Linguistics 556: Historical Syntax
Fall 2007

Course syllabus and suggested readings

Linguistics 556 is an introduction to the study of the syntax of languages as attested in historical texts, from both the synchronic and the diachronic perspective. As such, it is necessarily interdisciplinary, raising questions of syntactic theory, language acquisition, and sociolinguistics. Among the issues it addresses are:

looking for grammatical parameters in the syntactic variation among closely related languages and dialects
using textual examples and frequency information to draw grammatical conclusions for languages with no living native speakers
interpreting the time course of syntactic change
the role of first language acquisition effects as a source of change
language contact and second language acquisition effects as a source of change
modeling language change in a population as a dynamical system

The topics and readings below are subject to change. In particular, the list of readings will grow as the semester progresses. I will put some of the books on the list on reserve in Rosengarten. Several of the papers of which I am the author or a coauthor are available for download from my web page. The most recent paper exists at the moment in draft form so that I don't want to put it on my papers page, but you can download it from here. Please do not cite it or pass it around.

Introductory lectures

1. Language transmission and language change
                a. the overall diachronic stability of language
                b. inaccuracy in transmission as a source of change
                        learning effects
                        contact effects

2. Language variation and language change
a. the apparent gradualness of change
b. the Constant Rate Effect

3. Treating an evolving linguistic population as a dynamical system

Download Excel template for varbrul (requires Excel Solver module)

David Sankoff varbrul paper

Brief addendum to Yang 2000.

Alternative update functions (in Excel)

Case studies

1. Verb movement to functional heads
                a. V-to-Infl
                        loss of agreement and loss of V-to-I
                            English, Scandinavian
                b. V-to-Comp
                        varieties of verb-second
                        change and loss of V2
                            English, French, Spanish, Yiddish

2. Change and stability in the order of verbs and complements
                a. Loss and maintenance of OV word order in Germanic
                            English, German, Icelandic, Yiddish
                b. The evolution of word order in the history of Greek

3. Variation and change in the syntax of negation
a. The Jespersen cycle in the history of English
b. Other cases: German and Dutch, West Flemish, Quebec French

Readings

(I'll be adding items to this list as the semester progresses.)

I. Introduction: Bobaljik, Jonathan. 2002. Realizing Germanic inflection: Why morphology does not drive syntax.. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics, 6:2, 129-167.; Han, Chung-hye, Jeffrey Lidz and Julien Musolino. 2007.Verb-raising and grammar competition in Korean: Evidence from negation and quantifier scope. Linguistic Inquiry, 38:1, 1-47.; Anthony Kroch. 2001. Syntactic change. In Baltin and Collins, eds., Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory. Blackwell.; David Lightfoot. 1999. The Development of Language. Blackwell. chapter 3: Grammars and language acquisition.; Susan Pintzuk. 2002. Verb-object order in Old English: variation as grammatical competition. In Lightfoot, ed., Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change. Oxford University Press.; Ian Roberts. 2007. Diachronic Syntax. Oxford. chapter 3: Acquisition, learnability, and syntactic change.; supplementary readings:; Kampen, J. and N. Corver. 2006. Diversity of possessor marking in Dutch child language and Dutch dialects. Maurice Vliegen, ed. Proceedings of the 39th Linguistic Colloquium 2004 pp. 385-398. Berlin: Peter Lang.; Fred Weerman et al. 2006. L1 and L2 Acquisition of Dutch Adjectival Inflection. ACLC Working Papers, vol. 2006, Issue 1.
II. The Constant Rate Effect: Anthony Kroch. 1989. Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change, vol. 1, pp. 199-244.; Beatrice Santorini. 1993. The rate of phrase structure change in the history of Yiddish. Language Variation and Change, vol. 5, pp. 257-283.; Ann Taylor. 1999. The change from SOV to SVO in Ancient Greek. Language Variation and Change, vol. 6, pp. 1-37.
III. Dynamical Modeling of Language Change: Jeff Elman et al. 1996. Rethinking Innateness. chapter 4: the shape of change.; Partha Niyogi. ms. Phase transitions in language evolution. University of Chicago.; Charles Yang. 2000. Internal and external forces in language change. Language Variation and Change. vol. 12.; Charles Yang. 2002. Grammar competition and language change. In Lightfoot, ed., Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change. Oxford University Press.; supplementary readings:; Ted Briscoe. 2000. Evolutionary perspectives on diachronic syntax. In Pintzuk, Tsoulas and Warner, eds., Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms. Oxford University Press.; Partha Niyogi and Robert Berwick. 1997. Evolutionary consequences of language learning. Linguistics and Philosophy. vol. 20.
IV. Grammaticalization: Ian Roberts and Anna Roussou. 2005. Syntactic Change: A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization.Cambridge U. Press. chapters 1 and 2.
IV. The Character and Evolution of V2 in English: Eric Haeberli. 2000. Adjuncts and the syntax of subjects in Old and Middle English. In Pintzuk, Tsoulas and Warner, eds., Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms. Oxford University Press.; Eric Haeberli. 2002. Inflectional morphology and the loss of V2 in English. In Lightfoot, ed., Syntactic Effects of Morphological Change. Oxford University Press.; Anthony Kroch, Ann Taylor, and Donald Ringe. 2000. The Middle English verb-second constraint: a case study in language contact and language change. In Herring, van Reenan and Schoesler, eds., Textual Parameters in Older Languages. John Benjamins.; supplementary readings:; Eric Haeberli. 2002. Observations on the loss of Verb Second in the history of English In In C.J.W. Zwart and W. Abraham (eds.), Studies in Comparative Germanic Syntax. John Benjamins.; Anthony Kroch and Ann Taylor. 1997. Verb movement in Old and Middle English: dialect variation and language contact. In Kemenade and Vincent, eds., Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change. Cambridge University Press.
V. The Loss of OV Word Order in Germanic: Anthony Kroch and Ann Taylor. 2001. Verb-Object Order in Early Middle English. In Pintzuk et al., eds., Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms. Oxford University Press.
VI. Periphrastic do: Chung-hye Han. 2000. The evolution of do-support in English imperatives. In Pintzuk, Tsoulas and Warner, eds., Diachronic Syntax: Models and Mechanisms. Oxford University Press.; Chung-hye Han and Anthony Kroch. 2000. The rise of do-support in English: implications for clause structure. In Hirotani et al., eds., Proceedings of the 30th Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society.; Stefan Frisch. 1997. The change in negation in Middle English: a NEGP licensing account. Lingua. no. 101, pp. 21-64.; Anthony Warner. 2005. Why DO dove: Evidence for register variation in Early Modern English negatives. Language Variation and Change. vol. 17.
VII. The historical evolution of clitics: Fontana, J. 1997. On the integration of second position phenomena. Kemenade, Ans and Nigel Vincent, eds. Parameters of Morphosyntactic Change pp. 207-249.; Galves, C. et al. 2005. The change of clitic placement from Classical to Modern European Portuguese. Portuguese Journal of Linguistics vol. 4, pp. 39-67.; Pancheva, R. 2005. The rise and fall of second position clitics. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. vol. 23, pp. 103-167.