Historical Linguistics

1
Historical Linguistics

• Changes in syntax
• Lecture 5, Week 6
• Lynne Cahill
• February 2008

2
Syntactic change

• Mechanisms very similar to morphological change
• Reanalysis and extension
• Also borrowing (more later in the course)
• Obviously related to morphological change
• Changes in morphosyntactic features may be
  influenced by changes in syntax or vice versa
• It's not called grammatical morphology for
  nothing!

3
Reanalysis and extension

• Periphrastic constructions analogous to morpheme
  combinations
• So what happens to morpheme combinations also
  happens to elements in periphrastic constructions
• Reanalysis of syntactic constructions most common
  type of syntactic change
• Affects various levels of syntactic
  representation
• Extension less common in syntax

4
Reanalysis

• Change in one (or more) of
• constituency (which bits belong together)
• hierarchical structure (how those chunks relate
  to one another)
• category labels (how we (as speakers, rather than
  linguists) define/perceive the chunks)
• grammatical relations (subject, object etc.
  roles)
• First three of these all linked (what is the tree
  for this sentence?)

5
Change of constituency

• English
• it is bet for meto sleen my selfthan ben
  defouled thus
• it is betfor me to sleen myself...
• for me to slay myself is better than ...
• German
• er ging aus um Wasserzu holen
• he went out for water to fetch (it)
• er ging ausum Wasser zu holen
• he went out (for) to fetch water
• Esopus ging um zu suchen
• Esopus went (for) to look (no nominal comp)

6
Change of category labels

• Chinese verb gt DO marker
• Wo da Zhang-san le (SVO)
• I hit Zhang-san PERF
• 'I hit Zhang-san'
• Wo ba Zhang-san da le (SVO V)
• I take Zhang-san hit PERF (SOV)
• 'I hit Zhang-san'
• Zhang-san ba Li-si piping le
• Zhang-san DO Li-si criticise PERF
• 'Zhang-san criticised Li-si'

7
Change of category labels

• Grammaticalisation of ba
• Change of category (verb to affix marking direct
  object
• Simple clause gt complex clause gt simple clause
• 'Word order change' without changing order of
  words
• Apparently simple reanalysis can have wide
  ranging implications

8
Reanalysis triggered by grammaticalisation

• Example from Teso (Ateso) Nilo-Saharan VSO
• mam petero e-koto eki?ok
• not Peter 3sg-want dog
• 'Peter does not want a dog'
• Historically derived from
• e-mam petero e-koto eki?ok
• 'It is not Peter who wants a dog'
• mam 'not to be' gt negation marker
• Single instance of grammaticalisation lead to
  other changes

9
Reanalysis triggered by grammaticalisation

• Complex sentence reanalysed as simple
• Subordinate clause reanalysed as main clause
• Former main clause reanalysed as grammatical
  marker
• Subject of previous main clause reanalysed as
  subject of new sentence
• Former VSO structure reanalysed as SVO
• Teso has SVO in negative clauses

10
Grammatical relations

• Old English 'like' (verb)
• þam wife þa word wel licodon
• the.DAT woman.DAT those.NOM words well liked.PL
• 'the woman liked those words well'

11
Grammatical relations

• Modern English verbs with PPto experiencer
• looks, seems, appears, sounds, appeals
• With accusative experiencer
• pleases, delights, impresses, amazes, stuns,
  astonishes, startles
• often used in passive, so experiencer becomes
  subject
• So changes in subcategorisation patterns in
  verbs, agreement patterns and case marking of
  arguments

12
Extension (analogy)

• Observed extensions generalise to a natural class
• Exactly the same as morphological analogy
• African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
• Nobody ain't gonna touch me 'No-one's going to
  touch me'
• (It) ain't noobdy gonna touch me 'There's no-one
  who's going to touch me'
• Nobody cain't do what he can 'No-one can do what
  he can'
• Cain't nobody do what he can 'There's no-one who
  can do what he can'

13
Extension

• Original structure of B
• (It) ain't nobody Ø Ø gonna touch me
• (Subj) Cop compl Rel Auxbe VP
• (There) is no-one who is ...
• B is reanalysed as related to A by subject-aux
  inversion
• Order of words in B (without 'it') same as
  question 'Ain't nobody gonna touch me?'
• Innovation same pattern applied to C, giving D

14
Shift of markedness

• Alternative ways of expressing same proposition
• One way is 'neutral', other way(s) 'marked'
• Marked forms only appropriate in specific
  pragmatic contexts
• Neutral I can't recommend this book SVO
• Marked This book I can't recommend OSV
• Marked I can't recommend it, this book SVOO
  (afterthought)
• Change happens when marked form becomes neutral

15
Shift of markedness

• French question structure
• Old French VS word order in Y/N questions
• est morte m'amie? 'Is my love dead?'
• V complem S
• Modern French
• est-ce que mon amie est morte?
• Is it that my love is dead? Originally
  marked
• Reanalysed SV word order in Y/N questions
• Est-ce que grammaticalised as a question
  particle although its meaning is transparent,
  cannot use any form but est

16
Colloquial French

• Word order and agreement marking
• Standard written French
• Mon frère a écrasé le lapin SVO
• My brother ran over the rabbit
• Colloquial French
• il l'a écrasé, le lapin, mon frère
• Pro Pro-Aux run-over the rabbit my
  brother
• Msubj Obj Pst PTCP
• S O Aux V Top-O
  Top-S (SOV)
• AgrS AgrO Aux V O S
  

17
Colloquial French

• Topicalisation phenomenon of main clauses
• Shift of markedness in main clauses
• marked topicalised gt unmarked neutral
• Subordinate clauses often then display earlier
  unmarked pattern
• Hence German, SVO order in main clauses
• SOV order in subordinate clauses

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Other influences

• Behagel's Third Law what belongs together
  semantically should be adjacent
• Avoid discontinuous constituents iconicity
• S Aux O V gt S Aux V O
• OE
• mid þm þeowum ic eom ealne þone hefon
  ymbhweorfende
• with these servants I am all the heaven
  encompassing
• 'I am encompassing all heaven with these servants'

19
Other influences

• Modern English Aux not always followed by V, but
  cannot be separated from it by object
• Variation in transitive verb particle
  constructions
• look the answer up look up the answer
• give the idea up give up the idea
• take a bin out take out a bin
• take the company over take over the company
• Verb linked semantically to both particle and DO
  NP

20
Other influences

• Cannot have both orders when DO is pronoun
• look it up look up it
• give her up give up her
• Why?
• Maybe other tendencies can account for this
• Cross-linguistic tendencies (Harris and Campbell
  1995)
• Three types of tendency, may conflict

21
Cross linguistic tendencies

• Relational word order rules formal rules of
  syntax, place constituents according to
  grammatical relations
• Stylistic-prosodic rules certain positions
  (especially second and final) dependent on stress
  
• Pragmatic rules position of focused or
  topicalised constituents defined by pragmatics of
  each language