CLAUSE STRUCTURE IN OLD-ENGLISH - EVIDENCE FROM NEGATIVE CONCORD

This paper deals with the clause structure of Old English. In the main body of the paper we adopt the 'traditional' analysis of the West Ger manic languages in which it is proposed that VP is head-final. We will argue (contra Van Kemenade 1987, pace Cardinaletti & Roberts 1991, Pi ntzuk 1991, Tomaselli 1991) that the clause structure of Old English c ontains a head-initial functional projection whose head can be the lan ding site of verb movement in subordinate clauses. This claim is based on evidence related to the distribution and interpretation of negativ e elements in Old English and West Flemish. We will show that differen ces between these two languages with respect to Negative Concord pheno mena can be accounted for straightforwardly in terms of an Old English clause structure which is different from the one traditionally propos ed for the modern Germanic SOV/V2 languages. In the appendix to the pa per we briefly turn to the recent alternative approaches to the phrase structure of SOV languages in terms of a universal base hypothesis wh ere all projections are head-initial (see Kayne (1993), Zwart (1993), Roberts (1995) for a discussion of Old English).