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This study brings together many of the resources needed for the exploration of English historical syntax and deals with many of the important changes in English sentence structure from Old English to present. It also features a survey of published research from both classical and modern linguistic traditions, as well as new research by the author. Provides guidance on methodology, important reference materials, and the general history of the English language.
The aim of this study is to provide an outline of the development, from the earliest times to the present day, of all the English syntatical constructions with a verbal form as their nucleus. Professor Visser's description is based on a very extensive collection of documentary material covering every kind of writing in prose and poetry in the Old, Middle and Modern periods, drawing on quotations illustrating syntactical phenomena in Bosworth & Toller, O.E.D., M.M.E.D., E.D.D., and D.O.S.T., but also making reference to obsolete usages not found in any grammar, and to the views of English and American grammarians of the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries on the various syntactical constructions. The volumes of this work originally appeared in the early sixties and seventies and were well received by readers and reviewers. Volumes 1 and 2 underwent correction in the light of these early reactions. We should like to think that this work will continue to be available to the scholarly world without great increases in the price. We are however only reprinting the individual volumes in small numbers, and so we have decided that in order to guarantee a consistent reprint and pricing policy for the future, the work should be available henceforth only as a set of four volumes.
In this major new work Alice Harris and Lyle Campbell set out to establish a general framework for the investigation of linguistic change. Systematic cross-linguistic comparison of syntactic change across a wide variety of languages is used to construct hypotheses about the universals and limits of language change more generally. In particular, the authors seek to move closer towards describing the range of causes of syntactic change to develop an understanding of the mechanisms of syntactic change, and to provide an understanding of why some languages undergo certain changes and not others. The authors draw on languages as diverse as Pipil and French, Georgian and Estonian, and the data presented is one of the book's great strengths. Rigor and precision are combined here with a great breadth of scholarship to produce a unique resource for the study of linguistic change, which will be of use to scholars and students alike.
An accessible, up-to-date account of the major changes in English syntax since its beginnings up to the present day.
This book of new work by leading international scholars considers developments in the study of diachronic linguistics and linguistic theory, including those concerned with the very definition of language change in the biolinguistic framework, parametric change in a minimalist conception of grammar, the tension between the observed gradual nature of language change and the binary nature of parameters, and whether syntactic change can be triggered internally or requires the external stimuli produced by phonological or morphological change or through language contact. It then tests their value and applicability by examining syntactic change at different times and in a wide range of languages, including German, Chinese, Dutch, Sanskrit, Egyptian, Norwegian, old Italian, Portuguese, English, the Benue-Kwa languages of Niger-Congo, Catalan, Spanish, and old French. The book is divided into three parts devoted to (i) theoretical issues in historical syntax; (ii) external (such as contact and interference) and internal (grammatical) sources of morphosynactic change; and (iii) parameter setting and reanalysis.
This volume offers a selection of papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held at the University of Santiago de Compostela. From the rich programme (over 130 papers were given during the conference), the present twelve papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the fields of English historical syntax and morphology. Some of the issues discussed are the emergence of viewpoint adverbials in English and German, changes in noun phrase structure from 1650 to the present, the development of the progressive in Scots, the passivization of composite predicates, the loss of V2 and its effects on the information structure of English, the acquisition of modal syntax and semantics by the English verb WANT, or the use of temporal adverbs as attributive adjectives in the Early Modern period. Many of the articles tackle questions of change through the use of methodological tools like computerized corpora. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, grammaticalization theory, Dik's model of functional grammar, construction grammar and Government & Binding Theory.