Synopses & Reviews
In this important new work, Alice Harris and Lyle Campbell set out to establish a general framework for the investigation of syntactic change. Using a cross-linguistic approach, they reveal shared properties of changes across languages, determine what mechanisms lie behind them, and how they correlate to the overall explanation of syntactic change. They draw on data drawn from a wide variety of languages, in particluar those from the Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, Kartvelian, and North East Caucasian families.
Review
'\"A book of this magnitude and comprehensiveness on a topic so neglected in recent linguistics has long been wanting. Harris and Campbell have made an admirable attempt to provide a balanced synthesis of over one hundred years of research on diachronic syntax...while simultaneously attempting to provide some unity to this dipersed field. Thus, they provide a unified methodology and a limited set of mechanisms of change.... ...this book is essentially the only one of its kind; this by itself is a virtue.\" Paul Manning, Anthropological Linguistics'
Synopsis
This study utilizes a cross-linguistic approach to establish a general framework for the investigation of syntactic change. It reveals shared properties of changes across languages, determines what mechanisms lie behind them, and how they correlate to the overall explanation of syntactic change.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 436-477) and indexes.
Table of Contents
Preface; 1. Introduction; 2. The history of historical syntax: major themes; 3. Overview of a theory of syntactic change; 4. Reanalysis; 5. Extension; 6. Language contact and syntactic borrowing; 7. Processes that simplify bi-clausal structures; 8. Word order; 9. Alignment; 10. On the development of complex constructions; 11. The nature of syntactic change and the issue of causation; 12. Reconstruction of syntax; Appendix; Bibliography.