Diachronic Syntax

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

When children develop their native language capacity, they acquire properties for which there is no evidence in the speech they encounter; these are so-called “emergent phenomena.” Furthermore, children sometimes acquire systems that are significantly different from those of their parents and the language undergoes rapid structural change, a “phase transition.” We can understand emergent phenomena and phase transitions through a principled approach to language acquisition by young children. We will consider the methods, successes and failures of 19th-century work on language change, which was the foundation for a new discipline of linguistics and of great interest to thinkers in evolutionary biology, beginning with Darwin, and early researchers in what we now call political science, including Marx. We will then move to language acquisition, arguments from the poverty of the stimulus and cue-based acquisition. We will investigate how historical change can be understood (within limits) through children’s acquisition and how it enables us to understand the birth and death of languages more generally. This will involve a crucial distinction between external and internal languages and new methods for historical linguistics. Throughout the course we will see how linguistics is a lead science in understanding change and complex dynamics quite generally. Texts: Lightfoot 2006 How New Languages Emerge. Cambridge UP. Ian Roberts 2007 Diachronic syntax. Oxford UP. Requirements: students need at least one course in generative syntax and will make a class presentation and write a paper dealing with a specific syntactic change in some language. Syllabus: Week 1 The beginnings: 19th-century work on language change: methods, successes and failures. Reading: Lightfoot chs 1, 2. Week 2 Syntax as a complex system, poverty of stimulus reasoning. What is learned and how. Reading: L ch 3 Week 3 Models of acquisition: learning algorithms, cue-based acquisition. Reading: L ch 4 Week 4 Phenomena of syntactic change in English: Modal auxiliaries, verb movement, be+part, change in meaning of like, repent, ail, etc. Methodologies. Reading: Roberts ch 1 Week 5 Explanations for historical changes through acquisition (thresholds and phase transitions). E-language vs. I-language. The birth and death of languages (creoles, language endangerment) Reading: L ch 5, R ch 3 Week 6 Other explanations for change: grammar evaluation, principles of change (grammaticalization, UG biases). Gradualism. Reading: L ch 6, R ch 2 Week 7 More case studies: lexical passives, quantifiers, group genitives, infinitives. Reading: R ch 4 Week 8 Other languages: verb movement, null subjects. Reading: L ch 7, R ch 5 Week 9 Reconstruction of proto-syntax. Reading: Journal of Linguistics debate Week 10 Evolution of the language faculty: mutations and natural selection. Week 11 How diachronic syntax differs from synchronic work and how it illuminates some of the idealizations of synchronic work. Reading: L ch 8 Week 12 New methods for historical linguistics, working with corpora. Research topics: microvariation and abstract categories. Linguistics as a lead science in complex dynamics. Weeks 13-14 Student presentations.