Teamleader:
Peter Svenonius

Other Team members:
Marit R. Westergaard
Patrik Bye
Thorbjorg Hroarsdottir
Merete Anderssen
Berit Anne Bals
Kristine Bentzen

Time span:
Project starts:
01.01.2003

Project ends:
01.07.2005

Brief description and goals:
Great strides have been made in understanding language change through the formal approach to language acquisition, especially after major breakthroughs in both methodology (e.g. due to the advent of large, tagged corpora) and theory (e.g. parameter theory and the notion of triggers). These matters are central to any complete understanding of the nature of linguistic variation more generally. In this subproject, selected areas of syntactic variation (synchronic and diachronic) will be examined in greater depth.

This subproject will be coordinated with the other ones in order to ensure that all research is interconnected; for example, the structure of wh-questions is a topic for for the syntax of the CP domain as well as being an ongoing subject of research here in language acquisition and change; similarly, the correlation of verb movement with inflection is a natural part of the Morphophonology/morphosyntax Subproject, as well as being a testing ground for theories of acquisition and change.

As recent generative theory postulates universal principles of grammar formation rather than characterizing the acquisition of language as the product of general cognitive growth, the task of approaching language changes differs greatly whether we take a generative point of view or not. Within generative linguistics, language changes are often assumed to take place between two generations, that is, with a new generation acquiring the language on the basis of the parents’ output. Hence, in searching for an understanding of language changes, it is important to try to understand how children acquire their native language.

Diachronic linguists can describe the grammar of a language with the same methods and the same ideas as generative synchronic linguists: they can describe the grammar as it was before and after a certain change. Historical syntax is very similar to comparative synchronic syntax: Different I-languages are analyzed and compared. Of course, this is not the whole story. We certainly need some additional tools to describe and not least understand how and explain why the change took place. We need to locate language change while taking the innate grammar into consideration, that is, explain the change on the basis of the innate competence, how we use it and how we acquire it.

It is usually assumed that the grammar is fixed (the parameters have been set) before the speaker’s adulthood. It is thus necessary to emphasize that a grammar change does not occur by a child (speaker) changing her grammar; the change in grammar takes place from one generation to another. However, it is necessary to assume either some changes in language during one generation, or simply a language change in the linguistic community, for instance a gradual change in usage, which then leads to the ‘new’ input for the next generation. Otherwise the input of the next generation will be the same as that of the previous one, resulting in identical grammars.

Grammars, seen as mental organs, may change between two generations. A change is initiated when (a population of) learners converge on a grammatical system which differs in at least one parameter value from the system internalized by the speakers of the previous generation. Learnability issues then connect to both language acquisition and language change, and understanding language changes depends on understanding how children acquire their native language. Acquisition is a process in which Universal Grammar (UG) interacts with a context-specific set of Primary Linguistic Data (PLD: the linguistic input to the child-learner) and uses these PLD as the source for triggers or cues that map the innate (preexperience) knowledge to a mature grammar.

If a certain phenomenon has survived through many generations, it must have been reflected clearly in the PLD. Then, if we note that it has changed, something in the language performance of the previous generation must have changed, and thereby paved the way for a new interpretation. Innovation leading to linguistic variation in the PLD and gradual changes in PLD play a central role in the explanation here: the immediate cause of a grammar change must lie in some alternation in the PLD. The language spoken in a certain community (E-language) may gradually become different from the language that originally served as the triggering experience. These changes in the E-language also mean changes in the input available to the child-learners of the next generation and a motivation for a different parameter setting has arisen. Change in PLD may itself be the result of some antecedent change, such as the loss or weakening of overt morphologically motivated alterations in frequency