Language changes. This fact of everyday life seems to be a problem for generative grammar, which, in the structuralist tradition, takes language to be a system, composed of elements whose only status in reality lies in their relations with other elements. As such, change takes place as a replacement of one system by another, and is caused by factors outside the system itself. It can neither be stated nor explained within the linguistic system, i.e. within I-language. To the extent that the linguistic system is stable, all changes and all small deviations from the optimal realisation should be attracted back to the optimum and any change would necessarily fail. As structuralist linguistics does not provide a theory or model for a successful change, change is considered a replacement of one system by the other, be this a jump in the individual or group of individuals as an adult innovation (L2 model of linguistic change), or a jump between individuals as an incomplete or imperfect inter-generation transmission of language (L1 model). Therefore, theories that describe the dynamics of the change necessarily involve the realisation and behaviour of the E-language.
In diachronic syntax, we study questions like the ones listed below. In answering we will make use of theoretical concepts like those in the second column.
Questions
What is syntactic change? What changes when syntax changes?
What causes syntactic change?
Can two syntactic changes be related? How?
How can we trace syntactic change?
How long does it take for a change to complete?
Theoretical concepts
models of syntactic change (grammaticalisation, reanalysis, deflection, drift, ..)
internal and external factors (source agentivity, recipient agentivity, koineization)
parameters flip, constant rate hypothesis
tricks and traps of linguistic databases (corpora)
long tendencies and lifespan changes
The aim of the course is to make the students familiar with the relevant concepts, make him/her familiar with (part of) the literature. The student will be confronted with some case studies. After the course the student is able to find his way in the literature in diachronic syntax and identify research and results in its theoretical context.
We discuss three or four changes in more detail:
changes in OV/VO order in English
rise of reflexive pronoun in late Middle Dutch (koineization effects)
rise of perfect tense HAVE in English
enclisis and proclises of pronouns in Portuguese in relation to literary styles
There is a possibility to connect the term paper/project with an internship at the Meertens Institute.