Syntactic Features and the Limits of Syntactic Change (Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics)

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 ?P/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.

Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson, Professor of Icelandic Linguistics, University of Iceland,Thórhallur Eythórsson, Professor of Linguistics, University of Iceland

Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson is Professor of Icelandic Linguistics at the University of Iceland. His work focuses on theoretical and diachronic syntax, and particularly on case marking, passives, Object Shift, and the left periphery in Icelandic and Faroese. He is currently the principal investigator, along with Cherlon Ussery, of a research project exploring ditransitives in Island Scandinavian.


Thórhallur Eythórsson is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Iceland. His main research interests lie in word order, cliticization, and verbal syntax in Germanic from a diachronic perspective; case, argument structure, and voice in Icelandic and other old and modern Germanic languages; the development of overt and covert pronominals, reflexives, and expletives in Icelandic; and prefixation in Germanic from a historical and comparative perspective.