syntactic usage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	24
3. The Clash Avoidance Requirement in Modern English and German Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	80
4. Phonological Aspects of the Clash Avoidance Requirement Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
5. Topicalization and the Clash Avoidance Requirement in Old English Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
6. Concluding remarks Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	234
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
Audience: Linguists, English Language Historians and General Linguists, Historical Syntacticians and Phonologists, Students
Pages
- Front matter: 9
- Main content: 286
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 19
- Tables: 64
Keywords: English /Language; Prosody; Language Change

eBook

Published: March 26, 2010
ISBN: 9783110220247

Hardcover

Published: March 17, 2010
ISBN: 9783110220230