IN THE RIGHT MOOD, IN THE RIGHT PLACE: ON MOOD AND VERB PLACEMENT IN OLD GERMANIC SUBORDINATE CLAUSES

The indicative/subjunctive mood alternations and differences in verb placement in Old Germanic subordinate clauses have received much attention in the literature and have been interpreted in different ways, for example as strategies for clause marking, for information structure, in order to fulfill semanto-pragmatic requirements of the clause, etc. This paper presents an empirical survey that sheds light on the interaction between mood alternations and verb placement in Old Germanic subordinate clauses. An innovative aspect is that the survey is conducted from a cross-linguistic perspective by comparing Old English and Old High German. The results show clearer interactions in the first language than in the latter, thus hinting at the possibility that the two languages reflect two different stages of one and the same process. These findings are discussed and accounted for theoretically in the last section of the paper.