The Paradox of Grammatical Change: Perspectives from Romance

The Paradox of Grammatical Change......Page 2
Editorial page......Page 3
Title page......Page 4
LCC data......Page 5
CONTENTS......Page 6
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS......Page 7
INTRODUCTION......Page 8
REFERENCES......Page 16
1. The problem: The locus of syntactic change......Page 20
2. The rise of French est-ce que as an interrogative particle: a pragmatically motivated syntactic change......Page 23
3. Shift of grammatical function in Spanish presentational constructions: a syntactic change caused by syntactic factors......Page 30
Secondary Literature......Page 35
Old French Texts......Page 37
1. Introduction......Page 38
2. The grammar of c’est-clefts in French......Page 40
3.1 Clefts in speech and in writing......Page 46
3.2 Implications for diachrony......Page 49
4.1 Discourse-governed constituent order from Latin to Modern French......Page 50
4.2 Corpus evidence......Page 51
5. On explaining clefting ‘beyond necessity’......Page 55
Further References......Page 59
1. Introduction: Different systems of indefinite nominal determiners in Romance nominals as results of language change......Page 64
2. A functional ‘explanation’: Romance indefinite determiners as ‘classification devices’......Page 67
3.1 ‘Manufacturing plurality’......Page 71
3.2 Romance languages: gender, number and ‘classification’......Page 76
4. From Latin to Romance: what happened in the structure?......Page 82
5. Conclusion......Page 86
REFERENCES......Page 88
1. Introduction......Page 92
2. The development of the Latin ACI......Page 94
3. The evolution of French infinitives......Page 97
4. Explaining grammatical change......Page 108
Italian texts......Page 110
Secondary literature......Page 111
1. Introduction......Page 114
2.1 Stylistic Fronting......Page 115
2.2 Clitic Distribution......Page 119
3. Connecting and explaining the phenomena......Page 120
4.1 Language change within the generative tradition......Page 123
4.2 Grammaticalisation within minimalism......Page 125
5. Loss of stylistic fronting and postverbal clitics in Romance......Page 128
REFERENCES......Page 129
IMPERFECT SYSTEMS AND DIACHRONIC CHANGE......Page 134
1.1 Passive si......Page 136
1.2 Impersonal si......Page 137
2.1 Passive si......Page 140
2.2 *Impersonal si......Page 141
3. Intermediate stages......Page 143
3.1 Stage I......Page 144
3.2 Stage II......Page 145
3.3 Stage III......Page 147
4. Conclusions......Page 150
REFERENCES......Page 151
1. A puzzle......Page 154
2. The historical situation in Old Spanish......Page 156
3. The pluperfect as the starting point for the development of irrealis readings......Page 160
4. The developments in Portuguese......Page 166
5. The turning-point in Spanish: from condition-based irreality to generalised counterfactuality......Page 168
6. The third stage: from counterfactual (irrealis) to subjunctive II......Page 174
7. Interpretation and conclusions......Page 177
REFERENCES......Page 182
Latin......Page 184
Portuguese......Page 185
1. Introduction......Page 188
2. The Realisation of non-lexical arguments in Basque......Page 190
2.2. Basque, two arguments S-DO (transitive, Nor-Nork)......Page 191
2.3. Basque, three arguments S-IO-DO (transitive, Nor-Nori-Nork)......Page 193
3. The typological parameter head-marking vs. dependent marking......Page 198
4. The other end of the hierarchy: German......Page 205
5. The Romance languages – problematic intermediate cases......Page 206
6. Language change: intermediary stages of a change from dependent-marking towards head-marking......Page 212
7. Conclusion......Page 217
REFERENCES......Page 218
1. Introduction......Page 222
2. Language and biology: Three positions......Page 223
3.1. Adaptive views: Adaptation and optimization......Page 227
3.2. Critique......Page 228
3.3. Interim Summary I......Page 235
3.4. Two-level views: Innovation and propagation......Page 236
3.5. Critique......Page 239
3.6. Interim Summary II......Page 243
4. Two-level views and traditional approaches to language change......Page 244
5. A revised explanation scheme of language change......Page 246
6. Conclusions......Page 251
REFERENCES......Page 252
SUBJECT INDEX......Page 258
The series CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY......Page 260