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SUMMARY:From morphology to syntax or the other way around: Re-thinking the
  directionality of change in historical syntax - Dr Chris Reintges (CNRS-U
 niversité Paris 7 and Leiden University Centre for Linguistics)
DTSTART:20081113T170000Z
DTEND:20081113T183000Z
UID:TALK14675@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Elliot Lash
DESCRIPTION:In the principles-and-parameters approach to diachronic syntax
 \, differences in grammatical structure between successive historical stag
 es are derived from the resetting of a parameter value. In Roberts & Rouss
 ou’s (2003) system\, the locus of parameter change is the morphological 
 expression of parameters. The non-convergence with the target grammar is b
 rought about by the ambiguity or loss of a morphological trigger\, which i
 nitiates the reanalysis of an input string in terms of a simpler represent
 ation. The directionality of change is therefore from morphology to syntax
 \, with morphological change entailing the loss of formal marking. I propo
 se a more fine-grained typology of the relation between morphological and 
 syntactic change.	\n\nThe central hypothesis is that the locus of syntacti
 c change is syntactic variation\, where syntactic variation is defined as 
 the co-existence of various sentence patterns (word orders) in one languag
 e to express the same basic proposition with subtle distinctions in meanin
 g. In enhancing the expressive power of the language\, syntactic variation
  is an integral part of the syntax and so is syntactic change. Syntactic v
 ariation itself is restricted\, because it is tied to syntactic processes 
 such as movement. I will present a case of INCREASING morphological comple
 xity (the extension and paradigmatic organization of the tense/aspect/mood
  system in the later stages of Ancient Egyptian) and argue that it represe
 nts a regular and systematic type of morphological change that comes forth
  from regular syntactic change (expansion of the topic/focus field\; shrin
 king of the vP domain). 
LOCATION:GR06-7\, English Faculty\, 9 West Road (Sidgwick Site)
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