Verbal ellipsis (Gapping) in Old English
What is it about?
Ellipsis is an important diagnosis tool for the grammatical nature of languages, and it may help determine whether they are syntax or disourse-oriented. In this article I argue, on the basis of some tests on adjacency and symmetry in verbal ellipsis, that word order in Old English is not only determined by structural, syntactic factors, but that it depends considerablty on aspects of discourse organisation and communicative saliency.
Why is it important?
In the first systematic, formal approaches to word order in Old English the emphasis was laid on syntax, and little room was left to discourse and pragmatics. This article was on of the first approaches taking both perspectives into account, and in a way anticipated much of the work on the issue from 2000 onwards. In hardly any of the recent works on OE word order, however, is ellipsis the focus of the analysis.