Syntactic Change

A Minimalist Approach to Grammaticalization

• Author(s): Ian Roberts, Anna Roussou,
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Pages: 289
• ISBN_10: 1139435515
  ISBN_13: 9781139435512
  
• Language: en
• Categories: Language Arts & Disciplines / General , Language Arts & Disciplines / Linguistics / General ,

Description:... 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.