Changes in the argument and event structure of psych verbs in the history of Spanish

This chapter offers a detailed study of changes affecting the argument structure of Spanish psych verbs that appear with a dative experiencer (EXP). After proposing a three-way classification of these verbs based on their etymological origin, the chapter traces two parallel, but interconnected, diachronic paths: the first one involves the development from transitive (or pronominal) to unaccusative constructions with a dative EXP, whereas the second one concerns the evolution from dynamic to stative events. The use and decrease of the passive in Classical Spanish is also shown to play a role in this change: to wit, passive and unaccusative structures with a dative EXP are structurally similar, as the prepositional agent phrase and the dative EXP originate in the same position.

Weak elements in cycles

The diachronic development of Modern Italian pronouns, in particular of the 3pl dative loro ‘to them’ (Cardinaletti 2010; Egerland 2010), could be seen as the first step in a linguistic cycle in which elements become more and more structurally deficient, going from strong XPs, through weak deficient XPs, and finally to clitic X°s. However, historical data from Old Tuscan varieties show that there is much distributional instability and variation which is not easily accommodated in Cardinaletti and Starke’s (1999) tripartite typology. It will be claimed that the diachronic development of dative loro can be captured in terms of a close interaction between the internal structure of pronouns (where reanalysis as upward movement and the Head Preference Principle derive different degrees of structural deficiency), and general rules governing sentence structure.

Cyclical change and problems of projection

In diachronic change, specifiers are reanalysed as heads and heads as higher heads. When the older specifiers and heads are renewed, a linguistic cycle emerges. Explanations provided for these cycles include structural and featural economy (e.g. van Gelderen 2004; 2011). Chomsky’s (2013, 2015) focus on labelling as unconnected to merge makes it possible to see the cycles in another way, namely as resolutions to labelling problems. The Labelling Algorithm (LA) operates after merge is complete, when a syntactic derivation is transferred to the interfaces. When a head and a phrase merge, the LA determines that the head is the label by Minimal Search. Where two phrases merge, the LA cannot find the head and one of the phrases has to either move or share features with the other. This chapter argues that, in addition to Chomsky’s resolutions to labelling paradoxes, reanalysing a phrase as a head also resolves the paradox. It also shows that the third factor principle minimal search is preferable over feature-sharing. The change from phrase to head is frequent, as eight cross-linguistically attested changes show. In addition, in the renewal stage of a cycle, adjuncts are frequently incorporated as arguments showing a preference of set-merge (feature-sharing) over pair-merge.

Cycling through diachrony

The notion of ‘linguistic cycle’ has long been recognized as being relevant to the description of many processes of language change. This introduction deals with different phenomena of cyclical change, making clear that while grammaticalization is one area where cyclical change can be found, it is not the only one. The chapter provides an overview of the theoretical literature about cyclical change, with particular emphasis on a diachronic generative approach. It contextualizes the chapters in this volume against the background of this literature, and groups them into more theoretical and more empirical contributions, addressing cyclical changes in both the nominal and the clausal domains.

French negation, the Superset Principle, and Feature Conservation

This chapter provides a nanosyntactic account of negation in French, modelling the change from le bon usage French (BUF) to colloquial French (CF). It is argued that language change is driven by Feature Conservation: the lexical items involved in the expression of sentential negation may change over time, but the features needed remain stable. Furthermore, it is argued that the change from BUF to CF is economy-driven, resulting in bigger lexically stored trees, less spell-out-driven movements and a maximal operationalization of the Superset Principle. In addition, the account shows how negative concord and double negation can be explained as a natural consequence of the interplay of the internal structure of lexical trees and the Superset Principle. Finally, the chapter adds to theoretical discussions within nanosyntax by presenting how the interaction between syntactic movement and spell-out-driven movement may be conceived of.

The clitic doubling parameter

The aim of this chapter is to explain the emergence and distribution of clitic doubling (CLD) in Romance. On the basis of newly assembled diachronic and synchronic data, the chapter argues that the development can be analysed as a cycle of five different stages. The emergence of the CLD parameter (Fischer and Rinke 2013) is connected to the grammaticalization path of the clitic itself and the verb’s ability to move to the front of the sentence, which in turn affects the A’-positions in front of the verb that are available for the object. CLD in Spanish and Catalan is argued to have taken over partially the information-structural meaning expressed by word order in the Old Romance languages.

When morphological and syntactic change are not in sync

This chapter discusses diachronic implications of the idea that there is a correlation between rich verbal agreement marking and verb movement, known as the Rich Agreement Hypothesis (RAH). Focusing on Koeneman and Zeijlstra’s (2014) recent work that aims at reinstating the RAH in its strongest biconditional form, it presents a set of diachronic case studies that challenge the expectation, fuelled by the strong RAH, that morphological and syntactic change should always go hand in hand. First, it is argued that Koeneman and Zeijlstra’s attempt to accommodate problematic cases (e.g. loss of verbal agreement morphology with delayed loss of verb movement) in terms of syntactic reanalysis runs into difficulties. In addition, the chapter presents data from Lithuanian and Cimbrian, where a change from SOV to SVO resulted in word-order patterns that violate the RAH, an observation that challenges both strong and weak versions of the RAH.

On the relative cycle

This chapter investigates linguistic cycles in order to shed light on the general principles of language change, in the light of certain recent developments in syntactic theory, in particular Kayne’s (2016) proposal that all heads are necessarily silent. If this approach is on the right track, it would have major consequences for economy-based theories of language change that make heavy use of spec-to-head reanalyses. Instead of a spec-to-head reanalysis, we propose that cycles can be accounted for in terms of a change in the silent nominals that an item can be paired with. The testing ground of our claim is provided by the history of Italian relativizers.

Quantificational cycles and shifts

The chapter reports an inter-genetic diachronic study of quantificational particles, drawing from Indo-European and Japonic and making a case for diachronic typological approach to the syntax/semantics/pragmatics of quantificational meanings motivating a treatment of unidirectional semi- or fully cyclical change. Empirically, the quantificational expressions under investigation conform to the bimorphemic expression that comprises a wh-stem and a quantification particle (dubbed ‘superparticle’), e.g. *kwe in Proto-IE, and mo in Old Japanese. The grammaticalization of scalar universal quantifiers into negative polarity items (NPIs) in the history of Japonic is presented using a single feature-system change. What is more, the same feature system is assumed to underlie the aetiology of the ‘quantifier split’ in Indo-European. Theoretically, to present the fully explanatory view of the quantificational shifts and cycles, a novel model of a syntactico-centric pragmatics of grammaticized implicatures (Chierchia et al., 2012; Chierchia, 2013) is assumed.

What kind of constructions yield what kind of constructions?

The chapter investigates the properties and diachrony of the much-debated German was-für construction based on data from historical corpora. It is argued that this construction originated from the was ‘what’ plus partitive genitive construction. The latter is claimed to be a construction stretching over two DPs, the first one consisting of a wh-element and a null noun, the second one being a genitive noun. Given the absence of phonetical evidence for the presence of a null noun in the first DP, it is shown that, during the Early New High German period, this binominal construction was reanalysed as a mononominal construction consisting of the wh-element was in combination with an indefinite NP. A number of properties of this construction (absence of partitive interpretation, possibility to split, etc.) can be explained straightforwardly by means of the diachronic development sketched.