Toward a grammar of syntactic change (original) (raw)

There is an extensive body of literature on the subject of formalized theories of phonolggy, morphology and semantic change, but regrettably little on the theory of syntactic change. An exaggerated picture of the situation may be given by such a textbook as Lehmann's Historical linguistics: an introduction (1962), which discusses genetic change, if only briefly, st every level of language other than the syntactic. All the same, the bias of this book is symptomatic (cf. the lack of syntactic material in Hoenigswald's Language change and linguistic reconstruction (1960)). The present article attempts partially to fill the gap from a transformational point of view and to point to some of '~he "kinds of change found in sentence structure excluding lexicon. Particular emphasis will be laid on the two processes that are usually considered the fundamental universals of linguistic change: simplification and elaboration. No attempt is made a.t all-inclusiveness. Only a limited number of possible types of change are discussed; it is unlikely, however, that other changes would prove to be of fundamentally different character. The observations and hypotheses put forward here can hopefully be tested against tl'e histories ot many different languages so that a universal granunar of syntactic change may eventually be developed. 'rhe examples here are all taken from the history of English. t) The conventional designations Old English (OE), Middle z) The bulk of the prirrmry data is selected from: (i) King All:ted's Orosius (c. 880). Ed. H. Sweet, EETS No. 79. Lolzdon, Kegsn Paul, 11383; (if) The works o/Geo//rcy Chaucer (latter half fourteenth century). Ed. F. N. Robinson. New York, Houghton Mifflin, 1957, 2.~d ed.; (iii) The complete worhs o/ Shakespeare (end of sixteenth, beginning of seventeenth centm-ies). Ed. H. Craig. Chicago, Sco~.. Foresman, 1951. Other quotations are selected from the following worxs' ~v) The romance o/ Sir Beues o/ Hamtoun (c. 1327). Ed. TOWARD A GRAMMAR OF SYNTACTIC CH.~,NGE