Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change

by Edited by Ans van Kemenade , Nigel Vincent

• ISBN13: 9780521584029
• ISBN10: 0521584027
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-05-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The relationship between changes in (inflectional) morphology and the consequences of these changes in syntax has been a perennial issue in historical linguistics. The contributors to this volume address the issue of how to model the phenomena of syntactic and morphological change within recent frameworks, including the Minimalist Programme. Topics addressed include the way categories like aspect and mood interact over time with the valency of verbs; the nature of changes in verb placement; the changing division of labor between different types of argument marking--case, word order, clitics, agreement. The volume contains chapters by many of the leading scholars in the field. There is a substantial introduction which reviews the development of ideas in generative historical syntax over the last fifteen years, and assesses the distinctive properties of the generative position. The volume will appeal to those working in theoretical syntax, and also to specialists in the history of German, French and the Romance and Germanic languages more broadly.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	ix	(2)
Preface	xi
Parameters and morphosyntactic change	1	(26)
Ans van Kemende
Nigel Vincent
Part 1 Aspect, argument structure and case selection	27	(120)
1 The interdependence of case, aspect and referentiality in the history of German: the case of the verbal genitive	29	(33)
Werner Abraham
2 The rise of the article in the Germanic languages	62	(32)
Julia Philippi
3 The diachronic development of a modal verb of necessity	94	(25)
Paola Beninca
Cecilia Poletto
4 Auxiliary verbs in Old and Middle French: a diachronic study of substitutive faire and a comparison with the Modern English auxiliaries	119	(15)
Philip H. Miller
5 Commentary on part 1: aspect, argument structure and case selection	134	(13)
Alessandra Tomaselli
Part 2 Clitics	147	(104)
6 The emergence of the D-system in Romance	149	(21)
Nigel Vincent
7 On two locations for complement clitic pronouns: Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian and Old Spanish	170	(37)
Maria Luisa Rivero
8 On the integration of second position phenomena	207	(44)
Josep M. Fontana
Part 3 Verb second and comp	251	(144)
9 Shifting triggers and diachronic reanalyses	253	(20)
David Lightfoot
10 Viewing change in progress: the loss of V2 in Hiberno-English imperatives	273	(24)
Alison Henry
11 Verb movement in Old and Middle English: dialect variation and language contact	297	(29)
Anthony Kroch
Ann Taylor
12 V2 and embedded topicalization in Old and Middle English	326	(27)
Ans van Kemenade
13 Qu'est-ce que ce que? The diachronic evolution of a French complementizer	353	(27)
Laurie Zaring
Paul Hirschbuhler
14 The structure of parametric change, and V-movement in the history of English	380	(15)
Anthony Warner
Part 4 Scrambling and morphological case	395	(114)
15 Directionality and word order change in the history of English	397	(30)
Ian Roberts
16 On the relation between morphological and syntactic case	427	(33)
Fred Weerman
17 The rise of positional licensing	460	(35)
Paul Kiparsky
18 The chapters by Kiparsky, Roberts and Weerman: an epilogue	495	(14)
Hoskuldur Thrainsson
References	509	(30)
Index	539