A Comparison of Syntactic Structures of the Old and Middle English Versions of The Tale of Apollonius of Tyre

The primary purpose of this paper is to descriptively analyze the syntactic aspects of the Old and Middle English versions of The Tale of Apollonius of Tyre, and to find out similarities and differences of the two. The Old English version examined here is based on Thorpe s 1834 edition and translation of the Old English Apollonius of Tyre, MS Corpus Christi College Cambridge 201. The Middle English version based on John Gower s Confessio Amantis, Vol. I, Book 8 (lines 271-2008), edited by Russel A. Peck (2006), was examined. The main concerns of this paper are focused on the phrase structures, such as noun/adject, verb/adverb, genitive/noun, preposition/noun, non-finite verb/object, and some syntactic aspects are also discussed.