Objects

Syntax 165

However, the difference is not always clear-cut, and for many verbs allowing only one case option, the specific form taken was probably to a large extent conventional rather than semantically motivated (though the respective roles of convention and semantic motivation need not have been the same for all verbs or verb classes; Mitchell, 1985: §1082 gives a convenient overview of the meaning classes that verbs governing the dative and genitive tend to fall into). Whatever the exact system in OE may have been, the disappearance of the formal accusative–dative distinction in all nouns and pronouns after the OE period meant that contrasts as in (73a,b) could no longer be made. Instead, it became the rule for any object to have the objective form (i.e. the base form of any ordinary noun and the object form of the personal pronoun).

From the early ME period onwards, there was also an increase in the use of verb–preposition–complement collocations where OE might have had a verb– object collocation. Thus the OE verb ofsendan, seen in (74), has disappeared from the language, but its function has been taken over by the prepositional verb send for.

In ModE, this development has continued to the point where there are systematic pairs like hit/stab/poke versus hit at/stab at/poke at or live/feed/subsist versus live on/feed on/subsist on. These modern pairs often express distinctions that were made in OE by means of prefixation to the verb (thus OE geotan means ‘to pour (sth.)’, but begeotan means ‘to pour (sth.) over (sth./sb.)’; see also Chapter 4). In addition, the language has many loanwords from Romance, which helped to express meanings that might have been expressed differently – or not at all – in OE; see also Chapter 4. The changes in this area are therefore most profitably viewed as consisting in a shift in general methods of meaning-making rather than the replacement of individual forms by others.

Another long-term development in meaning-making involving the object concerns the use of ‘light-verb combinations’ like take a look, do a somersault, make an attempt and have lunch, where the meaning of the combination appears to be located primarily in the (usually indefinite) object noun phrase rather than in the verb. Some combinations like this are attested in OE (e.g. andan habban ‘have envy’, rest habban ‘take rest’ and blod lætan ‘let blood’); more appear in ME, also with nouns preceded by the indefinite article, such as take a nap, make a leap (see the data in Iglesias-R´abade, 2001 and Moralejo-G´arate, 2001); and, from 1500, there is a further steady increase in the types and tokens of these collocations. Their high frequency in PDE is therefore the result of a gradual process stretching over more than a thousand years.

Syntax 167

The alternation between experiencer-as-subject and source-as-subject is in itself remarkable enough; it is complemented by a third pattern which has no overt subject at all, and oblique marking of both experiencer and source. Example sentences with the impersonal verb ofhreowan ‘pity/repent’ are given in (79a–c).

Not all OE impersonal verbs occur in all three constructions, and some verbs show a clear preference for one or the other pattern, but these differences appear to be lexical rather than grammatical.

In cases where the E X P E R I E N C E R is in the dative and the S O U R C E is itself a clause, dummy hit sometimes fills the subject slot (compare Section 3.4.1), as shown in (80), although the empty subject variant as in (81) is much more usual.

What happened to this OE system of impersonal verbs? In ME, the system survives but shows signs of a slow loss of productivity. Several of the relevant OE verbs were lost from the language, including those in (80) and (81), and the remainder tend to become restricted to one or the other pattern, with other lexical items, often from French (e.g. please), filling the gaps. Nevertheless, the three patterns of (78) remain (though without any formal distinction between accusative and dative, and without genitive marking of any arguments), and there are some new additions to the class of impersonal verbs. These include some instances of the native English modals ought and must, as in (82), but also loans from French, such as marvel in (83):

(82)us must worschepyn hym

‘We must worship him.’ (Dives and Pauper I 206.34)

(83)me marvaylyyth mychil why God euyth wyckyd men swych power

‘I wonder a lot why God gives wicked men such power.’

(Dives and Pauper I.1 336.2)