The reanalysis of VO in the history of English: Evidence for a language-internal account

In this paper, I present empirical data about selected Early Middle English (henceforth eME) texts which show how the reanalysis of VO as the unmarked word order constitutes a uniform development from Old English (henceforth OE). I employ an antisymmetric framework, in which information structural (henceforth IS) and weight interface conditions govern the pre- and post-verbal spell-out of constituents. The dialectal provenance of the texts and their trans- mission history is considered, to allow for a comparative analysis of the data.