230 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 



The most obvious question about Middle English syntax is: 

 What did French do to it? This is not the only question; but it is so 

 insistent that to many persons it plays the part of Aaron's rod with 

 the other serpents: it swallows up all the rest. Very little has been 

 accomplished in the investigation of Middle English syntax, and in 

 part for this very reason. Some scholars appear to think that all one 

 has to do is to discover a French construction (or a French phrase) 

 that is identical with one hi the English of this period, and then to 

 infer that we have an example of the gradual Gallicizing of our 

 language. The inference is far too easy. Take for example, the 

 matter of prepositions and cases. One often hears that the substitu- 

 tion of prepositional phrases for the inflected cases of nouns comes 

 from unconscious imitation of the French. But we must be cautious. 

 As inflections decay, what is to replace them but prepositions? 

 Imagine for the moment that there had been no Norman Conquest, 

 but that inflectional decay had taken place in English as it has in 

 Dutch and Danish, for example. Would not the spread of preposi- 

 tional phrases have taken place then? There were already con- 

 structions enough of this kind in Anglo-Saxon to give the impulse to 

 any number of analogies, to any amount of growth. I am not 

 taking sides. I am merely asking for a suspension of judgment until 

 we have more facts in order; and this suggests a second article in 

 our programme: We need to study carefully and exhaustively the 

 syntax of the Transition Period, comparing it on the one hand with 

 Anglo-Saxon and on the other with contemporary French, and 

 checking all our conclusions by means of the development of the 

 Germanic languages in general. Such a study, devoted to a period 

 of English during which the direct influence of French in other re- 

 spects (on the vocabulary, for instance) was almost nil, ought to give 

 us some idea of the native tendencies which our language was bound 

 tto follow. A priori, it might reasonably be maintained that foreign 

 syntax is not likely to be intensely operative so long as a language 

 shows such an independence of outside influences as to keep its 

 vocabulary pure. May it not be that, after all, the direct effect of 

 French in modifying our syntax has been greatly exaggerated? 

 We must all admit the possibility, but there is not a living scholar 

 who has the right to dogmatize on the subject. For myself, I am 

 inclined to think that we shall find out some day that in syntax, as 

 in other respects, the chief linguistic result of the Norman Conquest 

 for a couple of centuries was indirect, and came from breaking down 

 the literary tradition of Anglo-Saxon, and so allowing our language 

 to disintegrate (let us say rather, to advance) with more rapidity 

 than would otherwise have been the case. At all events, we must 

 have a study of Transition syntax, and it must take especial heed 

 of Late West Saxon, and in particular of those texts which are 



