Left Dislocation and Verb Movement in Old English: With Special Reference to Ælfric's Catholic Hmilies

Left Dislocation and Verb Movement in Old English: With Special Reference to Ælfric's Catholic Hmilies

This paper alms to survey the phenomenon of left dislocation in Old English and propose a proper explanation for its syntactic idiosyncrasies The most distinctive aspect of Old English left dislocation lies in the fluctuation of a finite verb position It exhibits both V2 and V3 ordering pattern with a left dislocate in an initial position V3 representing the regular pattern of German and Dutch left dislocation necessitates the split CP hypothesis and the assumption that a finite verb targets the lowest functional head beyond TP Nevertheless, V2 in left dislocation still fads to be illuminated even through the traditional clitic analysis of Old English personal pronouns As an alternative, I suggest that contrary to the CPM V2 hypothesis, verb movement into a functional head relevant to topicalization should be optional in Old English I furthermore argue that a clause-initial subject is not subject to topicalization and remain within TP The analysis proposed in this study leads to the conclusion that an overwhelming majority of Old English left dislocation counts as an occurrence of Hanging Topic Left Dislocation (HlLD) constituting the exclusive type of Present-Day English left dislocation