(14) Mildheorted beð þe man þe reouð his nehgebures unselðe
merciful is the man who regret his neighbors’ unfortune
and likeð here alre selðe
and pleases their all fortune
‘merciful is the man who feels sorry about his neighbours’ unhappiness
and is pleased by the good fortune of them all’
(M.OEH II 95.33; adapted from Allen (1995: 244))
It follows that the gap before likeð can be regarded as a dative subject just
like in Icelandic. Then Allen insists that such examples are found more abun-
dantly in Early ME.^13 In addition, Allen’s investigation of the verb lyst indicates
that dative subjects were changing into nominative subjects during the ME
period. Table 13.1 shows that dative subjects were predominant before the
fourteenth century, whereas nominative subjects began to be used after the
fi fteenth century and became abundant in the sixteenth century.
If her observation is on the right track, it is assumed that nominative subjects
became obligatory in the course of the historical change of English, which began
at a stage of the German type (with non-dative subjects) and proceeded through
a stage of the Icelandic type (with dative subjects).
Then, how can we place such a process in the Dynamic Model of Language?
First, as (15) shows, LoT has the same representation in OE, ME, ModE and
PDE respectively.
(15) Language of Thought What we should notice is that there is a thematic hierarchy when each semantic (16) Agent > Experiencer > Recipient > Theme > Patient > Goal^14 Table 13.1 Lyst in the NO PROP construction from OE to the sixteenth century OE 1 0 7 0 0 13thC 0 0 3 0 0 14thC 9 0 201 1 2 15thC 0 23 8 0 0 16thC 11 117 12 0 0 204 Michio Hosaka
[√like √John √like]]] (OE, ME, ModE, PDE)
feature is merged. (16) is a thematic hierarchy postulated based on Allen (1995),
in which the merging process works from the lowest to the highest. Then it
produces the structure of (15).
(Allen (1995:288))
AMB V NOM V DAT/ACC V it V (to) EXP it (to EXP) V