1 - Introduction

Summary

This book is about historical syntax in general. Although syntactic change was an important part of the comparative linguistic tradition, and while the past fifteen years or so have seen a significant increase in attention to the topic, the study of diachronic syntax is still largely disorganized and unfocused and lacks the sort of consensus enjoyed, for example, by historical phonology. This book is aimed at remedying this situation in so far as this is possible at the present time. It is intended as a basic treatise on diachronic syntax. Some might claim that the present state of the field is too fragmented and overwrought with conflicting claims to offer much optimism for achieving our goal, which is to establish a general framework for syntactic change. This state of affairs, however, does not render the task impossible, just more important, exciting, and more urgent.

Goals of a theory of diachronic syntax

Recent work in diachronic syntax has been chiefly of three sorts: (1) studies of particular changes in individual languages; (2) research on specific kinds of change (e.g. word order change, grammaticalization); and (3) explorations of the diachronic implications of particular formal approaches to grammar, often given more to championing the particular theory of syntax than to actually accounting for linguistic changes (for details, see chapter 2).