Split Coordination in the History of English
Ann Taylor and Susan Pintzuk, University of York
In this paper we investigate a construction which is often referred to descriptively as
“split coordination”. “[O]ne of the most characteristic features of Old English syntax” (Perez
Lorido 2009), it affects every type of coordinated constituent in OE: subject and object DPs,
adnominal genitives, predicative and attributive ADJPs, ADVPs, PPs, and DP objects of P.
An example of an OE split coordinated subject is given in (1). This is not just an OE
phenomenon, however; it, or a superficially similar construction, occurs continuously, albeit
with decreasing frequency, throughout the attested period up to the present day, as the
parallel example in (2) from Present-Day English (PDE) demonstrates.
Split coordination in PDE is most frequently analyzed as a type of Gapping known as
Stripping or Bare Argument Ellipsis (BAE; see Johnson 2006 for an overview). Although the
OE and PDE examples appear superficially similar, a closer look at the data suggests that we
are dealing with two different phenomena. In PDE the 2nd conjunct is almost always clausefinal, but this is not the case in the early stages of English. Typical OE and Middle English
examples are given in (3) and (4), with the 2nd conjunct positioned between the finite and
non-finite verbs (3), and immediately after the non-finite verb but not clause-final (4). BAE
cannot derive cases like those in (3) and (4), where verbs, arguments and adjuncts appear
after the 2nd conjunct.
Despite its synchronic range and diachronic persistence, split coordination has
received surprisingly little attention in the diachronic literature (but cf. Sielanko 1994, Perez
Lorido 2009); no empirical corpus-based studies of its use exist for any stage of the English
language. Its occurrence in OE is often mentioned (Traugott 1972, Kohonen 1978, among
many others); but beyond Perez Lorido’s (2009) limited study of split subjects in eight OE
texts, it hasn’t been rigorously investigated. The reason for this lack may be the low
frequency of split coordination throughout the history of English: while the number of cases
is not negligible, it is small enough to necessitate annotated corpora and sophisticated search
tools to collect sufficient examples for robust qualitative and quantitative results.
We suggest a new analysis of split coordination in the early stages of English: Second
Conjunct Stranding (SCS). When the coordinated constituent moves from its merged
position, e.g. from Spec,vP to Spec,TP, the 2nd conjunct can be stranded either at the merge
site or at any subsequent landing site. This analysis is reminiscent of quantifier stranding, and
a similar analysis is used in Milićev and Milićević (2012) for split appositives in OE and
Serbian. Unlike BAE, SCS accounts for the full range of positions of the split 2nd conjunct.
Two basic diachronic trends can be seen in the history of English: first, the frequency
of split coordination decreases over time, as shown in Table 1 for subjects. Although it is
possible that the declining frequency of this construction is simply an external effect, perhaps
the result of standardization and/or a prescription against split coordination in writing, a more
plausible scenario is that BAE and SCS are indeed different processes, both of which exist in
the early stages of English. BAE derives split coordination with the 2nd conjunct in clausefinal position; SCS derives split coordination with the 2nd conjunct either in clause-internal
position or in clause-final position, depending upon the merge position of the coordinated
constituent. Over time SCS is lost, leaving only BAE still in operation. This scenario is
supported by the second diachronic trend: the frequency of clause-final 2nd conjuncts
increases over time, as shown in Table 2. We suggest that BAE is and has always been a low
frequency, possibly genre-sensitive, process, while SCS in the early stages of English is
influenced by other factors (e.g. information structure and discourse/performance constraints)
that serve to rearrange sentence constituents in the early language.
(1) oðþæt þæt ad wæs forburnen, and ealle þa tunnan
until the pile was burned and all the casks
‘until the pile and all the casks were burned up’
(YCOE: coaelive,+ALS_[Julian_and_Basilissa]:332.1143)
(2) "Fear possessed me, and the certainty of war'', he has related. (BROWN)
(3) þæt he sceolde & his ofspring his wed healdan
that he should and his offspring his oath hold
‘that he and his offspring should hold his oath’
(YCOE: cocathom1,+ACHom_I,_6:225.49.1090)
(4) Jhesus was clepid and hise disciplis to the weddyngis (PPCME: CMNTEST,II,1.122)
Jesus was summoned and his disciples to the wedding
‘Jesus and his disciples were summoned to the wedding’
Table 1: The frequency of split coordinated subjects over time
Period
Split
Total
% Split
coordinated subjects coordinated subjects
Old English
437
2609
16.8%
Middle English
264
2292
11.5%
Early Modern
191
2963
6.5%
English
Early Modern
12
1442
0.8%
British English
Present Day English
6
2336
0.3%
Table 2: The frequency of split coordinated subjects with clause-final 2nd conjuncts over
time; the data are controlled for finiteness, type of conjunction and type of split
Period
Split coordinated
Total split
% Clausesubjects with clause- coordinated subjects
final
final 2nd conjuncts
Old English
275
437
62.9%
Middle English
191
264
72.3%
Early Modern
154
191
80.6%
English
Early Modern
5
12
[41.7%]
British English
Present Day English
6
6
100.0%
References
Johnson, K. 2006. Gapping. In The Blackwell Companion to Syntax, (Eds, Everaert, M. &
van Riemsdijk, H.) Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 407-435.
Kohonen, V. 1978. On the development of English word order in religious prose around
1000 and 1200 AD. Åbo Akademi Foundation, Åbo.
Milićev, T. & Milićević, N. 2012. Leftward movement with discontinuous appositive
constructions. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 59, 205-220.
Perez Lorido, R. 2009. Reconsidering the role of syntactic “heaviness” in Old English split
coordination. Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, 45, 31-56.
Sielanko, E. 1994. Split coordinated structures in Late Old English. Studia Anglica
Posnaniensia, 29, 57-72.
Traugott, E.C. 1972. A History of English Syntax: A transformational approach to the
History of English sentence structure. Holt, Rinehart and Winston, New York.