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In ICEHL 20 at the University of Edinburgh, I made a report of my research on this theme. The present paper gives additional facts on the construction of a verb of negation followed by a þæt-clause with a negative element. What I try to exemplify is not a historical change from expletive negative to affirmative clause, but the facts that (i) the expletive negative was one of the correlative constructions based on Old English syntax and (ii) the affirmative clause was already found in early Old English together with the negative clause, even though the negative clause was frequent in late Old English to early Middle English and then decreased after late Middle English. The verb with negative import with a negated þæt-clause is, therefore, not an illogical expression but a stylistic device of combining the negation of the governing verb with the content of the governed, negated þæt-clause.

1.Introduction (1) Old English is characterised by a significant number of synonyms. Nouns, adjectives, and adverbs which could occupy an alliterating position in poetry decreased in frequency as soon as alliterative poems were replaced by rhyming poems, together with compounds, first elements of which were employed for alliteration. Verbs were not necessarily used for alliteration, except for infinitives and participles, but they also suffered conflict for survival. It is well attested by Gorrell (1895) that there was a rivalry between cwedan and secgan among the synonymous verbs of saying. The former took direct speech and the dative of person with the preposition to as the indirect object, while the latter governed indirect speech/questions and the dative of person without to; these syntactic features were gradually transferred from the former to the latter, and from the latter to tellan, around the time of transition from late Old to early Middle English, and eventually cwedan was fossilised and died out in Modern English. (2) There is also an obvious confusion and merger between pyncan and pencan, an 'impersonal' verb and a personal one, especially between the preterite and the past participle forms puht(e) and poht(e), which is examined by van der Gaaf (1904). Thus the semantic rivalry may lead to syntactic changes, morphological mergers, and/or the replacement of one of the synonyms by a native or foreign synonym, and to the ultimate demise of the once flourishing word. There must be cases of less obvious conflict caused by morphological resemblance, considering the fact that a number of Old English synonyms disappeared in the course of the language history. This cannot be explained away only by the prosodic change from alliterative to rhyming verse. There must be phonological and morphological as well as syntactic and semantic features that caused the conflict between synonyms or beyond groups of synonyms. In this paper I try to illustrate the process of morphological merger of several verbs through the extant texts of Old and Middle English periods in order to find the causes of their demise and survival. 2. wendan and gewendan Wendan 'to turn' takes the accusative as a coreferential pronoun in the reflexive construction, while gewendan 'to turn' takes the dative, as in (1) Pa gebealh hine se cynincg and to his bedde eode. wende hine to wage woodlice gebolgen. 'Then the king became angry and went to his bed, and turned himself to the wall, madly enraged.' (AELS (Book of Kings) 178-93) (2) He forlet pa Ipoet swurd stician on him 7 gewende him ut aet sumere opre duran, od Ipoet he eft becom to his agenum geferon. 'He then left the sword stuck on him and went himself out at another door, until he came again to his own comrades.' (Judges 3.24) But in some instances the reverse is found, as in (3) Nicanor pa sceawode salomones tempi. and swor purh his godas poet he paet godes hus wolde mid fyre forbaernan butan him man betaehte iudan gebundene to bismorlicum deade. wende him swa awaeg woodlice geyrsod. 'Nicanor then beheld Solomon's temple, and swore by his gods that he wished to burn up the house of God with fire, except Judas should be given up to him bound, (and) so turned himself away, madly enraged.' (AELS (Maccabees) 612-6) (4) Dis weard pa gekydd oaem casere sona, & he hine gewende to his gewunelicum gebedum & paet gewinn betohte pam welwillendan Haelende. 'This was immediately made known to the emperor, and he went himself to his usual service, and entrusted the strife to the benevolent Saviour.' (AE JudgEp 71) From late Old English onwards the accusative-dative syncretism proceeds, and the prefix ge-disappears, and consequently the two verbs merge into one. 3. pyncan and pencan Pencan 'to think', a verb in personal use, and pyncan 'to seem', a verb in 'impersonal' (4) use, are said to be confused in the preterite and the past participle forms, poht(e) and puht(e), as in (5) C: Per ich lai a sweueter agan ich forto slepe. …

Old English verbs of tasting like beorgan, drincan and etan may take the accusative, the genitive or the of-phrase. The number of occurrences of these verbs with the genitive or the of-phrase is not so large, but we notice the fact that Latin ex-/de-phrases could be rendered by the of-phrase and that both the genitive and of-phrase were used in a partitive sense. In this short paper I try to show that the Old English genitive object was in the process of being replaced by the of-phrase even in a limited context.

Old English prefixed verbs are numerous. At times prefixes are used to convey different shades of meaning, but often the meanings seem, in context, not to convey definite distinctions in sense. Prefixes and prefixed verbs must have been important in Old English, judging from their numbers and morphological distinctions, but most prefixes had adverbial and/or prepositional counter-parts, and verbs with adverbs or prepositional phrases (whether preposed or postposed to verbs) could be used alongside prefixed verbs.