The Diachrony of Differential Object Marking in Romanian

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the beginnings, development, and stabilization of differential object marking (DOM) in Romanian by combining two approaches: diachronic syntax and comparative syntax. The working hypothesis is that Romanian DOM reflects a typological mix of Balkan and Romance DOM patterns, and that the assessment of the mixed structures must separately quantify three DOM mechanisms in this language (through clitic doubling, DOM particle, and the combination of the above). Tests applied to these DOM mechanisms indicated the nominal domain as the repository for DOM triggers in Romanian, as opposed to the verbal domain in other Romance languages. The cross-linguistic perspective adopted in this book is instrumental for revisiting the DOM typologies in light of the variations shown to occur in the location of the DOM particle and the pronominal clitic (i.e., either on the nominal or on the verb spines).

Syntactic Features and the Limits of Syntactic Change

This volume brings together the latest diachronic research on syntactic features and their role in restricting syntactic change. The chapters address a central theoretical issue in diachronic syntax: whether syntactic variation can always be attributed to differences in the features of items in the lexicon, as the Borer-Chomsky conjecture proposes. In answering this question, all the chapters develop analyses of syntactic change couched within a formalist framework in which rich hierarchical structures and abstract features of various kinds play an important role. The first three parts of the volume explore the different domains of the clause, namely the C-domain, the T-domain and the ν‎P/VP-domain respectively, while chapters in the final part are concerned with establishing methodology in diachronic syntax and modelling linguistic correspondences. The contributors draw on extensive data from a large number of languages and dialects, including several that have received little attention in the literature on diachronic syntax, such as Romeyka, a Greek variety spoken in Turkey, and Middle Low German, previously spoken in northern Germany. Other languages are explored from a fresh theoretical perspective, including Hungarian, Icelandic, and Austronesian languages. The volume sheds light not only on specific syntactic changes from a cross-linguistic perspective but also on broader issues in language change and linguistic theory.

Diachronic change and feature instability

This chapter focuses on diachronic changes of obligatory control (OC) constructions in Romanian. We argue that the setting for the OC parameter has remained constant since the 16th century, but that the values of the features associated with the C/T/Agr system show systematic change. Specifically, Romanian OC follows the Balkan paradigm (i.e., truncated/FinP clause) which is under tension to accommodate the Romance morphology with Force features that it employs. This pressure results in a continuous cycle, from syncretic to split and, again, to remerged C. This process affects Fin, the only C head available to Romanian OC, alongside constant flux of the T/Agr specifications (i.e., inflected versus uninflected). These findings support the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture (BCC) that sees variation as being restricted to formal features of functional heads (Baker 2008), namely, [+/- Agr] of C/T, while aligning with Biberauer and Walkden’s (2015) observation that diachronic syntax has shifted from the “macro” to the “micro” level.

Introduction

The chapters in this volume are concerned with syntactic features and their role in restricting syntactic change. Most of the contributions propose analyses in accordance with the Borer-Chomsky Conjecture, stating that all parameters of variation are attributable to differences in the features of particular items in the lexicon. The syntactic topics are of four types: the first three reflect different domains of the clause, while the fourth type is concerned with methodology. A great number of languages and dialects figure in the discussion, including languages that have not previously received a thorough treatment in terms of diachronic syntax such as Romeyka and Middle Low German. Other languages also discussed from a fresh theoretical perspective, e.g. Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, English, and Austronesian languages, as well as Latin and Ancient Greek. This volume confirms the validity of the view that diachronic syntax is a scientific tool of inquiry in its own right.

Left is right, right is not

This paper argues for the left-branching constituency of the Chinese classifier phrase and demonstrates that the right-branching approach assumed by the majority of current syntactic works is not viable. The rejection of the right-branching approach entails the rejection of the “split” approach, where both left- and right-branching structures are required. In this debate, we offer a vital fresh perspective from the syntax and mathematics of complex numerals. We examine the right-branching argumentation in A. Li (2014), which, crucially, extends Ionin & Matushansky’s (2006) non-constituent account of complex numerals, e.g. two hundred, in non-classifier languages like English to Chinese and must rely on ellipsis and a silent element YIDIAR ‘a bit’. Yet, complex numerals in Chinese, e.g. liang bai ‘200’, are in fact constituents (He 2015), and the alleged YIDIAR ‘a bit’ does affect the semantics of the noun phrase and is thus by definition illicit (Her & Tsai 2014; 2015). Other evidence comes from Chinese synchronic and diachronic syntax as well as the typology of classifier word orders. While the overall argumentation centers on Chinese, it has significant cross-linguistic implications.

Introduction: New perspectives on diachronic syntax in North Germanic

This special issue of Nordic Journal of Linguistics is dedicated to diachronic generative syntax in the North Germanic languages. With the introduction of generative grammar in the late 1950s the historical perspective became less prominent within linguistics. Instead, contemporary language, normally represented by the researcher’s own intuitions, became the unmarked empirical basis within the generative field, although there were some early pioneering studies in generative historical syntax (e.g. Traugott 1972). It was not until the introduction of the Principles and Parameters theory in the 1990s that diachronic syntax emerged as an important domain of inquiry for generative linguists. Since then, the study of syntactic change has added a temporal dimension to the overall enterprise to better understand the nature of variation in human language.

Diachronic syntax based on constituency and dependency annotated corpora

This contribution presents two syntactically annotated corpora of Old French, Modéliser le changement: les voies du français (MCVF) and the Syntactic Reference Corpus of Medieval French (SRCMF). The focus is on how the underlying syntactic theory (constituency vs. dependency) influences the grammar model and how this choice is reflected in the syntactic annotations of the corpora. The comparison relates to the most relevant general properties of the corpora as well as to two phenomena, null subjects and cleft constructions. Null subjects highlight possible conflicts between syntactic annotation models and syntactic theory, and the information-structural properties of cleft constructions pose a particular problem for the interpretation and annotation of historical corpora. Both phenomena are major instances of diachronic variation in French. The study is relevant for corpus users working on diachronic syntax, as well for corpus builders wishing to design a grammar model for annotation.