Word-Order

Abstract

One of the many respects in which languages differ from each other concerns the manner in which syntactic relations are expressed. In Vol. I, Appendix IV, an attempt was made to describe the changes in the inflectional system of OE; these changes had been brought about by the Germanic stress-system, which, by its levelling influence on vowels in inflectional syllables, caused a considerable reduction of the number of distinctive endings. According as these contrastive forms, which had been the chief means of denoting syntactic relations, diminished, word-order became more important as another device for performing that function, which means that it became less free. English was becoming a more analytic language; but OE word-order was still far less rigid, and, as a consequence, a far less important means of signalling relationships between words than the word-order in Modern English. Although there is sufficient justification for the assumption that word-order was in operation in OE, especially in late OE, I hold the view that any suggestion that the loss of inflections was caused by this operation cannot be taken seriously by a student of OE phonology, even though it may have hastened the process.