In this paper, I provide examples from Germanic of cyclical changes involving the nominal phrase. Using a DP structure, it can be observed that demonstratives in specifier positions of the DP are reanalyzed through time as articles in head positions. The change from demonstrative to article is known as the definiteness cycle and described in Greenberg 1978 and Lyons 1999. Providing examples from Old Norse, Old English, and Afrikaans, I suggest an explanation for the cycle in terms of a cognitive principle, Feature Economy, that assists in language acquisition and hence language change.Many thanks to Werner Abraham, Johanna Wood, Jan Terje Faarlund, two anonymous referees, and especially to Terje Lohndal for helpful discussion and comments.

The present paper investigates the origin and semantics of complex verbs with pleonastic prepositions in the Gothic Bible in comparison with the Greek and Latin sources from which the Gothic was translated. In these constructions, the same directional information is specified by a preverb and its semantically and formally related preposition in a PP-modifier. It is shown that Gothic preverb-preposition redundancy is largely the result of mechanical translation from the Greek source, with the strong possibility of Latin influence in some cases. While there are co-occurrences of formally related preverbs and prepositions in Gothic independent of Greek and Latin textual influence, directionality is usually only fully specified by the preposition, and so these instances are not truly pleonastic. The considerable influence of Greek on redundant preverb-preposition constructions in Gothic ultimately serves as a caution against taking Gothic morphosyntax at face value.I would like to thank Kari Ellen Gade, Robert Dennis Fulk, and Tracy Alan Hall for their valuable input on earlier drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful feedback.