The Main Clause Structure of Old English: External Pair-Merge of T and C

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This paper investigates the structure of Old English (hereafter, OE) in terms of Chomsky’s (2013, 2015) Labeling Theory. From a typological perspective, Old English can be characterized as a topic-prominent language, in contrast to Present-Day English. OE has a Verb Second (V2) structure, in which the topic element occupies the structural-initial position, and the verb appears in the second position (van Kemenade 1987). This paper proposes that this structural property of Old English is attributed to the different application of Merge: the main clause of OE is derived via External Pair-Merge of T and C. We argue that this structural configuration contributes to the topic-prominent nature of the sentence-initial element. Furthermore, we propose that the V2 order in the main clause is derived through PF head movement, in accordance with the V2-Comp generalization. In addition, we suggest that embedded clauses in OE exhibit a different derivation from that of main clauses.