고대영어 종속절의 화제화에 대하여

On Topicalization in Old English Subordinate Clauses

The purpose of this paper is to examine various types of topicalizations in Old English (OE) and to argue that the fronting of some elements in subordinate (or non-root) clauses is not a genuine topicalization. It has been claimed that while fronting of non-subjects occurs with V-movement to the second position in root clauses, there is no such fronting in non-root clauses, which thus led Kemenade (1997a, b) and Fischer et al. (2000), etc. to claim the asymmetry of V-movement between root and non-root clauses. Yet, the fronting of non-subjects in non-root clauses is found, its distribution being limited to impersonal, passive, and ergative verb constructions. This paper argues that the dative NP, though superficially being non-subject, is in fact a subject in impersonal (passive) constructions. Passive constructions with nominative arguments and ergative verb constructions share unaccusative structures in which the underlying object becomes a surface subject. OE allowed a lexically unrealized expletive in the unaccusative structure, which later becomes lexically realized as the expletive 'there'. In subordinate clauses in OE, therefore, there was no genuine topicalization of non-subjects with V-movement.