Jurgen Meisel, Martin Elsig, and Esther Rinke
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748642250
- eISBN:
- 9780748695157
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748642250.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language
This book discusses diachronic change of languages in terms of restructuring of speakers’ internal grammatical knowledge: Under which circumstances does grammatical change come about? One answer in ...
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This book discusses diachronic change of languages in terms of restructuring of speakers’ internal grammatical knowledge: Under which circumstances does grammatical change come about? One answer in historical linguistics has been to invoke the child as principal agent of change. But efforts to construct a theory of diachronic change consistent with findings from psycholinguistics are scarce. Here, these questions are therefore addressed against the background of insights from research on monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Given that children are remarkably successful in reconstructing the grammars of their ambient languages, commonly held views need to be reconsidered according to which language change is primarily triggered by structural ambiguity in the input and in settings of language contact. In an innovative take on this matter, the authors argue that morphosyntactic change in core areas of grammar, especially where parameters of Universal Grammar are concerned, typically happens in settings involving second language acquisition. The children acting as agents of restructuring are either second language (L2) learners themselves or are continuously exposed to the speech of L2 speakers of their target languages. Based on a variety of case studies from Romance languages, this discussion sheds new light on phenomena of change which have occupied historical linguists since the XIXth century.Less
This book discusses diachronic change of languages in terms of restructuring of speakers’ internal grammatical knowledge: Under which circumstances does grammatical change come about? One answer in historical linguistics has been to invoke the child as principal agent of change. But efforts to construct a theory of diachronic change consistent with findings from psycholinguistics are scarce. Here, these questions are therefore addressed against the background of insights from research on monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Given that children are remarkably successful in reconstructing the grammars of their ambient languages, commonly held views need to be reconsidered according to which language change is primarily triggered by structural ambiguity in the input and in settings of language contact. In an innovative take on this matter, the authors argue that morphosyntactic change in core areas of grammar, especially where parameters of Universal Grammar are concerned, typically happens in settings involving second language acquisition. The children acting as agents of restructuring are either second language (L2) learners themselves or are continuously exposed to the speech of L2 speakers of their target languages. Based on a variety of case studies from Romance languages, this discussion sheds new light on phenomena of change which have occupied historical linguists since the XIXth century.
Xuhui Hu
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- October 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780198808466
- eISBN:
- 9780191846069
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198808466.003.0005
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Theoretical Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
This chapter investigates how a theory of events can be combined and be compatible with the theory of parametric variation in the generative tradition. At the diachronic level, Chinese resultatives ...
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This chapter investigates how a theory of events can be combined and be compatible with the theory of parametric variation in the generative tradition. At the diachronic level, Chinese resultatives developed from serial verb constructions with two subjacent verbal predicates in Old Chinese. The two adjacent verbs are reanalyzed as components of a single de-adjectival verb in the period of Middle Chinese due to language acquirers’ preference for structural simplicity. At the synchronic level, the preference for computational efficiency is also responsible for the fact that English style resultatives are not attested in Chinese. The English style resultatives are not attested in Romance languages due to a property in the lexicon of Romance languages: the valuation of the [uDiv] feature, or verbal feature, has to be achieved via incorporation in Romance languages, thus rejecting the operation of feature sharing that is crucial for the derivation of the English-style resultatives.Less
This chapter investigates how a theory of events can be combined and be compatible with the theory of parametric variation in the generative tradition. At the diachronic level, Chinese resultatives developed from serial verb constructions with two subjacent verbal predicates in Old Chinese. The two adjacent verbs are reanalyzed as components of a single de-adjectival verb in the period of Middle Chinese due to language acquirers’ preference for structural simplicity. At the synchronic level, the preference for computational efficiency is also responsible for the fact that English style resultatives are not attested in Chinese. The English style resultatives are not attested in Romance languages due to a property in the lexicon of Romance languages: the valuation of the [uDiv] feature, or verbal feature, has to be achieved via incorporation in Romance languages, thus rejecting the operation of feature sharing that is crucial for the derivation of the English-style resultatives.
