DERIVING OBJECT-VERB ORDER IN LATE MIDDLE-ENGLISH

Late Middle English is a VO language in which surface OV order can nev ertheless be found. This has been taken to show that the language has both OV and VO as possible underlying orders. However, there are vario us types of data that this hypothesis cannot account for. It is theref ore argued in this article that late Middle English only had VO order underlyingly, and that all surface OV orders are derived by means of l eftward movement of the object across the verb, in a manner fully comp atible with the Minimalist Program. In surface OV, the object moves ov ertly to the functional projection AgrOP for feature-checking; LF move ment is also possible (yielding surface VO), since the two derivations are equally economical. Pronominal objects can move to a higher cliti c position. This analysis is shown to account for a wide range of data .