Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies
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Jack Hoeksema
Abstract
Dutch long-distance dependencies representing four constructions (wh-questions, relative clauses, topicalization and comparatives) are studied from a diachronic corpus-based perspective. There is a steep decline in usage of such dependencies for relative clauses (but not free relatives) and topicalization, which we attribute to the rise of resumptive prolepsis as an alternative to syntactic movement. Our corpus data show that resumptive prolepsis is particularly common with relative clauses and topicalization, but hardly in use for wh-questions and not at all for comparatives. Long-distance movement therefore needs to be viewed from a broad perspective that includes the available alternatives to movement constructions, such as wh-copying and partial wh-movement, as well as resumptive prolepsis. The historical record shows more violations of the wh-island constraint for early modern Dutch than for present-day Dutch. We argue that this is linked to the near disappearance of long-distance movement in relative clauses and topicalization.
Abstract
Dutch long-distance dependencies representing four constructions (wh-questions, relative clauses, topicalization and comparatives) are studied from a diachronic corpus-based perspective. There is a steep decline in usage of such dependencies for relative clauses (but not free relatives) and topicalization, which we attribute to the rise of resumptive prolepsis as an alternative to syntactic movement. Our corpus data show that resumptive prolepsis is particularly common with relative clauses and topicalization, but hardly in use for wh-questions and not at all for comparatives. Long-distance movement therefore needs to be viewed from a broad perspective that includes the available alternatives to movement constructions, such as wh-copying and partial wh-movement, as well as resumptive prolepsis. The historical record shows more violations of the wh-island constraint for early modern Dutch than for present-day Dutch. We argue that this is linked to the near disappearance of long-distance movement in relative clauses and topicalization.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
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Part I. General and specific issues of language change
- Competing reinforcements 3
- On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
- Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
- Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
- How different is prototype change? 89
- The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
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Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
- The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
- Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
- Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
- On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
- OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
- Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
- The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
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Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
- Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
- Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
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Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
- The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
- The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
- Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
- The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
- Index 399
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & Acknowledgements vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I. General and specific issues of language change
- Competing reinforcements 3
- On the reconstruction of experiential constructions in (Late) Proto-Indo-European 31
- Criteria for differentiating inherent and contact-induced changes in language reconstruction 49
- Misparsing and syntactic reanalysis 69
- How different is prototype change? 89
- The syntactic reconstruction of alignment and word order 107
-
Part II. Linguistic variation and change in Germanic
- The Dutch-Afrikaans participial prefix ge- 131
- Diachronic changes in long-distance dependencies 155
- Changes in the use of the Frisian quantifiers ea/oait “ever” between 1250 and 1800 171
- On the development of the perfect (participle) 191
- OV and V-to-I in the history of Swedish 211
- Ethnicity as an independent factor of language variation across space 231
- The sociolinguistics of spelling 253
-
Part III. Linguistic variation and change in Greek
- Dative loss and its replacement in the history of Greek 277
- Word order variation in New Testament Greek wh-questions 293
-
Part IV. Linguistic change in Romance
- The morphological evolution of infinitive, future and conditional forms in Occitan 317
- The evolution of the encoding of direction in the history of French 333
- Velle -type prohibitions in Latin 355
- The use and development of habere + infinitive in Latin 373
- Index 399
