UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Los Angeles

Archaic and Innovative Word Order Patterns in

Late Middle English Prose

A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the

requirements for the degree Master of Arts

in English

by

Denise Therese Perez

1990

ii

iii

To My Father

[In Memoriam]

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

DEDICATION………………………………………………………… iii

LIST OF TABLES……………………………………………………… vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………… vii

ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THIS THESIS………………………… viii

ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………… ix

NOTES……………………………………………………………………. xi

Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION…………………………………… 2

Context of the Problem….………………………………… 2

Research Questions…………………………………………4

The Methodology………………………………………… 5

Notes…………………………………………………… 6

2. LITERATURE REVIEW……………………………… 8

Theoretical Perspective: The “Modern” View………………8

The “Archaic” Rebuttal……………………………………13

Inversion……………………………………………… 14

Inversion in Modern English………………………………15

VS in Old and Middle English………………………… 18

Verb Second……………………………………………….22

Notes………………………………………………………27

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3. MANDEVILLE’S TRAVELS: THE WORK…………… 33

The Tales of the Travels………………………………… 37

Mandeville’s Literary Value……………………………… 40

The Linguistic Appeal of Mandeville’s Travels……………..41

Notes.........................................................................................…. 43

4. DATA ANALYSIS……………………………………… 46

Main Clauses……………………………………………….46

Conjunctive Influence……………………………………. 51

“For”………………………………………………………55

Conjunctive Adverbs………………………………………58

Adverbial Influence…………………………………… 58

Existential Clauses…………………………………………63

Other Archaic Orders…………………………………… 63

Summary………………………………………………… 64

Subordinate Clauses………………………………………. 66

Conclusion…………………………………………………67

Notes………………………………………………………71

REFERENCES…………………………………………………… 71

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List of Tables

Page

1 Independent Clauses, No Pre-position…………………………... 47

2 Conjunctive Influence…………………………………………… 52

3 “For”……………………………………………………………. 56

4 “For” in the Peterborough Chronicle……………………………. 57

5 Adverbial Influence……………………………………………… 58

6 Adverbial Breakdown……………………………………………. 61

7 Summary of Word Order Patterns……………………………….. 65

8 Subordinate Clauses……………………………………………… 66

vii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all three members of

my committee, Dr. Henry A. Kelly, Dr. Edward I. Condren, and Dr. Donka

Minkova.

Most especially, my gratitude goes out to the chair of my committee,

Dr. Donka Minkova, for her unfailing patience, support, and guidance. It was

she who first alerted me to this topic and gave me the confidence to pursue it.

viii

Abbreviations Used in this Thesis

Original Sources

ASC = Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

PC = Peterborough Chronicle

Other Sources

EME = Early Middle English

LME = Late Middle English

ME = Middle English

OE = Old English

S = Subject

V = Verb

V2 = Verb Second

V3 = Verb Third

Vf = Verb Final

WO = Word Order

ix

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

Archaic and Innovative Word Order Patterns

in Late Middle English Prose

by

Denise Therese Perez

Master of Arts in English

University of California, Los Angeles, 1990

Professor Donka Minkova, Chair

The purpose of this study is twofold. First, as a specimen of field work

it seeks, by close syntactic analysis, to discover more about the language of a

late medieval text in which few recent scholars have furrowed. Secondly I

wish to relate – in a very tentative manner – the data from this study with

current theories of word order as they relate to Middle English. The subject

of my analysis is Mandeville’s Travels.

Following examination of this fourteenth century text, a corpus

consisting of 8,115 full clauses, my findings are as follows:

x

1. Despite its high percentage of SVX patterns, Mandeville’s Travels

exhibits a very high percentage of inversions, something Bean’s early SVX

hypothesis could not have predicted. This seems to lend support to Kenade’s

OE V2 hypothesis, and to her scenario of V2 to SVX reanalysis at about 1400.

2. The equally surprising discovery in this text of brace clauses, OVS,

and SOV word orders, though few, further suggests that some other principle

besides V3 was at work in Old and Early Middle English.

3. Dependent clauses in Mandeville, as in Bean’s study of ASC, show a

much higher percentage of modern word order than independent clauses. As

we will see later, this has its own set of theoretical consequences.

Conclusion: Given the many archaic word orders in Mandeville which

occur alongside the modern ones, the entire idea that either “early” or “late”

Middle English could be syntactically “identical” to Modern English must be

abandoned. Instead, the data of this study reinforces Mitchell’s insistence on

the original meaning of the term “Middle English,” namely: a transitional

period in the history of English. (1)

xi

NOTES

1) Bruce Mitchell, “Syntax and Word Order in the Peterborough Chronicle

1122-1154,” (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 65) 143.

Old English began as a verb final language and changed toward basic subject-

verb-complement order during the Old English period, becoming predominately

identical to Modern English in the Early Middle English Period. (1)

Marion Bean (1976)

2

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

Context of the Problem

It is common knowledge that English, in contrast to all of its Germanic

sister languages, has struck a very different path in terms of word order. Thus

while German, Frisian and Dutch are verb-final in subordinate clauses and

verb second in main clauses; and while the Scandinavian languages are at least

still verb second in main clauses, English alone is verb third throughout. (2)

This peculiar situation has raised numerous questions. One – why English

followed such a radical path in the first place – is still a mystery. Another,

whether English ever did conform to the archaic Germanic V2 constraint, is

still disputed. If it did, as Kemenade has recently suggested, then the next

question becomes: exactly when did English shift from V2 to V3? For her

part, Kemenade posits the approximate year at 1400. On the other hand, if

English never did pass through a V2 stage, how can one explain the often high

number of inversions which did occur in OE texts, and which do much to

contribute to their semblance of foreignness? This is Bean’s challenge in her

1976 dissertation, when she becomes the first scholar to posit the abrupt

grammaticization of modern V3 syntax during the OE period. The most

vexing part of the debate has always been the ambiguous nature of the early

3

English data itself. Perhaps only now have linguistic methods become

sophisticated enough to get beyond the contradictory surface structures of Old

and Middle English and thus understand the “real” patterns of its underlying

deep structure.

The implications of the above unanswered questions and opposing

hypotheses are clear for any new analysis of Middle English word order.

Depending upon whichever hypothesis one adopts, the terms, for example,

“archaic” and “innovative” shift their meaning; indeed, one’s very classification

of word order types depends heavily upon one’s frame of reference.

Nonetheless, as Jeffers and Lehiste have said, word order theories are merely

“hypotheses” based on “statistically established tendencies.” (3) Statistics can

be explained away, but they will not go away. The following study represents

an attempt to collect some fresh statistics on the matter, to discover more

about English word order during a period little studied in this respect, namely

late Middle English; and by means of analysis of a document little studied in

the period, Mandeville’s Travels. This, in turn, might shed more light on which

theories better account for the data discovered, both in Middle and Old

English; for, indeed, in the end both reflect merely states of development in

the same language, one which ultimately evolves into Modern English.

4

Before jumping into my analysis proper, however, I believe some

further discussion of the theoretical frameworks proposed above is in order,

especially if one is to understand the sometimes ambiguous data which English

word order studies often produce. I will thus introduce in Chapter Two a brief

overview and background of the above-mentioned hypothesis. I will also

mention the part these various theories play in the sometimes partisan debate

concerning Old and Middle English word order. Chapter Three will be

devoted to a short discussion on the Mandeville’s Travels document itself; and

the final chapter will consist of an in-depth analysis of the word order patterns

found here.

Research Questions

As mentioned earlier, the primary aim of this study is to provide further

data for discussion of the complex phenomenon which is Middle English word

order. Secondarily, however, on the basis of my analysis of a representative

ME text, two theoretical questions will also be considered:

1. Is Bean justified in her claim, based on her data from the Anglo-

Saxon Chronicle, that LOE word order becomes “predominantly identical” to

Modern English in the Early Middle English period? For if she is, then one

5

should anticipate the WO of Mandeville’s Travels, a somewhat late ME text,

exactly to conform to Modern English norms. If she is not correct, then what

becomes of her V3 hypothesis?

2. If, on the other hand, Mandeville proves to have some archaic

features, how archaic will it be? Written in 1410 [which is to say ‘translated at

this time], how will it fare with Kemenade’s hypothesis of Verb-Second

disappearance at about 1400?

The Methodology

The methodology applied to this study is basic database analysis. Only

full clauses were counted for the present purposes, as conjunct clauses, devoid

as they are of the subject, are ambiguous entities. The conclusions to be drawn

in the following pages will be drawn on the basis of statistical compilation.

6

NOTES

Chapter 1

1) Marion Bean, The Development of Word Order Patterns in Old English (Kent: Croom Helm Ltd., 1983) 13.

Bean is referring here to conclusions arrived at by “the consensus” of her sources; but, in her final pages it becomes clear that, essentially, Bean has merely reevaluated this claim and then reasserted it. “…the most probable direction of change in OE,” she says, expressing her own opinions, “does appear to have been directly from verb-final to verb-third (XSV). This conclusion will perhaps not startle the writers of OE grammars where such a direct change is generally assumed….” (p. 139)

2) Some definitions are probably appropriate here.

A) Verb-Second

In syntax, when any constituent (besides the verb) takes first place in a sentence, be it subject, prepositional phrase, direct or indirect object, or adverb; the verb must then occupy of necessity the second position. This constraint is still operative in Modern German; hence such sentences as

Sehr laut schrie der Polizist. Very loud screamed the policeman. i.e., The policeman screamed very loud.

This word order permits the subject verb pattern, but only if no other constituent precedes the subject – thus, providing that the verb again occupies second position. B) Verb-Third A phenomenon permissible in Modern English, an SVO language, but not modern German: When two syntactic constituents may precede the verb. Usually this includes the adverb and the subject, but in

7

Modern English it may also include pre-posed direct and indirect objects. Thus:

Slowly the priest drinks the wine. To his girlfriend he gave a new dress.

Which, in a Verb-Second language would be rendered, for example, as:

Langsam trinkt der Priester den Wein. Slowly drinks the priest the wine. Zu seiner Freundin gab er einen neuen Kleid. To his girlfriend gave he a new dress.

C) Verb Final For example in Mod. German subordinate clauses, when the verb obligatorily takes final position in a clause. i.e.:

…da er zu dumm war. …because he too stupid was. i.e., because he was too stupid.

In Verb-Final languages, if perchance there are two verbs in a clause, either a modal + infinitive, or an auxiliary + past participle, then the positioning of the verb takes the order non-finite, finite at the end of the clause, i.e.:

…weil er die Bücher mitgenommen hat. …because he the books brought along has. i.e. …because he took the books with him.

3) Robert J. Jeffers and Ilse Lehiste, Principles and Methods for Historical linguists (Cambridge: MIT, 1986) 124.

8

Chapter 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Theoretical Perspective: The “Modern” View

In the great flourishing of studies on Old and Middle English word

order following Rothstein’s 1922 monograph on the Peterborough Chronicle

(1), it is interesting to note that two very distinct theoretical tendencies have

flourished as well. In common, both tend to focus on – and sometimes

blatantly privilege – one aspect of early English word order over another. The

more popular trend looks always in Old and Middle English texts for the

harbingers of Modern word order, and, depending on their percentages, they

are quick to deem such works as “modern.” Marion Bean’s pronouncements

on the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle aptly reflect this perspective, which I call “the

modern view.”

This tendency crystallizes in the studies directly preceding Bean’s, in the

works of such scholars as Shannon (1964), Carlton (1970), Shores (1971), and

Gardner (1971). Otherwise unrelated, these historical linguists share one goal,

which is to challenge the idea that, because synthetic, OE word order was free.

Such a view, conventional up to then, is perhaps best represented by Fries,

who in a 1940 volume of Language claims that, in OE, “the order of words…

9

has no bearing whatever upon … grammatical relations…. (2) Much the same

thing is asserted by Mossé five years later in his historic volume on OE:

“l’ordre dans lequel se placent les divers éléments de la phrase,” says he,

referring of course to OE, “est beaucoup plus libre qu’en anglais moderne, …”

(3) What both of these scholars have in common, as well as later scholars who

follow them in the fifties, (4) is an overly strict adherence to the notions of

“analycity” and “syntheticness” in grammars. In an analytic grammar, for these

scholars, word order alone is supposed to convey all sense of grammatical

relation, as for example, in Modern English. Thus the sentences “Mary hit the

man,” and the “The man hit Mary,” encode in English opposite meanings, due

entirely to their differing word orders. In contrary fashion, according to the

purist view, case morphology alone is burdened with the same task in synthetic

languages, thus allowing for a free word order. This is how many in Mossé’s

generation and before thought Old English functioned. (5) Thus Mossé’s

faith in OE inflection: “La flexion,” he says, again referring to OE, “est encore

suffisement riche pour permettre d’apercevoir le rôle joué par chacun de ces

éléments, quelle que soit sa place.” (6) What these scholars failed to

understand, or at least did not recognize to be happening in Old English, is

that such categories are merely generalizations, and that a language can be both

analytic and synthetic at the same time, perhaps in a transitional state. This is

exactly Carlton’s point as he nears the end of his study. After a meticulous

10

gathering of data from the Old English Charters, Carlton arrives at the

following conclusions: “The syntax of Old English,” he says,

does not depend wholly upon one type of system for

indicating the relationship between words; it employs

both inflection and word order, which may operate

simultaneously or which may supplement each other. (7)

This, indeed, is the same conclusion reached by Gardner and others. In this

way one cans see the present fascination with OE word order patterns begin in

earnest, patterns which hitherto had been thought chaotic and erratic. In

Kemenade’s words, these mid-sixties’, early seventies’ studies recognize

“regularity” in OE word order patterns, and “conformity to particular types of

constructions.” (8) But they also do more than that. For the “regular”

patterns emphasized in these works are, for the most part, Modern English

patterns. Indeed, none of the other common OE word order patterns, such as

VS, S…V, Sv…V, etc. are given more than a page of space in these studies. (9)

Here, then, for the first time one finds the entire focus of a historical linguistic

monograph on the English language uniquely dedicated to establishing the

emergence of the modern SVO order in Old English.

While the above works are the first to focus so exclusively on the “early

SVO” hypothesis, and while they do so using a somewhat sophisticated

11

linguistic framework, (10) it would be a mistake to think that earlier scholars

were not also well aware of the presence of the modern SVO order in a good

percentage of Old English sentences. If one ignores, for the moment, his

concepts of “natural” versus “artificial” word order arrangements, Kellner, for

example, notes as far back as 1892 that, “In fact, the oldest Teutonic dialects

exhibit, as a rule, this [i.e., SVO] arrangement” (11) Many years later in his

1958 dissertation, Frederick G. Cassidy notes the same thing. There he writes:

“From c. 900, when case-distinction is still strong, the word order patterns in

Modern English were already well established,” (12) he then goes on to say,

“By c.1050, then, word order in the major Old English pattern is already over

75% the same as the modern pattern.” (13) According to Mildred K. Magers,

says Carlton, referring to her 1943 dissertation, “SVO word order has a definite

trend established by the tenth century.” (14) As becomes evident, then, though

Bean has ventured furthest in her assertion that SVO was not only a tendency,

but in essence a full grammar by Late Old English, Bean’s overall thesis has

not been without precedent.

It would be interesting to think that, due to their prominence, the

above trend to single out modern word orders in Early English first begins in

the works of Anglo-Saxonists, only then to set off a similar tendency among

the medievalists. To look at the chronology, however, it may have been the

12

other way around. Perhaps the earlier, bolder syntactic studies on Middle

English first influenced the Anglo-Saxon scholars to take another look at their

texts. In any event, if enthusiasm over modern word orders in OE was ever

high, it actually soars at times in studies of Middle English. R.W. Chambers,

for example, in his 1932 study of Richard Rolle’s sermons, states: “Anyone

who reads these tracts must see that despite their Fourteenth-century

Yorkshire dialect, we have in them Modern English prose.” (15) Chambers

makes a few concessions to the archaism of the text, but none are syntactic:

“The spelling and the form of the words,” he says, “sometimes the actual

vocabulary may be strange; but the arrangement of the words is modern.” (16)

In an identical vein Cecily Clark makes the following remarks in 1958 on the

Peterborough Chronicle, an even earlier ME text, indeed, one written in what

Schmidt would term not Middle but “transitional” English. (17) “…most of

the basic developments leading to Modern English,” states Clark, “are

illustrated in this brief text: Toller spoke truly when he described this language

as ‘almost that of today.’” (18) Then, echoing a sentiment which,

coincidentally, has also been expressed in relation to Mandeville’s Travels,

written some 200 years later, Clark goes on to say: “These Peterborough

annals are not merely one of the earliest Middle English documents; they are

also the earliest authentic example of that East Midland language which was to

be the ancestor of Modern Standard English.” (19)

13

The “Archaic” Rebuttal

Bruce Mitchell, after reading Clark’s comments above, has declared

them “brief” and “misleading.” (20) In like manner, Japanese scholar Tadao

Kibouchi responds to Chambers’ study, that the latter is “open to criticism of

oversimplification.” (21) Herewith one sees the beginnings of a revisionist

reaction, then, to what these scholars, Kibouchi and Mitchell, consider to be

overhasty pronouncements in earlier works. Their intervention seems timely,

for one finds reintroduced in their studies a focus on various aspects of early

English syntax which, in other studies, are completely ignored. Both Kibouchi

and Mitchell’s general arguments largely attack the idea of “modernity” in pre-

modern stages of the language; and they deal exclusively with syntactic issues.

In the case of Mitchell, while he finds many points in which he agrees

with Clark, the former insists on a greater accuracy of definition. “If . . . the

Chronicle were truly modern,” he contends, then its percentage of SVO word

order “should be 100%.” (22) Kibouchi asserts nearly the same thing in his

counterstatement to Chambers’ article. Certainly, neither Richard Rolle’s

sermons nor the Peterborough Chronicle exhibit anything like 100% SVO

order. Lower even are the SVO percentages of the Old English Charters, the

Anglo Saxon Chronicle and other Old English works that have been variously

hailed as ‘modern.” On the basis of his analysis of the Peterborough

14

Chronicle, Mitchell outlines in his study a more realistic set of categories for

scholars to keep in mind as they analyze works written in Old or Middle

English. One must look, he says, for those constructions which a) are

common to both Old and Modern English, b) which cannot occur in Modern

English, and c) which cannot occur in Old English. In the Peterborough

Chronicle, for example, Mitchell finds much from the first two categories but

none from the third. “Any claim to modernity,” Mitchell concludes, “must

therefore rest on the relative percentages of the different orders and on the

extent to which the constructions which were to survive have ousted the

others.” (23)

Inversion

At the unlikely center of the debate between Mitchell and Clark,

between Kibouchi and Chambers – indeed, the very stumbling block for any

scholar who feels tempted to posit an underlying SVO word order for either

Old or Middle English, lies the little understood syntactic phenomenon in

English called “inversion.” As defined by Barber, it is, “the use in English of a

word order in which the verb precedes the subject.” (24) This, in addition to

the verb-final, and brace construction, is the principle ‘archaic” pattern to

which Mitchell refers above; in high numbers, it is that which “cannot occur in

modern English”; and scholarly reactions to its existence vary widely.

15

Gerritsen, for example, citing figures of 76% to 88% XVS orders in the Anglo

Saxon Chronicle asserts that the pattern is “gradually” declining. (25) On the

basis of figures she does not give she then claims that by the 14th century “it

occurs only rarely.” (26) Sweiczkowski, on the other hand, in his analysis of

Piers Plowman [1362-1387] asserts on the basis of figures from 18.5% to

22.6% in the document’s three parts, that “this striking proportion cannot be

without significance.” (27) Such interpretive confusion is typical among

historical linguists. Before delving into the problem further, though, perhaps it

might be better at this point if we turn, for a moment, to later periods of the

language, to see whatever became of this phenomenon, and what governs its

present-day use.

Inversion in Modern English

As Gerritsen notes, inversion has “almost completely” disappeared in

Modern English. (28) The ‘almost’ completely, however, is the interesting

point, for inversion is still permissible in present-day English. In a modern

American novel, for instance, The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, (29)

we can find 13 instances of inversion in 100 pages. Thus, when Gerritsen

refers to a “disappearance of inversion,” perhaps she wishes to emphasize a

separate issue, that of grammaticization. (30) As Stockwell points out, (31)

inversion in modern English is not a “fully grammaticized” phenomenon,

16

which means that, for the most part, it is not obligatory. If one considers those

few cases in which VS order is obligatory in English, after a certain word such

as “nor,” for example, one can best understand that phenomenon as a lexical

restriction rather than as a syntactic rule. If inversion in Modern English is not

syntactically obligatory, what then decides its use?

In Modern English, and, as we shall see, in both Old and Middle

English as well, it is clear that the distribution of verb-subject inversions is

related to the phenomenon of thematic “fronting,” that is, preposition of a

post verbal element in first position in a sentence. Different in kind from

glottis inversions which distinguish one kind of sentence from another (32)

such as the VS of a direct question versus the SV of a normal statement,

fronted elements have always been the chief catalyst for subject-verb inversion

in Germanic languages. In Old English almost any sentential element could be

fronted including direct object pronouns and direct objects, as Mitchell notes.

(33) Yet, even in Old English, as he says, “the frequency of VS is greatest in

simple sentences and principle clauses introduced by the ambiguous

adverb/conjunctions Þaer, Þanon, Þider, Þa, and Þonne. (34) In Middle

English as well, the presence of fronted “tertiaries” as Jespersen calls them –

adverbs, prepositional phrases, etc. – continue to trigger inversion, even until

17

late in the period, while fronted direct and indirect objects increasingly become

disallowed.

In Modern English, according to Quirk et al., inversions possible

through thematic fronting become very limited (35) Schmidt in her schema

makes two main divisions: “full” inversions after a preposed constituent

versus “semi-inversions.” According to Schmidt, full inversions, or non-

auxiliary verb inversions, are obligatory in English after the following fronted

constituents: A) adverbs – of direction, succession, manner, time, place; B)

predicate nouns; C) predicate adjectives; D) fronted participles; E) “there”

sentences; F) 1. Direct quotes; and 2. onomatopoetic words (i.e., “Bang went

the gun”). After negative, restrictive, and affective adverbs only semi-

inversions are possible, and they are obligatory. Semi-inversions are optional

after such words as “so,” “such”; after “the… the,” and “if… so” correlates;

after preposed infinitives (36) and comparative “than” and “as” subordinators;

and finally, after other openers such as “more,” “particularly,” etc. (37)

A uniquely modern inversion, according to Jacobsson, is that which

occurs after the negative adjunct “nor,” which, he says, “[does] not go further

back than to 1590”; (38) Stockwell also mentions some obligatory inversions

new to Middle English; these are inversions after fronted present participles,

adjective phrases and “preposed abstract prepositional phrases.” (39) Part of

18

the modernity of such inversions lies, no doubt, in the novelty of the

constructions themselves.

Armed with such facts about Modern English VS orders, one is in a

better position, I think, to see what is “modern” versus what “archaic” in

various pre-modern texts in terms of inversion. What is clear is that, in

Modern English at least, “inversion” is a highly constrained phenomenon, and

its use is heavily dependent upon the style of the speaker/writer. AS Schmidt

notes in her discussion of Modern English: “…we can observe,” she says,

“that the larger number of archaic Ss having inversion (i.e., in any sample of

Mod. E inverted sentences) is a clue that inversion is more restricted than it

was in slightly earlier stages of the language.” (40) This is an interesting

admission; for, if modern inversions are really ‘fossils’ of a less restricted prior

phenomenon, one must ask, ‘what are they fossils of? (41)

VS in Old and Middle English

Scholarly acknowledgement of and reaction to the VS phenomenon in

Early English varies widely. At one end of the interpretive spectrum one finds

complete silence or blatant misunderstanding of the pattern. Gardner, for

example, in her general study of Old English prose, makes almost no mention

19

of it, beyond citing the surprisingly high statistics of 40.5% and 29.6% for its

occurrence in her material. What few comments Gardner then does proffer on

the subject – namely, that VS seems to be a signal of subordination (42) – are

completely erroneous. As Mitchell points out, in OE the contrary is true,

especially after the copy-correlatives Þa… Þa. Thus, S…V was the normal

order of subordination, while VS signaled main clause status. (43)

Rothstein [1922] and later Clark [1958] writing about the EME

Peterborough Chronicle simply deny the existence of inversion altogether. VS

patterns, says Clark, “are here abandoned in favour of word order nearer to

that of Modern English.” (44)

Shores, citing his own statistics on the work, disputes Clark’s

overreaching statement above. (45) But while Shores at least concedes the

existence of inversions in the Peterborough Chronicle, he then back-handedly

dismisses their importance. He does this by attributing any instance of the

GVS pattern that he finds as due to a loosely defined, catch-all agent of “style”

or “emphasis.” Thus, according to Shores, the reason for the high occurrence

of VS in the Peterborough Chronicle

probably lies. . . in the scribe’s feeling the force of

style and of certain formulaic patterns of manuscripts

20

of earlier periods, even at this advanced stage of the

language. (46)

This is the approach Bean takes as well. In her study on the earlier

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle Bean attributes inversion first to style, then to its

putative function as a narrative device; and finally to an unduly number of

existential “there” clauses which artificially inflate the VS percentages in her

data. All of these explanations are somehow unsatisfying. First of all, both

Shores and Bean invoke the concept of inversion-as-formulaic expression.

Such high numbers of formulaic “survivals,” however, as are cited by both

authors, would surely imply that at one time inversion must have been

obligatory. Shores, for his part, posits this mythical period as occurring before

the recording of the Peterborough Chronicle, thus saving his document from

the taint of archaism. Bean then, using the same argument, but discussing a

much earlier text, pushes the period even further back. Thus, the possible

Verb-Second constraint, that is, the living syntactic pattern of which OE

inversions are the putative fossils, becomes conveniently deposited to some

prehistoric stage in the language. This, coincidentally, would make English the

most precocious of its sister languages: for it would have had to both acquire

and drop the V2 constraint before the beginning of the ASC, thus, pre-700,

while its sister languages only begin acquiring it in the 6th century. (47)

21

The other arguments conjured up by Bean to discount VS occurrences

in the ASC, those of inversion-as-narrative-device and inflation by “there”

sentences, will be discussed in more detail and kept in mind as we analyze

Mandeville’s Travels.

The most cogent treatment up to very recently of pre-Modern

inversions in English is that by Deborah Ann Schmidt. (48) IN her doctoral

dissertation, Schmidt argues that the difference between present and past

inversions in the language derive from a difference of function between the

two. Thus, in Mod.E, Schmidt claims, inversions are brought about when a

normal SV syntactic order would violate the normal discourse order of theme-

rheme. (49) Specifically, this happens when a subject is new and thus a-

thematic. In Old English, however, because she finds both thematic and

athematic subjects inverted, Schmidt concludes that some other principle is at

work: the principle of “subject-shift.” This is to say that in Old English, the

subject of any new clause, if it is different from the previous clause, tends to be

inverted.

While this analysis explains much in terms of Mod.E, with Old and

Middle English one can find many problems with it. First: if the basis of

inversion is, as Schmidt would contend, semantically motivated and not a

syntactic rule, then one has to account somehow for the invariably obligatory

22

inversions after ne and Þa in OE. As Schmidt says, “Inversion after Þa is

almost totally insensitive to the thematicity of the subject.” (50) Second:

While Schmidt claims that atopical, first mention subjects are the prime

candidates for inversion in OE, her data force her to include seven other

functional categories for inversion as well, such as topical, personal pronoun

subjects [the most unlikely to be inverted element in such a scenario]; topical

subjects: no topic shift; recent mention subjects…etc. In short, her categories

seem all-inclusive for Old English, and even more so for Middle English. (51)

Thus, even though exceptions are part of any linguistic rule, if too many

anomalies are possible, then it may be true that that rule has too little

explanatory power.

Verb-Second

What would seem most commonsense in explaining the high number

of inversions found in Old and Middle English, would simply be to assume

that English, like every other Germanic language once had a Verb-Second

constraint, which somehow disappeared; and that this V2 constraint was

operative in both Old and Middle English. Yet, it is precisely this hypothesis

that many of the above scholars have considered, evaluated and then

disregarded. It seems that there is too much counter-evidence to this theory:

too many instances of non-inversion when, under a verb-second constraint,

23

inversion should be obligatory. This is Mitchell’s conclusion in his great two-

volume grammar of Old English, where he concludes that V2 “is obviously no

more than a tendency.” (52) We’ve seen Bean’s disallowance of a

grammaticized rule for inversion in OE; Gerritsen, who bases her study on

Bean’s, declares that: “Inversion,” the phenomenon that distinguishes Modern

English from the other Modern Germanic languages, also sets apart OE from

the other Old and Middle Germanic languages.” (53) On new evidence,

however, a recent generative grammarian, Ans van Kemenade, is now

disputing this claim, which is based, she believes, on an uncritical acceptance of

OE surface structure.

Indeed, according to Kemenade’s new reasoning, fully two-thirds of the

seeming “exceptions” to an OE V2 constraint can be immediately removed if

one analyzes OE personal pronouns as “clitics.” Because there is so much

evidence indicating that this might indeed be the case, new optimism has

emerged. Stockwell, for his part, hails this new effort as “a principled account

that goes far beyond everything that has been done before….” (54)

Kemenade’s ideas are very innovative; for indeed, what happens in an analysis

of OE syntax, if all personal pronouns which occur before the verb, perhaps

both of them following an adverb, are not really syntactic constituents?

Ke3llner, again, as far back as 1892, noticed the strange behavior of direct

24

object pronouns: “We must distinguish,” he says, speaking of the position of

the object in the history of English, “between the object when a noun and

when a personal pronoun.” (55) What he and Mitchell did not yet realize,

according to Kemenade, is that personal pronoun subjects share in this strange

behavior, which is the tendency to always precede the verb, when full nouns

more often tend to follow it – especially, in the case of nominal subjects, when

a preposed constituent is involved. This, in an utterly simplified version, is

Kemenade’s argument. Unlike Gerritsen before her, Kemenade is inspired by

the similarities between Old English and its sister Germanic languages. As she

says:

…it is often remarked, quite loosely, that OE, being a

set of West Germanic…languages/dialects, resembles

Modern Dutch and Modern German far more closely

than Modern English does… But so far it seems, this

observation has not led to serious comparative work.

(56)

In an intricate and insightful comparison of these languages’ deep structures,

with a special focus on OE clitics and preposition stranding, Kemenade

suggests the following hypotheses: 1) that OE was a verb-final language,

“with rules of verb-fronting and topicalization, resulting in a Verb-Second

25

constraint”; (57) 2) that verb finality was lost at about 1200, and finally, 3) that

the verb-second constraint was lost about 1400, due to reanalysis of clitics as

full constituents.

On this basis of this, Minkova and Stockwell make further suggestions

pertaining to the chronology and causality of the syntactic changes leading

from Old to Middle to Modern English. (58) Thus these scholars suggest that:

4) subordinate clauses, shifting from verb-final to verb late in 1200, were the

first consistent clause group in English to exhibit an XSV order, composed of

Complementizer-Subject-Verb. This then in turn becomes the model for main

clauses. Thus by 1400, main clauses shift from V2 to V3 syntax partly on the

basis of loss of clitization, and also partly by analogy to subordinate clause

structure. Finally, these scholars also note the continuance of the “verb-

brace” into Middle English; that’s to say, the Sv…V construction which

results, as Stockwell and Minkova point out, from “verb-final base rules plus a

verb fronting rule....” (59) Given, then this Vf to V2 to SVO reanalysis, one

would have to assume that in post-1400 Middle English, any Verb-Final brace,

or Verb-Second construction would be due to archaic survivals, not stylistic or

thematic aberrations.

In sum then, such hypotheses as are outlined above form one’s frame

of reference in any new analysis of Middle English. What remains in this case

26

is to gather the data from the chronologically very intriguing ME document

Mandeville’s Travels, to see a) how the above theories succeed in explaining

the data found here; and b) what the data in Mandeville may reveal about the

viability of such theories as we have up to now discussed.

27

NOTES

Chapter 2

1) Rothstein’s Die Wortstellung in der Peterborough Chronik, (1922) is somewhat of a pioneering work. Most of the studies to be found in his list of references are late 1800’s and early 1900’s German dissertations.

For an excellent history of English syntactic studies preceding Rothstein’s, one is especially referred to Gardner and Carlton’s introductions. There these scholars trace the interest in Old English syntax which emerged out of the primary phonological interests of the nineteenth-century grammarians.

2) Charles Fries, “On the Development of the Structural Use of Word-Order in Modern English,” Language XVI (1940), 199.

3) Fernand Mossé, Manuel de l’anglais du moyen age, Vol. I (Paris, 1945) 167.

4) Carlton mentions many of the later grammarians who, believing OE word order to be chaotic, devote little or no space to discussion of the phenomenon. They include such scholars as Norman Davis, G.L. Brook, Quirk and Wrenn in their 1955 Old English Grammar and P. S. Ardern.

5) It is Gardner who best summarizes the history of the arguments relating to the “synthetic” nature of old English.

6) Mossé, Ibid. (Emphasis mine)

7) Charles Carlton, Descriptive Syntax of the Old English Charters (The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1970) 195.

8) Ans Van Kemenade, Syntactic Case and Morphological Case in the History of English (Dordrecht: Foris, 1987) 15.

9) There are other problems with these studies; for example, neither Carlton nor Gardner distinguish SV from S…V, or Verb Final order. Both

28

of these are equally counted as “modern” instances of SV (as opposed to VS).

10) Indeed, from a contemporary perspective, these studies are somewhat marred by their now outdated linguistic framework. Carlton’s study is thus confusing due to his Friesian distinction of “basic” sentences versus “sequence” sentences. It is interesting that part of the logic for this distinction is due to the high number of XVS inversions found in his data, which fall into the “sequence” sentence category – a category thus more easily “dismissible” as somehow not being a “kernel” sentence. In like manner, Shores’ study is somewhat difficult due to his use of “tagmemes” and Gardner’s due to her now out-of-date abbreviations for constituents. All of these studies, however, reflect an early Chomskyan influence.

11) Leon Kellner, Historical Outlines of English Syntax (London: Macmillan, 1982) 286.

12) Frederic G. Cassidy, The Backgrounds in Old English of Modern English Substitutes for the Dative Object in the Group Verb + Dative-Object + Accusative Object (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Michigan, 1939) 86.

13) Ibid.

14) Carlton, p. 17.

15) R.W. Chambers, On the Continuity of English Prose from Alfred to More and his School (EETS: OS 191A, 1932).

16) Ibid.

17) Deborah Ann Schmidt, A History of Inversion in English (unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1980). See especially Chapter Three.

18) Cecily Clark, The Peterborough Chronicle 1070-1154 (Oxford: OUP, 1958), lxvi.

19) Ibid.

29

20) Mitchell, p. 113

21) Tadao Kubouchi, “Word Order in Richard Rolle’s English Epistles, (In Geardagum 4, 1982) 19.

22) Mitchell, 122.

23) Mitchell, 138.

24) Charles Barber, Early Modern English (London: Andre Deutsch, 1976)

280.

25) Marinel Gerritsen, “Divergent word order developments in Germanic: A description and a tentative explanation” (In Fisiak: Historical Syntax. Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984) 113.

Gerritsen here is citing figures taken from Bean, all of which reflect inversion related to pre-posed constituents.

26) Ibid.

27) Walerian Swieczkowski, Word Order Patterning in Middle English (The Hague: Mouton, 1962) 19.

28) Gerritsen, 114.

29) Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1968).

30) Gerritsen, however, clearly does not believe that a Verb Second constraint was ever grammaticized in English. Instead, she maintains that English differed from its sister languages at least from the Old English period.

31) Robert P. Stockwell, “On the history of the verb-second rule in English,” (In Fisiak, 1984) 575.

30

32) Otto Jespersen, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Principles (London: George Allen & Unwin LTD, 1958) Vol. VII, Syntax, 62.

33) Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985). Vol. 2, 971.

34) Ibid.

35) Quirk et al., A Grammar of Contemporary English, (London: Longman Group Limited).

36) Schmidt, p. 17

37) Schmidt, p. 18.

38) Bengt Jacobsson, Inversion in English: with Special Reference to the Early Modern English Period, (Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksells Boktrycheri Aktiebolag, 1951) 26.

39) Stockwell, 580.

40) Schmidt, 17.

41) Like Gerritsen, Schmidt does not believe that inversion ever formed part of a V2 grammar in Old English. Her argument is not that inversions were indeed less restricted in OE, but rather that they were “differently restricted,” 18.

42) Gardner notes (p. 41) that she gets this idea from Samuel Andrew’s Syntax and Style in Old English, (Cambridge, 1940).

43) As Mitchell, in his A Guide to Old English (1964) says: “…it may be taken as a safe rule for prose that, when one of two correlative clauses has the word order VS, it must be the principle clause….” 68.

44) In Rothstein’s words: “Trotz der verhältnismäßigen Anzahl und in ihrer syntaktishcen Funktion geht die Inversion im mittelenglishchen Abschnitt der Chronik scharf zurück.” 108.

31

45) “Cecily Clark,” he says, “…was misleading in her reference to Rothstein’s study, …as Rothstein was himself, when she wrote that the VS order was frequently abandoned after introductory adverbial phrases,” 84.

46) David L. Shores, A Descriptive Syntax of the Peterborough Chronicle, from 1122 to 1154 (The Hague: Mouton, 1971) 87.

47) Bean in her chapter on the “Backgrounds and Relatives of Old English” makes mention of A.H. Smith’s 1935 study of the ancient runes and of North Germanic languages in their early stages and concludes that these languages went directly from Vf to V2 around 600. (Bean, 46)

48) Schmidt’s work is heavily influenced by the Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP) theory which was further developed, she notes, by the Prague School of Linguistics. Essential to this theory is the notion of Communicative Dynamism, i.e., the idea that thoughts, hence sentences, are organized in the order of “theme “rheme,” or old information, new information. It is the heavier “rheme” elements, she states, which “push the communication forward by providing fresh information.” 33.

49) “Theme” here refers to that constituent-bearing information that is old or known. In her work, Schmidt clarifies the concept. “In prose,” she says, “thematic nouns generally have been previously introduced into the discourse and in any case are known (identified) to the reader/hearer whether through shared knowledge or through the linguistic context,” 28.

50) Schmidt, 135.

51) In Middle English her categories are least convincing. There, she argues, inversion functions either to stress the subject, the verb or the preposed constituent. Unlike in OE, according to her schema, the inverted subject does not have to be stressed; but unlike Modern English, it doesn’t have to be athematic either. To a non-initiate, at least, such a scenario seems to indicate that “anything goes” in terms of inversion.

52) Mitchell (1985), 974.

53) Gerritsen, 112.

54) Stockwell, Review (Lingua, 1989) 93.

32

55) Kellner, 291.

56) Kemenade, 1.

57) Stockwell, 92.

58) Robert P. Stockwell and Donka Minkova, “Subordination and Word Order Change in the History of English” (Kellner Memorial, Mouton de Bruyter, 1991, ed. By D. Katovsky)

59) Stockwell and Minkova, 30.

33

Chapter 3

MANDEVILLE’S TRAVELS: THE WORK

As Henry Parkes notes, Europe during the fourteenth and fifteenth

centuries was literally “haunted by rumors of strange civilizations in the East.”

(1) To what extent the book of Mandeville’s Travels may have contributed to

this phenomenon we will never truly know; but it is nearly impossible to

underestimate the influence of this late medieval travel guide. Translated into

almost every European language, there are more extant manuscripts of this

medieval work than almost any other; and its contents worked upon the

brightest and best minds for generations. Leonardo da Vinci, says Dr. Mosley,

kept the book along with others of its genre in his library; Christopher

Columbus apparently studied its contents assiduously; and Hernando Cortes

always kept his eyes peeled for the mythical inhabitants of Mandeville’s

descriptions. Beyond this, the book has had a lasting impact on the popular

imagination. Yet, while the work remains a precious artifact, both on literary

and linguistic grounds, it remains also, to a large extent, shrouded in mystery.

The most straightforward account we have about both the author and

his work comes from the pages of the “Travels” themselves. There, in the

book’s prologue and concluding pages the author volunteers the following

information: his name, he says, is Sir John Mandeville, Knight; and he was

34

born in England, in the town of St. Albans. He set out on his famous voyage

to the East, we learn, in the year 1322, and came back again, reluctantly, in the

year 1356. Now old and afflicted with gout, it gives him certain “solace,” to

record his many adventures before they pass from his mind. Though

unworthy, he says, his special purpose in writing this guide is to instruct those

Þat will + are in purpos for to visite the holy cite of Jerusalem”; for he has

often times passed that way himself, “with gode companye of many lords.”

Finally, as regards the language of the text, the author matter of factly offers

the following comments: that he has “put this boke out of latyn” into French,

and translated it again out of French into English, so that every man in his

nation, i.e., England, may “understonde” it.

Always urbane and devout, if indeed authentic, Mandeville immediately

strikes one as the real-life counterpart to that “meeke” and “parfit” knight of

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Both knights, for example, have spent long years

in heathen lands; both have graced the company of noble armies; and both, at

one time or another, embark upon a pilgrimage: Chaucer’s knight to the local

shrine of Thomas à Becket, Mandeville directly to the Holy Land. Yet, for

many scholars, Mandeville is as factitious as his literary compeer. It would

certainly be safe to say that, after the brilliant and scholarly detective work of

35

the last century, there is no claim in the work which is not roundly disputed by

scholars.

First of all, there is the question of the “Travels” themselves. It has

been suggested, for example, that the furthest trip undertaken by Mandeville

was not to the distant lands of Prestre John, but rather to the local library. As

Letts notes, one of the most dedicated of the Mandeville scholars, Sir George

Warner, “has tracked down Mandeville’s sources with such deadly effect that

only a few pages are left which are not shown to have been stolen.” (2) Then

there is the question, given the proliferation of translations of the work: which

was the original? Is it the Latin, the French, or the English version? And if

one of the English versions is the original, which one is it … the Cotton, the

Bodley, the Egerton manuscript? At least we can dismiss the “defective” text

as definitely copied. And finally there is the question of the author’s identity

itself. Mossé notes, in his Handbook of Middle English, that Mandeville

“probably never existed.” (3) Instead, he believes that a certain Jehan de

Bourgogne, a Frenchman, is “undoubtedly” the author of the work. Hamelius,

for his part, editor of the Cotton version, posits instead that Jean

d’Outremeuse, another Frenchman, is the man behind the “Travels”; (4) while

M.C. Seymour, editor of the Bodley text, believes simply that the work is

anonymous, and was intended to be so. (5)

36

In response to all of these various facts and theories, two scholars,

Malcolm Letts and Dr. Moseley from Cambridge, (6) offer the most interesting

conclusions so far. Both Letts and Moseley believe that it is Mandeville

himself, an Englishman, who actually wrote the travels. They concede that in

some French documents a certain Jehan de Bourgogne, confessed on his

deathbed to be Mandeville; they also concede that the original document had

to be written in French, given all the Gallicisms in the English version, (7) and

given also that that the most complete and earliest of the 300 known

manuscripts is in French. (8) In addition, Dr. Moseley happily concedes that

most of the contents of the “Travels” are in fact plagiarized. His retort, in

short, is that none of these details are decisive. The fact, for instance, that an

Englishman might write in French during the Middle Ages is entirely

conventional. (9) So too the act of plagiarism, which was not only “accepted”

at the time, Mosley argues, but also “admired.” (10)

Three additional things work well for the Mandeville-as-Englishman

interpretation: 1) Mandeville’s intimate knowledge of England; 2) the

presence, in the “Travels” of a very sophisticated persona; and 3) the

unlikelihood that the author never travelled. As regards Mandeville’s

“Englishness,” one may find, for example, in his discussion of alphabets,

references to the peculiar characters “thorn” and “yogh” which occur in his

37

native language, English. This would surely be arcane knowledge for a scholar

from the continent. Mandeville also makes a few references to England’s

native flora and fauna. (11) Unrelated but equally important: though the

sources in Mandeville are plagiarized, as Moseley notes, they are not carelessly

or cluelessly weaved together. Instead, the author greatly modifies his

material, adding factors, according to the Cambridge scholar, such as the smell

of a panther skin, which lend great authenticity to the work, as well as adding

validity to the narrator persona. If Mandeville is not authentic, concludes Dr.

Moseley, “the higher one has to rate his literary artistry.” (12) Finally, it is

somewhat implausible that the author never travelled. Given the popularity of

pilgrimages in that age, especially for those of the leisured class, it would be

hard to believe, argues Moseley, that Mandeville never once went to Jerusalem.

While the fables and stories with which Mandeville inflates his account make

the work more like an Arthurian romance than a factual guide, perhaps this is

simply Mandeville’s way to placate his medieval readers.

The Tales of the Travels

Every version of Mandeville’s Travels is divided into two parts: the

first recounts one of the principle medieval routes to Jerusalem; and the second

describes the lands and peoples of the Orient. The very construction of the

38

work represents well the medieval idea of the “compendium of knowledge,”

for Mandeville succeeds in providing geographic data encyclopedic in scope, as

well as in relating such facts to greater spiritual truths. Thus, as in Dante,

Jerusalem is here considered to be both the geographical and spiritual center of

the world; and as such its description is found at the very heart of the

“Travels.”

Mandeville opens his work with a description of the way to the Holy

Land. The route he describes is that of the First Crusade: that is, from the

Rhine Valley, through Hungary and Bulgaria, to Constantinople. (13) On the

way he describes, among other things, the beliefs of the Orthodox Greeks, and

the fate of the major relics pertaining to the crucifixion of Jesus. He also gives

an extended account of the sultans of Egypt, a passage known by scholars as

“the Egypt gap,” for it is missing in all the known English MSS, except the

Cotton and Egerton versions of the work. Finally, at the end of Part I one

finds the actual descriptions of Jerusalem itself. To be sure, this is the

fulfillment of every pilgrim’s dream…. Here Mandeville shows us every trace

of the life of Jesus; and without exception, one might yet see them all. One

can actually touch, for instance, the very spot where Mary was conceived; and

twenty-two steps away one may visit her father’s grave. There are stones in yet

another place still stained white from the milk of the Holy Mother’s breast; and

39

we see the cave where Peter hid after denying Christ. In short, every New

Testament event is here captured and revisited, as well as the m any popular

myths which, in the course of the Middle Ages, grew around these Biblical

stories.

While Part I of the “Travels” delights and mystifies, it is the second half

of Mandeville’s narrative that, pertaining to the distant realms of the East, has

made the work immortal. Here one may find the same mixture of the real and

the imaginary that makes the first part of the work so alluringly believable. In

terms of what is “real,” Mandeville expends great energy, for example, in his

discussion of circumnavigation, to prove that world, contrary to all

superstition, is round. Also many grains of truth can be found in Mandeville’s

descriptions of Muslim and Hindu religious beliefs, some of which still pack a

certain force. Yet, it is Mandeville’s strange accounts of marvels and atrocities,

those “wonders” of the East, which, for a while at least, became part of the

Western imagination. It is here that one is introduced to the Amazons, for

example, who cut off one breast so as to fight more easily; the headlines, flat-

faced monsters on the Isle of Andaman; the lost tribes of Gog and Magog shut

up by Alexander in the mountains; the gravelly sea where one my fish for

diamonds; self-sacrificing fish; and gold-digging ants…not to mention the

visionary realms of the Great Khan and of Prestre John… It was such stories

40

as these which transfixed his readers and gained for Mandeville a lasting

audience, well into the Renaissance. Indeed, it wasn’t until Renaissance

explorers finally despaired of ever finding such marvels that the “Travels”

finally lost their influence. Only then did they become, like the Middle Ages

themselves, an object of ridicule and contempt among the more enlightened.

Mandeville’s Literary Value

As with just about every other aspect of the work, the precise literary

merit of Mandeville’s Travels remains to some degree disputed among

scholars. There are some, like Laird and Gorrell, who view the “Travels” as

“obviously not the work of a skilled mind.” (14) Beyond this, however, such

scholars have nothing further to say about the work. Moseley, on the other

hand, marvels at Mandeville’s handling of hypotactic syntax, and at what he

considers Mandeville’s intentionally “naïve style”: “No bumbler,” he writes,

“could handle this periodic and episodic complex in his mind and express it

effectively; Mandeville cannot be seen as anything but a most competent

writer.” (15) Mossé, for his part, finds much to praise, not so much in the

work of Mandeville himself, bhut in the talent of his unknown “Englisher.”

The anonymous translator of Mandeville, he notes, “had a deep and sure

instinct for the English language,” as well as an instinct for English sentence

rhythm. (16) Many, in the course of time, have considered Mandeville, with his

41

simple and clear style, the ‘father of English prose.’ (17) Given the dearth of

comparable prose pieces in English at this time, this is a difficult claim to

challenge.

The Linguistic Appeal of Mandeville’s Travels

Of the three hundred extant MSS of the “Travels,” four versions of the

work have been preserved in Middle English, three of them translations of a

French original, one from Latin. (18) The former three are known respectively

as the Cotton, the Egerton and the “Defective” texts. It is the first of these in

which I am most interested.

Two very crucial features make the Cotton manuscript an especially

worthy document for an English philological study: its date and its dialect.

Although the manuscript itself is dated c.1410 – 20 (19) internal historical

evidence suggests that the original work might have been composed c. 1362.

(20) Even a proximity to this latter dating would make the Mandeville

translator a contemporary of the major figures in medieval English letters:

Langland in this year was probably 41, Chaucer 22, and Wycliffe perhaps 42.

As for the dialect of the Cotton manuscript, it is that of the South East

Midlands (21) – a dialect which at this time, notes the scholar van der Meer,

“hardly, if at all, deviates from the English spoken near the Metropolis at the

42

beginning of the 15th century.” (22) Already by this date, he adds, “a standard

language had begun to develop.” (23)

Such facts, to which we might be reminded of a final, that “Mandeville”

is a prose composition, place this linguistically somewhat neglected work in a

unique position. Certainly I believe it can offer us a valuable glimpse into the

development of what was to become Modern English. Or perhaps, as Bean’s

theory would suggest, when our scribe sat down to translate Mandeville’s

Travels, the English language was already quite modern, and had been so for

centuries, at least as far as word order is concerned. It is the purpose of the

next few pages to explore this question.

43

NOTES

Chapter Three

1) Henry Bamford Parkes, A History of Mexico (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1938) 27.

2) Malcolm Letts, Sir John Mandeville: The Man and his Book (London: Batchworth Press LTD, 1949) 123.

3) Fernand Mossé, A Handbook of Middle English (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1968) 276.

4) Thus the title of Hamelius’s edition of the Cotton manuscript: Mandeville’s Travels: Translated from the French of Jean d’Outremeuse.

D’Outremeuse, a French contemporary of Mandeville, and author of a work entitled Mirror of Histories, definitely tampered with some of the manuscripts. Because of this connection, and because there are otherwise so few documentary traces of the real Mandeville, Hamelius simply posits the Frenchman as writer of the Travels.

In terms of the Frenchman’s possible motivation for disguising his real identity, Hamelius cites some anti-papal references in the work, which he assumes d’Outremeuse very daringly wished to publish. This latter, then, fearing the authorities, thus felt obliged to use “Mandeville” as his nom de plume. Later, Hamelius argues, the Wycliffites translated the document in English for obvious reasons.

Moseley, for his part, agrees with Symore that the “Travels” are not an “anti-papal Lollard pamphlet in disguise.” [Seymour, 176] Such subtle reproaches to the papacy as are found in Mandeville, argues Moseley, are somewhat common for the time; in addition, one could cite many occasions in the work where Mandeville shows himself to be unambiguously devout and pious.

5) The Bodley Version of Mandeville’s Travels, Ed. M.C. Seymore (Oxforf: Oxford University press, 1963) 176.

6) Dr. Moseley’s thorough and perceptive discussion of the “Travels” is to be found in his Introduction to the 1983 Penguin edition. In this

44

edition he provided a modern translation of the work based on the Egerton version.

7) Mossé notes some of the more amusing Gallicisms in the Cotton text, translations such as “the hills of Aygnes” for the French “Montaigne,” and “swannes of hevene” for “signes du ciel.”

8) According to Letts, the earliest known French manuscript is dated 1371 and has not been printed. This is the manuscript to which Moseley compares to both the Cotton and the Egerton version of the “Travels.”

9) Although Chaucer, of course, breaks with this convention with his English Canterbury Tales, his contemporary John Gower still chooses at this time to write his major pieces in Latin and Norman French.

10) As Moseley notes [p. 12] many English writers considered plagiarism as a means to bestow greater authority to their works. He cites the example of Marie de France who, in her reworking of Robert of Flamborough’s Poenitentiale, has no problem in claiming experiences “she could not have had.”

11) When he mentions, for example, the “Barnacle Geese” which were reputed to breed in Britain.

12) Moseley, 13.

13) Although by the year 1356, when Mandeville sites down to write his “Travels,” the great Crusades of the Middle Ages were long over, one still finds in this work a remarkable crusading spirit. In his very prologue, for example, while discussing Jerusalem, Mandeville can yet be found urging his fellow Christians to “conquere” their “right heritage,” and to “chacen out all the mysbeleeuynge men…”

14) Charlton Laird and Robert M. Gorrell, English as Language: Backgrounds, Development, Usage (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1961) 62.

15) Moseley, 37.

16) Mossé, 276.

45

17) Ibid.

18) Ibid.

19) Mossé, 398.

20) Letts, XXVII.

21) The Egerton Ms., in contrast, is written in a Northern dialect.

22) H.J. van der Meer, Main Facts Concerning the Syntax of Mandeville’s Travels (Utrecht: Kemnik en Zoon, n.d.) XI.

23) Ibid.

46

Chapter 4

DATA ANALYSIS

The following analysis will proceed upon a total clause breakdown in

both parts of Mandeville’s Travels. Of the 8,085 full clauses in the work, 4,520

are main clauses. It is with these that I shall begin.

I: Main Clauses

From the very beginning, the English of Mandeville’s Travels offers a

direct challenge to the Beanian perspective. To take the category, for example,

of independent clauses which do not begin with “and,” “but,” “ne” or other

conjunctions, or with adverbs or adverb phrases, one should expect, if Bean is

correct, an unflinching SVX, or “modern” order. (1) Instead, one finds both

SVX and non-SVX patterns.

Because it is helpful to see the word order in the “Mandeville”

document as part of a continuum in development, I have adjoined in Table 1

the Old and Early English data compiled by Mitchell in his similar analysis of

Stephan and the Peterborough Chronicle, both “Continuations,” 1122-1154.

(2)

47

Table 1 (a)

Steph. Cont. I Cont. II Mand.

1. SV 39 52 22 296

2. OSV 2 4 6 7

2. a. oSV 8

3 CSV 0 0 0

4. VS 2 1 5 16

5. V 4 0 2 0

6. soV 4 3 1 0

7. OVS 3 2 0 6

7.a. Vs 2

8. CSV 0 1 0 0

9. SV 0 6 0 10

a) In this and the following tables, numbers 1-3 represent modern word orders, while numbers 4 and following represent orders not possible in Modern English.

b) Mitchell in his study does not distinguish noun objects from pronoun objects. Both he classifies under OSV or OVS respectively. In my study, however, I make the distinction, since it is an important one in terms of clitics.

c) C = compliment, i.e., A lady she was.

d) On the basis of these figures, Mitchell calculates that 76% of Stephen, Cont. I, and Cont. II respectively demonstrate modern word order.

(b)

(c) (d)

--expressing a wish--

48

As the comparison in Table 1 indicates, English word order, while well

on its way, has not yet completely evolved by the time of Mandeville into its

modern arrangement. Thus, in many categories of word order that are

permissible in Old English but not in Mod. E., some clauses in Mandeville’s

Travels are represented.

Beginning with VS, I classify in my study only those word order

arrangements not possible in present-day English. I thus discount most

question inversions, even though they invert the full verb, since inversion is

required in Mod. E. Included are thus inverted conditionals and indirect

questions as not being possible in Mod. English, (3) i.e., “And ȝif ony man

aske hem, what is here belieeue…”; “ȝit were it gretter Almes to ȝeven it to þo

soules.” Also included are various archaic imperatives.

Archaic imperatives may be divided into two types: second person

imperatives with expressed subject, and something resembling a third-person

subjunctive, which Mitchell calls a “jussive subjunctive.” (4) As Mitchell notes,

such subjunctives may take wither VS or SV order, both of which are equally

archaic in Modern English. The SV pattern figures under line 9 in the above

table, “SV expressing a wish.”

Examples of the VS jussive subjunctive in Mandeville are the following:

49

p. 123/1.24 Be þer ymagined a figure.

1.36 Also, be the erthe deuysed in als manye parties as the firmament…etc.

In Mod.E, the same idea is often expressed as a subjectless second-person

imperative with the verb “let.” Interestingly, this pattern occurs once in

Mandeville, suggesting that the two options were in free variation at this time.

i.e., “+ lat euery partye answere to a degree of the firmament.”

Some fossils of this use of the subjunctive have survived into Mod.E,

namely the “be it” construction. This occurs in LME also, but I have

discounted it as an ‘archaic” order.

Of the SV subjunctives “expressing a wish,” four begin with the “that”

complentizer. Thus: “þat he haue no children,” “þat all the lynes meeten at

the centre,” etc. Four others begin with an appeal to the deity and are perhaps

formulaic: “God be thonked,” “Lord be with þe”; and one beginning with

“wo” is definitely formulaic: “Wo be to the Chorsaym.” A completely non-

formulaic example of the SV jussive subjunctive is the following, p. 47, 1.14

“But his curs be turned in to his owne hed.” Because these imperatives and

third-person subjunctives are “glottic” in nature, I include them in Table 1,

even though some of them are introduced by a conjunction or conjunctive

adverb.

50

In terms of the Sv…V and soV patterns, signifying the brace

construction and verb-final order respectively, none occur in the Mandeville

text in this category.

Several examples of inversion do surprisingly occur in Mandeville in the

environment of a preposed direct object. Actually, both SV and VS orders can

be found here, thus indicating that both orders are in free variation in this

environment. What is perhaps most unexpected in the text, beyond the fact

that there is any inversion after a direct object at all, is that personal pronoun

subjects are twice inverted. Thus, “Dere god, what love hadde he to vs his

subjettes,” and “All this schall I ȝeve þe-.” As Kemenade notes vis-à-vis the

prose of Wycliffe, one can find therein “no inversion of subject pronouns.” (5)

This is somewhat strange since Mandeville and Wycliffe were writing in the

same dialect. At the most, if one assigns to the “Mandeville” text the latest

possible date, for example the year 1420 as posited by Mossé, that would

separate Mandeville’s Travels from the latest Wycliffite prose by some 40 years.

(6) In this time then, if not already decliticized (7), personal pronoun subjects

would have had to have undergone decliticization in the East Midland dialect,

or at least this is what the “Mandeville” text seems to indicate. Inversions of

subject pronounces in Chaucer’s southern dialect had already taken place,

suggesting earlier decliticization in the South. These facts are of some interest

in regard to Kemenade’s relation of loss of Verb-Second with decliticization.

51

Finally, as regards Table 1, one notes a complete absence in Mandeville

of the Complement-Verb-Subject order, an order which was apparently

unpopular in OE as well.

To tally the percentages then, one arrives at 91% of modern word order

in Mandeville in simple sentences with no adverbial or conjunctive influence.

This is 10% higher than in the same category in the PC, Cont. I, thus showing

a continual evolution towards modern WO in LME. IN the meantime,

though, 9% of the simple sentences in this category are still archaic, something

which Bean’s early conclusions could not have predicted.

Conjunctive Influence

Because of the tendency for the Old English conjunctions “and,” “but”

[i.e., “ac”], and sometimes “ne” to send a verb to the end of the clause, I have

taken special care to analyze them separately in Mandeville’s Travels. AS Table

2, however, shows, by c. 1410-20, these constructions only rarely trigger

archaic word orders in independent clauses.

52

Table 2

And But + MC* Ne AND BUT NE 1. SVX 1,039 167 12 2. SvVX 199 52 6 3. OSV 41 4. VS 5. vSV 6. sv…V 1 7. OVS 7 7.a. oVS 1 7.b. OVs 8 8. SOV *MC = main clause a) p. 2/ 1.1 “And he myghte best in in þat place suffer deth.”

Of the .01% of archaic word orders one can find in this category,

none of them are clearly related to conjunctive influence, as I will explain

below. In this Mandeville’s Travels stands in striking contrast to earlier

medieval texts. Thus, according to Mitchell’s statistics, Stephen still

demonstrates 30.6%, Cont I of the Peterborough Chronicle 20%, Cont. II 15%

non-modern word orders after coordinating conjunctions. (8)

In this study, the inversions in lines 7, 7a, and 7b, for example, as in

Table 1, result from the preposed direct object. (It must be remembered that

conjunctions in OE caused verb finality, not inversion.) (9) Interesting again

here are the eight instances of subject-pronoun inversion, represented here in

(a)

53

7b, adding further support that subject-personal pronouns have lost their clitic

status.

Correct interpretation of the WO pattern of line six is more difficult.

In his extremely brief chapter on word order, van der Meer notes in the

English of Mandeville’s Travels “a greater freedom in the place of adverb

adjuncts,” and also of adverbs of degree, than “at later times.” (10) In the over

599 instances in Mandeville, however, that sentences contain two verbs, one

finite and the other non-finite, only in six instances can one find an adverb of

any length intervene between the two verbs. The example here in line six is

one such time. IN a seventh similar instance one can find a direct object take

media position between two verbs in a clause. This latter is clearly a “brace”

construction; the former six instances might be called “pseudo-brace”

constructions.

The seven such instances found in the entire text are as follows. First,

the pseudo brace:

p. 2/ 1.1 And he myghte best in that place suffer deth

p. 6/ 1.29 For cedre may not in erthe ne in water rote.

p. 1 /1.8 And þere he wolde of his blessedness enoumbre him in the seyd blessed + gloriouse virgine Marie.

p. 2/ 1.2 … because he ches in þat lond rathere þan in ony other þere

54

to suffer his passioun + his deth.

p. 2/ 1.19 …whan he …wolde for trespassours suffer deth. p.99/ 1.28 For the toll + the custom of his marchantes is withouten

estimacyoun to ben nombred.

And, finally, the “true” brace: p. 1/ 1.28 For as for himself he hadde non euyill deserued…..

Clearly, none of the above sentences would be produced by a native

speaker of Modern English; yet it is difficult to tell if syntactically the six

instances of pseudo brace reflect a historical movement of the finite verb from

a verb-final to a verb-second position, which is the origin of the true OE brace;

or whether such sentences merely reflect less restricted adverb placement in

LME. Scholars up to now have been somewhat vague on this subject. The

closest Stockwell, for example, comes to a definition of the OE Sv…V

phenomenon, that is, to defining exactly what may be “embraced” by the brace

construction, is in his explication of its demise. “Rightward movement,” he

says, takes place to eliminate nominal and adverbial elements from within the

brace.” (11) One assumes the nominal element is a complement or a direct

object. Mitchell, in his analysis of the PC offers two examples in which “the

participle in a resolved verb form takes final position,” (12) although he does

not call this by name a “brace” construction. They include one sentence where

55

a direct object takes medial position, and another in which an agent/source

assumes this position, i.e., “hit wearþ fram heofonlicum fyre forbaerned.”

Both constructions, he notes, are impossible today. To return to the data in

this study, we find two pseudo brace constructions in dependent clauses.

These two are especially puzzling since brace constructions have never been

part of the subordinate clause scenario in Germanic languages. Instead,

subordinate clauses in Germanic are usually verb final. While the entire “brace”

clause phenomenon could benefit, I believe, from a more detailed

investigation, here I can only conclude that such constructions are definitely

non-modern, and in “Mandeville” contribute to its archaic flavor.

“For”

As for the much used “for” in Mandeville’s Travels, I think it best to

accord it a category all its own. As in Stephen (13) it is unclear in “Mandeville”

whether “for” is a coordinating, or a subordinating conjunction. (14) Strictly

speaking it is used as both. Yet sometimes it seems also used as an empty

marker –perhaps, as v.d. Meer speculates, because “it is apt to give an

appearance of veracity to the strangest of tales.” (15) In any event, both in

Mandeville as well as in the Peterborough Chronicle “for” has clearly outgrown

its OE limitations as a mere preposition. The breakdown of word orders after

“for” is the following:

56

Table 3

Mandeville

1. For + SVS (a) 339 2. For + OSV 2 3. For + Adv + SVX 5 4. For + VS (b) 0 5. For + Adv + VS 8 6. For + sv…V (c) 3 7. For + OVS 1 8. For + SOV 0

a) All SVX figures include instances of SvVX as well. b) Similarly, all VS figures also include instances of vS…V. c) All three instances of the brace construction can be found in my discussion of these latter in the preceding pages. d) “For more precious ne gretter ransoun ne myghte he put for us þan his blessed body his precious blood + his holy lyf.” P. 2 / 1.15 In this category, all archaic orders are coincidental. Inversions, for

example, in lines five and seven, as the direct-object related inversions found in

Tables 1 and 2, are plainly due to their respective preposed constituents; how

else could one explain the complete lack of inversions found after the “for”

conjunction by itself? And, again, as a conjunction, “for” could conceivably

have caused verb finality, not inversion. In this respect the preposed

constituent-caused inversion one actually finds after “for” are quite revealing:

since – generally – these would not be possible in OE/ME subordinate

57

clauses, those found here seem to be evidence for an early non-subordinating

function of this conjunction.

As concerns the sv…V constructions in line six, they are, as I suggested

above, strange anomalies. Along with the other brace constructions, they seem

arbitrarily scattered in the text, occurring as they do with our without

conjunctions, in both dependent and independent clauses. Moreover, their

number is very small. Doubtless they are archaic, but what exactly accounts

for their presence, beyond perhaps the style of the author, is not clear. Similar

results occur after “for” in Mitchell’s study of the PC, which I adjoin here for

comparison.

Table 4 Cont. I Cont. II 1. For + SVX 3 9 2. For + Adv + SVX 0 1 3. For + Adv + VS 0 5 4. For + SoV 0 2 5. For + S…V 0 1

The only order which does not appear in Mandeville occurs here on line 4; yet

it is deceiving. Here, unlike in Mandeville, direct object pronouns are still

clitics, not full constituents. Thus, this order can be considered as a variation

of SV. (16) In conclusion then, “for” in Mandeville, as in the PC, is a mod.E

conjunction, after which one can expect modern word order.

58

Conjunctive Adverbs

To be safe, I also considered in a separate analysis independent clauses

preceded by the conjunctive adverbs “ȝit” and “wherefore,” which, due to

their adverbial nature, could possibly influence word order in a non-SVO

language. In Mandeville inversions only follow “ȝit.” Statistics on this

inversion will be found in Table 6.

Adverbial Influence

Throughout this study, the presence of pre-posed adverbs as well as

direct objects have had a marked effect on word-order patterns. Adverbial

influence in “Mandeville” can been seen in Table 5, where X = adverb or

adverbial phrase. All figures refer to main clauses only.

Table 5

Simple With Conjunction (a)

1. XSV 185 664 2. XVS 272 584 3. XvSV 24 84 4. XvVS 4 11

a) Because of the conceivable ambiguity in cases where there is both a conjunction [i.e., “and,” “but,” “ne,” “for”] and an adverb possibly influencing

59

the word order of a clause, I have classed this contingency as a separate category.

Quite clearly, in this category we are witness to a dramatic shift in word

order patterns in “Mandeville.”

Of the 485 main clauses preceded by an adverbial element, fully 61% of

them demonstrate what Bean would term as “variant,” (17) or non-modern

word orders. Of the 1,341 main clauses preceded by both an adverb and a

coordinating conjunction, 677, or 50% of them possess non-modern word

order. Considering the modern conjunctive tendencies we saw earlier in Table

2, the present phenomenon seems doubtlessly due to adverbial, not

conjunctive, influence.

If Bean’s hypothesis is correct, and Middle English was indeed

“predominately identical” at an early stage to Modern English, a verb-third

language, then what can the high percentages of typically V2 word orders in

Mandeville’s Travels mean?

As I mentioned in Chapter 2, Bean herself encounters this dilemma in

her study of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle, where, again, after introductory

adverbs, there occurs a high percentage of VS word order. Her main argument

bases itself on the style of the text. Because this latter document is a chronicle,

60

it is characterized by abnormally high instances of adverbs such as “þa,”

adverbs which, in short, “become markers of new, consecutive / sequential

action and induce inversion of the basic SVX order.” (18) Bean thus believes

that, because the Chronicle deals primarily with a sequence of events, that this

“lends to its having a large percentage of temporal and locative adverbs and

hence to its having a high percentage of XVS order.” (19) The idea is, of

course, that given a ‘normal’ OE text its word order would be SVO.

There are two problems with this.

First, in terms of Old and Early Middle English, as we saw in our

discussion of Table 2, Mitchell reports rather heavy percentages in both

Stephen and the Peterborough Chronicle of non-SVO word orders after

conjunctions. This cannot be dismissed as a stylistic option related to adverbial

influence.

Table 6 illustrates a second reason why Bean’s argument seems open to

question, this time from the point of view of Mandeville’s Travels.

61

Table 6: A Breakdown of the Principle Adverbs in Mandeville’s Travels, Part I

VS SV 1. Locative about 5 abouen 6 1 at 21 4 be 7 9 before 9 benethe 2 behind 1 besyde 32 2 betwene 8 1 be onde 2 1 fro(m) – hence, etc. 63 16 in 85 34 into 1 1 of (i.e., “from) 6 1 on 10 2 out of 1 1 nygh/nere 11 thens 7 ther 134 33 þere aboute 1 þerein 4 þereon 1 thider 3 þorgh 1 toward 6 vnder 9 1 vpon 12 3 vpward to the see 1 within 9 without 4 2. Temporal after 10 32 always 2 2 anon 2 2 at such houre 1 from ens forwards 1

62

in somer 1 now 7 5 on (Schoresthorsday) 1 2 þan(ne) 18 21 3. Manner In at (same) way 2 So 17 5 Þus 4 4 4. Consequence Þerfore [sic] 21 31 For at skyll 2 1 5. Adversative

Ȝit 12 7 natheles/neuertheles 5 6. Causal for at cause 1 2 7. Other in coming down from… 3 out of them 2 right wel 1 As Table 6 shows, VS word order does not only occur with one or two

formulaic temporal adverbs in “Mandeville,” but also with such causal adverbs

as “therefore,” as well as after “right so,” “right wel,” and others. It is also

interesting to note that the writer of “Mandeville” seems undecided in the case

of several adverbs in the case of several adverbs as to whether to put an SV or

VS order. Following “ere,” “now,” “therefore,” and many of the locatives,

63

both word orders appear. The language seems, then, still very much in a

transitionary stage, about which I will have more to say very shortly.

Existential Clauses

Of the 143 existential “þere” clauses in Mandeville, clauses which

through their inverted structure much resemble the XVS pattern discussed

above, I have counted only 23 as archaic. These include non-interrogative

inverted existentials, i.e., “And þan is þere another chirche right nygh”; “And

sodeynly is þthere passying hete + sodeynly also passynge cold”; as well as full

verb existentials: thus, “þere came a voys to him.” All of these are either illicit

or very archaic on Mod. E. (20)

Other Archaic Orders

A final non-modern inversion related to fronting must be noted

here: that is, inversion in the main clause following a dependent clause. This,

as Mitchell notes, is quite a regular syntactic phenomenon in OE, and occurs

twice in the Peterborough Chronicle. In Mandeville’s Travels it occurs three

times. Thus:

p. 52 / 1.7 (nominal clause…) seye men…

p. 55/ 1.8 (when…) com an erthequakeng.

p. 66 / 1.12 (as…) sat the blynde man cryenge…

64

This phenomenon is also obligatory in Mod. German.

A final statistic one must take into account when considering

archaic word orders in ME relates to possible occurrences of subjectless dative

constructions. Expressions such as “me semeth,” “ + ȝit me thinketh”; as well

as expressions with the subjectless “befell,” i.e., “And o tyme befell,” occur ten

times in Mandeville in independent clauses.

Needless to say, none of the above word order patters are licit in

present-day English.

Summary

As a recapitulation of the main clauses and simple sentences analyzed in this

study, Table 7 will be helpful.

65

Table 7

MODERN ARCHAIC SVX OSV VS Sv…V OVS SV 1. Simple MC* 296 15 20 2 8 10 2. And + MC 1,237 41 1 16 3. But + MC 219 4. Ne + MC 17 5. For + MC 339 2 3 1 6. Wherefore + MC 19 7. Adv + MC 185 300 8. Conj + Adv + MC 664 677 9. Existentials 120 23 10. Sub Clause/MC 290 3 11. Subjectives Datives [10] SUMMARY Total Modern: 3,444 76% Total Archaic: 1,074 24% Total Text: 4,518 100%

* MC = main clause

a) The breakdown of VS here is: 16 archaic imperatives, 3 inverted conditionals, 1 inverted indirect question.

b) i.e., SV expressing wish, or “jussive subjunctive”

c) This is the category of main clause inversion after a preceding subordinate clause.

(b) (a)

66

II: Subordinate Clauses

Very quickly, the results gleaned from my study of the subordinate

clauses in Mandeville’s Travels can be seen below. IN sum, they numbered

3,568. Their analysis proceeded as follows:

Table 8 I: Relative Clauses Modern WO 1,619 98% Archaic WO 31 2% Total Relative Clauses: 1,650 46% II: Adverbial Clauses Modern WO 1,203 97% Archaic WO 30 3% Total Adverbial Clauses: 1,233 35% III: Nominal Clauses Modern WO 666 97% Archaic WO 18 3% Total Nominal Clauses: 684 19% Total Subordinate Clauses 3,567 100%

a) If one considers the more clear cases of subornation after the ambiguous conjunction “for” one could add 54 more instances of SVO adverb clauses to this category.

(a)

67

What Table 8 demonstrates is that subordinate clauses in “Mandeville” are

overwhelmingly modern in their word order. This “victory of modernity,” as

Mitchell calls it, occurs as early as the Peterborough Chronicle in subordinate

clauses, as Mitchell’s study indicates, thus supporting the theory that the

modern SVO order first grammaticized in these clauses, only later to become

the norm in main clauses.

Conclusion

In terms of main clauses, the data in this study, I believe, consistently

demonstrate that the word order patterns of Late Middle English have not yet

rigidified into their modern arrangement. (22) On the contrary, nearly one

fourth of the WO patterns in main clauses here studied have been proven to

be archaic – a surprisingly high number. This alone, I would say, destroys any

notion of syntactic equivalence one may posit between Middle and Modern

English. Thus, while one may assert with Bean that in many instances the

syntax of Middle English is strikingly modern, one must also acknowledge,

with Mitchell, that it is not there yet, not even in LME.

This, in my mind, raises the following question: if the WO of

Mandeville’s Trave3ls, as a ME case in point, is not fully SVO, to what, then,

68

can one attribute its high numbers of archaic constructions? If they are

“fossils,” then, of what are they fossils? If they are not lingering remnants of a

former WO, then how can we explain their presence?

First of all, we might consider the possibility that the syntax of

Mandeville’s Travels could be verb second. Inversions are numerous in

Mandeville; they occur after preposed adverbs and direct objects, and

occasionally in main clauses after a preceding subordinate clause. Yet, taken

together, considering all inverted and non-inverted main clauses, the verb

occurs in second position 72% of the time. While high, this is not enough to

constitute a V2 language.

Second, we could attribute archaic inversions in Mandeville to a

possible French influence. If we remember that the Cotton manuscript of the

“Travels” is merely a translation of a French original, this hypothesis seems

attractive. Marianne Adams in a 1987 article in the journal Natural Language

and Linguistic Theory, has definitively established a verb second constraint in

Old French. Three things, however, could possibly mitigate against a French-

to-English influence of inversion. First, Adams herself characterizes the

French phenomenon as a “Germanic type of inversion,” (23) which, on the

surface at least, would seem to suggest a German to French direction of

syntactic influence. A more tangible objection is that Adams posits the French

69

V2 reanalysis into SVO at about 1300, (24) thus 100 years before the

translation into English of the “Mandeville” document. In Mandeville,

inversions occur roughly 45% of all instances where possible in a rigid V2

language. This seems a bit too strong to attribute to an archaic pattern already a

century dead in French. A third objection is that French influence on English

begins in earnest in 1066; by all accounts inversions were already numerous in

Pre-Conquest Old English. It is my opinion, the, that the VS phenomenon in

ME is thus a native one.

Finally, there is Kemenade’s hypothesis regarding Old and Middle

English, according to which both went through a full verb-second stage whose

demise occurred c. 1400. Clearly, this is the theory which best accounts for all

the data found in this study. It implies, first of all, that post-1400 English is in

a state of transition – exactly what we find in Mandeville’s Travels. This is

especially evident, as we have seen, in the scribe’s vacillation when faced with

introductory preposed constituents: 55% of the time he employs an SV order

after these first-position constituents, while 45% of the time he chooses the VS

pattern. In addition, Kemenade’s positing of a somewhat recent (c. 1200) verb

finality in the language, as opposed to Bean’s prehistoric timetable for the

same, nicely explains those few instances of sv…V constructions found in the

Mandeville text.

70

As icing on the cake appears Stockwell and Minkova’s latest theory on

subordination and word order change in English. As mentioned earlier,

Mitchell already in the 1960’s noted that the subordinate clauses in the

Peterborough Chronicle, unlike the main clauses in the text, are almost

completely modern. Nevertheless it has taken all these years for scholars to

reconsider the truism that word order change must take place in main clauses

first, only then to be grammaticized, by analogy, into subordinate clauses.

Stockwell and Minkova have recently challenged this conventional view, and

the data in the “Travels” fully vindicate their position. Thus, quite clearly,

modern SVX or verb-third word order is fully grammaticized in Mandeville’s

subordinate clauses, while it is not yet quite obligatory in main clauses. That the

change would proceed, at least in part, from the former to the latter seems

most probable in terms of this study.

Above all, the results of this study seem to lend validity to Mitchell’s

traditional definition of Middle English. “The language of the Peterborough

Chronicle,” he states, “is Mi9ddle, not Modern English. It is transitional.” (25)

The same might be said of another, later product of the East Midlands,

Mandeville’s Travels.

71

NOTES Chapter Four 1) In modern English especially archaic word orders are rare in this category. 2) Bruce Mitchell, “Syntax and Word order in the Peterborough Chronicle

1122-1154 (Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 65, 1964) 121-2. 3) Bruce Mitchell, Old English Syntax (2 vols. Oxford: Oxford University

Press) 378. 4) Of course, a very restricted type of inversion may occur in Mod. E

conditional clauses, as Quirk points out, in lieu of the if-SV pattern. The grammarian however notes that these “special” cases reflect a somewhat “literary style.” Specifically, one may invert the subject and auxiliary in clauses which express a hypothetical or “putative” condition. (748)

5) Kemenade, 220. 6) Wycliffe died in the year 1384. 7) In relation to Kemenade’s study, Minkova and Stockwell [1989] note that it

is unclear in the prose of Wycliffe whether personal subjects had indeed decliticized or not. Inversion of these latter, of course, are one of the best indicators of declitization.

It is interesting to note that these do in Mandeville invert. In total,

inversion of personal pronoun subjects occurs 121 times in this text, including subordinate clauses.

8) Mitchell [1964], 143. While the word orders following conjunctions as cited

by Mitchell are still high, their numbers are somewhat inflated by Mitchell’s inclusion in this category of OVS, XVS, and SoV patterns –the first two archaic by fronting, the last probably not archaic.

9) VS does occur once, however, after “ac” in the PC Continuation II, and 3

times after “and.” (Mitchell 1964, 132)

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10) H.J. Van der Meer, Main Facts Concerning the Syntax of Mandeville’s Travels (Utrecht: Kmnik en Zoon, n.d.) 164.

11) Robert Stockwell, “Motivations for Exbraciation in Old English,”

Mechanisms of syntactic change (Austin: University of Texas Press) 295.

12) Mitchell [1964], 123. 13) Ibid, 134. 14) In Mod. E this is still ambiguous. Quirk notes, “On the gradient between

the ‘pure’ coordinators and the ‘pure’ subordinators are ‘for’ and ‘so that’; ‘for,’ indeed is often classed as a coordinator.” 552

15) Van der Meer, 168. 16) As Minkova and Stockwell [1989] point out, Mitchell at times seems to

have an inconstant understanding of the nature of clitics. 17) Bean, 13. 18) Ibid, 138. 19) Ibid. 20) As Quirk notes, existential “there” inversions with any other verb other

than ‘Be” create a “more literary” type of clause, which is to say that such constructions are somewhat archaic. (960). Bean in her study of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle claims that a disproportionate number of “ere” clauses inflate the VS percentages in her text. In this study, therefore, I exclude in my VS count all existential clauses unless the “there” word itself is inverted in a non-interrogative sentence or in cases where a verb other than “be” follows “there.”

21) There are three types of archaic orders found in these clauses. The first

occurs in relative clauses and constitutes inversion after the subordinators “where,” “in the which” and “of the whiche.” Both full verbs, i.e., “dwellen”; auxiliaries, i.e., “was made”; as well as the verb “be” are here inverted. A second archaic order is found only in adverbial clauses, and consists of inversion after the comparative

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subordinators “an” and “as,” i.e., “as don ei of Grece.” Perhaps this is due in part to analogy with main clause XVS occurrences. Finally, in the nominal clauses, inversion occasionally occurs after a preposed adverb. Thus: (main clause) “before the chirche of the sepulchre is the cytee more feeble þan in ony othere parie…” This might also be due to analogy with main clauses.

Interestingly, there also occurs in my data one instance of a verb final

relative clause. Thus: “þat all formed.” This is the one SOV order mentioned at the beginning of this study.

22) At least in the East Midland dialect c. 1410. 23) Marianne Adams, “From Old French to the Theory of Prop-Drop,”

(Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 5, 1987) 4. 24) Ibid, 26. 25) Mitchell [1964], 143.

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