Syntactic Change A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization

A general account of grammaticalization in terms of formal syntax.

The phenomenon of grammaticalization - the historical process whereby new grammatical material is created - has attracted a great deal of attention within linguistics. This is an attempt to provide a general account of this phenomenon in terms of a formal theory of syntax. Using Chomsky's Minimalist Program for linguistic theory, Roberts and Roussou show how this approach gives rise to a number of important conceptual and theoretical issues concerning the nature of functional categories and the form of parameters, as well as the relation of both of these to language change. Drawing on examples from a wide range of languages, they construct a general account of grammaticalization with implications for linguistic theory and language acquisition.

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Parameters, functional heads and language change; 2. T elements; 3. C elements; 4. D elements; 5. Theoretical consequences; References; Index of languages; Index of names; Index of subjects.

The phenomenon of grammaticalization - the historical process whereby new grammatical material is created - has attracted a great deal of attention within linguistics. This is an attempt to provide a general account of this phenomenon in terms of a formal theory of syntax.

Ian Roberts is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge.
Anna Roussou is Assistant Professor at the University of Patras, Greece.