The Order of Word Order Change

Aitchison, Jean

doi:10.1111/j.1467-968x.1979.tb00853.x

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Where no such process is at work, there is evidence that usage frequencies remain stable over long periods of time. Thus, one common explanation proferred for the shift from verb-final to verb-medial word order in the history of English is a gradual increase in the frequency of rightward extraposition of complements and adjuncts (Aitchison 1979, Stockwell 1977). 4 There is, however, no careful quantitative study of extraposition in English from a diachronic perspective that takes into account what is currently known about the syntax of the language, so the hypothesis remains a speculation.…”

Section: Change and Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic Change

Kroch¹

2001

The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory

203

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Over historical time languages change at every level of structure: vocabulary, phonology, morphology and syntax. 1 How and why such change occurs are the key questions addressed by the discipline of historical linguistics. From the perspective of modern generative grammar, language change is narrowly constrained by the requirement that all languages conform to the specifications of the human language faculty; but the fact of language change, like the brute fact of the structural diversity of the world's languages, marks a limit to the biological specification of language. Just how wide a range of variation biology allows is perhaps the major open question of theoretical linguistics; but whatever that range may be, it is the field on which historical developments play themselves out. The necessity for a richly specified Universal Grammar follows from the logical problem of language acquisition, so that the synchronic linguist considers as candidate analyses only learnable ones couched in theories that specify clearly what is to be learned and what is built in. The modern study of syntactic change, the topic of this article, 2 is also often couched in terms of learning; but, as we will see, the study of diachrony adds complexities of its own. 1 Most of what I know about diachronic syntax, I have learned from years of discussion with my collaborators and colleagues in the field. Thanks for this ongoing dialog go first to my students and collaborators, especially Susan Pintzuk, Beatrice Santorini, and Ann Taylor, my collaborator on the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English.

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Section: Change and Stabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Syntactic Change

Kroch¹

2001

The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory

203

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“…Lightfoot 1999 for an overview). The proposed solutions range from the allegedly universal principle of harmonic branching (Vennemann 1975) and adaptation to human parsing capacities (Aitchinson 1979, Hawkins 1990 to switches from one parameter setting to another (e.g. Lightfoot 1979, Kroch 1989.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Discourse and Syntax in Linguistic Change: Decline of Postverbal Topical Subjects in Serbo-Croat

Matić¹

2010

Diachronic Studies on Information Structure

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“…Harris Delisle (1978). Some remarks on coordination reduction in Homer can be found inAitchison (1979).22 On the interpretation of third person pronouns or NS's in coordinated sentences in English, seeChao (1986).23 More in general, there appears to be an implication between the occurrence of Null Subjects and the possible occurrence of NO's, whereby the latter implies the former, see Luraghi (forthcoming a).…”

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confidence: 99%

Definite referential null objects in Ancient Greek

2003

Indogermanische Forschungen

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It is well known that direct objects of transitive verbs can be omitted in Greek in occurrences in which they refer to definite antecedents (hence the definition of 'definite referential Null Objects).Under what conditions omission can occur has never been the topic of any detailed study. Based on previous research on Latin, and on extensive analysis of Greek texts, I try to describe these conditions. It turns out that there are constructions where omission is the rule (e.g. with conjunct participles), and thus must be regarded as syntactically conditioned. Other occurrences are best explained as a matter of high topicality and low communicative dynamism of the omitted objects. 0.Introduction.

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The Order of Word Order Change

Cited by 6 publications

References 8 publications

Syntactic Change

Syntactic Change

Discourse and Syntax in Linguistic Change: Decline of Postverbal Topical Subjects in Serbo-Croat

Definite referential null objects in Ancient Greek

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