The Syntax of Old English Experiencer Verbs

Abstract

The paper offers a new classification of the syntactic frames of Old English Experiencer verbs can appear in. The characteristics of individual construction types seen against the background of the variance exhibited by individual verbs found in them allows us to propose that the fifteen different attested structures are in fact variants of three basic types. The discussion reveals that OE clausal arguments are Case-marked in the same way as NP arguments. A further observation is that OE lexicon is relatively insensitive to category distinctions but sensitive to Case.