Clitic verbs in early Germanic: Evidence from Old English Beowulf
Yasuko Suzuki
Kansai Gaidai University
Earlier studies on Germanic verse structure and historical Germanic syntax, especially of Old
English, have noted several properties peculiar to auxiliaries, which suggest that they are clitics.
In terms of stress, clause-early auxiliaries typically occur in a metrically unstressed position
(Kuhn 1933). In terms of distribution, auxiliaries tend to occur in second position or in clauseearly position (Kuhn 1933; Fourquet 1938; Hopper 1975; Hock 1982, 1991; Harkness 1991).
These observations have led several scholars to assume that second-positioning of clitic verbs
gave rise to the verb-second order in early Germanic (Wackernagel 1892; Kuhn 1933; Hock
1982, 1991; Harris and Campbell 1995). On the other hand, Kiparsky (1995) explicitly denies
the existence of clitic verbs while many others remain silent as to the existence of clitic verbs
and their possible consequence on word order change, implying doubt on clitic verb hypothesis
(e.g. Denison 1993; Pintzuk 1999; Hinterhölzl and Petrova 2009). As another property relevant
to the position of finite verbs, Old English shows a contrast between the verb-second order in
main clauses and the verb-final order in subordinate clauses. In order to account for this contrast,
some scholars have assumed that finite verbs (not just auxiliaries) in main clauses are clitics but
not in subordinate clauses and, because of the apparently similar pattern of finite verb
accentuation in Sanskrit, that this property goes back to Proto-Indo-European (Wackernagel
1892; Bonfante 1930; Kuhn 1933; Harkness 1991).
Following Suzuki (2008), this paper examines the stress and distribution of finite verbs in
Old English Beowulf, an epic poem that has been claimed to be linguistically more archaic than
other early North- and West-Germanic texts (Kuhn 1933; Fourquet 1938; Hock 1982; Fulk et al.
2008). It presents additional evidence for clitic verbs from Beowulf and critically examines their
relation to the development of the verb-second order and the contrast in the verb position
between main and subordinate clauses.
In Beowulf, a number of monosyllabic auxiliaries show a tendency to occur as the second
word of the clause either after the clause-initial linking word as in (1a) or after the clause-initial
stressed word as in (1b) (also Hock 1982, 1991; Harkness 1991).
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(1) a. Ðā wæs on búrgum
then was in strongholds
Bḗow
Scýldinga,
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Beowulf of-Scyldings
‘Then in the cities was Beowulf of the Scyldings’
b. Hýge wæs him hínfūs,
755a
heart was him eager-to-get-away
‘His heart was eager to get away’
In relation to this fact, there is an alternation between monosyllabic auxiliaries in second position
after the clause-initial þā ‘then’ as in (1a) and polysyllabic auxiliaries and lexical verbs in clauseinitial position followed by þā as in (2) (Fourquet 1938; Andrew 1940; Cable 1970; Harkness
1991; Getty 2002).
(2)
Gewā́t þā ofer wǣ́gholm
wínde gefȳ́sed
went then over sea
wind impelled
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‘Then it traveled over the sea-waves, blown by the wind’
As shown by Suzuki (2008), this alternation is observed with other clause-early short adverbs
and pronouns in Beowulf and not just with þā. Moreover, monosyllabic auxiliaries tend to occur
more frequently in clause-early position than polysyllabic auxiliaries and lexical verbs (Hopper
1975; Bliss 1981; Donoghue 1987; Suzuki 2008).
The prosodic and syntactic properties of a number of monosyllabic auxiliaries in Beowulf
suggest that they are sentential clitics with the clause-initial word as their host. The evidence
shows that the clause types are irrelevant to the clitichood of auxiliaries: thus, the contrast in the
verb position between main and subordinate clauses cannot be attributed to finite verb
cliticization. While the second position of monosyllabic auxiliaries is after the clause-initial word
in Beowulf, this second position was later extended to the position after the clause-initial
constituent and to lexical verbs (Kuhn 1933; Hock 1982, 1991; Harris and Campbell 1995).
Although this observation may suggest that the verb-second order was initiated by the secondpositioning of clitic verbs, a more reasonable assumption would be that it interacted with word
order variations motivated by information structure (Vennemann 1974, 1975; Stockwell 1977;
Hinterhölzl and Petrova 2009; Speyer 2010; Taylor and Pintzuk 2012).
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