Formal Syntax and Language Change

Elly van Gelderen

5 January 2013

LSA, Boston

Outline of the ChapterA. A review of the tension between generative

grammar and historical linguistics, in both directions.

B. The role of Universal Grammar in ChangeC. The major advances from the 1950s to the

present in generative grammar and how they have an impact on diachronic studies, e.g. from catastrophic reanalyses to gradual change.

D. Some issues, e.g. Minimalism vs cartography and inventory of features.

First an example

A formal approach: how and why

The introduction of reflexives (a puzzle from a purely functional point of view):

(1) Wit unc wið hronfixas werian þohton

we us against whales defend thought

`We intended to defend ourselves against the whales.' (Beowulf 540)

Demonstratives, pronouns, and pro-drop in Old English

(1) þæt fram ham gefrægn Higelaces þegn, god mid Geatum, Grendles dæda; se wæs moncynnes mægenes strengest on þæm dæge þysses lifes, æþele ond eacen.

`Hygelac’s thane heard about Grendel’s deeds while in Geatland; he (=Hygelac’s thane) was mankind’s strongest man on earth, noble and powerful.

Old English ctdHet him yðlidan godne gegyrwan, cwæð, he

guðcyning ofer swanrade secean wolde, mærne þeoden, þa him wæs manna þearf. ðone siðfæt him snotere ceorlas lythwon logon, þeah he him leof wære.

(He) ordered himself a good boat prepared and said that he wanted to seek the king over the sea since he (=the king) needed men. Wise men did not stop him (=Hygelac’s thane) though he was dear to them.’ (Beowulf 194-98)

Around 1200: a reanalysis(1) & gaddresst swa þe clene corn

`and so you gather the clear wheat.’ (Ormulum 1484-5, Holt edition)

(2) 3ho wass … Elysabæþ 3ehatenn `She was called Elisabeth.’ (Ormulum 115)

(3) & swa þe33 leddenn heore lif Till þatt te33 wærenn alde `and so they led their lives until they were old.’ (Ormulum 125-6)

(4) þin forrme win iss swiþe god, þin lattre win iss bettre. `Your earlier wine is very good, your later wine is better.’ (Ormulum 15409)

Internal Externalse --> the seo --> she

that --> that hi --> they

him/her --> himself/herself

a.se/that > the

[i-loc]/[i-phi] [u-T]/[u-ps] (= -Ps)

b.he/hi is replaced by he

heo/ha is replaced by she (possibly via seo)

hi/hie is replaced by they

[i-phi] [i-phi]/[i-loc]

Demonstrative

[i-phi]

[i-loc]

 article pronoun Ccopula

[u-phi] [i-phi] [u/i-T] [u-phi]

[u-T] [i-loc]

Feature Economy:

Utilize semantic features: use them as for functional categories, i.e. as formal features.

As for A, the tensions ...Chomsky has never been interested in

language change. The exception is a chapter in Chomsky & Halle’s (1968) The Sound Pattern of English, which is a description of four stages of English vowels (most likely due to Halle’s interests, as evidenced in Halle 1962).

Since Chomsky has set the agenda for generative linguists for almost 60 years, pursuing historical linguistics has therefore been `less popular’.

IntrospectionGenerative syntax has typically relied on

introspective data, i.e. asking a native speaker for grammaticality judgments because of its emphasis on the internalized grammar.

For historical periods, such a method of data gathering is obviously impossible and, as a result, historical generative linguistics has often suffered.

Generative grammar places much emphasis on the distinction between competence and performance, or more recently I(nternal)- and E(xternal)-language (see Chomsky 1986).

Use (of texts and) corporaThe use of corpora has also been controversial in

much generative syntax up to recently. However, finding a pattern in a (spoken) corpus

shows that there is something systematic going on: repeatedly finding shouldof and shoulda indicates that something interesting is happening with modals and perfect auxiliaries:

(1) I should of knew this was too good to be true.

(2) There xuld not a be do so mykele.`There shouldn’t have been done so much.’

(Margaret Paston a1469)

Practical consequencesMainstream historical linguists often see generative work as

data-poor, over-theoretical, and not very insightful. Lack of impact: ICHL (International Conference on

Historical Linguistics) and ICEHL (International Conference on English Historical Linguistics) will have generative papers and occasional plenary addresses using that framework, but generative grammar is a minor framework.

Thus, ICHL 20 in Osaka, Japan in 2011 was organized around workshops but did not have a specific workshop on generative grammar and no plenary speaker, and ICEHL 17 in Zurich, Switzerland in 2012 had no generative plenary speakers and included only a handful of generative papers.

And ...Generative conferences and journals do not see historical

linguistics as a crucial component to their enterprise of understanding the faculty of language.

Thus, two recent, very influential generative conferences had only two papers devoted to historical linguistics: NELS (North East Linguistic Society) 42, held in Toronto in 2011, included two papers with a diachronic focus in the 67 papers that appeared on the final program and GLOW (Generative Linguists of the Old World) 35, held in Potsdam in 2012, included no historical ones in the 32 papers of the general session.

Although the next GLOW will have Variation and Change as one workshop and another on diachronic phonology (http://conference.sol.lu.se/en/glow-36/ )

There has always been a group:Closs (later Closs Traugott), King, Kiparsky, Klima,

Lakoff, and Lightfoot. Starting in 1990 in York, generative historical

linguists have come together through the DIGS (Diachronic Generative Syntax) conference which is devoted entirely to diachronic generative syntax. These linguists have used written sources and have, for the last 20 years, been using various corpora.

Many of the DIGS conferences had selected papers appear, e.g. as Battye & Roberts (1995), van Kemenade & Vincent (1997), Pintzuk, Tsoulas, & Warner (2000), and Crisma & Longobardi (2009).

Parsed CorporaSince the 1990s, a group of generative linguists

has worked on the creation of parsed corpora (see http://www.ling.upenn.edu/histcorpora/).

This has resulted in much better descriptions of changes in the word order (e.g. work by Pintzuk, Haeberli, Taylor, van Kemenade and others), changes in do-support (e.g. Kroch and Ecay), Adverb Placement (Haeberli, van Kemenade, and Los), and pro drop (Walkden).

Corpus work has reinvigorated Historical Linguistics.

Other historical (parsed) corpora have appeared or are appearing and spurring much work among generative and non-generative linguists:

the Tycho Brahe parsed corpus of historical Portuguese, o corpus do Português,

the Corpus del Español,

the Regensburg Russian Diachronic Corpus,

a Hungarian corpus is under construction,

and COHA with a very helpful interface!

Some other issues of tension

• Unidirectional or not

• Gradual or not

• Role of UG: Language-specific or third factor

• Currently: - The role of features

- Minimalism vs Cartography

The role of grammaticalization and unidirectionality.

Is grammaticalization real or epiphenomenal?

Roberts & Roussou (2003: 2), very much in the spirit of Newmeyer (1998: 237), state that “grammaticalization is a regular case of parameter change … [and] epiphenomenal” in that all components also occur independently.

Others, e.g. van Gelderen (2004; 2011), argue that the unidirectional patterns that are shown by grammaticalization can be explained internally, namely through the child reanalyzing the input in a certain way.

Is change gradual or abrupt?Most functionalist explanations assume it is

gradual whereas many formal account think it is abrupt.

Early generative approaches emphasize a catastrophic reanalysis of both the underlying representation and the rules applying to them. Lightfoot, for instance, argues that the category change of modals is an abrupt one from V to AUX, as is the change from impersonal to personal verbs (the verb lician changing in meaning from `please’ to `like’).

With the shift to parametric parameters, it becomes possible to think of gradual change through reanalysis as well (e.g. Roberts 2009 and van Gelderen 2009).

B. How to see the role of UG?

In the 1960s, UG consists of substantive universals, concerning universal categories (V, N, etc) and phonological features, and formal universals relating to the nature of rules. The internalized system that is the result is very language-specific, as we’ll see.

Even as early as 1965, Chomsky says that “semantic features ..., are presumably drawn from a universal ‘alphabet’” (1965: 142, although Chomsky continues that “little is known about this today”).

Model of language acquisition(based on Andersen 1973)

Generation n Generation n+1

I-language I-language

E-language E-language

+ innovations

1970s and 1980s

In the 1970s, UG comes to be seen as consisting of Principles (true in all languages) and Parameters (choices to be made depending on the language).

Subjacency Principle (Chomsky 1973): don’t move too far or too complicated

Headedness Parameter: initial or last depending on the language a child encounters: head-initial in Arabic and head-final in Urdu.

Therefore emphasis on parameter resetting, i.e. a younger generation will set its parameter in a different way from the older generation.

1990sParameters now consist of choices of feature

specifications as the child acquires a lexicon (Chomsky 2004; 2007). All parameters are lexical and determine linearization; therefore, they account for the variety of languages.

Baker, while disagreeing with this view of parameters, calls this the Borer-Chomsky-Conjecture (2008: 156): "All parameters of variation are attributable to differences in the features of particular items (e.g., the functional heads) in the lexicon." This has spurred some work on the role of features in language change (e.g. Breitbarth 2012, Roberts 2009, van Gelderen 2008). The set of features that are available to the learner is determined by UG.

Faculty of Language“(1) genetic endowment, which sets limits on the

attainable languages, thereby making language acquisition possible;

(2) external data, converted to the experience that selects one or another language within a narrow range;

(3) principles not specific to FL [the Faculty of Language]. Some of the third factor principles have the flavor of the constraints that enter into all facets of growth and evolution.... Among these are principles of efficient computation”. (Chomsky 2007: 3)

Third factorsWe need more on third factors: not well defined

and invoked to account for a number of phenomena, e.g. pro-drop (Sigurðsson 2011), phrase structure (Medeiros 2012), and language change (van Gelderen 2011).

Constraints on word learning, such as the shape over color bias (Landau et al 1992), would also be third factor. Like UG before it, third factor reasons would remain stable and not responsible in language change.

On to C, advances:1960/70s:

Rule loss, addition, and restructuring/simplification

underlying /rajt/ `write’ /rayt-ər/ `writer’a.voicing not applicable raydərb.raising rʌjt can no longer

applyphonetic [rʌjt] [rajder]

Kiparsky 1971: Opacity

1960-70s:Closs Traugott, Lightfoot on the category of

modals

Late 1970s: Allen on wh-extraction:(1) Ac hwaet saegst ðu ðonne

ðaet hwaet sie forcuðre But what say you then that --

be wickederðonne sio ungesceadwisnes?than be foolishness`But what do you say is wickeder than

foolishness?' (Boethius 36.8, from Allen 1977: 122)

Main advance: from very language-specific to more cross-linguistic

a. Sentence --> NP + VPb. VP --> Verb + NP (Chomsky 1957 : 27)

And form ordering of transformations:If S1 is a grammatical sentence of the form

NP1 - Aux - V - NP2, then the corresponding string of the formNP2 - Aux + be + en - V - by + NP1is also a grammatical sentence. (Chomsky 1957: 43)

Closs (later Traugott) on modals

(8) S → NP VPVP → MV + AUXMV → NP – Vt

ViVi → Vi move

VixAUX → PP – habb, in env. Vt and Vi-move (Inf M) T

PP – wes, in env. ViPrP – BE

M → cunn, mag, mot, sceal, willBE → beo, wes, weorþ

Closs’ types of changesreversal of the order, loss of restrictions, addition and loss

of formants, and “finally, ..., really radical changes of system membership, e.g. when do, which was a member of the lexical system, gave rise to an operator in the syntactic system” (p. 412).

“[L]anguage changes by means of the addition of single innovations to an adult’s grammar, by transmission of these innovations to new generations, and by the reinterpretation of grammars such that mutations occur” (p. 415).

Lightfoot (1974: 234 ): “all [modals] behave exactly like ordinary, complement-taking verbs” but they are not full verbs in Modern English.

This is due to a “radical change in the deep structure” due to the Transparency Principle.

Causes for reanalysisOpacity

Kiparsky (1971)

A rule R of the form a→b / c __ d is opaque if there are surface representations in the language having either (i) a in the environment c __ d (underapplication) or (ii) b derived by R in an environment other than c __ d (overapplication)

Transparency Principle

“[D]erivations may be only of a limited degree of complexity” (Lightfoot 1979: 344).

Post 1986: functional categoriesVan Kemenade (1987) OV > VO around 1200, echoing Canale, and position of I. V-second becomes more limited in scope and is different

from V-second in current V-second languages. Van Kemenade recognizes that wh-elements and negatives in initial, pre-V position trigger absolute V-second but that, with topicalized elements, the subject pronoun can follow resulting in V-third, as (10) shows.

(10) Ðas þing we habbað be him gewritene ...

these things we have about him written`These things we have written about him.’ (Chronicle E, 1087, 143, van Kemenade 1987: 110)

1980-90s: parameters

Functional categoriesV to T and T to Cclitics V-2 and V-3Impersonal > personalWord order change

(Pintzuk, Kroch, Taylor, van Kemenade, Los, van Gelderen, EyÞórrson, Roberts, Kiparsky)

Pintzuk 1991V-to-I movement, but once in a while there is one that looks as if it has

a topic with a verb moved to I, as in (12), from Pintzuk (1991).(12) þæt his aldres wæs ende gegongen

that his life was end come`The end of his life had come' (Beowulf 822, from Pintzuk 1991: 187).

Pintzuk claims Old English has two strategies: movement of the V to C as well as to I. She takes (12) as evidence for V to I movement with the topic in the Spec of IP and (13) has V to C

(13) Gregorius se trahtnere cwæð þæt forði wolde drihten getrahtnian ...Gregorius the translater said that therefore wanted God to-translate`Gregorius, the translator, said that therefore God wanted to translate ...' (van Kemenade 1997: 333).

Word order > Information Structure

This early work provides the seed to the current shift by van Kemenade and others, e.g. Los (2012), to connecting word order and information structure. This construction also leads Kroch & Taylor (1997) to investigate the regional variation in the V-third of (10) and Speyer (2008) revisits the issue and argues that the choice between verb-second and verb-third is determined by a requirement to avoid two focused elements next to each other.

1980/90s: From functional categories

I and C cross-linguistically. Steele (1981) looks at the category of the auxiliary cross-linguistically and this has diachronic implications.

Many of the languages examined are Indo-European. Pintzuk (1991) looks at the position of I in Old English, Roberts (1993) at Verb-movement, auxiliaries, and I in French and English, Kiparsky at V-to-C movement in early Indo-European and Germanic, EyÞórrson (1995) at early Germanic Verb-movement, and Los (2000) looks at the status of infinitives and the position of to.

Battye & Roberts’ (1995) Clause Structure: parametric differences in verb-movement, both V-to-I and V-to-C, in pro-drop, and in clitics.

Clausal skeleton: CP, TP, VP.

Towards featuresIn van Kemenade & Vincent (1997), we can see

the beginning of the shift towards Minimalism with its emphasis on features. Most of the papers continue to be more in the P&P framework, as does Pintzuk, Tsoulas, and Warner (2000). Typical topics are null arguments, negatives and polarity, position of subjects, the change to VO order, and verb-movement.

Roberts (1996): clitics are in the Spec of FinP and the V is in Fin; in wh-questions, the V is in Focus. = cartography

Argument StructureThere has always been an interest in the change from

impersonal to personal constructions. Lightfoot (1979) uses early work by van der Gaaf (1904) to argue that, due to the loss of morphological case, the argument roles are opaque and a reanalysis takes place with the experiencer role as subject.

Allen (1995) questions this relationship between the loss of case and the change to personal constructions and argues instead for a gradual spread of a particular lexical frame. Since Hale & Keyser’s (2003) views where argument structure, i.e. thematic structure, is represented as a vP-shell, this model has been used to account for changes in verb particle constructions (Elenbaas 2007) and a loss of intransitives (van Gelderen 2011).

Current Generative Model

Lexicon

N(arrow) S(yntax)

Interfaces PHON SEM

External

systems:Sensorimotor Conceptual-Intentional

The role of featuresairplane build

interpretable: [nominal][verbal]

[3 person] [assign accusative]

[non-human]

uninterpretable:[case] [phi]

Major Issues

Where do features ‘come from’?

Cartography vs Bare Phrase Structure

(1) Tpast Tfut Moodir ModnecModpos ASPhab ASPrep ASPfreq

oncethen perhaps necessarily possibly usually again often

(from Cinque 1999: 107)

Features and word order

Biberauer & Roberts (2008) in examining the shift from OV to VO crucially rely on a the EPP-feature. If T bears an EPP feature, a D head will adjoin to T or a DP will move to the specifier of the TP in Modern English. Languages can also have a VP or vP satisfy the EPP feature rather than just the DP contained in the VP or vP.

Features and grammaticalization

Another minimalist approach using features, not primarily concerned with word order, can be found in van Gelderen (2004; 2010). Van Gelderen argues that grammaticalization can be understood as a change from semantic to formal features.

For instance, a verb with semantic features, such as Old English will with [volition, expectation, future], can be reanalyzed as having only the grammatical feature [future].

Examples of CyclesSubject and Object Agreementdemonstrative/emphatic > pronoun > agreement > zeroCopula Cyclea demonstrative > copula > zerob verb > aspect > copulaCase or Definiteness or DPdemonstrative > definite article > ‘Case’ > zeroNegativea negative argument > negative adverb > negative particle

> zerob verb > aspect > negative > C Future and Aspect AuxiliaryA/P > M > T > C

Negative Cycle in Old English450-1150 CE

a. no/ne early Old English

b. ne (na wiht/not) after 900, esp S

c. (ne) not after 1350

d. not > -not/-n’t after 1400

The Negative Cycle

XP

Spec X'

na wiht X YP

not > n’t …

or through Feature Economy:

a. DP > b. DP

that D' D'

[i-ps] D NP D NP

[i-loc][u-#] N … the N

[i-phi] [u-phi] [i-phi]

Hence (1) *I saw the

(2) I saw that/those.

Conclusions

Review of GG and HL

Introspection vs corpora/texts

Gradual, unidirectional change

Role of UG determines what changes:

PS rules > parameters > features

Challenges