This paper examines a type of existential there sentence found in Middle English that has been argued to have a structure similar to transitive expletive constructions (TECs) in other Germanic languages, or to follow from the presence of NegP below T during the relevant period. Based on an exhaustive analysis of the 74 examples of this construction found in the Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English (out of a total of over six thousand sentences from 1125 to 1913 containing there coded as expletive), we observe that 67 contain both a modal verb and clausal negation licensing a negative associate, unlike TECs found in other Germanic languages, and that the construction is found only between 1390 and 1600. We argue that the availability of this construction was due to a transitory alignment of three syntactic properties in this stage of the language: (i) modals were still main verbs merged within vP, but took a reduced complement consisting of only an inner clausal phase, and did not take a thematic external argument; (ii) English still had negative concord; (iii) Voice and viewpoint Aspect shared a single syntactic projection. The confluence of these three factors provided a non-thematic specifier position, [Spec,vP], into which there could merge. Before the late 14th century, modals were full verbs taking a thematic external argument and full clausal complements, and after about 1600, they were merged directly in T, occurring in a monoclausal rather than a (reduced) biclausal structure. At no point did the English monoclausal spine have the structural room to accommodate a true Germanic TEC.

中文翻译：

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中古英语及物动词的错觉

本文研究了在中古英语中发现的一种存在句 there 被认为具有与其他日耳曼语言中的及物动词结构 (TEC) 类似的结构，或者是从相关时期 T 以下 NegP 的存在中得出的结论。基于对 Penn Parsed Corpora of Historical English 中发现的这种结构的 74 个例子的详尽分析（从 1125 年到 1913 年，总共有 6000 多个句子包含编码为咒语），我们观察到 67动词和从句否定许可否定联想，与其他日耳曼语言中的 TEC 不同，并且该结构仅在 1390 年和 1600 年之间发现。我们认为这种结构的可用性是由于在语言的这个阶段三个句法属性的暂时对齐：（i）情态仍然是在 vP 中合并的主要动词，但采用了仅由内部从句阶段组成的减少补语，并且没有采取主题性的外部论证；(ii) 英语仍然有负面的和谐；(iii) Voice 和viewpoint Aspect 共享一个单一的句法投影。这三个因素的汇合提供了一个非主题说明符位置，[Spec,vP]，可以合并到该位置。在 14 世纪后期之前，情态动词是带有主题外部参数和完整从句补语的完整动词，大约在 1600 年后，它们直接合并在 T 中，出现在单句而不是（简化的）双句结构中。