Diachronic and Comparative Syntax

573 Pages·2019·2.913 MB·English

by  Ian Roberts

Diachronic and Comparative
Syntax
This book brings together for the first time a series of previously published
papers featuring Ian Roberts’ pioneering work on diachronic and comparative
syntax over the last thirty years in one comprehensive volume. Divided into
two parts, the volume engages in recent key topics in empirical studies of
syntactic theory, with the eight papers on diachronic syntax addressing major
changes in the history of English as well as broader aspects of syntactic change,
including the introduction to the formal approach to grammaticalisation,
and the eight papers on comparative syntax exploring head-movement, the
nature and distribution of clitics, and the nature of parametric variation and
change. This comprehensive collection of the author’s body of research on
diachronic and comparative syntax is an essential resource for scholars and
researchers in theoretical, comparative, and historical linguistics.
Ian Roberts is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics
at the University of Cambridge. His most recent publications include The
Final-Over-Final Condition, with Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg and
Michelle Sheehan (2017) and The Wonders of Language (2017).
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Formal Grammar
Theory and Variation
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Juan Uriagereka
Diachronic and Comparative Syntax
Ian Roberts
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Diachronic and Comparative
Syntax
Ian Roberts
First published 2019
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Contents
Preface vii
Acknowledgments x
List of Contributors xii
PART I
Diachronic Syntax 1
1 Agreement Parameters and the Development of
English Modal Auxiliaries 3
IAN ROBERTS
2 A Computational Model of Language Learnability and
Language Change 39
ROBIN CLARK AND IAN ROBERTS
3 Object Movement and Verb Movement in Early
Modern English 88
IAN ROBERTS
4 Directionality and Word Order Change in the History
of English 104
IAN ROBERTS
5 Verb Movement and Markedness 139
IAN ROBERTS
6 Theoretical Consequences 184
ANNA ROUSSOU AND IAN ROBERTS
vi Contents
7 Cascading Parameter Changes: Internally-Driven
Change in Middle and Early Modern English 227
THERESA BIBERAUER AND IAN ROBERTS
PART II
Comparative Syntax 259
8 Passive Arguments Raised 261
MARK BAKER, KYLE JOHNSON AND IAN ROBERTS
9 Complex Inversion in French 296
LUIGI RIZZI AND IAN ROBERTS
10 Excorporation and Minimality 325
IAN ROBERTS
11 Two Types of Head Movement in Romance 334
IAN ROBERTS
12 Clause Structure and X-Second 369
ANNA CARDINALETTI AND IAN ROBERTS
13 The Analysis of VSO Clauses 419
IAN ROBERTS
14 Introduction: Parameters in Minimalist Theory 473
ANDERS HOLMBERG AND IAN ROBERTS
15 Macroparameters and Minimalism: A Programme for
Comparative Research 535
IAN ROBERTS
Index 554
Preface
This book brings together in one place, for the first time, a series of papers
on diachronic and comparative syntax that I have published over a period
of more than three decades. The papers deal with central empirical topics
in recent syntactic theory (verb-movement, word order, null subjects, the
nature and distribution of clitics) and also several major theoretical top-
ics (head-movement, argument structure, the nature of parametric change
and variation). Together, they form a coherent body of work reflecting how
syntactic theory, as it has developed since the 1980s, can shed new light on
questions of variation and change.
Part I includes papers on diachronic syntax. Several of these papers
deal with well-known changes in the history of English. Chapter 1 was a
pioneering paper in that it attempted to recast Lightfoot’s classic (1979)
analysis of the development of English modal auxiliaries in terms of prin-
ciples and parameters governing verb-movement. It was the first paper to
observe that English lost V-to-I movement of main verbs in the 16th century
and to connect this to the breakdown of verbal inflection. In important
respects, it anticipated Pollock’s (1989) seminal work on V-to-I movement
in English and French, as well as the large literature on verb-movement
that grew out of Pollock’s work in the 1990s (see, for example, the papers
in Hornstein and Lightfoot 1994, Vikner 1995, 1997, Rohrbacher 1999,
Bobaljik 2002, Bobaljik and Thráinsson 1998, Bentzen 2007, Wiklund et al.
2007, Koeneman and Zeijlstra 2014 and Tvica 2017).
Chapter 3 shows how Holmberg’s (1986) generalization (object shift can
only apply when the verb moves) holds throughout the history of English
(albeit vacuously in Modern English); a corollary of this is that there is
no need to posit any change in the nature of English pronouns in order to
account for their changed distribution since the Early Modern period, as
this follows directly from the change in verb syntax discussed in Chapter 1
combined with Holmberg’s generalisation.
Chapter 4 was the first attempt to account for the change from OV to VO
word order in Middle English from the point of view of the antisymmetric
theory of syntax of Kayne (1994), closely basing the analysis of Old English
word order on the proposals for Dutch in Zwart (1993). This approach
viii Preface
was largely superseded by the one developed in Biberauer & Roberts (2005,
2008), the latter of which is republished here as Chapter 7. This latter paper
presents an overview of a series of changes in English, from the Old English
period through to the 17th century, showing how these changes form a
“cascade”, with each change creating the conditions for the next.
The other chapters of Part I deal with more general aspects of syntactic
change. Chapter 6 is excerpted from Roberts & Roussou (2003) and sum-
marises the overall approach to grammaticalisation adopted there, consid-
ering its implications both for the theory of parameters and for the theory
of functional categories. Chapter 2 is an ambitious attempt to develop an
account of parameter setting using genetic algorithms, and applying the idea
to an account of how syntactic change originates in language acquisition.
An important aspect of this approach is a “least-effort” principle in acqui-
sition, which forms the basis for the theory of markedness developed and
applied to a range of data in Chapter 5.
The chapters making up Part II, dealing with comparative syntax, treat
head-movement, the nature of clitics and/or the nature of parametric
variation. Chapter 8 proposes an influential analysis of passive construc-
tions, whose central idea is that the passive morpheme is an argumental
clitic. Chapter 10 points out that there is nothing in the systems of head-
movement put forward in Chomsky (1986) and Baker (1988) that, without
stipulation, prevents “excorporation”, i.e. successive-cyclic head-movement
without pied-piping. It is suggested that this may be an empirical advan-
tage. Chapter 11 proposes, on the basis of Romance data, that there are
two distinct kinds of head-movement, “A-head-movement” and “A’-head-
movement,” subject, in terms of Relativised Minimality (as formulated in
Rizzi 1990), to different locality constraints. It is argued that this can account
for certain apparent violations of the Head Movement Constraint. Both
Chapter 9 and Chapter 12 deal with clitic-placement and its interactions
with verb-movement, the former in relation to a particular construction in
French, the latter in relation to a range of “second-position” effects in a range
of languages. In some respects, the latter paper anticipates Rizzi’s (1997)
proposals regarding the expanded left periphery. Chapter 13 analyses verb-
movement in VSO clauses in Welsh, relating the situation in this language
to verb-movement and clause structure in Germanic and Romance. Finally,
Chapters 14 and 15 develop a new approach to parametric variation, the
former on the basis of a thorough overview of work on null subjects, the latter
in more general terms.
Taken together, these papers form a coherent body of work applying the
theory of principles and parameters, at different stages of its development,
to a range of diachronic and comparative phenomena.
Ian Roberts
Los Angeles, October 2017
Preface ix
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