The King Liked Pears: A Choice rather than a Change

The King Liked Pears: A Choice rather than a Change

Among the famous examples given or Invented by Jespersen in his Modern English Grammar we find the king liked pears, which represents an ambiguous and transitional stage of word order, the Old English farm being pam cynge licodon peran This is obviously not an 'impersonal' construction, but a construction With a plural subject of thing, and so the change that really took place is not the one from 'impersonal' to personal but from a thing-subject to a person-subjct construction The word order change from OVS to SVO found with 'impersonal' verbs, as seen in this example, is again not "basic" but in fact rather rare In this paper I first explain the uses of OE (ge)lician and Its synonym (ge)cweman and then try to show the merger and decline of icwemen/quemen throughout the transitional period and the final choice of ME liken with a subject of person and in SVO order of a modem "basic" construction, m place of the former thing-subject construction succeeded by the loan synonym plesen