Relative clauses in Old English prose: A stylistic choice

Abstract

Old English prose and poetry show a great variety of relativizing constructions which have traditionally been interpreted as a sign of an ongoing change in Old English syntax. On closer examination, the different relative strategies show too constant a behaviour to be the unstable result of competing patterns towards a greater clause asymmetry; and the differences between Early West Saxon and Late West Saxon texts are more reasonably accounted for as the creation of stylistic patterns which involve the type of relativizer, the clause word order and the type of relative clause. In other words, the variety in strategies and their distribution reflect the establishment of a more formal written language.