Diachronic and Comparative Syntax

This book brings together for the first time a series of previously published papers featuring Ian Roberts’ pioneering work on diachronic and comparative syntax over the last thirty years in one comprehensive volume. Divided into two parts, the volume engages in recent key topics in empirical studies of syntactic theory, with the eight papers on diachronic syntax addressing major changes in the history of English as well as broader aspects of syntactic change, including the introduction to the formal approach to grammaticalisation, and the eight papers on comparative syntax exploring head-movement, the nature and distribution of clitics, and the nature of parametric variation and change. This comprehensive collection of the author’s body of research on diachronic and comparative syntax is an essential resource for scholars and researchers in theoretical, comparative, and historical linguistics.

Part I: Diachronic Syntax 1. Agreement Parameters and the Development of English Modal Auxilaries 2. A Computational Approach to Language Learnability and Language Change (with Robin Clark) 3. Object Movement and Verb Movement in Early Modern English 4. Directionality and Word Order Change in the History of English 5. Verb Movement and Markedness 6. Theoretical Consequences (with Anna Roussou) 7. Cascading Parameter Changes: Internally-driven Change in Middle and Early Modern English (with Theresa Biberauer) Part II: Comparative Syntax 8. Passive Arguments Raised (with Mark Baker & Kyle Johnson) 9. Complex Inversion in French (with Luigi Rizzi) 10. Excorporation and Minimality 11. Two Types of Head Movement in Romance 12. Clause Structure and X-Second (with Anna Carinaletti) 13. The Analysis of VSO Clauses 14. Introduction: Parameters in Minimalist Theory (with Anders Holmberg) 15. Macroparameters and Minimalism: A Programme for Comparative Research

Ian Roberts is Professor of Linguistics in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. His most recent publications include Syntactic Variation in Minimalist Syntax, with Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg and Michelle Sheehan (2010) and Agreement and Head Movement (2010).