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To come to terms with the logical problem of language change, many historical linguists subscribe to the view that the syntax is in a state of equilibrium and does not change by itself. This chapter develops an alternative theory, which derives the complexity of syntactic change from the inherent dynamism and flexibility of an autonomous syntactic component. In explaining syntactic variation and change in terms of language design, it seeks to bridge the gap between historical linguistics and (synchronic) syntactic theory.

This chapter discusses the emergence of hyper‐raising constructions in Brazilian Portuguese (BP). Assuming Dresher's (1999) cue‐based approach to language acquisition, it argues that the loss of Romance‐type pro‐drop in BP prompted a chain reaction that led to a reanalysis of finite Ts as optional Case‐assigners/checkers (Ferreira 2000) and, therefore, to the incorporation of hyper‐raising structures into the grammar.

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of the term grammaticalization. It explains the theoretical framework of this book. The chapter then discusses functional categories and syntactic change and the minimalist programme. An overview of the subsequent chapters is presented.

As research on syntactic change within a broadly generative framework enters its fifth decade, it is possible to look back at the development and accomplishments of this enterprise. Three publications which appeared in the late 1970s serve as a useful demarcation of its beginning: the collection of papers in Li (1977), David Lightfoot's (1979) book, and Lightfoot's (1979) review of the Li volume. The three features that Lightfoot criticizes are the absence of a careful formal description of the synchronic stages referenced in the diachronic analysis, reliance on assumptions about reconstructed stages of a language, and a focus on independent diachronic principles and constraints on ‘diachronic processes’. The methodology of diachronic generative syntax as it has developed over the past four decades is closely based on Lightfoot's injunctions. Some theoretical assumptions change, but the methodology has remained remarkably consistent. Thus, while the chapters in this volume represent a broad theoretical range within the general rubric of a formal approach to language changes, their methodology hews largely to the basic scheme, which are outlined in this introductory chapter. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

This chapter lays out a framework for the reconstruction of syntax. Section 2.2 is dedicated to the question of syntactic variation: it defends an implementation of Principles & Parameters theory against the criticisms of Newmeyer (2004). Section 2.3 addresses the question of syntactic change, arguing that it is desirable to reduce ‘language’ to individual grammars as assumed within the generative tradition, and that the task of diachronic linguistics then becomes to investigate the historical relationships between these grammars, mediated by transmission and acquisition. In section 2.4 an attempt is made to draw parallels between lexical-phonological and syntactic reconstruction, and, where these fail, to work around them as far as possible.

This chapter suggests that the interest in reanalysis as a mechanism of change, while rightly focusing attention on syntactic structure, also contributes to a blinkered view of diachrony. It exemplifies this view with accounts of two widely discussed changes: the Middle English emergence of for noun phrase (NP) to verb phrase (VP) infinitivals, and the Early Modern English emergence of the be going to future. These accounts illustrate an approach whose goal is not just to characterize reanalyses but to understand what lies behind them. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 3.2 comments on the modern interest in reanalysis and then treats alleged reanalysis changes as cases of analogy or grammaticalization. Section 3.3 shows that radical reanalysis in syntactic change has been overemphasized, and that most of the changes involved in one well-known alleged case (the English for NP to VP pattern) are broadly analogical. Section 3.4 proposes a new account of the emergence of the English be going to future. This case shows how the combinatorial properties of a source pattern give rise to the properties of an emergent one in grammaticalization. Section 3.5 concludes.

This chapter begins with a description of the terms and definitions used in the relatively field of information structure. It then discusses what the study of syntactic change can tell us about information structure and vice versa, and challenges of research into discourse and information structure. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

The relegation of syntactic variation to lexical features under the Minimalist Programme has led to a growing awareness that syntactic change should be characterized in the same way: by changes in the discrete features of individual lexical items. This insight has given rise to the following distinctively minimalist typology of syntactic change: (a) loss or gain of a feature driving movement; (b) grammaticalization as shift ‘up the tree’ to a functional category; and (c) reanalysis as relabelling: lexical items change categorial or projection ([±max, ±min]) features under preservation of hierarchical (c-command) relations. This chapter applies this typology to several well-known examples of syntactic change in Chinese. It shows that earlier analyses exaggerate the scope of syntactic change in the long-documented history of Chinese languages. The changes that are in fact attested can be characterized as featural change, without rearrangement of hierarchical structure.

This chapter shows how two tendencies, Normative Sickness (NS) and Dative Sickness (DS), can coexist and what their relative domains say about the nature of syntactic change. It argues that NS and DS are conditioned by different factors: NS is motivated by syntax (structure), but DS is motivated by semantics (thematic roles). Specifically, it suggests that both changes can be accounted for in terms of a cue-based approach, on the assumption that case can be a cue in language acquisition. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 11.2 presents some basic facts about case-marking and thematic properties of subjects in Modern (Standard) Icelandic. Section 11.3 describes the domain of the two changes in Modern Icelandic and summarizes the results of two previous studies of the case alternations. Section 11.4 focuses on the diachronic development of the changes in Icelandic, and Section 11.5 contains some comparative evidence of similar changes in other languages. Section 11.6 attempts a ‘diagnosis’ of NS and DS, concluding that both ‘diseases’ involve morphosyntactic leveling of productive patterns attributable to frequency. Section 11.7 proposes a cue-based account of the changes in question in the spirit of Lightfoot (1999). Section 11.8 concludes the chapter.

This chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of change in the syntax of early English subjects within the framework of Stochastic Optimality Theory (StOT). It shows that positional discrepancies between subject pronouns and full noun phrase (NP) subjects in Old English (OE) and early Middle English (EME) can be accounted for if pronouns are non-projecting (do not project to a maximal phrase) and appear in the IP domain, whereas full NP subjects can appear in Spec,VP or Spec,IP. The structure of the chapter is as follows. After stating some preliminary assumptions about early English syntax, the chapter presents an analysis of subjects that accounts for the positional discrepancies between full NP subjects and subject pronouns. Next, it shows that StOT, given the theory of syntax embodied by the constraint set, provides an illuminating model of change in the syntax of subjects in OE and ME.

This chapter analyzes the Negative Movement (NM) pattern in Norwegian, where, as in other Scandinavian languages, objects containing a negative quantifier (e.g., no books) must appear to the left of the verb, albeit with a slightly archaic or marginal flavour. The chapter is organized as follows. Section 15.2 discusses Complement-Verb_main (XV) and Verb_main-Complement (VX) order, and gives a presentation of word order patterns in Early Norwegian that resemble scrambling, quantifier movement (QM), and NM in modern Germanic languages. These three types of XV word order are described in terms of semantically-driven movement regulated by information structure. QM and NM in nineteenth-century and contemporary Modern Norwegian is also discussed. Section 15.3 discusses NM as a remnant of these once-productive movement operations, framing the discussion in terms of Virus Theory. It examines four characteristics shared by grammatical viruses and point out the similarities between NM and other prestige constructions in Modern Standard English. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Virus Theory as a tool for the description and analysis of data on syntactic variation and change.

This introduction discusses current trends in diachronic linguistics with a focus on syntactic change and reviews the fifteen other chapters included in the volume. In the spirit of modern diachronic syntax, the selected articles show that very general patterns of change, emergent, multigenerational diachronic phenomena, interact with small, discrete, local, intergenerational changes in the lexical specification of grammatical features. General topics include acquisition biases, cross-categorial word order generalizations, typological particularities and universals, language contact, and transitional changes, while specific linguistic topics include tense and viewpoint aspect, directional/aspectual affixes, V2, V3, Stylistic Fronting, directional/aspectual prefixes, negation, accusative and dative marking, analytic passives, complementizer agreement, and control and raising verbs.

This chapter seeks to reappraise the value of periodization for both early French and Occitan, by analysing a range of syntactic changes including verb placement, inversion effects, the structure of the left periphery, the null subject system and the particle SI. On this basis, it is argued that in syntactic terms there is some value in assigning the label ‘middle’ to a particular period in the history of French, whereas there is minimal empirical basis to assign the same label to a particular stage in the history of Occitan. Overall in terms of comparative Romance syntactic typology this is linked to the fact that medieval and modern Occitan are syntactically closer to the ‘southern’ Romance prototype than French.

The widespread adoption of the Chomsky-Borer Hypothesis, with its assumption of a crosslinguistically (and thus diachronically stable) syntactic computational system, removes an explanation for syntactic change the once widely-invoked concept of a ‘syntactic parameter’. This chapter explores some of the implications of this conceptual shift for an acquisition-driven model of syntactic change. It then leverages that discussion to explore some central issues surrounding syntactic reconstruction –especially the so-called ‘correspondence problem’, attempting to bring to light some previously underdiscussed aspects of what it means to stand ‘in correspondence.’

This chapter is a study of Latin indefinites in direct-negation contexts. These indefinites are interesting from a theoretical point of view because of their extreme dependence on the surrounding structural conditions, and because of the variety of their instantiations in different linguistic systems. Two phenomena of Latin grammar with wide-ranging implications for the development of Romance indefinites are discussed: the syntax of negation and the diachronic pathways followed by indefinites interacting with it. Latin is a Double Negation language, whereas Early Romance exhibits Negative Concord. The study proposes that this typological shift is linked to another major change from Latin to Romance, namely the change from OV to VO. Late Latin is analyzed as a ‘concealed’ nonstrict Negative Concord language, in which restrictions in the use of the ‘old’ negative indefinites emerge, as well as new patterns with (new) negative-polarity items.