Passives and Impersonal Verb Constructions in the History of English

Passives and Impersonal Verb Constructions in the History of English

  This paper explores the Case phenomena in two types of constructions, the indirect passives and the impersonal verb constructions, in the history of English, and gives a unified account of the use of Case in these constructions in terms of the constraint interactions in the Optimality theoretical framework. It is suggested in this paper that the dominant use of Nominative on the subjects of these constructions has been incurred by the establishment of the SVO surface order due to a levelling of inflections in Middle English. It thus follows that the prevailing use of the constraint <SUP>*</SUP>SUBJ<SUB>Oblique</SUB> has also been caused by the SVO surface order fixed in Middle English. Overall, this paper suggests that the two constraints put forth here have been in force as two of the major grammatical constraints in the history of English.