Search Results

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 argues that to in Old English is semantically occupying the same niche as the subjunctive ending (or, for Present-day English, the modal verb that has taken over the subjunctive function) and should be accommodated in the functional projection that accommodates the subjunctive ending and, later, the modals, say T(ense). This in effect means that there has been no change in the syntactic status of to since it stopped being a preposition in prehistoric times. In early Middle English, split infinitives become possible, a change triggered by the fact that the finite subjunctive was increasingly coming to be expressed by a free form (a modal verb) raising to T overtly, rather than by a bound form (a subjunctive ending), raising to T covertly. The overt movement of to brought it in line with the rest of its paradigm: the modal verbs.

This chapter argues that the occurrence of the to-infinitive after verbs expressing meanings like ‘intend’ or ‘want’, or the negative counterparts ‘fear’ or ‘avoid’ represents an innovation. Unlike the verbs discussed in the previous chapter, these verbs never occurred with a to-prepositional phrase, so that the presence of the to-infinitive requires a different explanation. The best predictor for the distribution of a to-infinitive after verbs of this group in Old English is that of the subjunctive þæt-clause. As subjunctive þæt-clauses and to-infinitives had occurred side by side as expressions of the adjunct of purpose and of the GOAL-argument, this may have led them to be analysed as each other’s equivalents, as if the to-infinitive had come to be regarded as a non-finite subjunctive clause. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the only environment in which bare infinitive and to-infinitive occur side by side: verbs with the meaning ‘begin’.

This chapter identifies a second set of ditransitive verbs: the verbs of commanding and permitting. Unlike the verbs of persuading and urging discussed in the Chapter 3, which have a thematic structure of AGENT, THEME, and GOAL, the verbs of commanding and permitting have a thematic structure of AGENT, RECIPIENT, and THEME. The different roles are clear from the different cases that express them: THEMES are expressed by accusative NPs, and RECIPIENTS by dative NPs. Verbs of commanding and permitting have two ‘variants’, a three-place and a two-place one. This is not an accidental, idiosyncratic lexical property of these verbs, but a structural feature connected with the basic meanings of this group. It is precisely this structural feature of the verbs of commanding and permitting that is responsible for the appearance of the first to-infinitival ECMs in Middle English.

This chapter argues that some purpose adjuncts were reinterpreted as GOAL-arguments of conatives and verbs of persuading and urging. This involved a semantic change of the higher verb. Verbs meaning ‘exert oneself’ came to mean ‘exert oneself in order to’, hence ‘strive, try’, i.e., a conative, with the following to-infinitive, originally there as purpose adjunct, becoming a GOAL-argument of that verb. The GOAL-argument of verbs of persuading and urging underwent a similar change. That these to-infinitives are indeed arguments in Old English and no longer adjuncts is shown by syntactic tests. That the to-infinitive after these verbs started out as a purpose adjunct is clear from the fact that the other two expressions that are available to encode the GOAL-argument are the to-prepositional phrase and the subjunctive þæt-clause — both, like the to-infinitive, regularly used to encode purpose adjuncts.

This chapter is a case study in syntactic reanalysis leading to grammaticalization. It investigates the history of Modern Irish comparative particle ná 'than', and shows how it has developed phonologically, morphologically, and syntactically from an Old Irish phrase ol/ind daäs 'beyond how it is'. Two reanalyses are proposed: first, the verb daäs in T is reanalyzed as C in gapping contexts; second, C (daäs) is cliticized to P (ol) and reanalyzed as a morphological part of P in subcomparatives. The chapter shows that the first reanalysis can be characterized as formal grammaticalization, while the second does not appear formal grammaticalization (upward reanalysis), but merely 'morphologization'; although it is grammaticalization in the strictly functional sense. Besides the two reanalyses, the chapter explains several surface extensions of these reanalyses: loss of tense marking, changes in case marking, and exaptation/analogical reformation of verbal agreement marking as the comparative marker became more particle-like.

This chapter argues that the to-infinitive cannot be analysed as a prepositional phrase in Old English. Its distribution is no longer that of a to-PP, its dative inflection has fossilized and does not behave like the dative inflection found on true N-heads, and it takes accusative objects rather than the genitive objects that would be expected if it was still nominal. Evidence from relative clauses, the position of the to-infinitival object, and the emergence of an overt complementizer — for — in early Middle English all argue for clausal rather than phrasal status. The most telling piece of evidence is the fact that the to-infinitive has entered into competition with the finite subjunctive clause and can be seen to gradually oust it in a number of environments. All the available evidence suggests that the to-infinitive was being analyzed as a non-finite subjunctive already in OE.

This chapter focuses on a third type of ditransitive: commissives, with meanings like ‘promise’. The commissives are interesting in that finite clauses are still their preferred complement in Present-day English, unlike the other subject-controlled verbs where finite clauses have been ousted completely by the to-infinitive. Closer investigation suggests that this survival is due to the fact that coreference of the subject of the subclause and an argument of the main clause is less frequent than with the verbs discussed in the previous chapters, i.e., the embedded subject is not ‘controlled’. Secondly, the ratio of modals versus simple subjunctive form is far higher in Old English after the commissives than after other ‘control’ verbs, which suggests that there is a need to distinguish between these types by using different modals for different types, which explains the continued survival of finite clauses.

The chapter investigates aspects of variation in Old English modals with respect to functional status, modal base, modal force, and event realization under the modals in the actual world. The main goal is to view—in tandem, rather than in isolation—aspects of variation that are of interest at the syntax–semantics interface. The chapter focuses on three modals, the cognates of ‘can,’ ‘may,’ and ‘must,’ which show the full range of variation available in the categories investigated. The role of circumstantial modality in the diachronic development is underlined. It is furthermore argued that the modals of the period occupy a structural position in the aspectual domain. Evidence for functional status includes ellipsis, topicalization, and the complementary distribution with the aspectual prefix ge-.

This chapter presents a case study of grammatical properties of complex pronouns in Wu Chinese, namely the Fuyang dialect, from both the synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The chapter argues that the syntactic context for using complex pronouns is dependent on their information status as topic or focus. A distinction is made between stressed and unstressed complex pronouns: unstressed complex pronouns are restricted to topic positions, either primary or secondary, while stressed ones have no such restriction and can serve as contrastive topic or focus. The chapter proposes that complex pronouns in Fuyang Wu involve a ‘syntactic reanalysis’, being derived from the fusion of the copula and pronouns in cleft sentences and that the fused complex pronouns undergo a grammaticalization process from focalization to topicalization.