MA English - Thesis 1990
Transcript of MA English - Thesis 1990
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Archaic and Innovative Word Order Patterns in
Late Middle English Prose
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree Master of Arts
in English
by
Denise Therese Perez
1990
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To My Father
[In Memoriam]
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
DEDICATION………………………………………………………… iii
LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………… vi
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………… vii
ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS THESIS………………………… viii
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………… ix
NOTES……………………………………………………………………. xi
Chapter
1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………… 2
Context of the Problem….………………………………… 2
Research Questions…………………………………………4
The Methodology………………………………………… 5
Notes…………………………………………………… 6
2. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………… 8
Theoretical Perspective: The “Modern” View………………8
The “Archaic” Rebuttal……………………………………13
Inversion……………………………………………… 14
Inversion in Modern English………………………………15
VS in Old and Middle English………………………… 18
Verb Second……………………………………………….22
Notes………………………………………………………27
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3. MANDEVILLE’S TRAVELS: THE WORK…………… 33
The Tales of the Travels………………………………… 37
Mandeville’s Literary Value……………………………… 40
The Linguistic Appeal of Mandeville’s Travels……………..41
Notes.........................................................................................…. 43
4. DATA ANALYSIS……………………………………… 46
Main Clauses……………………………………………….46
Conjunctive Influence……………………………………. 51
“For”………………………………………………………55
Conjunctive Adverbs………………………………………58
Adverbial Influence…………………………………… 58
Existential Clauses…………………………………………63
Other Archaic Orders…………………………………… 63
Summary………………………………………………… 64
Subordinate Clauses………………………………………. 66
Conclusion…………………………………………………67
Notes………………………………………………………71
REFERENCES…………………………………………………… 71
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List of Tables
Page
1 Independent Clauses, No Pre-position…………………………... 47
2 Conjunctive Influence…………………………………………… 52
3 “For”……………………………………………………………. 56
4 “For” in the Peterborough Chronicle……………………………. 57
5 Adverbial Influence……………………………………………… 58
6 Adverbial Breakdown……………………………………………. 61
7 Summary of Word Order Patterns……………………………….. 65
8 Subordinate Clauses……………………………………………… 66
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all three members of
my committee, Dr. Henry A. Kelly, Dr. Edward I. Condren, and Dr. Donka
Minkova.
Most especially, my gratitude goes out to the chair of my committee,
Dr. Donka Minkova, for her unfailing patience, support, and guidance. It was
she who first alerted me to this topic and gave me the confidence to pursue it.
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Abbreviations Used in this Thesis
Original Sources
ASC = Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
PC = Peterborough Chronicle
Other Sources
EME = Early Middle English
LME = Late Middle English
ME = Middle English
OE = Old English
S = Subject
V = Verb
V2 = Verb Second
V3 = Verb Third
Vf = Verb Final
WO = Word Order
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ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS
Archaic and Innovative Word Order Patterns
in Late Middle English Prose
by
Denise Therese Perez
Master of Arts in English
University of California, Los Angeles, 1990
Professor Donka Minkova, Chair
The purpose of this study is twofold. First, as a specimen of field work
it seeks, by close syntactic analysis, to discover more about the language of a
late medieval text in which few recent scholars have furrowed. Secondly I
wish to relate – in a very tentative manner – the data from this study with
current theories of word order as they relate to Middle English. The subject
of my analysis is Mandeville’s Travels.
Following examination of this fourteenth century text, a corpus
consisting of 8,115 full clauses, my findings are as follows:
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1. Despite its high percentage of SVX patterns, Mandeville’s Travels
exhibits a very high percentage of inversions, something Bean’s early SVX
hypothesis could not have predicted. This seems to lend support to Kenade’s
OE V2 hypothesis, and to her scenario of V2 to SVX reanalysis at about 1400.
2. The equally surprising discovery in this text of brace clauses, OVS,
and SOV word orders, though few, further suggests that some other principle
besides V3 was at work in Old and Early Middle English.
3. Dependent clauses in Mandeville, as in Bean’s study of ASC, show a
much higher percentage of modern word order than independent clauses. As
we will see later, this has its own set of theoretical consequences.
Conclusion: Given the many archaic word orders in Mandeville which
occur alongside the modern ones, the entire idea that either “early” or “late”
Middle English could be syntactically “identical” to Modern English must be
abandoned. Instead, the data of this study reinforces Mitchell’s insistence on
the original meaning of the term “Middle English,” namely: a transitional
period in the history of English. (1)
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NOTES
1) Bruce Mitchell, “Syntax and Word Order in the Peterborough Chronicle
1122-1154,” (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 65) 143.
Old English began as a verb final language and changed toward basic subject-
verb-complement order during the Old English period, becoming predominately
identical to Modern English in the Early Middle English Period. (1)
Marion Bean (1976)
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Chapter 1
INTRODUCTION
Context of the Problem
It is common knowledge that English, in contrast to all of its Germanic
sister languages, has struck a very different path in terms of word order. Thus
while German, Frisian and Dutch are verb-final in subordinate clauses and
verb second in main clauses; and while the Scandinavian languages are at least
still verb second in main clauses, English alone is verb third throughout. (2)
This peculiar situation has raised numerous questions. One – why English
followed such a radical path in the first place – is still a mystery. Another,
whether English ever did conform to the archaic Germanic V2 constraint, is
still disputed. If it did, as Kemenade has recently suggested, then the next
question becomes: exactly when did English shift from V2 to V3? For her
part, Kemenade posits the approximate year at 1400. On the other hand, if
English never did pass through a V2 stage, how can one explain the often high
number of inversions which did occur in OE texts, and which do much to
contribute to their semblance of foreignness? This is Bean’s challenge in her
1976 dissertation, when she becomes the first scholar to posit the abrupt
grammaticization of modern V3 syntax during the OE period. The most
vexing part of the debate has always been the ambiguous nature of the early
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English data itself. Perhaps only now have linguistic methods become
sophisticated enough to get beyond the contradictory surface structures of Old
and Middle English and thus understand the “real” patterns of its underlying
deep structure.
The implications of the above unanswered questions and opposing
hypotheses are clear for any new analysis of Middle English word order.
Depending upon whichever hypothesis one adopts, the terms, for example,
“archaic” and “innovative” shift their meaning; indeed, one’s very classification
of word order types depends heavily upon one’s frame of reference.
Nonetheless, as Jeffers and Lehiste have said, word order theories are merely
“hypotheses” based on “statistically established tendencies.” (3) Statistics can
be explained away, but they will not go away. The following study represents
an attempt to collect some fresh statistics on the matter, to discover more
about English word order during a period little studied in this respect, namely
late Middle English; and by means of analysis of a document little studied in
the period, Mandeville’s Travels. This, in turn, might shed more light on which
theories better account for the data discovered, both in Middle and Old
English; for, indeed, in the end both reflect merely states of development in
the same language, one which ultimately evolves into Modern English.
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Before jumping into my analysis proper, however, I believe some
further discussion of the theoretical frameworks proposed above is in order,
especially if one is to understand the sometimes ambiguous data which English
word order studies often produce. I will thus introduce in Chapter Two a brief
overview and background of the above-mentioned hypothesis. I will also
mention the part these various theories play in the sometimes partisan debate
concerning Old and Middle English word order. Chapter Three will be
devoted to a short discussion on the Mandeville’s Travels document itself; and
the final chapter will consist of an in-depth analysis of the word order patterns
found here.
Research Questions
As mentioned earlier, the primary aim of this study is to provide further
data for discussion of the complex phenomenon which is Middle English word
order. Secondarily, however, on the basis of my analysis of a representative
ME text, two theoretical questions will also be considered:
1. Is Bean justified in her claim, based on her data from the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, that LOE word order becomes “predominantly identical” to
Modern English in the Early Middle English period? For if she is, then one
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should anticipate the WO of Mandeville’s Travels, a somewhat late ME text,
exactly to conform to Modern English norms. If she is not correct, then what
becomes of her V3 hypothesis?
2. If, on the other hand, Mandeville proves to have some archaic
features, how archaic will it be? Written in 1410 [which is to say ‘translated at
this time], how will it fare with Kemenade’s hypothesis of Verb-Second
disappearance at about 1400?
The Methodology
The methodology applied to this study is basic database analysis. Only
full clauses were counted for the present purposes, as conjunct clauses, devoid
as they are of the subject, are ambiguous entities. The conclusions to be drawn
in the following pages will be drawn on the basis of statistical compilation.
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NOTES
Chapter 1
1) Marion Bean, The Development of Word Order Patterns in Old English (Kent: Croom Helm Ltd., 1983) 13.
Bean is referring here to conclusions arrived at by “the consensus” of her sources; but, in her final pages it becomes clear that, essentially, Bean has merely reevaluated this claim and then reasserted it. “…the most probable direction of change in OE,” she says, expressing her own opinions, “does appear to have been directly from verb-final to verb-third (XSV). This conclusion will perhaps not startle the writers of OE grammars where such a direct change is generally assumed….” (p. 139)
2) Some definitions are probably appropriate here.
A) Verb-Second
In syntax, when any constituent (besides the verb) takes first place in a sentence, be it subject, prepositional phrase, direct or indirect object, or adverb; the verb must then occupy of necessity the second position. This constraint is still operative in Modern German; hence such sentences as
Sehr laut schrie der Polizist. Very loud screamed the policeman. i.e., The policeman screamed very loud.
This word order permits the subject verb pattern, but only if no other constituent precedes the subject – thus, providing that the verb again occupies second position. B) Verb-Third A phenomenon permissible in Modern English, an SVO language, but not modern German: When two syntactic constituents may precede the verb. Usually this includes the adverb and the subject, but in
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Modern English it may also include pre-posed direct and indirect objects. Thus:
Slowly the priest drinks the wine. To his girlfriend he gave a new dress.
Which, in a Verb-Second language would be rendered, for example, as:
Langsam trinkt der Priester den Wein. Slowly drinks the priest the wine. Zu seiner Freundin gab er einen neuen Kleid. To his girlfriend gave he a new dress.
C) Verb Final For example in Mod. German subordinate clauses, when the verb obligatorily takes final position in a clause. i.e.:
…da er zu dumm war. …because he too stupid was. i.e., because he was too stupid.
In Verb-Final languages, if perchance there are two verbs in a clause, either a modal + infinitive, or an auxiliary + past participle, then the positioning of the verb takes the order non-finite, finite at the end of the clause, i.e.:
…weil er die Bücher mitgenommen hat. …because he the books brought along has. i.e. …because he took the books with him.
3) Robert J. Jeffers and Ilse Lehiste, Principles and Methods for Historical linguists (Cambridge: MIT, 1986) 124.
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Chapter 2
LITERATURE REVIEW
Theoretical Perspective: The “Modern” View
In the great flourishing of studies on Old and Middle English word
order following Rothstein’s 1922 monograph on the Peterborough Chronicle
(1), it is interesting to note that two very distinct theoretical tendencies have
flourished as well. In common, both tend to focus on – and sometimes
blatantly privilege – one aspect of early English word order over another. The
more popular trend looks always in Old and Middle English texts for the
harbingers of Modern word order, and, depending on their percentages, they
are quick to deem such works as “modern.” Marion Bean’s pronouncements
on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle aptly reflect this perspective, which I call “the
modern view.”
This tendency crystallizes in the studies directly preceding Bean’s, in the
works of such scholars as Shannon (1964), Carlton (1970), Shores (1971), and
Gardner (1971). Otherwise unrelated, these historical linguists share one goal,
which is to challenge the idea that, because synthetic, OE word order was free.
Such a view, conventional up to then, is perhaps best represented by Fries,
who in a 1940 volume of Language claims that, in OE, “the order of words…
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has no bearing whatever upon … grammatical relations…. (2) Much the same
thing is asserted by Mossé five years later in his historic volume on OE:
“l’ordre dans lequel se placent les divers éléments de la phrase,” says he,
referring of course to OE, “est beaucoup plus libre qu’en anglais moderne, …”
(3) What both of these scholars have in common, as well as later scholars who
follow them in the fifties, (4) is an overly strict adherence to the notions of
“analycity” and “syntheticness” in grammars. In an analytic grammar, for these
scholars, word order alone is supposed to convey all sense of grammatical
relation, as for example, in Modern English. Thus the sentences “Mary hit the
man,” and the “The man hit Mary,” encode in English opposite meanings, due
entirely to their differing word orders. In contrary fashion, according to the
purist view, case morphology alone is burdened with the same task in synthetic
languages, thus allowing for a free word order. This is how many in Mossé’s
generation and before thought Old English functioned. (5) Thus Mossé’s
faith in OE inflection: “La flexion,” he says, again referring to OE, “est encore
suffisement riche pour permettre d’apercevoir le rôle joué par chacun de ces
éléments, quelle que soit sa place.” (6) What these scholars failed to
understand, or at least did not recognize to be happening in Old English, is
that such categories are merely generalizations, and that a language can be both
analytic and synthetic at the same time, perhaps in a transitional state. This is
exactly Carlton’s point as he nears the end of his study. After a meticulous
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gathering of data from the Old English Charters, Carlton arrives at the
following conclusions: “The syntax of Old English,” he says,
does not depend wholly upon one type of system for
indicating the relationship between words; it employs
both inflection and word order, which may operate
simultaneously or which may supplement each other. (7)
This, indeed, is the same conclusion reached by Gardner and others. In this
way one cans see the present fascination with OE word order patterns begin in
earnest, patterns which hitherto had been thought chaotic and erratic. In
Kemenade’s words, these mid-sixties’, early seventies’ studies recognize
“regularity” in OE word order patterns, and “conformity to particular types of
constructions.” (8) But they also do more than that. For the “regular”
patterns emphasized in these works are, for the most part, Modern English
patterns. Indeed, none of the other common OE word order patterns, such as
VS, S…V, Sv…V, etc. are given more than a page of space in these studies. (9)
Here, then, for the first time one finds the entire focus of a historical linguistic
monograph on the English language uniquely dedicated to establishing the
emergence of the modern SVO order in Old English.
While the above works are the first to focus so exclusively on the “early
SVO” hypothesis, and while they do so using a somewhat sophisticated
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linguistic framework, (10) it would be a mistake to think that earlier scholars
were not also well aware of the presence of the modern SVO order in a good
percentage of Old English sentences. If one ignores, for the moment, his
concepts of “natural” versus “artificial” word order arrangements, Kellner, for
example, notes as far back as 1892 that, “In fact, the oldest Teutonic dialects
exhibit, as a rule, this [i.e., SVO] arrangement” (11) Many years later in his
1958 dissertation, Frederick G. Cassidy notes the same thing. There he writes:
“From c. 900, when case-distinction is still strong, the word order patterns in
Modern English were already well established,” (12) he then goes on to say,
“By c.1050, then, word order in the major Old English pattern is already over
75% the same as the modern pattern.” (13) According to Mildred K. Magers,
says Carlton, referring to her 1943 dissertation, “SVO word order has a definite
trend established by the tenth century.” (14) As becomes evident, then, though
Bean has ventured furthest in her assertion that SVO was not only a tendency,
but in essence a full grammar by Late Old English, Bean’s overall thesis has
not been without precedent.
It would be interesting to think that, due to their prominence, the
above trend to single out modern word orders in Early English first begins in
the works of Anglo-Saxonists, only then to set off a similar tendency among
the medievalists. To look at the chronology, however, it may have been the
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other way around. Perhaps the earlier, bolder syntactic studies on Middle
English first influenced the Anglo-Saxon scholars to take another look at their
texts. In any event, if enthusiasm over modern word orders in OE was ever
high, it actually soars at times in studies of Middle English. R.W. Chambers,
for example, in his 1932 study of Richard Rolle’s sermons, states: “Anyone
who reads these tracts must see that despite their Fourteenth-century
Yorkshire dialect, we have in them Modern English prose.” (15) Chambers
makes a few concessions to the archaism of the text, but none are syntactic:
“The spelling and the form of the words,” he says, “sometimes the actual
vocabulary may be strange; but the arrangement of the words is modern.” (16)
In an identical vein Cecily Clark makes the following remarks in 1958 on the
Peterborough Chronicle, an even earlier ME text, indeed, one written in what
Schmidt would term not Middle but “transitional” English. (17) “…most of
the basic developments leading to Modern English,” states Clark, “are
illustrated in this brief text: Toller spoke truly when he described this language
as ‘almost that of today.’” (18) Then, echoing a sentiment which,
coincidentally, has also been expressed in relation to Mandeville’s Travels,
written some 200 years later, Clark goes on to say: “These Peterborough
annals are not merely one of the earliest Middle English documents; they are
also the earliest authentic example of that East Midland language which was to
be the ancestor of Modern Standard English.” (19)
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The “Archaic” Rebuttal
Bruce Mitchell, after reading Clark’s comments above, has declared
them “brief” and “misleading.” (20) In like manner, Japanese scholar Tadao
Kibouchi responds to Chambers’ study, that the latter is “open to criticism of
oversimplification.” (21) Herewith one sees the beginnings of a revisionist
reaction, then, to what these scholars, Kibouchi and Mitchell, consider to be
overhasty pronouncements in earlier works. Their intervention seems timely,
for one finds reintroduced in their studies a focus on various aspects of early
English syntax which, in other studies, are completely ignored. Both Kibouchi
and Mitchell’s general arguments largely attack the idea of “modernity” in pre-
modern stages of the language; and they deal exclusively with syntactic issues.
In the case of Mitchell, while he finds many points in which he agrees
with Clark, the former insists on a greater accuracy of definition. “If . . . the
Chronicle were truly modern,” he contends, then its percentage of SVO word
order “should be 100%.” (22) Kibouchi asserts nearly the same thing in his
counterstatement to Chambers’ article. Certainly, neither Richard Rolle’s
sermons nor the Peterborough Chronicle exhibit anything like 100% SVO
order. Lower even are the SVO percentages of the Old English Charters, the
Anglo Saxon Chronicle and other Old English works that have been variously
hailed as ‘modern.” On the basis of his analysis of the Peterborough
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Chronicle, Mitchell outlines in his study a more realistic set of categories for
scholars to keep in mind as they analyze works written in Old or Middle
English. One must look, he says, for those constructions which a) are
common to both Old and Modern English, b) which cannot occur in Modern
English, and c) which cannot occur in Old English. In the Peterborough
Chronicle, for example, Mitchell finds much from the first two categories but
none from the third. “Any claim to modernity,” Mitchell concludes, “must
therefore rest on the relative percentages of the different orders and on the
extent to which the constructions which were to survive have ousted the
others.” (23)
Inversion
At the unlikely center of the debate between Mitchell and Clark,
between Kibouchi and Chambers – indeed, the very stumbling block for any
scholar who feels tempted to posit an underlying SVO word order for either
Old or Middle English, lies the little understood syntactic phenomenon in
English called “inversion.” As defined by Barber, it is, “the use in English of a
word order in which the verb precedes the subject.” (24) This, in addition to
the verb-final, and brace construction, is the principle ‘archaic” pattern to
which Mitchell refers above; in high numbers, it is that which “cannot occur in
modern English”; and scholarly reactions to its existence vary widely.
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Gerritsen, for example, citing figures of 76% to 88% XVS orders in the Anglo
Saxon Chronicle asserts that the pattern is “gradually” declining. (25) On the
basis of figures she does not give she then claims that by the 14th century “it
occurs only rarely.” (26) Sweiczkowski, on the other hand, in his analysis of
Piers Plowman [1362-1387] asserts on the basis of figures from 18.5% to
22.6% in the document’s three parts, that “this striking proportion cannot be
without significance.” (27) Such interpretive confusion is typical among
historical linguists. Before delving into the problem further, though, perhaps it
might be better at this point if we turn, for a moment, to later periods of the
language, to see whatever became of this phenomenon, and what governs its
present-day use.
Inversion in Modern English
As Gerritsen notes, inversion has “almost completely” disappeared in
Modern English. (28) The ‘almost’ completely, however, is the interesting
point, for inversion is still permissible in present-day English. In a modern
American novel, for instance, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, (29)
we can find 13 instances of inversion in 100 pages. Thus, when Gerritsen
refers to a “disappearance of inversion,” perhaps she wishes to emphasize a
separate issue, that of grammaticization. (30) As Stockwell points out, (31)
inversion in modern English is not a “fully grammaticized” phenomenon,
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which means that, for the most part, it is not obligatory. If one considers those
few cases in which VS order is obligatory in English, after a certain word such
as “nor,” for example, one can best understand that phenomenon as a lexical
restriction rather than as a syntactic rule. If inversion in Modern English is not
syntactically obligatory, what then decides its use?
In Modern English, and, as we shall see, in both Old and Middle
English as well, it is clear that the distribution of verb-subject inversions is
related to the phenomenon of thematic “fronting,” that is, preposition of a
post verbal element in first position in a sentence. Different in kind from
glottis inversions which distinguish one kind of sentence from another (32)
such as the VS of a direct question versus the SV of a normal statement,
fronted elements have always been the chief catalyst for subject-verb inversion
in Germanic languages. In Old English almost any sentential element could be
fronted including direct object pronouns and direct objects, as Mitchell notes.
(33) Yet, even in Old English, as he says, “the frequency of VS is greatest in
simple sentences and principle clauses introduced by the ambiguous
adverb/conjunctions Þaer, Þanon, Þider, Þa, and Þonne. (34) In Middle
English as well, the presence of fronted “tertiaries” as Jespersen calls them –
adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc. – continue to trigger inversion, even until
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late in the period, while fronted direct and indirect objects increasingly become
disallowed.
In Modern English, according to Quirk et al., inversions possible
through thematic fronting become very limited (35) Schmidt in her schema
makes two main divisions: “full” inversions after a preposed constituent
versus “semi-inversions.” According to Schmidt, full inversions, or non-
auxiliary verb inversions, are obligatory in English after the following fronted
constituents: A) adverbs – of direction, succession, manner, time, place; B)
predicate nouns; C) predicate adjectives; D) fronted participles; E) “there”
sentences; F) 1. Direct quotes; and 2. onomatopoetic words (i.e., “Bang went
the gun”). After negative, restrictive, and affective adverbs only semi-
inversions are possible, and they are obligatory. Semi-inversions are optional
after such words as “so,” “such”; after “the… the,” and “if… so” correlates;
after preposed infinitives (36) and comparative “than” and “as” subordinators;
and finally, after other openers such as “more,” “particularly,” etc. (37)
A uniquely modern inversion, according to Jacobsson, is that which
occurs after the negative adjunct “nor,” which, he says, “[does] not go further
back than to 1590”; (38) Stockwell also mentions some obligatory inversions
new to Middle English; these are inversions after fronted present participles,
adjective phrases and “preposed abstract prepositional phrases.” (39) Part of
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the modernity of such inversions lies, no doubt, in the novelty of the
constructions themselves.
Armed with such facts about Modern English VS orders, one is in a
better position, I think, to see what is “modern” versus what “archaic” in
various pre-modern texts in terms of inversion. What is clear is that, in
Modern English at least, “inversion” is a highly constrained phenomenon, and
its use is heavily dependent upon the style of the speaker/writer. AS Schmidt
notes in her discussion of Modern English: “…we can observe,” she says,
“that the larger number of archaic Ss having inversion (i.e., in any sample of
Mod. E inverted sentences) is a clue that inversion is more restricted than it
was in slightly earlier stages of the language.” (40) This is an interesting
admission; for, if modern inversions are really ‘fossils’ of a less restricted prior
phenomenon, one must ask, ‘what are they fossils of? (41)
VS in Old and Middle English
Scholarly acknowledgement of and reaction to the VS phenomenon in
Early English varies widely. At one end of the interpretive spectrum one finds
complete silence or blatant misunderstanding of the pattern. Gardner, for
example, in her general study of Old English prose, makes almost no mention
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of it, beyond citing the surprisingly high statistics of 40.5% and 29.6% for its
occurrence in her material. What few comments Gardner then does proffer on
the subject – namely, that VS seems to be a signal of subordination (42) – are
completely erroneous. As Mitchell points out, in OE the contrary is true,
especially after the copy-correlatives Þa… Þa. Thus, S…V was the normal
order of subordination, while VS signaled main clause status. (43)
Rothstein [1922] and later Clark [1958] writing about the EME
Peterborough Chronicle simply deny the existence of inversion altogether. VS
patterns, says Clark, “are here abandoned in favour of word order nearer to
that of Modern English.” (44)
Shores, citing his own statistics on the work, disputes Clark’s
overreaching statement above. (45) But while Shores at least concedes the
existence of inversions in the Peterborough Chronicle, he then back-handedly
dismisses their importance. He does this by attributing any instance of the
GVS pattern that he finds as due to a loosely defined, catch-all agent of “style”
or “emphasis.” Thus, according to Shores, the reason for the high occurrence
of VS in the Peterborough Chronicle
probably lies. . . in the scribe’s feeling the force of
style and of certain formulaic patterns of manuscripts
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of earlier periods, even at this advanced stage of the
language. (46)
This is the approach Bean takes as well. In her study on the earlier
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Bean attributes inversion first to style, then to its
putative function as a narrative device; and finally to an unduly number of
existential “there” clauses which artificially inflate the VS percentages in her
data. All of these explanations are somehow unsatisfying. First of all, both
Shores and Bean invoke the concept of inversion-as-formulaic expression.
Such high numbers of formulaic “survivals,” however, as are cited by both
authors, would surely imply that at one time inversion must have been
obligatory. Shores, for his part, posits this mythical period as occurring before
the recording of the Peterborough Chronicle, thus saving his document from
the taint of archaism. Bean then, using the same argument, but discussing a
much earlier text, pushes the period even further back. Thus, the possible
Verb-Second constraint, that is, the living syntactic pattern of which OE
inversions are the putative fossils, becomes conveniently deposited to some
prehistoric stage in the language. This, coincidentally, would make English the
most precocious of its sister languages: for it would have had to both acquire
and drop the V2 constraint before the beginning of the ASC, thus, pre-700,
while its sister languages only begin acquiring it in the 6th century. (47)
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The other arguments conjured up by Bean to discount VS occurrences
in the ASC, those of inversion-as-narrative-device and inflation by “there”
sentences, will be discussed in more detail and kept in mind as we analyze
Mandeville’s Travels.
The most cogent treatment up to very recently of pre-Modern
inversions in English is that by Deborah Ann Schmidt. (48) IN her doctoral
dissertation, Schmidt argues that the difference between present and past
inversions in the language derive from a difference of function between the
two. Thus, in Mod.E, Schmidt claims, inversions are brought about when a
normal SV syntactic order would violate the normal discourse order of theme-
rheme. (49) Specifically, this happens when a subject is new and thus a-
thematic. In Old English, however, because she finds both thematic and
athematic subjects inverted, Schmidt concludes that some other principle is at
work: the principle of “subject-shift.” This is to say that in Old English, the
subject of any new clause, if it is different from the previous clause, tends to be
inverted.
While this analysis explains much in terms of Mod.E, with Old and
Middle English one can find many problems with it. First: if the basis of
inversion is, as Schmidt would contend, semantically motivated and not a
syntactic rule, then one has to account somehow for the invariably obligatory
22
inversions after ne and Þa in OE. As Schmidt says, “Inversion after Þa is
almost totally insensitive to the thematicity of the subject.” (50) Second:
While Schmidt claims that atopical, first mention subjects are the prime
candidates for inversion in OE, her data force her to include seven other
functional categories for inversion as well, such as topical, personal pronoun
subjects [the most unlikely to be inverted element in such a scenario]; topical
subjects: no topic shift; recent mention subjects…etc. In short, her categories
seem all-inclusive for Old English, and even more so for Middle English. (51)
Thus, even though exceptions are part of any linguistic rule, if too many
anomalies are possible, then it may be true that that rule has too little
explanatory power.
Verb-Second
What would seem most commonsense in explaining the high number
of inversions found in Old and Middle English, would simply be to assume
that English, like every other Germanic language once had a Verb-Second
constraint, which somehow disappeared; and that this V2 constraint was
operative in both Old and Middle English. Yet, it is precisely this hypothesis
that many of the above scholars have considered, evaluated and then
disregarded. It seems that there is too much counter-evidence to this theory:
too many instances of non-inversion when, under a verb-second constraint,
23
inversion should be obligatory. This is Mitchell’s conclusion in his great two-
volume grammar of Old English, where he concludes that V2 “is obviously no
more than a tendency.” (52) We’ve seen Bean’s disallowance of a
grammaticized rule for inversion in OE; Gerritsen, who bases her study on
Bean’s, declares that: “Inversion,” the phenomenon that distinguishes Modern
English from the other Modern Germanic languages, also sets apart OE from
the other Old and Middle Germanic languages.” (53) On new evidence,
however, a recent generative grammarian, Ans van Kemenade, is now
disputing this claim, which is based, she believes, on an uncritical acceptance of
OE surface structure.
Indeed, according to Kemenade’s new reasoning, fully two-thirds of the
seeming “exceptions” to an OE V2 constraint can be immediately removed if
one analyzes OE personal pronouns as “clitics.” Because there is so much
evidence indicating that this might indeed be the case, new optimism has
emerged. Stockwell, for his part, hails this new effort as “a principled account
that goes far beyond everything that has been done before….” (54)
Kemenade’s ideas are very innovative; for indeed, what happens in an analysis
of OE syntax, if all personal pronouns which occur before the verb, perhaps
both of them following an adverb, are not really syntactic constituents?
Ke3llner, again, as far back as 1892, noticed the strange behavior of direct
24
object pronouns: “We must distinguish,” he says, speaking of the position of
the object in the history of English, “between the object when a noun and
when a personal pronoun.” (55) What he and Mitchell did not yet realize,
according to Kemenade, is that personal pronoun subjects share in this strange
behavior, which is the tendency to always precede the verb, when full nouns
more often tend to follow it – especially, in the case of nominal subjects, when
a preposed constituent is involved. This, in an utterly simplified version, is
Kemenade’s argument. Unlike Gerritsen before her, Kemenade is inspired by
the similarities between Old English and its sister Germanic languages. As she
says:
…it is often remarked, quite loosely, that OE, being a
set of West Germanic…languages/dialects, resembles
Modern Dutch and Modern German far more closely
than Modern English does… But so far it seems, this
observation has not led to serious comparative work.
(56)
In an intricate and insightful comparison of these languages’ deep structures,
with a special focus on OE clitics and preposition stranding, Kemenade
suggests the following hypotheses: 1) that OE was a verb-final language,
“with rules of verb-fronting and topicalization, resulting in a Verb-Second
25
constraint”; (57) 2) that verb finality was lost at about 1200, and finally, 3) that
the verb-second constraint was lost about 1400, due to reanalysis of clitics as
full constituents.
On this basis of this, Minkova and Stockwell make further suggestions
pertaining to the chronology and causality of the syntactic changes leading
from Old to Middle to Modern English. (58) Thus these scholars suggest that:
4) subordinate clauses, shifting from verb-final to verb late in 1200, were the
first consistent clause group in English to exhibit an XSV order, composed of
Complementizer-Subject-Verb. This then in turn becomes the model for main
clauses. Thus by 1400, main clauses shift from V2 to V3 syntax partly on the
basis of loss of clitization, and also partly by analogy to subordinate clause
structure. Finally, these scholars also note the continuance of the “verb-
brace” into Middle English; that’s to say, the Sv…V construction which
results, as Stockwell and Minkova point out, from “verb-final base rules plus a
verb fronting rule....” (59) Given, then this Vf to V2 to SVO reanalysis, one
would have to assume that in post-1400 Middle English, any Verb-Final brace,
or Verb-Second construction would be due to archaic survivals, not stylistic or
thematic aberrations.
In sum then, such hypotheses as are outlined above form one’s frame
of reference in any new analysis of Middle English. What remains in this case
26
is to gather the data from the chronologically very intriguing ME document
Mandeville’s Travels, to see a) how the above theories succeed in explaining
the data found here; and b) what the data in Mandeville may reveal about the
viability of such theories as we have up to now discussed.
27
NOTES
Chapter 2
1) Rothstein’s Die Wortstellung in der Peterborough Chronik, (1922) is somewhat of a pioneering work. Most of the studies to be found in his list of references are late 1800’s and early 1900’s German dissertations.
For an excellent history of English syntactic studies preceding Rothstein’s, one is especially referred to Gardner and Carlton’s introductions. There these scholars trace the interest in Old English syntax which emerged out of the primary phonological interests of the nineteenth-century grammarians.
2) Charles Fries, “On the Development of the Structural Use of Word-Order in Modern English,” Language XVI (1940), 199.
3) Fernand Mossé, Manuel de l’anglais du moyen age, Vol. I (Paris, 1945) 167.
4) Carlton mentions many of the later grammarians who, believing OE word order to be chaotic, devote little or no space to discussion of the phenomenon. They include such scholars as Norman Davis, G.L. Brook, Quirk and Wrenn in their 1955 Old English Grammar and P. S. Ardern.
5) It is Gardner who best summarizes the history of the arguments relating to the “synthetic” nature of old English.
6) Mossé, Ibid. (Emphasis mine)
7) Charles Carlton, Descriptive Syntax of the Old English Charters (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1970) 195.
8) Ans Van Kemenade, Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English (Dordrecht: Foris, 1987) 15.
9) There are other problems with these studies; for example, neither Carlton nor Gardner distinguish SV from S…V, or Verb Final order. Both
28
of these are equally counted as “modern” instances of SV (as opposed to VS).
10) Indeed, from a contemporary perspective, these studies are somewhat marred by their now outdated linguistic framework. Carlton’s study is thus confusing due to his Friesian distinction of “basic” sentences versus “sequence” sentences. It is interesting that part of the logic for this distinction is due to the high number of XVS inversions found in his data, which fall into the “sequence” sentence category – a category thus more easily “dismissible” as somehow not being a “kernel” sentence. In like manner, Shores’ study is somewhat difficult due to his use of “tagmemes” and Gardner’s due to her now out-of-date abbreviations for constituents. All of these studies, however, reflect an early Chomskyan influence.
11) Leon Kellner, Historical Outlines of English Syntax (London: Macmillan, 1982) 286.
12) Frederic G. Cassidy, The Backgrounds in Old English of Modern English Substitutes for the Dative Object in the Group Verb + Dative-Object + Accusative Object (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1939) 86.
13) Ibid.
14) Carlton, p. 17.
15) R.W. Chambers, On the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School (EETS: OS 191A, 1932).
16) Ibid.
17) Deborah Ann Schmidt, A History of Inversion in English (unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1980). See especially Chapter Three.
18) Cecily Clark, The Peterborough Chronicle 1070-1154 (Oxford: OUP, 1958), lxvi.
19) Ibid.
29
20) Mitchell, p. 113
21) Tadao Kubouchi, “Word Order in Richard Rolle’s English Epistles, (In Geardagum 4, 1982) 19.
22) Mitchell, 122.
23) Mitchell, 138.
24) Charles Barber, Early Modern English (London: Andre Deutsch, 1976)
280.
25) Marinel Gerritsen, “Divergent word order developments in Germanic: A description and a tentative explanation” (In Fisiak: Historical Syntax. Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984) 113.
Gerritsen here is citing figures taken from Bean, all of which reflect inversion related to pre-posed constituents.
26) Ibid.
27) Walerian Swieczkowski, Word Order Patterning in Middle English (The Hague: Mouton, 1962) 19.
28) Gerritsen, 114.
29) Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1968).
30) Gerritsen, however, clearly does not believe that a Verb Second constraint was ever grammaticized in English. Instead, she maintains that English differed from its sister languages at least from the Old English period.
31) Robert P. Stockwell, “On the history of the verb-second rule in English,” (In Fisiak, 1984) 575.
30
32) Otto Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1958) Vol. VII, Syntax, 62.
33) Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Vol. 2, 971.
34) Ibid.
35) Quirk et al., A Grammar of Contemporary English, (London: Longman Group Limited).
36) Schmidt, p. 17
37) Schmidt, p. 18.
38) Bengt Jacobsson, Inversion in English: with Special Reference to the Early Modern English Period, (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktrycheri Aktiebolag, 1951) 26.
39) Stockwell, 580.
40) Schmidt, 17.
41) Like Gerritsen, Schmidt does not believe that inversion ever formed part of a V2 grammar in Old English. Her argument is not that inversions were indeed less restricted in OE, but rather that they were “differently restricted,” 18.
42) Gardner notes (p. 41) that she gets this idea from Samuel Andrew’s Syntax and Style in Old English, (Cambridge, 1940).
43) As Mitchell, in his A Guide to Old English (1964) says: “…it may be taken as a safe rule for prose that, when one of two correlative clauses has the word order VS, it must be the principle clause….” 68.
44) In Rothstein’s words: “Trotz der verhältnismäßigen Anzahl und in ihrer syntaktishcen Funktion geht die Inversion im mittelenglishchen Abschnitt der Chronik scharf zurück.” 108.
31
45) “Cecily Clark,” he says, “…was misleading in her reference to Rothstein’s study, …as Rothstein was himself, when she wrote that the VS order was frequently abandoned after introductory adverbial phrases,” 84.
46) David L. Shores, A Descriptive Syntax of the Peterborough Chronicle, from 1122 to 1154 (The Hague: Mouton, 1971) 87.
47) Bean in her chapter on the “Backgrounds and Relatives of Old English” makes mention of A.H. Smith’s 1935 study of the ancient runes and of North Germanic languages in their early stages and concludes that these languages went directly from Vf to V2 around 600. (Bean, 46)
48) Schmidt’s work is heavily influenced by the Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) theory which was further developed, she notes, by the Prague School of Linguistics. Essential to this theory is the notion of Communicative Dynamism, i.e., the idea that thoughts, hence sentences, are organized in the order of “theme “rheme,” or old information, new information. It is the heavier “rheme” elements, she states, which “push the communication forward by providing fresh information.” 33.
49) “Theme” here refers to that constituent-bearing information that is old or known. In her work, Schmidt clarifies the concept. “In prose,” she says, “thematic nouns generally have been previously introduced into the discourse and in any case are known (identified) to the reader/hearer whether through shared knowledge or through the linguistic context,” 28.
50) Schmidt, 135.
51) In Middle English her categories are least convincing. There, she argues, inversion functions either to stress the subject, the verb or the preposed constituent. Unlike in OE, according to her schema, the inverted subject does not have to be stressed; but unlike Modern English, it doesn’t have to be athematic either. To a non-initiate, at least, such a scenario seems to indicate that “anything goes” in terms of inversion.
52) Mitchell (1985), 974.
53) Gerritsen, 112.
54) Stockwell, Review (Lingua, 1989) 93.
32
55) Kellner, 291.
56) Kemenade, 1.
57) Stockwell, 92.
58) Robert P. Stockwell and Donka Minkova, “Subordination and Word Order Change in the History of English” (Kellner Memorial, Mouton de Bruyter, 1991, ed. By D. Katovsky)
59) Stockwell and Minkova, 30.
33
Chapter 3
MANDEVILLE’S TRAVELS: THE WORK
As Henry Parkes notes, Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries was literally “haunted by rumors of strange civilizations in the East.”
(1) To what extent the book of Mandeville’s Travels may have contributed to
this phenomenon we will never truly know; but it is nearly impossible to
underestimate the influence of this late medieval travel guide. Translated into
almost every European language, there are more extant manuscripts of this
medieval work than almost any other; and its contents worked upon the
brightest and best minds for generations. Leonardo da Vinci, says Dr. Mosley,
kept the book along with others of its genre in his library; Christopher
Columbus apparently studied its contents assiduously; and Hernando Cortes
always kept his eyes peeled for the mythical inhabitants of Mandeville’s
descriptions. Beyond this, the book has had a lasting impact on the popular
imagination. Yet, while the work remains a precious artifact, both on literary
and linguistic grounds, it remains also, to a large extent, shrouded in mystery.
The most straightforward account we have about both the author and
his work comes from the pages of the “Travels” themselves. There, in the
book’s prologue and concluding pages the author volunteers the following
information: his name, he says, is Sir John Mandeville, Knight; and he was
34
born in England, in the town of St. Albans. He set out on his famous voyage
to the East, we learn, in the year 1322, and came back again, reluctantly, in the
year 1356. Now old and afflicted with gout, it gives him certain “solace,” to
record his many adventures before they pass from his mind. Though
unworthy, he says, his special purpose in writing this guide is to instruct those
Þat will + are in purpos for to visite the holy cite of Jerusalem”; for he has
often times passed that way himself, “with gode companye of many lords.”
Finally, as regards the language of the text, the author matter of factly offers
the following comments: that he has “put this boke out of latyn” into French,
and translated it again out of French into English, so that every man in his
nation, i.e., England, may “understonde” it.
Always urbane and devout, if indeed authentic, Mandeville immediately
strikes one as the real-life counterpart to that “meeke” and “parfit” knight of
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Both knights, for example, have spent long years
in heathen lands; both have graced the company of noble armies; and both, at
one time or another, embark upon a pilgrimage: Chaucer’s knight to the local
shrine of Thomas à Becket, Mandeville directly to the Holy Land. Yet, for
many scholars, Mandeville is as factitious as his literary compeer. It would
certainly be safe to say that, after the brilliant and scholarly detective work of
35
the last century, there is no claim in the work which is not roundly disputed by
scholars.
First of all, there is the question of the “Travels” themselves. It has
been suggested, for example, that the furthest trip undertaken by Mandeville
was not to the distant lands of Prestre John, but rather to the local library. As
Letts notes, one of the most dedicated of the Mandeville scholars, Sir George
Warner, “has tracked down Mandeville’s sources with such deadly effect that
only a few pages are left which are not shown to have been stolen.” (2) Then
there is the question, given the proliferation of translations of the work: which
was the original? Is it the Latin, the French, or the English version? And if
one of the English versions is the original, which one is it … the Cotton, the
Bodley, the Egerton manuscript? At least we can dismiss the “defective” text
as definitely copied. And finally there is the question of the author’s identity
itself. Mossé notes, in his Handbook of Middle English, that Mandeville
“probably never existed.” (3) Instead, he believes that a certain Jehan de
Bourgogne, a Frenchman, is “undoubtedly” the author of the work. Hamelius,
for his part, editor of the Cotton version, posits instead that Jean
d’Outremeuse, another Frenchman, is the man behind the “Travels”; (4) while
M.C. Seymour, editor of the Bodley text, believes simply that the work is
anonymous, and was intended to be so. (5)
36
In response to all of these various facts and theories, two scholars,
Malcolm Letts and Dr. Moseley from Cambridge, (6) offer the most interesting
conclusions so far. Both Letts and Moseley believe that it is Mandeville
himself, an Englishman, who actually wrote the travels. They concede that in
some French documents a certain Jehan de Bourgogne, confessed on his
deathbed to be Mandeville; they also concede that the original document had
to be written in French, given all the Gallicisms in the English version, (7) and
given also that that the most complete and earliest of the 300 known
manuscripts is in French. (8) In addition, Dr. Moseley happily concedes that
most of the contents of the “Travels” are in fact plagiarized. His retort, in
short, is that none of these details are decisive. The fact, for instance, that an
Englishman might write in French during the Middle Ages is entirely
conventional. (9) So too the act of plagiarism, which was not only “accepted”
at the time, Mosley argues, but also “admired.” (10)
Three additional things work well for the Mandeville-as-Englishman
interpretation: 1) Mandeville’s intimate knowledge of England; 2) the
presence, in the “Travels” of a very sophisticated persona; and 3) the
unlikelihood that the author never travelled. As regards Mandeville’s
“Englishness,” one may find, for example, in his discussion of alphabets,
references to the peculiar characters “thorn” and “yogh” which occur in his
37
native language, English. This would surely be arcane knowledge for a scholar
from the continent. Mandeville also makes a few references to England’s
native flora and fauna. (11) Unrelated but equally important: though the
sources in Mandeville are plagiarized, as Moseley notes, they are not carelessly
or cluelessly weaved together. Instead, the author greatly modifies his
material, adding factors, according to the Cambridge scholar, such as the smell
of a panther skin, which lend great authenticity to the work, as well as adding
validity to the narrator persona. If Mandeville is not authentic, concludes Dr.
Moseley, “the higher one has to rate his literary artistry.” (12) Finally, it is
somewhat implausible that the author never travelled. Given the popularity of
pilgrimages in that age, especially for those of the leisured class, it would be
hard to believe, argues Moseley, that Mandeville never once went to Jerusalem.
While the fables and stories with which Mandeville inflates his account make
the work more like an Arthurian romance than a factual guide, perhaps this is
simply Mandeville’s way to placate his medieval readers.
The Tales of the Travels
Every version of Mandeville’s Travels is divided into two parts: the
first recounts one of the principle medieval routes to Jerusalem; and the second
describes the lands and peoples of the Orient. The very construction of the
38
work represents well the medieval idea of the “compendium of knowledge,”
for Mandeville succeeds in providing geographic data encyclopedic in scope, as
well as in relating such facts to greater spiritual truths. Thus, as in Dante,
Jerusalem is here considered to be both the geographical and spiritual center of
the world; and as such its description is found at the very heart of the
“Travels.”
Mandeville opens his work with a description of the way to the Holy
Land. The route he describes is that of the First Crusade: that is, from the
Rhine Valley, through Hungary and Bulgaria, to Constantinople. (13) On the
way he describes, among other things, the beliefs of the Orthodox Greeks, and
the fate of the major relics pertaining to the crucifixion of Jesus. He also gives
an extended account of the sultans of Egypt, a passage known by scholars as
“the Egypt gap,” for it is missing in all the known English MSS, except the
Cotton and Egerton versions of the work. Finally, at the end of Part I one
finds the actual descriptions of Jerusalem itself. To be sure, this is the
fulfillment of every pilgrim’s dream…. Here Mandeville shows us every trace
of the life of Jesus; and without exception, one might yet see them all. One
can actually touch, for instance, the very spot where Mary was conceived; and
twenty-two steps away one may visit her father’s grave. There are stones in yet
another place still stained white from the milk of the Holy Mother’s breast; and
39
we see the cave where Peter hid after denying Christ. In short, every New
Testament event is here captured and revisited, as well as the m any popular
myths which, in the course of the Middle Ages, grew around these Biblical
stories.
While Part I of the “Travels” delights and mystifies, it is the second half
of Mandeville’s narrative that, pertaining to the distant realms of the East, has
made the work immortal. Here one may find the same mixture of the real and
the imaginary that makes the first part of the work so alluringly believable. In
terms of what is “real,” Mandeville expends great energy, for example, in his
discussion of circumnavigation, to prove that world, contrary to all
superstition, is round. Also many grains of truth can be found in Mandeville’s
descriptions of Muslim and Hindu religious beliefs, some of which still pack a
certain force. Yet, it is Mandeville’s strange accounts of marvels and atrocities,
those “wonders” of the East, which, for a while at least, became part of the
Western imagination. It is here that one is introduced to the Amazons, for
example, who cut off one breast so as to fight more easily; the headlines, flat-
faced monsters on the Isle of Andaman; the lost tribes of Gog and Magog shut
up by Alexander in the mountains; the gravelly sea where one my fish for
diamonds; self-sacrificing fish; and gold-digging ants…not to mention the
visionary realms of the Great Khan and of Prestre John… It was such stories
40
as these which transfixed his readers and gained for Mandeville a lasting
audience, well into the Renaissance. Indeed, it wasn’t until Renaissance
explorers finally despaired of ever finding such marvels that the “Travels”
finally lost their influence. Only then did they become, like the Middle Ages
themselves, an object of ridicule and contempt among the more enlightened.
Mandeville’s Literary Value
As with just about every other aspect of the work, the precise literary
merit of Mandeville’s Travels remains to some degree disputed among
scholars. There are some, like Laird and Gorrell, who view the “Travels” as
“obviously not the work of a skilled mind.” (14) Beyond this, however, such
scholars have nothing further to say about the work. Moseley, on the other
hand, marvels at Mandeville’s handling of hypotactic syntax, and at what he
considers Mandeville’s intentionally “naïve style”: “No bumbler,” he writes,
“could handle this periodic and episodic complex in his mind and express it
effectively; Mandeville cannot be seen as anything but a most competent
writer.” (15) Mossé, for his part, finds much to praise, not so much in the
work of Mandeville himself, bhut in the talent of his unknown “Englisher.”
The anonymous translator of Mandeville, he notes, “had a deep and sure
instinct for the English language,” as well as an instinct for English sentence
rhythm. (16) Many, in the course of time, have considered Mandeville, with his
41
simple and clear style, the ‘father of English prose.’ (17) Given the dearth of
comparable prose pieces in English at this time, this is a difficult claim to
challenge.
The Linguistic Appeal of Mandeville’s Travels
Of the three hundred extant MSS of the “Travels,” four versions of the
work have been preserved in Middle English, three of them translations of a
French original, one from Latin. (18) The former three are known respectively
as the Cotton, the Egerton and the “Defective” texts. It is the first of these in
which I am most interested.
Two very crucial features make the Cotton manuscript an especially
worthy document for an English philological study: its date and its dialect.
Although the manuscript itself is dated c.1410 – 20 (19) internal historical
evidence suggests that the original work might have been composed c. 1362.
(20) Even a proximity to this latter dating would make the Mandeville
translator a contemporary of the major figures in medieval English letters:
Langland in this year was probably 41, Chaucer 22, and Wycliffe perhaps 42.
As for the dialect of the Cotton manuscript, it is that of the South East
Midlands (21) – a dialect which at this time, notes the scholar van der Meer,
“hardly, if at all, deviates from the English spoken near the Metropolis at the
42
beginning of the 15th century.” (22) Already by this date, he adds, “a standard
language had begun to develop.” (23)
Such facts, to which we might be reminded of a final, that “Mandeville”
is a prose composition, place this linguistically somewhat neglected work in a
unique position. Certainly I believe it can offer us a valuable glimpse into the
development of what was to become Modern English. Or perhaps, as Bean’s
theory would suggest, when our scribe sat down to translate Mandeville’s
Travels, the English language was already quite modern, and had been so for
centuries, at least as far as word order is concerned. It is the purpose of the
next few pages to explore this question.
43
NOTES
Chapter Three
1) Henry Bamford Parkes, A History of Mexico (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1938) 27.
2) Malcolm Letts, Sir John Mandeville: The Man and his Book (London: Batchworth Press LTD, 1949) 123.
3) Fernand Mossé, A Handbook of Middle English (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1968) 276.
4) Thus the title of Hamelius’s edition of the Cotton manuscript: Mandeville’s Travels: Translated from the French of Jean d’Outremeuse.
D’Outremeuse, a French contemporary of Mandeville, and author of a work entitled Mirror of Histories, definitely tampered with some of the manuscripts. Because of this connection, and because there are otherwise so few documentary traces of the real Mandeville, Hamelius simply posits the Frenchman as writer of the Travels.
In terms of the Frenchman’s possible motivation for disguising his real identity, Hamelius cites some anti-papal references in the work, which he assumes d’Outremeuse very daringly wished to publish. This latter, then, fearing the authorities, thus felt obliged to use “Mandeville” as his nom de plume. Later, Hamelius argues, the Wycliffites translated the document in English for obvious reasons.
Moseley, for his part, agrees with Symore that the “Travels” are not an “anti-papal Lollard pamphlet in disguise.” [Seymour, 176] Such subtle reproaches to the papacy as are found in Mandeville, argues Moseley, are somewhat common for the time; in addition, one could cite many occasions in the work where Mandeville shows himself to be unambiguously devout and pious.
5) The Bodley Version of Mandeville’s Travels, Ed. M.C. Seymore (Oxforf: Oxford University press, 1963) 176.
6) Dr. Moseley’s thorough and perceptive discussion of the “Travels” is to be found in his Introduction to the 1983 Penguin edition. In this
44
edition he provided a modern translation of the work based on the Egerton version.
7) Mossé notes some of the more amusing Gallicisms in the Cotton text, translations such as “the hills of Aygnes” for the French “Montaigne,” and “swannes of hevene” for “signes du ciel.”
8) According to Letts, the earliest known French manuscript is dated 1371 and has not been printed. This is the manuscript to which Moseley compares to both the Cotton and the Egerton version of the “Travels.”
9) Although Chaucer, of course, breaks with this convention with his English Canterbury Tales, his contemporary John Gower still chooses at this time to write his major pieces in Latin and Norman French.
10) As Moseley notes [p. 12] many English writers considered plagiarism as a means to bestow greater authority to their works. He cites the example of Marie de France who, in her reworking of Robert of Flamborough’s Poenitentiale, has no problem in claiming experiences “she could not have had.”
11) When he mentions, for example, the “Barnacle Geese” which were reputed to breed in Britain.
12) Moseley, 13.
13) Although by the year 1356, when Mandeville sites down to write his “Travels,” the great Crusades of the Middle Ages were long over, one still finds in this work a remarkable crusading spirit. In his very prologue, for example, while discussing Jerusalem, Mandeville can yet be found urging his fellow Christians to “conquere” their “right heritage,” and to “chacen out all the mysbeleeuynge men…”
14) Charlton Laird and Robert M. Gorrell, English as Language: Backgrounds, Development, Usage (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1961) 62.
15) Moseley, 37.
16) Mossé, 276.
45
17) Ibid.
18) Ibid.
19) Mossé, 398.
20) Letts, XXVII.
21) The Egerton Ms., in contrast, is written in a Northern dialect.
22) H.J. van der Meer, Main Facts Concerning the Syntax of Mandeville’s Travels (Utrecht: Kemnik en Zoon, n.d.) XI.
23) Ibid.
46
Chapter 4
DATA ANALYSIS
The following analysis will proceed upon a total clause breakdown in
both parts of Mandeville’s Travels. Of the 8,085 full clauses in the work, 4,520
are main clauses. It is with these that I shall begin.
I: Main Clauses
From the very beginning, the English of Mandeville’s Travels offers a
direct challenge to the Beanian perspective. To take the category, for example,
of independent clauses which do not begin with “and,” “but,” “ne” or other
conjunctions, or with adverbs or adverb phrases, one should expect, if Bean is
correct, an unflinching SVX, or “modern” order. (1) Instead, one finds both
SVX and non-SVX patterns.
Because it is helpful to see the word order in the “Mandeville”
document as part of a continuum in development, I have adjoined in Table 1
the Old and Early English data compiled by Mitchell in his similar analysis of
Stephan and the Peterborough Chronicle, both “Continuations,” 1122-1154.
(2)
47
Table 1 (a)
Steph. Cont. I Cont. II Mand.
1. SV 39 52 22 296
2. OSV 2 4 6 7
2. a. oSV 8
3 CSV 0 0 0
4. VS 2 1 5 16
5. V 4 0 2 0
6. soV 4 3 1 0
7. OVS 3 2 0 6
7.a. Vs 2
8. CSV 0 1 0 0
9. SV 0 6 0 10
a) In this and the following tables, numbers 1-3 represent modern word orders, while numbers 4 and following represent orders not possible in Modern English.
b) Mitchell in his study does not distinguish noun objects from pronoun objects. Both he classifies under OSV or OVS respectively. In my study, however, I make the distinction, since it is an important one in terms of clitics.
c) C = compliment, i.e., A lady she was.
d) On the basis of these figures, Mitchell calculates that 76% of Stephen, Cont. I, and Cont. II respectively demonstrate modern word order.
(b)
(c) (d)
--expressing a wish--
48
As the comparison in Table 1 indicates, English word order, while well
on its way, has not yet completely evolved by the time of Mandeville into its
modern arrangement. Thus, in many categories of word order that are
permissible in Old English but not in Mod. E., some clauses in Mandeville’s
Travels are represented.
Beginning with VS, I classify in my study only those word order
arrangements not possible in present-day English. I thus discount most
question inversions, even though they invert the full verb, since inversion is
required in Mod. E. Included are thus inverted conditionals and indirect
questions as not being possible in Mod. English, (3) i.e., “And ȝif ony man
aske hem, what is here belieeue…”; “ȝit were it gretter Almes to ȝeven it to þo
soules.” Also included are various archaic imperatives.
Archaic imperatives may be divided into two types: second person
imperatives with expressed subject, and something resembling a third-person
subjunctive, which Mitchell calls a “jussive subjunctive.” (4) As Mitchell notes,
such subjunctives may take wither VS or SV order, both of which are equally
archaic in Modern English. The SV pattern figures under line 9 in the above
table, “SV expressing a wish.”
Examples of the VS jussive subjunctive in Mandeville are the following:
49
p. 123/1.24 Be þer ymagined a figure.
1.36 Also, be the erthe deuysed in als manye parties as the firmament…etc.
In Mod.E, the same idea is often expressed as a subjectless second-person
imperative with the verb “let.” Interestingly, this pattern occurs once in
Mandeville, suggesting that the two options were in free variation at this time.
i.e., “+ lat euery partye answere to a degree of the firmament.”
Some fossils of this use of the subjunctive have survived into Mod.E,
namely the “be it” construction. This occurs in LME also, but I have
discounted it as an ‘archaic” order.
Of the SV subjunctives “expressing a wish,” four begin with the “that”
complentizer. Thus: “þat he haue no children,” “þat all the lynes meeten at
the centre,” etc. Four others begin with an appeal to the deity and are perhaps
formulaic: “God be thonked,” “Lord be with þe”; and one beginning with
“wo” is definitely formulaic: “Wo be to the Chorsaym.” A completely non-
formulaic example of the SV jussive subjunctive is the following, p. 47, 1.14
“But his curs be turned in to his owne hed.” Because these imperatives and
third-person subjunctives are “glottic” in nature, I include them in Table 1,
even though some of them are introduced by a conjunction or conjunctive
adverb.
50
In terms of the Sv…V and soV patterns, signifying the brace
construction and verb-final order respectively, none occur in the Mandeville
text in this category.
Several examples of inversion do surprisingly occur in Mandeville in the
environment of a preposed direct object. Actually, both SV and VS orders can
be found here, thus indicating that both orders are in free variation in this
environment. What is perhaps most unexpected in the text, beyond the fact
that there is any inversion after a direct object at all, is that personal pronoun
subjects are twice inverted. Thus, “Dere god, what love hadde he to vs his
subjettes,” and “All this schall I ȝeve þe-.” As Kemenade notes vis-à-vis the
prose of Wycliffe, one can find therein “no inversion of subject pronouns.” (5)
This is somewhat strange since Mandeville and Wycliffe were writing in the
same dialect. At the most, if one assigns to the “Mandeville” text the latest
possible date, for example the year 1420 as posited by Mossé, that would
separate Mandeville’s Travels from the latest Wycliffite prose by some 40 years.
(6) In this time then, if not already decliticized (7), personal pronoun subjects
would have had to have undergone decliticization in the East Midland dialect,
or at least this is what the “Mandeville” text seems to indicate. Inversions of
subject pronounces in Chaucer’s southern dialect had already taken place,
suggesting earlier decliticization in the South. These facts are of some interest
in regard to Kemenade’s relation of loss of Verb-Second with decliticization.
51
Finally, as regards Table 1, one notes a complete absence in Mandeville
of the Complement-Verb-Subject order, an order which was apparently
unpopular in OE as well.
To tally the percentages then, one arrives at 91% of modern word order
in Mandeville in simple sentences with no adverbial or conjunctive influence.
This is 10% higher than in the same category in the PC, Cont. I, thus showing
a continual evolution towards modern WO in LME. IN the meantime,
though, 9% of the simple sentences in this category are still archaic, something
which Bean’s early conclusions could not have predicted.
Conjunctive Influence
Because of the tendency for the Old English conjunctions “and,” “but”
[i.e., “ac”], and sometimes “ne” to send a verb to the end of the clause, I have
taken special care to analyze them separately in Mandeville’s Travels. AS Table
2, however, shows, by c. 1410-20, these constructions only rarely trigger
archaic word orders in independent clauses.
52
Table 2
And But + MC* Ne AND BUT NE 1. SVX 1,039 167 12 2. SvVX 199 52 6 3. OSV 41 4. VS 5. vSV 6. sv…V 1 7. OVS 7 7.a. oVS 1 7.b. OVs 8 8. SOV *MC = main clause a) p. 2/ 1.1 “And he myghte best in in þat place suffer deth.”
Of the .01% of archaic word orders one can find in this category,
none of them are clearly related to conjunctive influence, as I will explain
below. In this Mandeville’s Travels stands in striking contrast to earlier
medieval texts. Thus, according to Mitchell’s statistics, Stephen still
demonstrates 30.6%, Cont I of the Peterborough Chronicle 20%, Cont. II 15%
non-modern word orders after coordinating conjunctions. (8)
In this study, the inversions in lines 7, 7a, and 7b, for example, as in
Table 1, result from the preposed direct object. (It must be remembered that
conjunctions in OE caused verb finality, not inversion.) (9) Interesting again
here are the eight instances of subject-pronoun inversion, represented here in
(a)
53
7b, adding further support that subject-personal pronouns have lost their clitic
status.
Correct interpretation of the WO pattern of line six is more difficult.
In his extremely brief chapter on word order, van der Meer notes in the
English of Mandeville’s Travels “a greater freedom in the place of adverb
adjuncts,” and also of adverbs of degree, than “at later times.” (10) In the over
599 instances in Mandeville, however, that sentences contain two verbs, one
finite and the other non-finite, only in six instances can one find an adverb of
any length intervene between the two verbs. The example here in line six is
one such time. IN a seventh similar instance one can find a direct object take
media position between two verbs in a clause. This latter is clearly a “brace”
construction; the former six instances might be called “pseudo-brace”
constructions.
The seven such instances found in the entire text are as follows. First,
the pseudo brace:
p. 2/ 1.1 And he myghte best in that place suffer deth
p. 6/ 1.29 For cedre may not in erthe ne in water rote.
p. 1 /1.8 And þere he wolde of his blessedness enoumbre him in the seyd blessed + gloriouse virgine Marie.
p. 2/ 1.2 … because he ches in þat lond rathere þan in ony other þere
54
to suffer his passioun + his deth.
p. 2/ 1.19 …whan he …wolde for trespassours suffer deth. p.99/ 1.28 For the toll + the custom of his marchantes is withouten
estimacyoun to ben nombred.
And, finally, the “true” brace: p. 1/ 1.28 For as for himself he hadde non euyill deserued…..
Clearly, none of the above sentences would be produced by a native
speaker of Modern English; yet it is difficult to tell if syntactically the six
instances of pseudo brace reflect a historical movement of the finite verb from
a verb-final to a verb-second position, which is the origin of the true OE brace;
or whether such sentences merely reflect less restricted adverb placement in
LME. Scholars up to now have been somewhat vague on this subject. The
closest Stockwell, for example, comes to a definition of the OE Sv…V
phenomenon, that is, to defining exactly what may be “embraced” by the brace
construction, is in his explication of its demise. “Rightward movement,” he
says, takes place to eliminate nominal and adverbial elements from within the
brace.” (11) One assumes the nominal element is a complement or a direct
object. Mitchell, in his analysis of the PC offers two examples in which “the
participle in a resolved verb form takes final position,” (12) although he does
not call this by name a “brace” construction. They include one sentence where
55
a direct object takes medial position, and another in which an agent/source
assumes this position, i.e., “hit wearþ fram heofonlicum fyre forbaerned.”
Both constructions, he notes, are impossible today. To return to the data in
this study, we find two pseudo brace constructions in dependent clauses.
These two are especially puzzling since brace constructions have never been
part of the subordinate clause scenario in Germanic languages. Instead,
subordinate clauses in Germanic are usually verb final. While the entire “brace”
clause phenomenon could benefit, I believe, from a more detailed
investigation, here I can only conclude that such constructions are definitely
non-modern, and in “Mandeville” contribute to its archaic flavor.
“For”
As for the much used “for” in Mandeville’s Travels, I think it best to
accord it a category all its own. As in Stephen (13) it is unclear in “Mandeville”
whether “for” is a coordinating, or a subordinating conjunction. (14) Strictly
speaking it is used as both. Yet sometimes it seems also used as an empty
marker –perhaps, as v.d. Meer speculates, because “it is apt to give an
appearance of veracity to the strangest of tales.” (15) In any event, both in
Mandeville as well as in the Peterborough Chronicle “for” has clearly outgrown
its OE limitations as a mere preposition. The breakdown of word orders after
“for” is the following:
56
Table 3
Mandeville
1. For + SVS (a) 339 2. For + OSV 2 3. For + Adv + SVX 5 4. For + VS (b) 0 5. For + Adv + VS 8 6. For + sv…V (c) 3 7. For + OVS 1 8. For + SOV 0
a) All SVX figures include instances of SvVX as well. b) Similarly, all VS figures also include instances of vS…V. c) All three instances of the brace construction can be found in my discussion of these latter in the preceding pages. d) “For more precious ne gretter ransoun ne myghte he put for us þan his blessed body his precious blood + his holy lyf.” P. 2 / 1.15 In this category, all archaic orders are coincidental. Inversions, for
example, in lines five and seven, as the direct-object related inversions found in
Tables 1 and 2, are plainly due to their respective preposed constituents; how
else could one explain the complete lack of inversions found after the “for”
conjunction by itself? And, again, as a conjunction, “for” could conceivably
have caused verb finality, not inversion. In this respect the preposed
constituent-caused inversion one actually finds after “for” are quite revealing:
since – generally – these would not be possible in OE/ME subordinate
57
clauses, those found here seem to be evidence for an early non-subordinating
function of this conjunction.
As concerns the sv…V constructions in line six, they are, as I suggested
above, strange anomalies. Along with the other brace constructions, they seem
arbitrarily scattered in the text, occurring as they do with our without
conjunctions, in both dependent and independent clauses. Moreover, their
number is very small. Doubtless they are archaic, but what exactly accounts
for their presence, beyond perhaps the style of the author, is not clear. Similar
results occur after “for” in Mitchell’s study of the PC, which I adjoin here for
comparison.
Table 4 Cont. I Cont. II 1. For + SVX 3 9 2. For + Adv + SVX 0 1 3. For + Adv + VS 0 5 4. For + SoV 0 2 5. For + S…V 0 1
The only order which does not appear in Mandeville occurs here on line 4; yet
it is deceiving. Here, unlike in Mandeville, direct object pronouns are still
clitics, not full constituents. Thus, this order can be considered as a variation
of SV. (16) In conclusion then, “for” in Mandeville, as in the PC, is a mod.E
conjunction, after which one can expect modern word order.
58
Conjunctive Adverbs
To be safe, I also considered in a separate analysis independent clauses
preceded by the conjunctive adverbs “ȝit” and “wherefore,” which, due to
their adverbial nature, could possibly influence word order in a non-SVO
language. In Mandeville inversions only follow “ȝit.” Statistics on this
inversion will be found in Table 6.
Adverbial Influence
Throughout this study, the presence of pre-posed adverbs as well as
direct objects have had a marked effect on word-order patterns. Adverbial
influence in “Mandeville” can been seen in Table 5, where X = adverb or
adverbial phrase. All figures refer to main clauses only.
Table 5
Simple With Conjunction (a)
1. XSV 185 664 2. XVS 272 584 3. XvSV 24 84 4. XvVS 4 11
a) Because of the conceivable ambiguity in cases where there is both a conjunction [i.e., “and,” “but,” “ne,” “for”] and an adverb possibly influencing
59
the word order of a clause, I have classed this contingency as a separate category.
Quite clearly, in this category we are witness to a dramatic shift in word
order patterns in “Mandeville.”
Of the 485 main clauses preceded by an adverbial element, fully 61% of
them demonstrate what Bean would term as “variant,” (17) or non-modern
word orders. Of the 1,341 main clauses preceded by both an adverb and a
coordinating conjunction, 677, or 50% of them possess non-modern word
order. Considering the modern conjunctive tendencies we saw earlier in Table
2, the present phenomenon seems doubtlessly due to adverbial, not
conjunctive, influence.
If Bean’s hypothesis is correct, and Middle English was indeed
“predominately identical” at an early stage to Modern English, a verb-third
language, then what can the high percentages of typically V2 word orders in
Mandeville’s Travels mean?
As I mentioned in Chapter 2, Bean herself encounters this dilemma in
her study of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, where, again, after introductory
adverbs, there occurs a high percentage of VS word order. Her main argument
bases itself on the style of the text. Because this latter document is a chronicle,
60
it is characterized by abnormally high instances of adverbs such as “þa,”
adverbs which, in short, “become markers of new, consecutive / sequential
action and induce inversion of the basic SVX order.” (18) Bean thus believes
that, because the Chronicle deals primarily with a sequence of events, that this
“lends to its having a large percentage of temporal and locative adverbs and
hence to its having a high percentage of XVS order.” (19) The idea is, of
course, that given a ‘normal’ OE text its word order would be SVO.
There are two problems with this.
First, in terms of Old and Early Middle English, as we saw in our
discussion of Table 2, Mitchell reports rather heavy percentages in both
Stephen and the Peterborough Chronicle of non-SVO word orders after
conjunctions. This cannot be dismissed as a stylistic option related to adverbial
influence.
Table 6 illustrates a second reason why Bean’s argument seems open to
question, this time from the point of view of Mandeville’s Travels.
61
Table 6: A Breakdown of the Principle Adverbs in Mandeville’s Travels, Part I
VS SV 1. Locative about 5 abouen 6 1 at 21 4 be 7 9 before 9 benethe 2 behind 1 besyde 32 2 betwene 8 1 be onde 2 1 fro(m) – hence, etc. 63 16 in 85 34 into 1 1 of (i.e., “from) 6 1 on 10 2 out of 1 1 nygh/nere 11 thens 7 ther 134 33 þere aboute 1 þerein 4 þereon 1 thider 3 þorgh 1 toward 6 vnder 9 1 vpon 12 3 vpward to the see 1 within 9 without 4 2. Temporal after 10 32 always 2 2 anon 2 2 at such houre 1 from ens forwards 1
62
in somer 1 now 7 5 on (Schoresthorsday) 1 2 þan(ne) 18 21 3. Manner In at (same) way 2 So 17 5 Þus 4 4 4. Consequence Þerfore [sic] 21 31 For at skyll 2 1 5. Adversative
Ȝit 12 7 natheles/neuertheles 5 6. Causal for at cause 1 2 7. Other in coming down from… 3 out of them 2 right wel 1 As Table 6 shows, VS word order does not only occur with one or two
formulaic temporal adverbs in “Mandeville,” but also with such causal adverbs
as “therefore,” as well as after “right so,” “right wel,” and others. It is also
interesting to note that the writer of “Mandeville” seems undecided in the case
of several adverbs in the case of several adverbs as to whether to put an SV or
VS order. Following “ere,” “now,” “therefore,” and many of the locatives,
63
both word orders appear. The language seems, then, still very much in a
transitionary stage, about which I will have more to say very shortly.
Existential Clauses
Of the 143 existential “þere” clauses in Mandeville, clauses which
through their inverted structure much resemble the XVS pattern discussed
above, I have counted only 23 as archaic. These include non-interrogative
inverted existentials, i.e., “And þan is þere another chirche right nygh”; “And
sodeynly is þthere passying hete + sodeynly also passynge cold”; as well as full
verb existentials: thus, “þere came a voys to him.” All of these are either illicit
or very archaic on Mod. E. (20)
Other Archaic Orders
A final non-modern inversion related to fronting must be noted
here: that is, inversion in the main clause following a dependent clause. This,
as Mitchell notes, is quite a regular syntactic phenomenon in OE, and occurs
twice in the Peterborough Chronicle. In Mandeville’s Travels it occurs three
times. Thus:
p. 52 / 1.7 (nominal clause…) seye men…
p. 55/ 1.8 (when…) com an erthequakeng.
p. 66 / 1.12 (as…) sat the blynde man cryenge…
64
This phenomenon is also obligatory in Mod. German.
A final statistic one must take into account when considering
archaic word orders in ME relates to possible occurrences of subjectless dative
constructions. Expressions such as “me semeth,” “ + ȝit me thinketh”; as well
as expressions with the subjectless “befell,” i.e., “And o tyme befell,” occur ten
times in Mandeville in independent clauses.
Needless to say, none of the above word order patters are licit in
present-day English.
Summary
As a recapitulation of the main clauses and simple sentences analyzed in this
study, Table 7 will be helpful.
65
Table 7
MODERN ARCHAIC SVX OSV VS Sv…V OVS SV 1. Simple MC* 296 15 20 2 8 10 2. And + MC 1,237 41 1 16 3. But + MC 219 4. Ne + MC 17 5. For + MC 339 2 3 1 6. Wherefore + MC 19 7. Adv + MC 185 300 8. Conj + Adv + MC 664 677 9. Existentials 120 23 10. Sub Clause/MC 290 3 11. Subjectives Datives [10] SUMMARY Total Modern: 3,444 76% Total Archaic: 1,074 24% Total Text: 4,518 100%
* MC = main clause
a) The breakdown of VS here is: 16 archaic imperatives, 3 inverted conditionals, 1 inverted indirect question.
b) i.e., SV expressing wish, or “jussive subjunctive”
c) This is the category of main clause inversion after a preceding subordinate clause.
(b) (a)
66
II: Subordinate Clauses
Very quickly, the results gleaned from my study of the subordinate
clauses in Mandeville’s Travels can be seen below. IN sum, they numbered
3,568. Their analysis proceeded as follows:
Table 8 I: Relative Clauses Modern WO 1,619 98% Archaic WO 31 2% Total Relative Clauses: 1,650 46% II: Adverbial Clauses Modern WO 1,203 97% Archaic WO 30 3% Total Adverbial Clauses: 1,233 35% III: Nominal Clauses Modern WO 666 97% Archaic WO 18 3% Total Nominal Clauses: 684 19% Total Subordinate Clauses 3,567 100%
a) If one considers the more clear cases of subornation after the ambiguous conjunction “for” one could add 54 more instances of SVO adverb clauses to this category.
(a)
67
What Table 8 demonstrates is that subordinate clauses in “Mandeville” are
overwhelmingly modern in their word order. This “victory of modernity,” as
Mitchell calls it, occurs as early as the Peterborough Chronicle in subordinate
clauses, as Mitchell’s study indicates, thus supporting the theory that the
modern SVO order first grammaticized in these clauses, only later to become
the norm in main clauses.
Conclusion
In terms of main clauses, the data in this study, I believe, consistently
demonstrate that the word order patterns of Late Middle English have not yet
rigidified into their modern arrangement. (22) On the contrary, nearly one
fourth of the WO patterns in main clauses here studied have been proven to
be archaic – a surprisingly high number. This alone, I would say, destroys any
notion of syntactic equivalence one may posit between Middle and Modern
English. Thus, while one may assert with Bean that in many instances the
syntax of Middle English is strikingly modern, one must also acknowledge,
with Mitchell, that it is not there yet, not even in LME.
This, in my mind, raises the following question: if the WO of
Mandeville’s Trave3ls, as a ME case in point, is not fully SVO, to what, then,
68
can one attribute its high numbers of archaic constructions? If they are
“fossils,” then, of what are they fossils? If they are not lingering remnants of a
former WO, then how can we explain their presence?
First of all, we might consider the possibility that the syntax of
Mandeville’s Travels could be verb second. Inversions are numerous in
Mandeville; they occur after preposed adverbs and direct objects, and
occasionally in main clauses after a preceding subordinate clause. Yet, taken
together, considering all inverted and non-inverted main clauses, the verb
occurs in second position 72% of the time. While high, this is not enough to
constitute a V2 language.
Second, we could attribute archaic inversions in Mandeville to a
possible French influence. If we remember that the Cotton manuscript of the
“Travels” is merely a translation of a French original, this hypothesis seems
attractive. Marianne Adams in a 1987 article in the journal Natural Language
and Linguistic Theory, has definitively established a verb second constraint in
Old French. Three things, however, could possibly mitigate against a French-
to-English influence of inversion. First, Adams herself characterizes the
French phenomenon as a “Germanic type of inversion,” (23) which, on the
surface at least, would seem to suggest a German to French direction of
syntactic influence. A more tangible objection is that Adams posits the French
69
V2 reanalysis into SVO at about 1300, (24) thus 100 years before the
translation into English of the “Mandeville” document. In Mandeville,
inversions occur roughly 45% of all instances where possible in a rigid V2
language. This seems a bit too strong to attribute to an archaic pattern already a
century dead in French. A third objection is that French influence on English
begins in earnest in 1066; by all accounts inversions were already numerous in
Pre-Conquest Old English. It is my opinion, the, that the VS phenomenon in
ME is thus a native one.
Finally, there is Kemenade’s hypothesis regarding Old and Middle
English, according to which both went through a full verb-second stage whose
demise occurred c. 1400. Clearly, this is the theory which best accounts for all
the data found in this study. It implies, first of all, that post-1400 English is in
a state of transition – exactly what we find in Mandeville’s Travels. This is
especially evident, as we have seen, in the scribe’s vacillation when faced with
introductory preposed constituents: 55% of the time he employs an SV order
after these first-position constituents, while 45% of the time he chooses the VS
pattern. In addition, Kemenade’s positing of a somewhat recent (c. 1200) verb
finality in the language, as opposed to Bean’s prehistoric timetable for the
same, nicely explains those few instances of sv…V constructions found in the
Mandeville text.
70
As icing on the cake appears Stockwell and Minkova’s latest theory on
subordination and word order change in English. As mentioned earlier,
Mitchell already in the 1960’s noted that the subordinate clauses in the
Peterborough Chronicle, unlike the main clauses in the text, are almost
completely modern. Nevertheless it has taken all these years for scholars to
reconsider the truism that word order change must take place in main clauses
first, only then to be grammaticized, by analogy, into subordinate clauses.
Stockwell and Minkova have recently challenged this conventional view, and
the data in the “Travels” fully vindicate their position. Thus, quite clearly,
modern SVX or verb-third word order is fully grammaticized in Mandeville’s
subordinate clauses, while it is not yet quite obligatory in main clauses. That the
change would proceed, at least in part, from the former to the latter seems
most probable in terms of this study.
Above all, the results of this study seem to lend validity to Mitchell’s
traditional definition of Middle English. “The language of the Peterborough
Chronicle,” he states, “is Mi9ddle, not Modern English. It is transitional.” (25)
The same might be said of another, later product of the East Midlands,
Mandeville’s Travels.
71
NOTES Chapter Four 1) In modern English especially archaic word orders are rare in this category. 2) Bruce Mitchell, “Syntax and Word order in the Peterborough Chronicle
1122-1154 (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 65, 1964) 121-2. 3) Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax (2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University
Press) 378. 4) Of course, a very restricted type of inversion may occur in Mod. E
conditional clauses, as Quirk points out, in lieu of the if-SV pattern. The grammarian however notes that these “special” cases reflect a somewhat “literary style.” Specifically, one may invert the subject and auxiliary in clauses which express a hypothetical or “putative” condition. (748)
5) Kemenade, 220. 6) Wycliffe died in the year 1384. 7) In relation to Kemenade’s study, Minkova and Stockwell [1989] note that it
is unclear in the prose of Wycliffe whether personal subjects had indeed decliticized or not. Inversion of these latter, of course, are one of the best indicators of declitization.
It is interesting to note that these do in Mandeville invert. In total,
inversion of personal pronoun subjects occurs 121 times in this text, including subordinate clauses.
8) Mitchell [1964], 143. While the word orders following conjunctions as cited
by Mitchell are still high, their numbers are somewhat inflated by Mitchell’s inclusion in this category of OVS, XVS, and SoV patterns –the first two archaic by fronting, the last probably not archaic.
9) VS does occur once, however, after “ac” in the PC Continuation II, and 3
times after “and.” (Mitchell 1964, 132)
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10) H.J. Van der Meer, Main Facts Concerning the Syntax of Mandeville’s Travels (Utrecht: Kmnik en Zoon, n.d.) 164.
11) Robert Stockwell, “Motivations for Exbraciation in Old English,”
Mechanisms of syntactic change (Austin: University of Texas Press) 295.
12) Mitchell [1964], 123. 13) Ibid, 134. 14) In Mod. E this is still ambiguous. Quirk notes, “On the gradient between
the ‘pure’ coordinators and the ‘pure’ subordinators are ‘for’ and ‘so that’; ‘for,’ indeed is often classed as a coordinator.” 552
15) Van der Meer, 168. 16) As Minkova and Stockwell [1989] point out, Mitchell at times seems to
have an inconstant understanding of the nature of clitics. 17) Bean, 13. 18) Ibid, 138. 19) Ibid. 20) As Quirk notes, existential “there” inversions with any other verb other
than ‘Be” create a “more literary” type of clause, which is to say that such constructions are somewhat archaic. (960). Bean in her study of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims that a disproportionate number of “ere” clauses inflate the VS percentages in her text. In this study, therefore, I exclude in my VS count all existential clauses unless the “there” word itself is inverted in a non-interrogative sentence or in cases where a verb other than “be” follows “there.”
21) There are three types of archaic orders found in these clauses. The first
occurs in relative clauses and constitutes inversion after the subordinators “where,” “in the which” and “of the whiche.” Both full verbs, i.e., “dwellen”; auxiliaries, i.e., “was made”; as well as the verb “be” are here inverted. A second archaic order is found only in adverbial clauses, and consists of inversion after the comparative
73
subordinators “an” and “as,” i.e., “as don ei of Grece.” Perhaps this is due in part to analogy with main clause XVS occurrences. Finally, in the nominal clauses, inversion occasionally occurs after a preposed adverb. Thus: (main clause) “before the chirche of the sepulchre is the cytee more feeble þan in ony othere parie…” This might also be due to analogy with main clauses.
Interestingly, there also occurs in my data one instance of a verb final
relative clause. Thus: “þat all formed.” This is the one SOV order mentioned at the beginning of this study.
22) At least in the East Midland dialect c. 1410. 23) Marianne Adams, “From Old French to the Theory of Prop-Drop,”
(Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 5, 1987) 4. 24) Ibid, 26. 25) Mitchell [1964], 143.
74
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