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Abstract
Abstract: This paper serves as an initial exploration of the hypothesis put forth by García García (2012) according to which morphological syncretism in the expression of valency in causative pairs may have a connection with syntactic parameters, specifi cally the overt expression of all verbal arguments and a fi xed or consistent word order. In this paper we assess the relative position of subject-verb and verb-object in early Middle English transitive and intransitive clauses containing melten, (a)quenchen, and burnen and compare them with those with a transitive- and intransitive-only verb respectively. The most outstanding result shows that labile verbs used transitively seem to anticipate the VO order that will become generalized in later stages of English.
Keywords: Word order, early Middle English, causatives, labile verbs, morphological loss, valency changes, English syntax.