Language Acquisition and Change: A Morphosyntactic Perspective 9780748677993

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Language Acquisition and Change

Language Acquisition and Change A Morphosyntactic Perspective Jürgen M. Meisel, Martin Elsig and Esther Rinke

© Jürgen M. Meisel, Martin Elsig and Esther Rinke, 2013 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh EH8 9LF www.euppublishing.com Typeset in 11.5/13 Ehrhardt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire, and printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 4225 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 7799 3 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 0 7486 7801 3 (epub) The right of Jürgen M. Meisel, Martin Elsig and Esther Rinke to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

Contents

Prefaceix Abbreviations xi 1. Variation and change in languages 1 1.1 Signs of change?  1 1.2 A cognitive perspective on diachronic change 3 1.3 Core properties of morphosyntax 13 Notes 18 2. Language change across the lifespan 20 2.1 Patterns of change in the individual and in the speech community 22 2.2 Subject-clitic inversion and -tu in Quebec French interrogatives38 2.3 Conclusions 49 Notes 50 3. The child as the locus and agent of grammatical change52 3.1 The language-learning child as the locus of grammatical change 52 3.2 Transmission failure as the solution of the logical problem of language change?  60 3.3 Conclusions 70 Notes 72

vi  language acquisition and change 4. Structural ambiguity as a possible trigger of syntactic change 73 4.1 Syntactic ambiguity and diachronic reanalysis 74 4.2 Parametric ambiguity and the loss of V2 in Old French81 4.3 Parametric ambiguity and triggering experience 90 4.4 Summary and conclusions 93 Notes 94 5. Language contact as a possible trigger of change 96 5.1 Mechanisms of contact-induced syntactic change: Structural borrowing and contact-induced interference97 5.1.1 Structural borrowing 99 5.1.2 Structural convergence 105 5.1.3 Contact-induced interference/Shift-induced interference 110 5.2 Case studies 114 5.2.1 The verb-second property of Old French 115 5.2.2 The loss of the pro-drop property of Old French 124 5.3 Conclusions 133 Notes 135 6. Acquisition in multilingual settings: Implications for explanations of change 137 6.1 Simultaneous bilingualism 138 6.2 Successive bilingualism 151 6.3 Implications and consequences for historical linguistics157 Notes 164 7. Towards an explanatory theory of grammatical change166 7.1 Two perspectives on generational change 167 7.2 Structural ambiguity and language change 170 7.3 Language contact and language change 171 7.4 A reappraisal of the role of L1 acquisition in diachronic change 175 7.5 A reappraisal of morphosyntactic change 176

contents  vii 7.6 Conclusions Note

177 183

8. References Primary sources Secondary sources

184 184 185

Index200

Preface

T

his book deals with the development of morphosyntactic properties of languages in acquisition and in diachronic change, referring to empirical evidence primarily from French and other Romance languages. In our discussion, we have tried to be as specific as possible with as few grammatical technicalities as necessary, and we therefore hope that this text will be accessible not only to students of linguistics but to all those interested in historical syntax and with a basic understanding of grammar. If it should be necessary to consult introductions to generative syntax, these are readily available, e.g. Adger (2003) or Hornstein, Nunes and Grohmann (2005). We are reporting here on some of the results of the research project Multilingualism as cause and effect of language change funded from July 1999 to June 2011 by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft – German Science Foundation) as part of the SFB (Son­derforschungsbereich Mehrsprachigkeit – Collaborative Research Center on Multilingualism), established at the University of Hamburg in 1999. This continued financial support from the DFG is gratefully acknowledged. The researchers who worked on the project during this period are Martin Elsig (2005–11), Gisella Ferraresi (2000–2), Maria Goldbach (2001–2), Marc-Olivier Hinzelin (2002), Georg A. Kaiser (1999–2000), Jürgen M. Meisel (1999–2011, principal investigator), Anne-Kathrin Riedel-Preißler (2009–10), Esther Rinke (1999–2011, principal investigator 2008–11) and Ioanna

x  language acquisition and change Sitaridou (2003–4). Without our wonderful colleagues and coresearchers this book would not have been possible. Working together we learned what we now know about parametric change. We are truly grateful to all of them. We also want to thank all those friends and colleagues in the Research Center on Multilingualism as well as Susanne E. Carroll (University of Calgary) and Robert W. Murray (University of Calgary) for their feedback on a number of issues treated in this volume. Jürgen M. Meisel, Martin Elsig, Esther Rinke

Abbreviations

2L1 bilingual first language ACC accusative ADV adverbial aL2 adult second language AO age of onset of acquisition AGR, AGRP agreement (phrase) AUX auxiliary BP Brazilian Portuguese C, COMP, CP complementizer (phrase) Cl clitic cL2 child second language ClasF Classical French COND conditional CPH Critical Period Hypothesis D, Det, DP determiner (phrase) DAT dative DO direct object [+F] finiteness feature FDH Fundamental Difference Hypothesis Fr French Ger German I, Infl, IP inflection (phrase) IH Interface Hypothesis INDF indefinite INF, Infin. infinitive, infinitival verb

xii  language acquisition and change INT interrogative marker INV subject–verb inversion IO indirect object IPFV imperfective It Italian L1 first language L2 second language LAD Language Acquisition Device LES Least Effort Strategy LF Logical Form LMC Language Making Capacity MF Middle French MHG Middle High German MLU mean length of utterances ModF Modern French MP Minimalist Program N, NP noun (phrase) NAR narrative NEG negation NOM nominative OEng Old English OF Old French OH Ottawa-Hull French Corpus OP Old Portuguese OSp Old Spanish OV object–verb OVS object–verb–subject PART particle PF Phonetic Form PL plural PLD primary linguistic data POSS possessive PP prepositional phrase PRS present PST past Ptg Portuguese QF Quebec French RFQ Récits du français québécois d’autrefois S subject

abbreviations  xiii SBJV subjunctive SG singular SOV, SVO subject–object–verb, subject–verb–object Span Spanish Spec specifier SV subject–verb SVX subject–verb–other constituent SXVO subject–other constituent–verb–object T, Tense, TP tense (phrase) UG Universal Grammar V, VP verb (phrase) vP little verb phrase V1 verb-first V2 verb-second V3 verb-third Vf finite verb VO verb–object wh interrogative element whVSO interrogative element–verb–subject–object WL weaker language X, XP unspecified category, maximal projection XSVO other constituent–subject–verb–object XV(S)O other constituent–verb–(subject)–object

chapter 1

Variation and change in languages

1.1  Signs of change?

V

ariation should be considered as a constitutive property of language use. One finds considerable variability in the use of particular constructions within languages, and individual speakers, too, make variable use of the options offered in a language. This observation applies to grammatical aspects of a person’s linguistic knowledge as well as to grammar-external ones, although the variation space of the former is arguably more limited than that of the latter. The nature and the extent of linguistic variation are an issue of crucial importance for studies striving for insights into how grammars change over time: in linguistic ontogenesis, in first language (L1) acquisition, in studies of development across generations in diachronic linguistics, or in cases of language attrition or loss. Such endeavours to investigate grammatical change are typically based on comparisons of linguistic samples gathered at different points in time, and variation across samples is interpreted as a plausible indication of change over time, although this need not necessarily be the case, for variability across speech samples can be caused by other factors as well. Native speakers are able to explore, to a larger or to a lesser degree, the variation space defined by situational (register), social (sociolectal) and even regional (dialectal) varieties of their language. It can be argued that in doing so they switch between varieties in much the same way as bilingual speakers switch between their

2  language acquisition and change languages. Consequently, the observed variability reflects alternations in the use of such varieties rather than diachronic change within a lect, although each of them is, of course, subject to change over time – the fourth dimension of the variation space. In this book, we intend to pursue this last issue, change over time. We must therefore ask how it is possible to determine whether variability in use indeed reflects changes of this sort. In fact, since we are almost exclusively concerned with the question of how to account for changes in grammatical systems underlying language use, focusing on morphosyntactic constructions, the crucial question is whether instances of variation observed in language use actually indicate variation within a linguistic system rather than, for example, switching between systems, as illustrated by the ­possibility of alternate uses of lects. The issue at stake is thus twofold. Assuming that variation in use can reflect ongoing change, in that linguistic variability may represent residues of past states or result from newly emerging means of expression, it is crucial to identify unambiguously instances of diachronic change and to determine whether the observed alterations do, in fact, indicate modifications of the underlying grammars. In order to deal with the latter problem, it is necessary to distinguish between quantitative and qualitative changes in the samples analysed. The former reflect an increase or decrease in frequency of occurrence of constructions, while the latter consist of the emergence of new forms or constructions or of the elimination of previously attested ones. Only qualitative changes can plausibly be hypothesized to reflect restructurings of grammatical systems, and these are the concern of the present volume. More specifically, the goal of the ensuing discussion is to shed light on the mechanisms underlying morphosyntactic change over time, in the history of languages. In view of the fact that relevant information about formal properties of languages is stored in speakers’ mental representations of their respective grammars, these mechanisms of change are necessarily constrained by the nature of the cognitive processes involved in the acquisition, storage and activation of linguistic knowledge in the human mind. Consequently, studies of diachronic grammatical change need to take into account what psycholinguistic research has revealed about such processes. Moreover, if the claim is correct

variation and change in languages  3 which postulates that language acquisition plays a crucial role in processes of diachronic change (see Chapter 3 for a discussion of this hypothesis), explanations of grammatical change must necessarily conform to, or at least not stand in conflict with, what we know about principles and mechanisms constraining the course of acquisition. This may seem to be a self-evident requirement, but, surprisingly perhaps, past studies in historical linguistics have frequently ignored it, and many of those who acknowledged its well-foundedness did not actually apply it to their own research. In Section 1.2 we will spell out in a little more detail what the implications and consequences are if one decides to do better and follow an approach which attempts to integrate insights from research on both language acquisition and change in a more comprehensive developmental linguistics. 1.2 A cognitive perspective on diachronic change

The central topic of this book is language change involving the restructuring of internal grammatical knowledge, i.e. the mental representations of grammatical knowledge of native speakers of a given language. This corresponds to what Chomsky (1986) defined as I-grammar, an internal entity of the individual, as opposed to E-language, ‘E’ suggesting ‘external’, i.e. the overt products in language use. Identifying the competence of an ‘ideal speaker-listener’ (Chomsky 1965: 3) and thus a cognitive entity as the subject matter of linguistic research can been considered as a fundamental reorientation, a cognitive turn in linguistic theorizing. But similar ideas were, in fact, entertained previously, e.g. by neogrammarians like Paul (1880/1920), and they are not alien to structuralist thinking, either; cf. Saussure (1916/1975). Still, there exist important differences between these earlier and contemporary ideas on language and on what constitutes the object of scientific research. In the present context, it is obviously not possible to discuss these issues in much detail. But it may be useful to remember that Paul (1880/1920) had already defined mental grammars as the proper objects of linguistic research. In his understanding, however, these

4  language acquisition and change are entities which constantly change in every act of speaking or hearing. This leads to the question whether it is at all possible to identify a core of structures common to the idiolects of individual speakers. According to Paul this is indeed achieved by linguistic contact among individual speakers, in other words by interaction within linguistic communities. Saussure, trained in the neogrammarian theoretical framework, favoured a similar solution, referring to the social pressure imposed by the respective speech communities. Suggesting his famous tripartite distinction – langage (the human linguistic faculty), langue (the linguistic system) and parole (speech) – he defines langue as the object of linguistic research, emphasizing its nature as a social product. C’est à la fois un produit social de la faculté du langage et un ensemble de conventions nécessaires, adoptées par le corps social pour permettre l’exercice de cette faculté chez les ­individus. (Saussure 1916/1975: 25)1 But he is also acutely aware of the fact that this knowledge is stored in the brains of the members of the speech community. C’est un trésor déposé par la pratique de la parole dans les sujets appartenant à une même communauté, un système grammatical existant virtuellement dans chaque cerveau, ou plus exactement dans les cerveaux d’un ensemble d’individus, car la langue n’est complète dans aucun, elle n’existe parfaitement que dans la masse. (Saussure 1916/1975: ­ 30)2 What we may want to retain from these quotations and similar observations is that they acknowledge the existence of a tension between properties of language which are due to its biological roots and those resulting from social practice in communicative interaction. This again reflects the dual nature of human language, which ‘is rooted in biology and transmitted genetically, although its phylogenetic evolution and the ontogenetic development of its specific manifestations are shaped in substantial ways by cultural factors’ (Meisel 2013: 69). In this book, we adopt the theoretical framework of generative grammar, as developed by Chomsky

variation and change in languages  5 (1965, 1981, 1986, and subsequently), focusing on the study of I-grammar defined as an internal entity of the individual. This does not entail, however, that we should ignore the question of whether grammatical theorizing along these lines can embrace the social as well as the biological nature of language in its definition of the object of linguistic research. Interestingly, Chomsky (1965: 3) does not see an inherent conflict between his view of what constitutes the subject matter of linguistics and the views held by ‘the founders of modern general linguistics’ when he proposes the following definition: Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, in a completely homogeneous speech community, who knows his language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shifts of attention and interest, and errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance. This definition can indeed be interpreted as advocating a view not substantially different from the one held by Saussure. In fact, at the time of writing these lines, Chomsky (1965: 4) saw the main difference between his notion of competence and Saussure’s concept of langue in that the former is intended to denote a system of generative processes whereas the latter is interpreted as referring to an inventory of items, a claim which we need not pursue in the present context. As for the idealizations suggested by Chomsky, most of them are, in our view, rather straightforward and unproblematic. From the perspective of the philosophy of science, there can be little doubt that such idealizations are necessary. But this also implies that the theoretical considerations guiding such decisions determine, explicitly or implicitly, which properties of the object of research are regarded as constitutive and which are of a more peripheral nature and may therefore be neglected, at least temporarily. It is therefore noteworthy that the speech community which, as mentioned above, is attributed a crucial role in earlier approaches to general linguistics, does appear in this quotation too, but it is de facto eliminated as a constitutive factor under the strict idealization of complete homogeneity.

6  language acquisition and change In this respect, Chomsky’s model of what linguistic theory should be concerned with does stand in conflict with those of the founders of modern linguistics, and this difference concerns a highly problematic point when it comes to explaining the restructuring of grammatical systems over time, whether in ontogenetic or phylogenetic development, or even conversely in language attrition or loss. A completely homogeneous community of speakers with strictly homogeneous grammatical competences captures a state of fossilization without traces of past change or seeds of future development. Such a view of language may allow one to deal with the structural characteristics of a system – admittedly a formidable task in itself – but it does not enable us to address the developmental problem (Felix 1984), for an explanation of development does not fall out automatically from a contrast of subsequent states of a grammar. Yet, in our view, studies of grammatical change in diachronic linguistics or in language acquisition research which fail to address the developmental problem miss out on a crucial task on their research agenda. In order to account for the developmental problem we need to recede from a pure property theory and to approach a transition theory (Gregg 1996: 51), focusing on internal and external linguistic variation and investigating the competent speaker-listener as well as the linguistic community of which the individual speaker forms part. Note that some authors working in the generative framework reject the linguistic community as a proper object of linguistic analysis; see, for example, Lightfoot (2011). He distinguishes between three possible meanings of the term ‘language’. The first one (Li) refers to the human language faculty or ‘the human linguistic genotype’ (Lightfoot 2011: 162) as captured by the theory of Universal Grammar (UG) (see Section 1.3, below); the second type (Lii) is intended to represent the linguistic knowledge of individuals; and the third one (Liii), finally, refers to what is meant by the colloquial, non-technical term, e.g. English, French, etc. The question then is whether one of these three notions qualifies as a definition of the object of linguistic research. Lightfoot (2011: 163) straightforwardly rejects Liii, which he considers to cover ‘sociologically ill-defined notions like German and Turkish’, as opposed to Li and Lii, which, he claims (p. 162), ‘have a basis in biology’. Surprisingly, he does not state explicitly which notion of

variation and change in languages  7 ‘language’ he favours as the one capturing the crucial properties of the object of historical linguistics. However, he quite rightly eliminates Li as a possible candidate since it explicitly disregards the variation between specific languages or historically different states of languages like, for example, Middle English and Old English. This appears to leave us no other choice than Lii, the individual competences of the ‘over six billion’ (Lightfoot 2011: 162) speakers of the currently existing human languages. But this would definitely not be a wise decision, for it necessarily leads to a situation where it becomes impossible to consider the social aspect of language as well as its biological roots. This, however, is imperative under a research programme striving to arrive at insights into the mechanisms underlying diachronic change. Although we share the view that the locus of change is ultimately the individual, given that alterations of grammars must be represented in the speakers’ mental representations of grammatical knowledge, we believe that restructurings will only be of interest for diachronic analyses if we admit that individual speakers form part of a speech community with which they share their linguistic knowledge. If we were to ignore the role of the linguistic community and pursued a purely biologically oriented research programme, diachronic linguistic analyses would not be feasible. Not only would it be impossible to address the developmental problem, but even the common practice which consists in contrasting two or more synchronic analyses in order to draw conclusions about diachronic change would be meaningless, for it would not be possible to conclude that instances of variation across the two grammars constituted alterations of one and the same system over time. Historical linguistics is only interested in formal properties of linguistic samples produced, for example, by a scribe in a medieval monastery if it can be assumed that his grammatical competence shares most of its properties with those of the people in his linguistic environment. In other words, unless we may assume that a text produced around 1309 represents an example of Old French and that one written in 1461 exhibits properties of a later stage of the same language, analysing these texts will be of little interest from the perspective of historical linguistics. The grammatical particularities of the idiolects of a person called Jean at the turn of the fourteenth century and of an individual by the name of

8  language acquisition and change François in the fifteenth century can only provide insights into the mechanisms of change if they are variants of what can rightfully be regarded as basically the same system. In fact, if we were to adopt the individual competences of ‘over six billion’ speakers of the currently existing human languages as objects of linguistic research, we would actually have to deal with a plethora of distinct grammars. As Lightfoot (2011: 162f.) remarks correctly, no two children are ever exposed to the same primary linguistic data (PLD); rather ‘children are always exposed to different systems, because languages are peculiar to individuals’. Regrettably, however, this view distinguishes neither between more subtle and more fundamental types of variation nor between type Liii languages and situational, regional or social varieties of such languages. Consequently, every child is seen as growing up in a multilingual situation. The observation that one finds variability of use in all settings where languages are used and acquired is, of course, correct. But if we fail to differentiate systematically the distinct types of internal and external variation, we will be facing a situation which borders on the absurd. The fact that members of a speech community perceive variability as idiolectal, or as pertaining to a dialect, register or sociolect, and that they are able to behave consistently, avoiding unsystematic mixing of varieties, would then be an irrelevant observation for which linguistics need not account. Children’s developing grammars eventually conform in all major properties to the grammars of their caretakers and peers. It would therefore be difficult to explain why a child growing up with English as the ambient language does not end up developing a partially Italian grammar and an English lexicon. Note that acquisition researchers talk about children developing English ‘as Italian’ if the child L1 learner temporarily adopts a grammatical feature provided by UG and instantiated in some grammars, like Italian, but not in the target language, i.e. English in this example. Yet in the acquisition literature one does not find reports of children adhering permanently to an option offered by UG but not tolerated by the target system. Lightfoot (2011: 163), however, states that ‘there is always some grammar growing and the grammar grows independently of the child’s models’. In reality, growth of grammar independently of the respective model has only been observed in settings where the model had been

variation and change in languages  9 removed or where no adequate target system existed, as in certain types of c­ reolization; cf. Bickerton (1981). Moreover, focusing entirely on languages peculiar to individuals entails the necessity of dealing not only with as many languages as there are speakers, but with many more, for we should expect to find that each individual will develop multiple grammars. This is what Roeper (1999) suggested under the label of Theoretical Bilingualism. Starting from the assumption that a ‘grammar cannot have contradictory rules’, the prediction is that a learning environment which is by definition multilingual in nature will result in the development of multiple grammars in every learner, even if these grammars differ only in a single rule, as Roeper (1999: 170) explains. This proposal is motivated by the ban on optional rules in recent versions of generative grammar, especially in the Minimalist Program (MP) (Chomsky 1995), as well as by the fact that learnability considerations suggest that it is difficult to eliminate optional rules if children can only rely on PLD and do not have access to negative evidence; cf. Roeper (1999: 170). Theoretical Bilingualism effectively eliminates optionality and variation within grammars, but this entails many of the problematic consequences of the proposal by Lightfoot (2011), i.e. all types of variability are treated as equal, not taking into account that native speakers do distinguish them. It can be argued, however, that the ability to behave consistently with respect to different varieties, not to mix them and to switch between them, is part of the competence of native speakers. The explanation of these facts should thus not be relegated to sociolinguistic studies. What matters in the present context is that, in our view, it is not a plausible model of the competence of an individual, attributing to every speaker knowledge of multiple grammars, many of which differ only minimally, possibly only with respect to a single feature. To sum up, we have seen that neogrammarian as well as structuralist grammatical theories were striving for a balance between the individual and the linguistic community in their definitions of the object of the language sciences. Already in Chomsky’s early version of generative grammar, the focus had shifted towards the individual. This, however, was an ideal speaker-listener who can thus be seen as representing the essential properties of the members of the linguistic community. If, on the other hand, contemporary

10  language acquisition and change generative theorizing favours the study of (multiple) grammars of individual speakers, this means that all attempts at idealization have been abandoned whereas the homogeneity assumption is maintained. In our view, this is not the right move if the goal is to arrive at an appropriate definition of the object of research in the language sciences. It fails to distinguish between constitutive and peripheral properties which are to be attributed to this object and therefore does not meet the most basic requirement which a model of scientific research must meet. Moreover, it is far from obvious how the resulting multi-fragmented view of an individual’s grammatical knowledge can be incorporated into a psycholinguistically plausible notion of grammatical competence – obviously a serious problem for anyone advocating a cognitive approach to diachronic change. The question arising here is whether it will be possible to avoid these undesirable consequences without abandoning the view that the locus of grammatical change is ultimately the mental grammar of the individual speaker. The challenge consists in the task of conceiving a concept of a competent speaker-listener who forms part of a linguistic community, an allegedly ill-defined notion. As a first observation, note that, contrary to what Lightfoot (2011) claimed, language of the Liii type also has a basis in biology and can be regarded as an expression of the genotype, for if the linguistic knowledge systems of all individuals of a speech community are constrained by UG, the grammatical knowledge attributed to this community must necessarily also conform to the principles of UG. Importantly, just like the competent speaker as a model of the object of grammatical theorizing, the linguistic community, too, must be subject to certain idealizations. In other words, both the competent speaker and the speech community are idealized entities defined by their constitutive properties, which, in turn, are hypothesized to be represented in the mental grammars of the individuals constituting the speech community. ‘“Language” can thus be understood as referring to the unification of properties ­represented in the mental grammars of individuals, i.e. as an ­idealized abstract object’ (Meisel 2011c: 169f.). What matters for the present purpose is that the core properties of grammar with which we are concerned in this book3 belong to the set of constitutive properties mentioned above – an assumption

variation and change in languages  11 which should meet with general consensus. Importantly, they are not subject to the kind of variability encountered with more peripheral ones. Grammatically licensed null subjects in so-called null subject languages, for example, are typically used consistently by language-learning children as well as by those providing the PLD to which the children are exposed. We therefore believe that the claim by Roeper (1999) that grammars cannot have contradictory rules is well taken but that it applies primarily to the core properties of grammars. In fact, evidence on conflicting parameter values has been argued to be the crucial cue enabling children acquiring two or more languages simultaneously to differentiate the grammatical systems; see Meisel (1993). We would like to conclude this discussion by returning briefly to the relation between diachronic change and language acquisition. As a consequence of the cognitive turn in linguistics, grammars are conceived of as mental objects, and this entails that all properties attributed to the grammar of a language must be instantiated in the mental representations of grammatical knowledge in individuals. From this again it necessarily follows that any theory of change, i.e. all possible explanations of how such mental representations are altered across generations, must take psycholinguistic considerations into account. Moreover, since we will be arguing that language acquisition plays an essential role in the processes resulting in grammatical change, we conclude that a minimal requirement to be met by explanations of diachronic change is that they conform to what is known about mechanisms operative in acquisition. Only if explanations of diachronic change rely on principles and mechanisms attested in contemporary studies of language processing and development can they be considered as psycholinguistically plausible; cf. Chapter 3. It is from this perspective that various scenarios and alleged causes for diachronic change – e.g. language contact, structural ambiguity, transmission failure in L1 acquisition – need to be critically examined. This is indeed one of the major goals of this book. Given that we intend to adopt this kind of cognitive perspective in our discussion of diachronic change in the domain of syntax and inflectional morphology, we want to end this section with some brief comments on the nature of the linguistic capacity which allows individuals to develop mental grammars. Our starting

12  language acquisition and change assumption is that humans come equipped with a genetically transmitted Language Making Capacity (LMC). This LMC is conceived of as a cognitive system consisting of multiple components. Since some of them are domain-specific, subserving exclusively the acquisition and processing of formal properties of human languages, it is useful to distinguish between the LMC in general, comprising domain-specific as well as domain-general cognitive operations, and the Language Acquisition Device (LAD), which contains only domain-specific principles and mechanisms, including the principles of UG; cf. Meisel (2011a: 13ff.). We would like to emphasize, however, that the LAD consists of more than just UG; the latter may be considered as its central component but not as the acquisition device; see Carroll (2001). Rather, the LAD comprises, in addition to representational knowledge (UG principles) guiding language development, domain-specific discovery and processing mechanisms, the former bootstrapping the child into the grammatical system; cf. Meisel (2011a: ch. 2). We should add that at least some of the domain-specific know­ ledge4 is subject to maturational changes resulting in partial inaccessibility of the LAD, depending on the age of the learner at the time of onset of acquisition. A number of factors are responsible for this change, but the most important one is that neural maturation opens and closes windows of opportunities for the languageacquiring child. Such a causal relationship between maturational changes and changes in the language acquisition capacity is, of course, what is postulated by the Critical Period Hypothesis (CPH) first proposed by Penfield and Roberts (1959) and elaborated in the seminal work of Lenneberg (1967). On the basis of current know­ ledge, there can be little doubt that L1 acquisition is indeed subject to critical period effects; cf. the careful review of the literature on this topic by Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson (2003). However, this happens much earlier than suggested by Lenneberg (1967). More recent research has demonstrated that some such effects occur as early as of an age of onset of acquisition (AO) of 4 years or earlier, and there is good evidence suggesting that language acquisition differs substantially from that of normally developing children if AO is delayed beyond age 6 or 7. Recent research has also shown that the original CPH needs to be revised not only with respect to the critical age range. For

variation and change in languages  13 example, we should expect to find several sensitive phases, rather than one critical period; see Locke (1997). Each of these phases represents an optimal developmental period for the acquisition of a particular grammatical device (Meisel 2010, 2013). Moreover, the term ‘sensitive phase’ does not imply an abrupt loss of a previously available capacity; rather, a phase typically fades out gradually, although it becomes accessible within a brief time span. In other words, a relatively short onset is followed by an extended optimal period and a gradual offset. The extension of the CPH to second language (L2) acquisition is well motivated, even if it is a more controversial issue. In principle, the LMC could be protected from maturational effects once it has been activated in the course of L1 development. But as we will show in Chapter 6 (Section 6.2), the question is not whether language acquisition continues to be possible but why L2 learners are only partially successful. The answer to this question which we support here is that the ability to develop a full grammatical competence by mere exposure fades out as AO increases. Note that it is not ‘language’ which is affected by maturational changes but certain domains of grammar. As we will argue in Section 6.2, parameterized principles of UG are the ones primarily affected by these changes; see also Section 1.3. Concerning the question of the critical age ranges, the currently available evidence suggests that significant changes happen around age 4 and around 7; as of approximately AO 15–16 no age-related changes are detected any more. In other words, critical period effects should be detectable at different points of development between the ages of approximately 4 and 16 years. Our goal in this book is to make use of these and other insights gained by research on L1 and L2 acquisition in order to understand better the mechanisms underlying diachronic change of grammars. 1.3 Core properties of morphosyntax

The main focus of this book is on diachronic change in the domain of morphosyntax. We therefore want to end this chapter with a few remarks on which aspects of grammar we intend to focus on and what motivates this particular choice.

14  language acquisition and change Such choices are necessarily determined by theoretical considerations and thus primarily by the grammatical theory within which the discussion is carried out. The theoretical framework adopted here is that of generative grammar, more specifically the theory of UG, although we will try to approach the various problems dealt with in the following pages in a manner which should enable readers who do not share this theoretical background to understand the nature and the relevance of the issues under discussion. Such readers should also be able to rephrase these issues in terms of different theoretical frameworks, in order to determine their interest for historical linguistics, independently of a particular theory of grammar. In fact, although the problems to be discussed as well as the arguments presented will be formulated within the theory of UG, we will not commit ourselves to a specific model of UG theory. We rely most heavily on Principles and Parameters Theory,5 and this implies that we will also adopt some of the revisions suggested in the framework of the MP. The rationale for this choice derives from the status assigned to parameters in UG theory where they define the variation tolerated by UG within and across linguistic systems. We should add that precisely because variation plays an important role in our discussion, we will also refer to insights from variationist grammar; see especially Chapter 2. UG is a theory about the formal properties of human languages and, given that grammars are mental objects, as has been argued in the preceding section of this chapter, UG is also a theory about the initial state of knowledge of the language-learning child. From this it follows that the principles of UG define essential properties of grammars underlying human languages, since all grammars must necessarily conform to these principles, provided of course that UG is correct in its hypotheses about human languages. Note that the requirement that violations of UG principles are not tolerated applies to developing grammars as well. In other words, alterations of grammars in the course of acquisition or of diachronic change can only produce results which themselves conform to the UG principles. It goes without saying that UG does not cover all aspects of grammars. Rather, many grammatical phenomena are language-specific in that they represent particularities of individual languages, and UG has nothing to say about these. We will refer to

variation and change in languages  15 the latter as to the grammatical periphery and to those constrained by principles of UG as the core properties of grammars. Perhaps the most important point to be mentioned here is that UG comprises invariant as well as parameterized principles, and only the latter allow for cross-linguistic and cross-generational variation. The basic idea is that these principles do not account exhaustively for the grammatical properties to which they refer; instead, they offer several options, i.e. parameters are left unspecified by UG and must be set to one of the possible values in individual grammars. Note that both the principles and the parameterized options are provided by UG, as can be illustrated by the bestknown example, the Null Subject Parameter. A principle of UG states that a sentence necessarily contains a structural subject, but languages differ in whether they require that this structural position be lexically filled or not. This option, the possibility of grammatically licensing a lexically empty subject position, distinguishes null subject from non-null subject languages and can be thought of as the result of a syntactic parameterization. To illustrate this idea further by means of another example, we can refer to the placement of finite verbs. It has been argued that an uninterpretable syntactic feature [+F] representing finiteness may be located in a functional category, either T or C. A principle of UG requires that finite verbs are moved to a functional head above VP. The parametric choice then states that [+F] may be instantiated in either of these functional elements, and language learners must set the parameter to one of its values, scrutinizing structural properties of the PLD for information triggering the setting of the parameter. Since it is not possible to give a more detailed summary of Parameter Theory at this point in our discussion, we must refer again to the literature for more detailed treatments of these issues, e.g. Meisel (1995, 2011a: 49ff.), Snyder (2007) or Roberts and Holmberg (2010). But we should at least mention that there is a broad consensus that parameters refer exclusively to feature specifications of functional categories, more specifically to uninterpretable features of functional heads. Another point which is of particular importance for our approach to diachronic change is that parameters once set to one of the values offered by UG cannot be reset in the grammar of the individual speaker. Although this is a more controversial issue, it is noteworthy that research on L1

16  language acquisition and change development has so far not been able to provide evidence for the resetting of parameters in individuals, i.e. their grammars do not change in this respect across their lifespan. This observation leads to the hypothesis that parametric change must happen in intergenerational transmission. We will discuss this claim in more detail in the following chapters, especially in Chapters 2 and 3. In sum, what matters most for studies of linguistic variation and diachronic change is that parameterized principles constitute the kind of grammatical core properties which are of interest for our understanding of change. In other words, invariant principles of UG, although they, too, define core properties of grammars, obviously cannot account for diachronic change since, by definition, they do not allow for variability, either within or across languages. Peripheral properties, on the other hand, can be expected to exhibit a considerable amount of variation, if only because they have to be learned inductively in the course of language acquisition, and language learners are not guided by UG in this process. Both types of phenomena must, of course, be analysed, if one wants to draw a complete picture of historical change in languages, but it is also important to keep in mind the differences in variability, for it can be argued that these correspond to differences in probability of change over time. In fact, it has frequently been observed in historical linguistics that the various linguistic domains are not equally likely to be affected by change. Whereas lexical change happens easily across and even within generations, morphological change occurs less frequently and at a slower rate, and syntactic systems are particularly stable and resistant to qualitative change; see, among others, van Coetsem’s (1988: 25) ‘stability gradient’ or Keenan’s (2002) and Longobardi’s (2001) ‘inertial theory’. This ‘inertia’ of morphosyntactic systems is the major issue with which we will be dealing in this volume. Not only do morphological and syntactic phenomena count as the ones which are most resistant to change, but grammatical as well as psycholinguistic theorizing predicts that core properties of grammars are least likely to be affected by change and that restructuring of grammars will only happen in exceptional cases. But they obviously do change. The issue at stake here is therefore to determine what it takes to trigger the restructuring of such fundamental aspects of grammar. We should perhaps add one more remark on our choice of the

variation and change in languages  17 term ‘core properties’ of grammars. It is intended as a theory-neutral term referring to grammatical properties which, as explained above, fall into the realm of UG principles if one adopts the theory of UG. More generally speaking, one can think of them as structural properties defining the typological classification of languages, e.g. underlying word order (SOV, SVO, etc.), placement of finite verbal elements (V2 effect), or the (non-)obligatory phonetic realization of arguments (null subjects, null objects). They are also of crucial relevance when it comes to formulating typological universals such as those proposed in the tradition of Greenberg (1966) and others. Precisely because these core properties are particularly resistant to changes leading to the restructuring of grammars, they are of special interest for a theory of diachronic change, and their study can shed light on the mechanisms underlying reanalyses of grammars. Since such changes have not been found to happen during a speaker’s lifespan (see Chapter 2), we pursue the idea already proposed in the nineteenth century that they are most likely to occur in intergenerational transmission of languages, i.e. that language acquisition plays a major role in this process; see Chapter 3. We conclude, however, that research results presented by studies on L1 development do not actually provide sufficient evidence in support of the idea of a fundamental reorganization of mental grammars. We therefore explore the hypothesis which claims that for grammatical restructuring to occur, a number of further conditions must be met, language-internal (structural ambiguity; see Chapter 4) as well as external ones (language contact; see Chapter 5). Language contact is, in fact, considered by many historical linguists as the single most important factor causing diachronic change to happen, and the claim that ‘any linguistic feature can be transferred from any language to any other language’ (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 14) seems to be supported by many. Yet our discussion in the following chapters leads us to argue that while language contact may very well be a necessary condition for grammatical change to occur, it is certainly not a sufficient one. Instead, we conclude that acquisition processes in multilingual settings are most likely to trigger the processes we are looking for, i.e. the ones resulting in changes of core properties of grammars. Importantly, we attribute a specific role to L2 learners, either as agents of these

18  language acquisition and change changes or as being the ones who provide the PLD containing the structural triggers for parameter settings differing from those of the grammars underlying the speech of the L1 learners’ parent generation; see Chapter 6. In view of the fact that grammatical reanalyses involving parametric change happen only under very specific socio-historical circumstances, we argue that this occurs less frequently than is commonly assumed. This allows us to predict that careful scrutiny will reveal that a number of alleged fundamental syntactic changes do not, in reality, involve restructuring of grammars. Rather, the observed differences are due either to changing frequencies in the use of particular constructions or to the emergence of different surface devices encoding the same structural properties as the diachronically preceding grammar. In fact, some apparent cases of restructuring are not instances of diachronic change at all but are artefacts, produced by specific linguistic analyses. This observation applies not only to parametric change but to morphosyntactic change, more generally. Poplack and Levey (2010), for example, were able to show that in a number of alleged cases of contactinduced syntactic change, no change had actually occurred. Rather, claims to this effect overlooked the fact that postulated ‘new’ constructions had long existed in the language, yet they had not been noted because the linguistic description was based on the standard norm; or apparent changes in the frequency of use of patterns result from the fact that colloquial speech had previously not been analysed adequately. In sum, we partially confirm the idea of ‘inertia’ with respect to core properties of grammars, but we are also able to identify settings in which even these domains of morphosyntax which are strongly resistant to diachronic change, do change – even if this happens less frequently than is claimed. NOTES

1. ‘This is a social product of the language faculty as well as a set of necessary conventions adopted by the social body in order to allow individuals to exercise this faculty’ (our translation). 2. ‘This is a treasure deposited as a result of their use of speech in

variation and change in languages  19 the subjects belonging to the same community, a grammatical system virtually existing in every brain, or more precisely in the brains of a group of individuals, for the linguistic system is not present in its entirety in any of them, it exists completely only in the mass’ (our translation). 3. See Section 1.3 for more details. 4. It may very well be the case that domain-general cognitive operations, too, are subject to maturational changes; see Meisel (2011a) for some evidence in support of this assumption. Since this issue is not directly relevant for the present discussion, we will not pursue this question here. 5. For some recent developments of Parameter Theory see, for example, Snyder (2007), Roberts and Holmberg (2010) and contributions to Biberauer, Holmberg, Roberts and Sheehan (2010).

chapter 2

Language change across the lifespan

I

n this chapter, our focus of interest will be on syntactic variation and change both within the speech community and within the individual speaker. We will mainly be concerned with the question whether certain patterns of variability target the grammatical knowledge of the speakers or whether they are rather a reflex of how this knowledge is put into use. The former would be the case when UG-constrained parametric differences are at stake which, in addition to language-universal principles, constitute the speakers’ core grammar (cf. Chomsky 1981: 7). Such cases of parametric variation can be observed not only when comparing different languages. Parametric differences might also be relevant, as we will lay out below, when comparing varieties of a single language such as dialects, sociolects or registers. Finally and most importantly for the purpose of this book, syntactic differences between two diachronic states of a language or variety could also reflect an underlying parametric change. We assume that the core grammar constitutes a homogeneous knowledge base shared by the speakers of a certain language or variety. Variability at this level would hence indicate the presence of different grammatical systems, either synchronically or diachronically. The second possibility relates to variation at the level of language use. This can be observed, for example, in domains where the grammar allows for different surface realizations of a single structural base. This kind of variation is typically conditioned by a multitude of environmental factors which may be of either a

language change across the lifespan  21 linguistic, a pragmatic or an extralinguistic, i.e. social or stylistic, type. Both parametric variation and variation in language use may result in the same surface effects. The major methodological challenge for the analyst is hence to disentangle for each instance of morphosyntactic variation which of these two types of variation is actually involved. In the following, we will examine a number of variable phenomena and discuss whether they can more plausibly be ascribed to parametric variation, i.e. to differences relating to the mental representation of the speakers’ grammatical knowledge, or whether they rather reflect variation in use. If, upon closer inspection, specific phenomena of variation cannot be ascribed to differences in the grammatical knowledge, i.e. to core grammatical differences, then the explanatory model of variation theory might turn out to serve better to explain the variable data. Our particular focus will be on instances of diachronic variation, hence of phenomena which change over time either in the speech community or within the individual speaker. We hypothesize that a number of cases in which a change has been ascribed to a restructuring of the grammatical system can instead be explained by changing patterns of use with a stable underlying system. We will evaluate different scenarios of language change which have been discussed in the context of sociolinguistic research and concentrate on the question to what extent an individual speaker’s language may undergo changes during his or her own lifespan after childhood. Our considerations are based on two premises: first, that every diachronic change passes through a stage of synchronic variation,1 and second, that the question of whether this variation affects the speakers’ grammatical knowledge or whether it targets the way this knowledge is used is of crucial importance. Variation and language change are therefore inextricably linked. The theory of UG defines the framework of our considerations of language change. This is the reason why we place such a special emphasis on the distinction between the mental representation of the grammatical knowledge in the individual speaker, on the one hand, and the way this knowledge is put into use in linguistic interactions, on the other. UG-based accounts of language change, however, often face the problem of how to account for variation since the grammatical knowledge, and especially the core grammatical

22  language acquisition and change properties of a language, are generally held to be invariant within a particular grammar. The questions of how and under which conditions such supposedly invariant subsystems of the language may change hence remain a notoriously difficult matter. In sharp contrast to UG-based accounts, the variationist paradigm of sociolinguistics assumes variation to be an integral part of all domains of the language. Even though this approach is incompatible with the assumption of a largely uniform core grammar, the findings emanating from variationist research on phenomena of language change are empirically highly reliable due to its carefully devised methodology. We therefore decided to consult these insights and to discuss to what extent we may benefit from them. In Section 2.1, we will discuss the four different scenarios of language change first proposed by Labov (1994) and later modified by Sankoff and Blondeau (2007), namely generational change, communal change, age grading and lifespan change, and examine which of these is more prone to parametric change or to change in usage patterns, respectively. In Section 2.2, we will examine a concrete case of morphosyntactic variation, i.e. the different ways of expressing yes/no interrogatives in Quebec French. In particular, we will discuss whether the diachronic decline of subject-clitic inversion is more likely to reflect a core grammatical restructuring of the language or whether it rather reflects changes in language use. 2.1 Patterns of change in the individual and in the speech community

Linguistic phenomena undergoing a change over time typically pass through a stage of variation. Therefore, variation is an inherent property of language change. Yet, as already pointed out above, not all instances of variation are indicative of some type of language change. In cases of stable variation, each of the variants is associated with a well-defined sociostylistic function in language use. The variants may coexist side by side for a very long period of time without entering into competition with each other. In such cases neither the individual speakers nor the speech community as a whole manifest any change in their linguistic habits. Three typical

language change across the lifespan  23 examples of stable sociolinguistic variables, discussed in Labov (2001b: ch. 3), are the velar or alveolar realization of nasal /n/ in word-final -ing in English, as in words like fishing and trying, the variation between fricatives, affricates and stops in the context of the initial interdental fricative /ð/, as in the pronouns this and that, as well as negative concord, as in I didn’t do nothing instead of I didn’t do anything (see also Meyerhoff 2006: 207f.). These variables show social and stylistic variation in language use. In general, the vernacular variants are favoured by adolescent speakers and speakers from the lower social classes while the prescriptive variants rather tend to be used by women. Importantly, at an age beyond adolescence, these variables do not show any differentiation by age. While variation at the level of language use does not necessarily imply the involvement of some type of language change, every change passes through a stage of variation in language use. Instances of language change can usually be detected in a synchronic analysis when comparing the language use of informants pertaining to different age cohorts in the sample. An increase or a decrease of the use of a certain variant from one age group to the next can be interpreted as a reflection of a change which has taken place or is in the middle of taking place at the time of the study. This has been termed the analysis of change in apparent time. Labov has established it as an integral part of the study of language variation and change (see e.g. Labov 1963, 1966, 1994: 43ff.). Change-related variation has been classified according to whether the change affects the language of the individual or that of the speech community. As mentioned above, four distinct patterns of language change have been identified in the framework of variationist sociolinguistics: generational change, communal change, age grading and lifespan change (cf. Labov 1994: 83f., 2001b: 75ff.; Sankoff and Blondeau 2007: 562f.). See Table 2.1. The following is a brief summary of the presentation of the different patterns of change in Labov (1994: 43ff.) and in Sankoff and Blondeau (2007). The first column of Table 2.1 refers to the possible patterns emerging from an analysis of change in apparent time. It has already been mentioned above that stable sociolinguistic variables show a flat pattern across the different age groups of a sample, apart from adolescent speakers, who favour the use of

24  language acquisition and change Table 2.1 Patterns of change in the individual and in the community (Table 2 in Sankoff and Blondeau 2007: 563, adapted from Labov 1994: 83 and modified by the authors) Synchronic pattern

Interpretation

Individual Community

Flat Regular slope with age Regular slope with age Regular slope with age

1. Stability 2a. Age grading 2b. Lifespan change 3. Generational change (= apparent-time interpretation) 4. Communal change

Stability Change Change Stability

Stability Stability Change Change

Change

Change

Flat

Republished with permission of the Linguistic Society of America, from: Sankoff, G. and H. Blondeau. 2007. Language change across the lifespan: /r/ in Montréal French. Language 83: 560–88. Permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

the vernacular variants. A flat pattern might, however, also result when a change affects all members of the speech community at the same time and rate, regardless of their age. This would be the case in a communal change. If the apparent time analysis reveals a regular slope with age, the interpretation is necessarily that of a language change. Due to the synchronic character of the analysis, it is, however, impossible to decide methodologically whether this change affects the speech community or the individual speaker. In the former case, the patterns of language use of the individual speakers remain stable during their lifetime, but those of the different generations represented in the sample diverge from each other (generational change). In the latter case, i.e. when the change takes place within individual speakers, two different scenarios need to be distinguished. One possibility is that the speakers modify their patterns of language use according to the age group they belong to (age grading). Importantly, these adaptations recur in every generation and hence do not contribute to moving forward a change. As a consequence, the language use of the speech community remains stable. Another possibility, suggested by Sankoff (2005), is that individual speakers follow, at least to a certain extent, a generational change initiated and led by younger speakers from the same speech community. They adapt their language use to the innovative patterns and, as a result, both the speech community and the individual speakers change their linguistic habits (lifespan change).

language change across the lifespan  25 Research conducted within the framework of the theory of language variation and change does not distinguish in a principled fashion between language change affecting the grammatical knowledge of the speakers and change affecting the way in which this knowledge is put to use. Since the focus in this line of research is, however, on variable phenomena whose concrete realization as one variant or the other depends on certain (linguistic and extralinguistic) environmental factors, preferential treatment is clearly granted to the analysis of variation and change at the level of language use. In the following, we will discuss to what extent the above-mentioned patterns of language change tie in with changes affecting core grammatical properties of the language. Our line of reasoning is based on the premise that core grammatical properties, and in particular parameterized principles, are acquired in the process of child L1 development, as we will explain in detail in Chapter 3. This entails that, after childhood, core grammatical properties are firmly entrenched in the grammatical knowledge of the speakers and are highly resistant to the pressure of change exerted by external, e.g. social, factors. In the ensuing discussion, we therefore pay particular attention to generational change, i.e. the pattern of language change which focuses on the acquisition stage, in which the grammatical knowledge of the speakers is still adjustable and which hence allows, at least in principle, for core grammatical variation as compared to the previous generation. Our prediction is that language change after childhood only targets variation in language use and leaves the core grammar unaffected. This concerns not only communal change and age grading but also, as we will show, lifespan change, even though the latter proceeds in the direction of a generational change in progress. The UG-based account of language acquisition and change and the variationist concept of generational change share an important assumption, namely that the linguistic knowledge of the individual stabilizes at a certain time after childhood (Labov 2001b: 448, 502). Although the two frameworks focus on different linguistic phenomena, i.e. properties of core grammar and of language use, respectively, they share the assumption that the single most important piece of evidence in processes of generational change is constituted by linguistic innovations which emerge in the period of childhood.2 On a UG-based account, the developmental

26  language acquisition and change phase during which the individual develops the core grammatical properties of the language he or she is acquiring is of particular importance. Once these properties have been acquired, they are supposed to turn into robust and firmly entrenched components of the individual’s grammatical system, as we will discuss in Chapter 3.3 Although the period from approximately 3 to 6 years of age has been argued to be the crucial one for the acquisition of a native grammatical competence, age effects are not limited to these sensitive phases. Rather, once acquired, grammatical knowledge apparently needs to be consolidated. Studies of language attrition in individuals, e.g. Flores (2008) or Bylund (2009), have shown that ‘grammatical knowledge is more likely to suffer from attrition if the speaker loses contact with a language before the age of eleven’ (Flores 2010: 545). This period of stabilization up to approximately age 11 or 12 ensures that the knowledge remains permanently accessible; without sufficient exposure to the language in this age range, an individual’s ability to control the acquired knowledge is likely to dwindle. It is, however, not the case that only core grammatical features become consolidated during childhood. The time frame within which the individual may acquire, change and adapt more variable phenomena of language use in his or her own vernacular is also limited. The different domains of grammar – i.e. morphosyntax, phonology, pragmatics and lexicon – behave differently, however, as regards age effects. Modifications in the lexicon have been argued to be least sensitive to the age of the speakers (cf. Kerswill 1996: 179, cited in Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2009: 65) while morphosyntactic patterns of language use rather remain stable in adulthood. In fact, the apparent-time hypothesis of language change relies on the hypothesis that the variable patterns in language use stabilize after childhood. Otherwise, the speech of a 40-year-old informant, for example, could not be taken as representative of the state of the language some twenty-five years ago when the speaker was still an adolescent. In other words, the apparent-time construct presupposes that a synchronic present-day analysis of older speakers’ language use provides a reliable picture of the language in the community some decades ago when these speakers were still in their childhood. This implies that a comparison of the speech of older and younger speakers allows us to uncover potential instances

language change across the lifespan  27 of a generational change. As Labov (1994: 24) states, the analyst may ‘use . . . the present to explain the past’. Labov’s (1963) study of the centralization of the diphthongs [aw], as in ‘house’, and [ay], as in ‘price’, which occurred in Martha’s Vineyard, an island located near Cape Cod in Massachusetts, and whose diachronic course was discovered by the author by comparing the language use of the representatives of different age groups, paved the way for many subsequent studies of change in apparent time. One important milestone was the study of Ch-lenition in Panama City by Cedergren (1973) and her restudy of that community (Cedergren 1988). In the course of this change, [č] was gradually replaced by [š] in words like muchos and muchacha. A comparison of the different age cohorts in the sample revealed a peak of the usage of the innovative variant among speakers in their late adolescence, and not, as would have been expected, among the youngest informants. This peak has empirically been confirmed in a number of later studies. Labov (2001b: 447ff.) elaborated a linear model in order to account for this common observation. This is illustrated in Figure 2.1,

Figure 2.1  Age profiles for females of a linguistic change in progress with logistic incrementation of the change © Labov (2001) Figure 14.5 in Principles of linguistic change. Volume II: Social factors, Wiley-Blackwell

28  language acquisition and change taken from Labov (2001b: 453), which shows a hypothetical change in the twentieth century. According to the author (2001b: 447ff.), the peak is a specific pattern in the linguistic behaviour of girls. In early childhood, the patterns of language use of both boys and girls are still very contingent on those of their parents and, in particular, of their mothers since they are their principal caretakers. In Figure 2.1, this is indicated by similar usage rates to those of the parental generation. The time distance between the generations has arbitrarily been set at 25 years. Up to an age of 4 or 5 years, the children’s use of patterns of variation closely matches that of their parents. Then a process of incrementation begins which implies that linguistic variables become increasingly more pronounced, both in frequency and in linguistic or extralinguistic conditioning as opposed to that of their parents (Labov 2001b: 446ff., 2007: 346). During this phase, the children either drive forward a change which has already been incipient in their parental generation, or introduce innovations which differentiate their language use from that of their parents. This is known as vernacular reorganization, which means that ‘children must learn to talk differently from their mothers’ (Labov 2001b: 415). At approximately 17 years of age, the patterns of language use stabilize, and they remain relatively constant during the remainder of the speakers’ lifetime. The rise of the four lines in Figure 2.1 up to this age is hence a development within the individual speaker, while the subsequent drop reflects generational change and individual stability. Figure 2.1 is based on the model of a logistic progression of a change, according to which the transmission of the change proceeds slowly in its early phase, then accelerates and slows down again towards its completion, yielding an S-shaped curve (Labov 2001b: 449f.). This results in rather flat slopes in the first quarter and towards the end of the twentieth century and in an accentuated peak in its middle. It has to be emphasized that Labov’s linear model is meant to account for language change at the level of phonological variation. However, Tagliamonte and D’Arcy (2009) were also able to identify the peak of the use of innovative variants in adolescence in instances of morphosyntactic, morphosemantic and discoursepragmatic change taking place in Toronto English. The authors

language change across the lifespan  29 analysed changes in the use of the quotative be like, as opposed to e.g. say, think and go; the discourse marker like, as in ‘You know, like the people were very very friendly’ (cf. Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2009: 76, example (3b.)); the stative possessive have, as opposed to have got or got; the modal have to instead of have got to, got to or must; the future temporal going to as opposed to will or shall; and the intensifier so as opposed to really. In all these cases, except for have to, the use of the innovative forms was most pronounced in the speech of adolescent speakers rather than in that of children. This suggests that the incrementation model may be valid to account, beyond the realm of phonology, for the gradual replacement of conservative variants by innovative ones in language use. Furthermore, the proposed model accounts first and foremost for those changes of variable patterns in language use which proceed below the level of linguistic awareness (changes ‘from below’), i.e. for variants which are neither stigmatized nor associated with overt prestige. In changes from below, children obtain these patterns from their parents via the process of transmission. Labov (2007: 346) defines transmission as the ‘ability of children to replicate faithfully the form of the older generation’s language, in all of its structural detail’. It is ‘the product of the acquisition of language by young children’ (p. 349). This means that the process of language acquisition equips children with the ability to use sociolinguistic variables as a function of the same environmental factors as their parents. During the process of incrementation, ‘[t]hese variable elements are then advanced further in the direction indicated by the inherited age vectors . . . Children’s incrementation of the change may take the form of increases in frequency, extent, scope, or specificity of a variable’ (p. 346). Importantly, this process typically does not involve dramatic and abrupt alterations of the linguistic system. The variationist model of generational change, as we have summarized it here, cannot be extrapolated to cases in which the grammatical knowledge of the speakers is being restructured in the course of the change. It rather focuses on those domains of diachronically unstable variation where the different variants, both conservative and innovative ones, all form part of the same linguistic system. The variationist perspective hence is concerned with changes in the complex set of environmental factors which favour or disfavour the use of a variant

30  language acquisition and change rather than with changes in the system itself where the variants are embedded. This is implied by the concept of inherent variation, i.e. the assumption that languages and their grammars are inherently variable in all of their domains. As a consequence, the objective of research in the variationist paradigm is not to elaborate a model of the grammar which precludes certain options not attested in the corpus, i.e. to define the limits within which the grammatical system allows for variation, but to account for the actually occurring forms. Consequently, variationist studies of language change are primarily concerned with changes in language use and not with diachronic modifications of the speakers’ core grammar. In spite of this epistemological divide, our brief summary of the mechanisms of generational change from a variationist perspective has shown a number of commonalities with UG-based research on core grammatical change. First, both approaches ascribe the principal role of innovation to young speakers. On a variationist account, adolescents move forward a change through incrementation; on a UG-based account, core grammatical change is expected to be instantiated by children in the process of L1 acquisition when they acquire a target congruent or deviant grammatical system. Second, in both approaches language acquisition plays an important role since the parents’ language sets the base of the subsequent linguistic development of the children, either because patterns of variability are transmitted from the parental generation to the next or because the parents produce the PLD based on which children acquire their linguistic knowledge. Finally, the variationist model of language change shares with the UG-based one the assumption that fundamental linguistic changes, i.e. patterns of use on the former and grammatical knowledge on the latter account, are not to be expected to occur in the individual speaker after a certain age. In spite of the fact that the two theoretical approaches on which our discussion of linguistic variation is based share a number of crucial assumptions, they differ in another respect. Importantly, core grammatical change implies the change from one invariable and uniform grammatical system to another. The two systems, the conservative and the innovative one, present mutually exclusive structural properties which relate to different grammars generating them. Phenomena of language change studied in the variationist paradigm, on the other hand, always represent cases of variability

language change across the lifespan  31 in language use and coexist side by side within the same speaker and within the same grammatical system. As we will show in Section 2.2, this is relevant when assessing specific cases of morphosyntactic variation and change with respect to the question of how they reflect restructurings of the grammatical system. In particular, it could turn out that a specific morphosyntactic change is not due to a restructuring of the grammatical system but that it rather represents a change in the preference for one surface form over another. In such a case, the variationist generalizations of language change laid out above might provide better predictions as concerns the course of the change. While the interplay between transmission and incrementation accounts for the typical cases of generational change, changes brought about by diffusion are of a completely different nature (Labov 2007: 345–50). This difference will turn out to be relevant for our discussion since it provides further support to the argument that only child speakers have the capacity to incorporate structurally complex linguistic innovations into their language. Diffusion may occur when individual members of two separate speech communities, typically adults, interact with each other. In such cases of language contact, certain forms of usage may be transferred or imported from the language or variety of one speech community into that of another. Often, these forms carry high social prestige and the agents of change are speakers from the upper middle class (change ‘from above’). Diffusion is most likely to affect the lexicon or other phenomena which do not have any systemic import on the structure of the recipient language. In other words, the less complex the set of environmental factors conditioning the use of a certain form is, the more likely is the diffusion of this form. As Labov (2007: 349) states, ‘structural patterns are not as likely to be diffused because adults do not learn and reproduce linguistic forms, rules, and constraints with the accuracy and speed that children display’. The speakers who adopt a new linguistic form as a consequence of diffusion show deficiencies in using it in response to the same environmental factors as speakers of the source variety who have acquired these factors in childhood. This shows that the age of the speaker is a critical measure not only when considering core grammatical properties of the language, but also with regard to patterns of variation in language use.

32  language acquisition and change

Figure 2.2  The Northern Cities Shift © Labov (2010) Figure 1.4 in Principles of linguistic change. Volume III: Cognitive and cultural factors, Wiley-Blackwell

As an exemplary case of the contrast between transmission and diffusion, Labov (2007) cites the Northern Cities Shift. This chain shift in the English vowel repertoire began with the tensing, raising and fronting of /æ/, followed by ‘the fronting of /o/, the lowering and fronting of /oh/, the falling and backing of /e/, and the backing of //’ (Labov 2010: 14). See Figure 2.2. This shift originated in the mid-twentieth century near Albany and has subsequently spread westwards, via a number of cities in the states of New York, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana and Illinois, to Wisconsin. All along the way, the environmental factors conditioning the use of the innovative vowel forms have faithfully been transmitted from one generation to the next with an incrementation in use by the adolescent speakers. The shift has also extended from Chicago down to St Louis, Missouri. The vowel patterns in the St Louis corridor are, however, characterized by a loss of structural constraints and a high level of irregularity, i.e. the speakers participating in the chain shift use the new forms, but not in response to the environmental factors which originally conditioned their use. Labov (2007) infers that it is the borrowing of individual lexical items by adult speakers, hence a process of diffusion, which accounts best for this arbitrariness. The transmission of features

language change across the lifespan  33 from a parental generation to their children does not seem to be involved in the spread of the vowel shift to St Louis. Here again, we may notice a number of parallels between the variationist and the UG-based concepts of generational or language change. The first years of life appear to be relevant both for the acquisition of the grammatical knowledge constituting the native speaker’s competence and for the consolidation of sociolinguistic variables within their set of conditioning factors. If speakers adopt new forms or constructions at a later point in their lifetime, the empirical evidence indicates a qualitatively different, less rule-governed and more arbitrary, way of learning these forms. Chapter 6 will elaborate on this from a UG-based perspective. Importantly, by emphasizing the empirical parallels between the variationist and the UG-based approaches we do not intend to deny the fundamental difference between the constraints on patterns of language use and those which contribute to the formation of the speaker’s competence. We have already noted above that the latter are acquired and fixed much earlier in life than the former. All we want to highlight is that variation and change in language use are not random but constrained, following the concept of ‘ordered heterogeneity’ established in Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968: 100), and that the predictions emanating from the variationist empirical research are in some ways parallel to the ones obtained from UG-based studies. As we will show in Section 2.2, this is of crucial importance when evaluating specific phenomena of change as to whether they affect language use or the core grammar. If it turns out that a certain morphosyntactic change is not associated with a change of the underlying core grammar, the methodological equipment and the empirical generalizations provided by the variationist approach might prove to be helpful for the explanation of this change. The trend study is a methodological tool forming part of this equipment (Sankoff and Blondeau 2007: 565). It consists of two apparent-time studies conducted at two discrete points in time. In order to guarantee comparability between the two studies, the same speech community is reanalysed on the basis of the same methodological criteria. By contrasting the two synchronic studies, a real-time perspective is obtained which allows researchers to determine whether a change observed in the earlier apparent-time

34  language acquisition and change study has advanced in the later one. In other words, a trend study distinguishes between a change in the patterns of language use which occurs across the lifetime of an individual speaker, due to either age grading or lifespan change, and a generational change. In this regard, it is a more powerful tool than a single apparenttime study, in which this distinction remains opaque (Labov 1994: 84). A trend study resamples the same speech community, but not the same informants. It is thus different from a panel study, which resam­ples the same individuals after a certain period of time and hence permits researchers to reveal their linguistic development. Three different patterns of change in Table 2.1 refer to language change in the individual speaker. While age grading occurs cyclically in each generation and hence does not contribute to moving forward a change, communal and lifespan change are intra-speaker modifications in language use which go along with a change currently taking place in the speech community. The crucial difference between the two is that communal change refers to cases in which the incoming form is adopted by all speakers of the speech community, regardless of their age, while lifespan change implies the adaptation of an individual’s language use to the innovative patterns brought about by a generational change in the community. Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) provide an example of a lifespan change in their study of the replacement of apical [r] by dorsal [R] in Quebec French during the second half of the twentieth century (see also Clermont and Cedergren 1979). The change proceeds gradually and passes through a phase of variation in which both the conservative and the innovative variant are used. Yet the variation does not seem to be heavily contingent on either phonological or stylistic factors (Sankoff and Blondeau, forthcoming). It rather depends on social factors like, most prominently, the speaker’s age (see also Cedergren 1988). This indicates that neither of the two variants is allocated to any specific contextual function in language use, but that they rather occur in competition with each other. This explains the fact that no situation of stable variation emerges; instead, one variant, [r], is eventually replaced by the other, [R]. Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) use data of a combined trend and panel study of Montreal French carried out in 1971 (Sankoff and Sankoff 1973) and in 1984 (Thibault and Vincent 1990) in order to trace the change. The majority of speakers from the panel sample

language change across the lifespan  35 show hardly any variation in their use of /r/. They make categorical use either of the innovative dorsal variant or of the traditional apical one and keep this habit along the 13-year time period investigated. Variation occurs only in a minority of speakers studied in 1971, and they all move towards a near-categorical use of [R] in 1984. It is notable, however, that some informants make this move well after childhood, and even in their late adulthood. Most interestingly, two informants were near-categorical users of [r], the traditional variant, in 1971 and moved to a predominant use of the innovative form 13 years later. They were aged 24 and 45 years in the first study. Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) conclude from these results that, in the majority of cases, speakers retain in their later life the phonological system acquired during childhood, but that in some cases the phonology of adult speakers may undergo changes, sometimes to a considerable extent. They adapt their language use to a generational change currently taking place in their linguistic environment. We want to highlight, however, an important remark made by the authors which deserves particular attention in our view. In contrast to many other phonological changes, like, for instance, the chain shift discussed above, the change of /r/ in Montreal French does not induce further changes within the phonological system of Quebec French. It is an isolated phenomenon which ‘does not have systemic phonological consequences’ (Sankoff and Blondeau 2007: 581). In other words, it targets the place of articulation of a single phoneme without affecting other consonants or vowels. The authors assume that it is primarily due to this property that the two informants could participate in the change and adapt their language use accordingly. On the other hand, Sankoff and Blondeau (2007: 581) assume that ‘the more embedded any given change is as part of a structural system, the less susceptible it might be to individual initiative’. This perfectly ties in with our assumptions about language change at the level of core grammar. If it is true that variable patterns of language use are hard to acquire by an adult speaker if they have repercussions for other related linguistic forms, then core grammatical properties, which are most deeply entrenched in the linguistic system and which are acquired well before the age of adolescence, should all the more present an ­obstacle for ­post-adolescent change.

36  language acquisition and change To summarize, four patterns of language change, as seen from the variationist perspective on language use, have been discussed in this chapter, only one of which involves intra-speaker stability, i.e. generational change. Communal change, age grading and lifespan change all relate to changes which occur in the adult individual. This leads to the crucial question of what kind of linguistic knowledge post-adolescent intra-individual language change may affect. In Chapter 1, we explained that, in this book, we are mainly concerned with the change of core properties of grammars which can be argued to be deeply entrenched in the cognitive system of the individual; see also the distinction between core grammar and peripheral grammatical properties; cf. Chomsky (1981). We must thus ask whether language change in the adult individual concerns such core properties. From what we may infer from the preceding discussion, this is not the case, i.e. core properties of an individual’s grammatical knowledge remain unaffected by the observed changes across the lifespan. We have made reference to insights gained from studies of changes related to patterns of language use which have shown that even at this level, post-adolescent speakers are not able to alter their speech habits, if they are embedded in a complex set of environmental factors conditioning their use. Changes in adulthood seem to affect only relatively isolated forms which are not contingent on a larger set of linguistic factors. In this regard, it is notable that many reported changes which involve age grading or communal change are lexical in nature, and that the change from [r] to [R] in Montreal French, discussed by Sankoff and Blondeau (2007), has no systemic effects on the phonology of the speakers. It therefore seems that such kinds of fairly delimited changes can more easily be performed by adult speakers than can changes which entail more complex modifications of the speaker’s phonetic system, e.g. chain shifts (Sankoff and Blondeau 2007: 581). Furthermore, the change in the pronunciation of /r/ in Montreal is a change from above whose origins stem from outside the speech community, namely from the eastern part of Quebec, and which has social significance (Sankoff and Blondeau 2007: 577f.). In such types of change, the innovators or early adopters are for the most part adults and, consequently, the change is propagated by the process of diffusion rather than transmission. It thus seems that the capacity of adults to modify

language change across the lifespan  37 their language use is restricted to relatively isolated patterns and that systemic changes only take place in the process of the transmission and incrementation of a change, i.e. during childhood. This coincides with our hypothesis, which we will elaborate in the next chapter, that the fixation of core grammatical properties is limited to this early phase of the speaker’s lifetime, i.e. to the period of child L1 acquisition. In this section, we focused on the variationist perspective on mechanisms of language change both in the individual and in the speech community. We referred to a number of studies investigating diachronic change at the level of language use. The most relevant finding from these case studies is, in our view, the observation that only children and adolescents are able to acquire the complete set of environmental, intra- and extralinguistic, factors which condition the use of the variants. In adulthood, the ability of speakers to participate in language change is by and large restricted to cases where the incoming forms are isolated, individual items without complex dependencies within the linguistic system. As a result, the variationist approach makes similar empirical predictions to those of studies which examine language change in terms of a structural reorganization of grammar, and in particular core grammar. This is all the more remarkable given that the two approaches target very different objects of study, namely the grammatical system itself, on the one hand, and the way the concrete output forms of this system are used in the actual discourse, on the other hand. The methodological challenge is, hence, to disentangle for each phenomenon undergoing change whether it involves a core grammatical change or whether the change occurs in language use with a stable ­grammatical system. On this account, it appears worthwhile to put under scrutiny diachronic changes which have been claimed to involve such a grammatical restructuring. It might turn out that at least part of these can in fact be better explained by a process of transmission and incrementation, gradually moving forward a change within the limits of structural optionality provided by a grammatical system whose core properties remain unaffected by such changes. In the following section, we will exemplify this point referring to a wellstudied case of grammatical change.

38  language acquisition and change 2.2 Subject-clitic inversion and -tu in Quebec French interrogatives

As a case in point, the French interrogative system can be alluded to which exhibits surface word order variability to a considerable degree. North American French, for instance, and in particular Quebec French, has a system of polar, or yes/no, questions in which four different variants occur in competition with each other. These are illustrated in (1),4 cited in Elsig (2009: 3f.). (1a) shows the insertion of the question marker est-ce que in initial position, which, in contemporary French, is grammaticalized (see Druetta 2002, 2003). (1b) is a yes/no question in which interrogative force is only expressed by intonation, without adding special interrogative morphemes or choosing a specific interrogative word order. In (1c), an interrogative suffix, -tu, is attached to the finite verb. (1d) is an instance of pronominal, or subject-clitic, inversion. A special case of subject-clitic inversion is complex inversion in which a preverbal subject DP is resumed by a co-referential postverbal clitic, see (1e). This variant has disappeared from the contemporary vernacular. (1) a. QF Ton frère est-ce que ton- son rhume est guéri? your brother INT your his cold is healed ‘Your brother, is your- his cold healed?’ (OH.078.1252) b. QF Ah, tu es du bout comme ça toi, tu ah you are from.the quarter like this you you connais un petit peu le bout? know a little bit the quarter ‘Oh, you are from this quarter then, do you know the quarter a little bit?’ (OH.113.1242) c. QF Ah, tu t’en vas’tu te baigner là? ah you yourself.ADV will.INT yourself to.bathe there ‘Oh, will you take a bath over there?’ (OH.090.413) d. QF Il dit, madame, il dit, nous he says, madam, he says, us[DAT]

language change across the lifespan  39 feriez-vous à dîner? prepare[2PL.COND].you[2PL] for dinner ‘He says, madam, he says, would you prepare us something for dinner?’ (RFQ.003.233) e. ClasF Ils le relancent; mais ce coup est-il prévu? they it throw.back but this coup has.been.it foreseen ‘They throw it back; but has this coup been foreseen?’ (Molière, Les fâcheux, act 2, scene 6)

The question that we want to pursue in this section is whether this diversity of forms reflects variation in the grammar of the speakers, notably in their core grammar, or whether the synchronic coexistence of the variants is rather to be understood as different surface realizations of a homogeneous underlying grammar. It is important to note, in this regard, that the variation displayed in (1) is not a case of stable variation. Instead, it reflects a change in progress whereby variants displaying preverbal subjects, as in (1a) to (c), gradually replace those with postverbal subjects, as in (1d) and (e). This change represents a general diachronic trend accounting for many varieties of French and which had already begun in the seventeenth century and has still not reached completion (cf. Foulet 1921). In the variety spoken in Quebec in the second half of the twentieth century, it is in particular variant (1c), featuring the postverbal interrogative morpheme -tu, which replaces subjectclitic inversion (see (1d)). This is shown in Figure 2.3, based on the results presented in Elsig and Poplack (2006) and Elsig (2009). Intonation questions, as in (1b), also show a rise in usage, but to a much lesser extent. They have since long been an important contender to the variants with postverbal subjects. Yes/no questions featuring the interrogative marker est-ce que, as in (1a), on the other hand, have always been only a relatively marginal variant as concerns their frequency of use. Table 2.2 lists the literary and oral sources from which the data were extracted. The variable system of yes/no interrogatives is hence in the middle of a restructuring process and the variation concerning the placement of the subject vis-à-vis the verb seems to suggest, on a first view, that the different variants are the output of competing structural systems, a conservative one generating

40  language acquisition and change 100% 80%

P-INV TU

60%

INTQ

40%

ECQ DP-INV

20% 0% 1450

CPL-INV 1550

1650

1750

1850

1950

Figure 2.3  Evolution of yes/no interrogative variants in French (P-INV = subject-clitic inversion; TU = interrogative morpheme -tu; INTQ = intonation questions; ECQ = est-ce que questions; DP-INV = subject– determiner phrase inversion; CPL-INV = complex inversion)

postverbal subjects, and an innovative one, accounting for variants with preverbal subjects. In the following, we will first describe how subject–verb inversion in interrogatives has been accounted for in the generative paradigm. We will show that inversion and non-inversion are generally explained with different syntactic derivations. Our aim is to challenge, on empirical grounds, an analysis that accounts for the different variants of yes/no interrogatives by drawing on competing grammars. It will turn out that a single syntactic derivation can explain all the variants considered, with the exception of est-ce que questions. The inverted verb–subject order is commonly explained in terms of verb movement to C° across the subject position, SpecTP (Kayne 1972; Rizzi and Roberts 1989). According to Rizzi (1996), the wh-criterion is responsible for this movement: The Wh-Criterion: A. A wh-operator must be in a Spec–head configuration with X°[+wh]. B. An X°[+wh] must be in a Spec–head configuration with a wh-operator. (Rizzi 1996: 64)

language change across the lifespan  41 Table 2.2 Data sources used for the extraction of yes/no interrogative variants in Elsig and Poplack (2006) and Elsig (2009). Time period Title

Tokens (N)

1456–61

110

1465 1532–52

1629–37

1649–51

1645–63

Nineteenth century

Twentieth century

Cent nouvelles nouvelles, ed. F. P. Sweetser. Geneva: Droz, 1966 Maistre Pierre Pathelin. Farce du XVe siècle, ed. R. T. Holbrook. Les Classiques Français du Moyen Âge. Paris: Libraire Honoré Champion, 19862 Gargantua et Pantagruel. Œuvres de Rabelais. Seule édition conforme aux derniers textes revues par l’auteur avec les variantes de toutes les éditions originales, des notes et un glossaire. 2 vols. Paris: P. Jannet, 1858. Mélite, 1629; La galérie du palais, 1634; L’illusion comique, 1635; La place royale, 1637. Théâtre complet de Corneille. Texte établi sur l’édition de 1682, avec les principales variantes, une introduction, des notices, des notes et un glossaire, par Maurice Rat. Volume 1. Paris: Éditions Garnier Frères, 1960. Agréables conferences de deux paysans de Saint-Ouen et de Montmorency sur les affaires du temps (1649–1651), reprint of the critical edition established by F. Deloffre. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1961 ; new edition enhanced by a complementary bibliography, Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1999. (La jalousie du barbouillé, 1645/50; Le médecin volant, 1655; L’étourdi ou les contretemps, 1655; Dépit amoureux, 1656; Les précieuses ridicules, 1659; Sganarelle ou le cocu imaginaire, 1660; Dom Garcie de Navarre ou le prince jaloux, 1661; L’école des maris, 1661; Les fâcheux, 1661; L’école des femmes, 1662; La critique de l’école des femmes, 1663. Molière: Œuvres complètes, foreword by P.-A. Touchard. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1962. Récits du français québécois d’autrefois (RFQ) (Poplack and St-Amand 2007). Speakers born: 1846–65 1866–75 1876–85 1886–95

 81 321

303

 36

424

112 173 174 103

Ottawa-Hull French Corpus (OH) (Poplack 1989). Speakers born: 1918–27 1928–37 1938–47 1948–57

 98 113  88 145

1958–67 1968 and later

121  72

42  language acquisition and change In Rizzi’s (1996) analysis, the wh-operator is located in SpecCP. It is either the wh-phrase in wh-questions or an empty interrogative operator in yes/no questions (see Baker 1970: 197). The syntactic head which bears the [wh]-feature is the head of inflection, T° (or formerly I°), which rises to C° in order to comply with the wh-criterion. This is precisely the configuration which is obtained in (1d), resulting in subject-clitic inversion. A possible alternative, still compatible with the wh-criterion, consists of merging the interrogative morpheme /εsk(ә)/ (est-ce que) in C°, as in (1a) (cf. Cheng and Rooryck 2000). (1b), (c), and (e), however, seem to be in conflict with the whcriterion since they all feature the subject in a position preceding the syntactic head bearing the [wh]-feature. In other words, there is no evidence that the verb rises from T° to C° in these cases. This is particularly true of intonation questions, (1b). The structure of complex inversion, (1e), has been a matter of much debate. Some authors maintain the view that the verb rises to C°, thus accounting for subject-clitic inversion in complex inversion. In this case, the subject DP either adjoins to C’ or occupies a second specifier position in CP (Rizzi and Roberts 1989). Others claim that the inverted subject clitic in complex inversion has evolved into a grammaticalized agreement marker which no longer bears constituent status, but which has been reanalysed as a ­syntactic enclitic of the verb (Boeckx 2001; Friedemann 1997). The inverted subject clitic in complex inversion has been argued to be the precursor of the currently fully grammaticalized postverbal interrogative suffix -ti/-tu, as in (1c) (Foulet 1921: 269; Picard 1992; Roberts 1993: 220–4). This suffix is a part of verbal inflection and can therefore not be interpreted as an argument in favour of the claim that the verb moves to C°. To summarize, the system of yes/no interrogative variants in Quebec French shows an apparent syntactic inconsistency. On the one hand, est-ce que questions, (1a), and subject-clitic inversion, (1c), point to a grammar which complies with the wh-criterion, i.e. the verb or the est-ce que marker occupy C° and the [wh]-feature can be checked in a specifier–head configuration against an empty interrogative operator in SpecCP. Intonation questions and questions featuring the suffix -tu, on the other hand, suggest a different derivation. In these variants, the preverbal position of the subject

language change across the lifespan  43 can be interpreted as evidence in favour of an analysis according to which the verb remains in T° and hence does not move across the subject in SpecTP. The yes/no variants hence appear to instantiate different grammars as regards the head position which is the target of verb movement. The diachronic change would then consist in the loss of verb movement from T° to C° in interrogative contexts. The co-occurrence of the different variants in twentieth-century Quebec French could be interpreted as an instance of coexistence of the conservative grammar still exhibiting this verb movement and of the innovative grammar lacking it. In what follows, we will discuss whether it is plausible to assume that speakers of Quebec French indeed have competing grammatical options available in their variable system of yes/no interrogatives; this discussion summarizes the line of argument developed by Elsig (2009). To begin with yes/no est-ce que questions (1a), Elsig (2009: 97) and Elsig and Poplack (2006) have shown in their analysis of the Quebec French data that the use of this variant strongly correlates with a switch to a formal speech style, the soapbox style, which, according to Labov (2001a: 91), is ‘an extended expression of generalized opinions, not spoken directly to the interviewer, but enunciated as if for a more general audience’. In our view, it is plausible to assume that each register may have its own particular grammar. A style shift may therefore make available a different set of grammatical options to the speaker. Since the occurrence of est-ce que questions is clearly restricted to a formal register in the Quebec French data, we can exclude it from consideration when modelling a grammar of the vernacular. In other words, a theory about the grammar of the vernacular does not need to account for forms which only occur in other, more formal, speech styles. We also do not need to invoke the concept of competing grammars since the different grammatical options do not occur in competition within the same variety. Instead, they occur in different diaphasic varieties. The same considerations hold for complex inversion. It is unclear whether this variant has ever been an important contender in the variable system of yes/no interrogatives in vernacular French. In contemporary French, its use indicates a highly formal style and is reserved for written discourse only.

44  language acquisition and change The remaining variants all form part of the Quebec French vernacular. These are intonation questions, which are diachronically relatively stable; -tu questions, the progressive variant; and subject-clitic inversion, the conservative variant. Their co-occurrence within the same speech style, and in particular the apparently problematic coexistence of variants with pre- and postverbal subjects, hence require an explanation. In the following, we will present an analysis of these three variants which does not analyse the variation of the subject–verb order as a conditional on an additional verb movement step from T° to C°. Instead, we provide evidence that the variation is morphological rather than syntactic in nature and that the diachronic change from subject-clitic inversion to -tu questions in Quebec French does not imply a change of the underlying grammatical system. As a starting point, we will have a closer look at the analysis of subject pronouns in French. We will show that strong evidence favours an analysis of these pronouns as morphological agreement markers rather than as independent syntactic items. The pre- or postverbal position of the pronouns is therefore not contingent on processes of syntactic movement. In colloquial French, subject pronouns have undergone a process of grammaticalization. The weak forms have changed from independent syntactic items (XPs) into functional (inflectional) heads. As a consequence, the doubling of a preverbal subject pronoun by a coreferential noun has increased in usage; see e.g. Kaiser (1994), Nadasdi (1995, 2001), Nagy, Blondeau and Auger (2003), Sankoff (1982) and Thibault (1983). It has therefore been proposed that the subject pronoun has evolved into an agreement marker of the verb (cf. Friedemann 1997) exhibiting properties of an affix (cf. Bonnesen and Meisel 2005). The cliticization of postverbal subject pronouns took place much earlier than that of their preverbal counterparts. It had already reached completion in the Old French period (cf. Roberts 1993: 120; Vance 1995: 194n12). As concerns interrogative contexts, Roberts (2010: 314), building on Poletto (2000: 45), analyses postverbal subject clitics as a form of inflection in C° or, in other words, as a conjugaison interrogative (referring to Pollock 2006: 628f.). According to Roberts, the postverbal subject pronoun has developed into a morpheme expressing an interrogative feature in C°. As a consequence, questions involving subject-clitic inversion

language change across the lifespan  45 can be analysed as either featuring an overt preverbal subject, yielding complex inversion, as in (1e), or featuring a preverbal null subject, pro, as in (1d). Roberts (2010) hence adopts a null subject analysis for cases of subject-clitic inversion in French. This is in line with earlier work on spoken varieties of French (see Kaiser and Meisel 1991; Roberge 1990). While subject-clitic inversion in European French features a unique form of the inverted subject clitic for each person and number of the subject (see Roberts 2010: 316),5 Quebec French shows a much more advanced state of the grammaticalization of the inverted subject clitic by being restricted to the second person, singular and plural, subject pronouns tu and vous (cf. Auger 1996; Barbarie 1982; Fox 1989; Picard 1992). Such arbitrary gaps are expected if the pronoun is analysed as an affix (see Fuß 2005: 137; Rizzi 1986). Contrary to clitics in subject-clitic inversion constructions, the interrogative morpheme -tu, shown in (1c), co-occurs with preverbal subjects of all persons and numbers (abstracting away from a somewhat limited use with the second person plural pronoun vous). On the other hand, it is similar to subject-clitic inversion in a number of ways. It is, for instance, homophonous to the inverted pronoun tu. Several authors have claimed that it evolved out of the inverted third person singular subject pronoun il in complex inversion (Foulet 1921: 269; Picard 1992; Roberts 1993: 220ff.). Noonan (1989) also analyses postverbal -tu in Quebec French in terms of a reanalysed inverted pronoun. It is ‘a wh-feature, a question marker base-generated under I’ (p. 325). As an overt functional feature, it has lost nominal properties and does not agree with the subject. It does not bear Case and is hence compatible with a preverbal subject. Finally, subject-clitic inversion and -tu questions share the property of being absent from wh-questions in Quebec French. According to Noonan (1989), the restriction of -tu to yes/no questions is due to the fact that the inflection (T°) is the wh-element in this context. We have presented some evidence which suggests that inverted subject pronouns in Quebec French are suffixes rather than independent syntactic items. This evidence is supported by distributional similarities between subject-clitic inversion and -tu questions. Elsig (2009: 179ff.) proposes a uniform analysis of the

46  language acquisition and change inverted pronouns tu and vous and of the interrogative morpheme -tu in Quebec French yes/no questions. According to this analysis, there is no difference between inverted -tu in subject-clitic inversion and the interrogative morpheme -tu. They are both interrogative suffixes, just like postverbal vous. However, they have not yet fully grammaticalized into purely functional interrogative morphemes. They still bear a residual number feature. This explains the fact that postverbal -tu co-occurs almost always with a preverbal singular subject (Elsig 2009: 185). It also explains why preverbal vous constitutes a highly unfavourable context for postverbal -tu. Finally, it offers an explanation for the alternation in number of the postverbal element, -tu in singular contexts (optionally with a preverbal null subject in second person contexts) and -vous in second person plural contexts.6 On this account, the morphosyntactic analysis is the same for subject-clitic inversion and -tu questions. The variation between the two interrogative variants is of a lexical nature: in subject-clitic inversion, a null subject occurs in preverbal position; in -tu questions, a phonetically overt subject occurs preverbally. But in both variants, an interrogative morpheme is realized postverbally. The third variant of the Quebec French vernacular, the intonation question, is characterized by the fact that this morpheme is left unexpressed. The observable change in the repertoire of yes/no interrogative variants in Quebec French is hence not an indicator of a structural reorganization of the morphosyntax in this domain. Instead, it is a change of the preference of different lexical items. In other words, it is not core grammar which is affected by this change, but language use. Before concluding our discussion of yes/no interrogatives in Quebec French, we still need to acknowledge the acceleration of the change in the middle of the twentieth century. As Figure 2.3 shows, subject-clitic inversion displays a sharp decline compensated by a sudden increase of -tu questions at the same time. If one were not to follow our above-mentioned arguments against a syntactic explanation of the variation between variants with preverbal and postverbal pronominal subjects, this could be interpreted as a consequence of an important grammatical change after which the conservative variant, subject-clitic inversion, is not generated any more by the innovative grammar. This could be interpreted as an example of a catastrophic change, in the sense of Lightfoot

language change across the lifespan  47 (2006). We would like to argue that this is not the case (see also Elsig 2009). First, as Lightfoot (2006: 93) himself points out, the catastrophic nature of a grammatical change is determined not by the rate of its spread in the speech community, but rather by the involvement of different surface phenomena which are all simultaneously affected by the grammatical change. Second, the decline of subject-clitic inversion starts as early as the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. At the same time, intonation questions featuring a preverbal subject compensate for this decline. Positing a grammatical change in the twentieth century would leave unexplained this prior development. Third, the use of complex inversion, even though only a minor variant, increases slightly at the time when the rate of subject-clitic inversion starts to drop. If it is true, as Friedemann (1997) and Boeckx (2001), for example, claim, that the postverbal subject pronoun in complex inversion is a morphological agreement marker associated with an interrogative feature borne by the inflectional head, the increase of this variant towards the end of the sixteenth century is an indicator that a structural reanalysis of the postverbal pronoun has already taken place. On our account, according to which the postverbal subject pronouns -tu and -vous are interrogative agreement markers and in this respect not any different from the postverbal interrogative marker -tu, the accelerated decrease of the former and the increase of the latter in the midtwentieth century can be interpreted as a progressing restriction of the contexts in which preverbal null subjects are allowed, in line with Roberts’ (2010) analysis. Overt subject pronouns are used in an increasing number of contexts. Since both null and overt preverbal subject pronouns form part of the same grammatical system, no grammatical restructuring is involved. We would like to add that, importantly, it is also not necessary to invoke the concept of competing grammars (Kroch 1989, 1994) in order to explain the change in usage rates of interrogative variants in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Quebec French. It would in fact be highly problematic if one were to posit the involvement of two or more competing grammars for the sole purpose of accounting for the coexistence of several morphosyntactic variants which, according to the theoretical model adopted by the researcher, cannot be generated by the same grammar, unless it is

48  language acquisition and change possible to provide independent evidence in support of this claim, such as register shifts. The argument would be circular in this case. Furthermore, an account drawing on competing grammars would have to provide an explanation for why it is that speakers abandon the conservative grammar. Are there cues in the linguistic input which serve as negative evidence against the conservative grammar? How could they ever come about in the first place, if the conservative grammar is still in use in the speech community? As concerns yes/no questions in Quebec French, we have shown, first, that both subject-clitic inversion and -tu questions occur within the same diaphasic variety, the vernacular, and, second, that they can be generated by the same grammar. We can now come back to the question of which conclusions can be drawn from the observations concerning the patterns of language change summarized in Table 2.1. The studies by Elsig (2009) and Elsig and Poplack (2006) are based on the evaluation of literary French texts dating from the mid-fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth century, as well as of two corpora of oral vernacular Quebec French, the Récits du français québécois d’autrefois (RFQ) (Poplack and St-Amand 2007) and the Ottawa-Hull French Corpus (OH) (Poplack 1989). The two oral speech corpora allow for an analysis of language change in apparent time since the informants were stratified by age groups, and the patterns of language use can be associated with different age cohorts, as can be seen in Figure 2.3. A certain real-time (trend) component comes into play when comparing the results from the RFQ, which were collected in the 1940s and 1950s (Poplack and St-Amand 2007: 710), with those from the OH, whose recordings date from the early 1980s. These data do not include, however, the tracking of an individual’s language use over time. We can therefore not assert with the desirable certainty whether the language patterns of the individual informants remain stable during their lifespan or whether they possibly move along to a certain extent with the change shown in Figure 2.3. However, the corpus design allows us to exclude stability, age grading and communal change as possible scenarios of this evolution. Stability can be ruled out for trivial reasons. If age grading had been in place, the real-time component would not have revealed any progression of the change. If communal change did play a role, the different age cohorts in each of the two oral speech corpora would have been

language change across the lifespan  49 expected to show the same linguistic behaviour. Figure 2.3 hence shows a clear case of a generational change, with an undetermined component of a potential lifespan change. The main argument we want to bring forward is that the change observable from the nineteenth century onwards does not imply a reorganization of the speakers’ grammar. It is rather an increasing quantitative preference for an overt preverbal subject pronoun, triggering -tu and intonation questions, as opposed to the phonetically zero allomorph which triggers subject-clitic inversion. Overt and zero allomorphs form part of the same grammar, and the choice of one or the other reflects a lexical alternation rather than a switch between two discrete structural options. Following the cognitive model of language change and reanalysis propagated in this book, the lexicon is expected to be malleable well beyond the period of child L1 acquisition during which children’s grammatical knowledge develops. Even though the real-time component of the empirical analysis referred to in this section did not contain a panel component which would allow us to trace over time the individual linguistic development of the speakers, it seems plausible to assume that adults contribute, at least to a certain degree, to a change which relates to quantitative preferences on the lexical level like the replacement of subject-clitic inversion by -tu questions. On the other hand, our discussion in this chapter has shown that none of the available evidence speaks in favour of the claim that change across the lifespan affects grammatical knowledge or even core grammar. Instead, studies investigating language development in the individual point to the contrary, showing a considerable stability not only as regards the patterns of language use after early childhood but even more so in domains pertaining to the ­grammatical knowledge of the speaker. 2.3 Conclusions

In view of these considerations, we conclude that the change discussed in the previous section can clearly be interpreted as an instance of a generational change whose main driving force is the process of transmission, as discussed in Section 2.1. The linguistic and extralinguistic factors conditioning the use of individual

50  language acquisition and change interrogative variants are faithfully transmitted from one generation to the next, and many of them remain unchanged over centuries (see Elsig and Poplack 2006; Elsig 2009). However, -tu questions have gradually intruded into the contexts of subjectclitic inversion, suggesting that they will eventually prevail and possibly displace the latter. Importantly, the change considered here concerns the contexts of language use in which the variants are embedded, but not the nature of the underlying grammatical structure. In other words, the grammar generating -tu questions, subject-clitic inversion and intonation questions has not been affected by a change, and core grammatical change can be excluded as an explanation of the observed facts. This also holds, as we have shown, for the rapidly changing preferences of the Quebec French speakers in the mid-twentieth century concerning variant choice. These too can be interpreted as reflecting a change of quantitative preferences between different lexical items while the underlying core grammatical system remains stable. Our discussion has shown that it is imperative to analyse each instance of a morphosyntactic change carefully before concluding that it involves grammatical change. In some cases, such as the one illustrated in this chapter, this will reveal that the observed change does not actually affect the grammar which allows for the generation of certain variants in a language or variety. Instead, it may affect the way this variant is used. In this latter case, other, non-UG-based explanatory models, like the analytic and methodological tools of variation theory, prove to be more useful to account for the phenomenon under study. NOTES

1. The reverse is, however, not necessarily the case, i.e. a synchronically variable pattern may also be diachronically stable (see Labov 2001b: ch. 3). 2. While UG-based accounts adopting the assumption of a critical period focus on the earliest stages of language acquisition in the first six years of the child’s life, since it is presumably during this age period that core-grammatical properties are acquired, research on generational change within the variationist para-

language change across the lifespan  51 digm considers an age window up to late adolescence as relevant for innovations to emerge at the level of language use. 3. The CPH (Lenneberg 1967; Penfield and Roberts 1959), according to which this process takes place in an early age-defined time window, has been discussed in Chapter 1. 4. The Quebec French examples are extracted from the OttawaHull French corpus (OH) (Poplack 1989), representing oral vernacular from the second half of the twentieth century, and from the Récits du français québécois d’autrefois corpus (RFQ) (Poplack and St-Amand 2007), containing oral speech data from speakers born in the nineteenth century, in particular legends and tales. The codes refer to speaker number and line number in the transcription. 5. The pronoun of the first person singular constitutes an exception, as in the proscribed sentence *chante-je? (see also Gerlach 2002: 31). 6. A possible alternative would be to retain for postverbal vous the analysis of an inverted subject pronoun with its full set of referential features. Vous is used as an address marker of formality. As such, its use might indicate a switch to a grammar of a more formal register of French in which subject-clitic inversion is still a structural option and which lacks the interrogative morpheme -tu. This would offer a different explanation for the virtual incompatibility between preverbal vous and postverbal -tu. The interrogative morpheme would then only occur as postverbal -tu, either with an overt preverbal subject or, in a second person context, with a null subject. This alternative account, however, fails to explain the restriction of subject-clitic inversion to tu and vous. It would instead predict that, as soon as there is a switch to a somewhat more formal register, inversion would occur with all types of weak subject pronouns .This, however, never happens.

chapter 3

The child as the locus and agent of grammatical change

3.1 The language-learning child as the locus of grammatical change

T

he variability of language use, across and within individuals, suggests that we may be witnessing ongoing processes of language change, including changes in the domain of morphosyntax. If, however, we distinguish carefully – as we should do – between, on the one hand, possible change at the level of I-grammar, affecting the internal grammatical knowledge of native speakers of a particular language, and, on the other, change at the level of how this knowledge is put into use in communicative interaction, the question arises as to whether the observed variability indeed reflects change involving restructuring of grammatical knowledge. The discussion in the preceding chapter has led to the conclusion that this never happens across the lifespan of a native speaker of a language. Individuals certainly modify their speech habits in the course of their lives, adapting, for example, patterns of usage to alterations of the norms in the speech community. But no evidence has as yet been provided suggesting that this might affect the mentally represented grammatical knowledge acquired in early childhood; rather, this knowledge seems to be largely resistant to external influences. Assuming this claim to be correct, it inevitably leads to the conclusion that modifications of core properties of grammar can only happen in the course of transmission of grammatical knowledge from one generation to the next. Generational

the child as the locus of change  53 change quite obviously exists, i.e. community use can differ across generations, and such changes may affect morphosyntactic core features such as the setting of the verb movement parameter which determines the position of the finite verb in a clause; cf. Chapter 1. Yet if mature mental grammars are resistant to restructurings of this type, we must turn to developing grammars in order to be able to explain phenomena of this kind. Note that this line of reasoning is based on the assumption that the results of psycholinguistic research can foster insights into the mechanisms underlying diachronic change. Although the relevance of acquisition research for explanations of diachronic change has long been acknowledged, it happens only very rarely that studies in historical linguistics actually take such insights into account. This is truly surprising, given that speech communities and consequently also the grammar of the language shared by the members of such a community are idealized abstract objects represented in the mental grammars of the individuals who constitute the speech community. In other words, if changes occur, they necessarily affect mental representations of grammatical knowledge. From this it follows that the locus of change is ultimately the individual, and every hypothesis about principles determining the properties of grammars or the processes leading to their restructuring must necessarily conform to the principles and mechanisms which shape the acquisition, representation and processing of linguistic knowledge in the mind. Although this requirement imposes tight constraints on the already notoriously difficult task of finding explanations for linguistic change, it opens, in fact, a window of opportunity. Given that the cognitive mechanisms underlying the construction and development of mental grammars have not changed over the past centuries – arguably not even over the 130,000 or more years since the evolution of human language – insights gained by contemporary studies can be applied to analyses of instances of possible grammatical change in the past; i.e. by examining the present, we can explain what happened in the past1 (Labov 1975). At the same time, it is safe to assume that phenomena never observed in ongoing acquisition processes are unlikely to have played a significant role in the past. From this again it follows that if it is correct to assume that alterations of core properties of grammar happen exclusively

54  language acquisition and change in the course of transmission of grammatical knowledge from one generation to the next, the main locus of grammatical change is the language-learning child, and mechanisms of change must be defined in terms of what is possible in L1 acquisition. As briefly alluded to above, this idea that children acquiring an L1 might be the principal agents of grammatical change is not entirely new. It goes back at least as far as to Paul (1880). Es liegt auf der Hand, dass die Vorgänge bei der Spracherlernung von der allerhöchsten Wichtigkeit für die Erklärung der Veränderung des Sprachusus sind, dass sie die wichtigste Ursache für diese Veränderung abgeben. (Paul 19205: 31)2 The implications of these claims for theories of language and of diachronic change are, of course, not identical in modern theorizing and in Hermann Paul’s approach to language.3 Still, Paul identified the ‘mental grammar’ of the individual as the object of linguistics, rather than such constructs of descriptive linguistics as ‘language’ or ‘dialect’, which is not dissimilar to contemporary thinking in a generative framework. But whereas the theory of UG postulates the existence of a set of universal principles, some invariant, others parameterized, accounting for a core of structural properties shared by all idiolects, dialects and languages, Paul viewed mental grammars as entities which are constantly changing, in every act of speaking or hearing. From this perspective, what needs to be explained is not how it is at all possible that core properties of grammars can change, but rather how there can possibly be a common core of structures across the idiolects of a linguistic community. According to Paul, this is primarily the result of linguistic contact among individual speakers. Almost a century later, Andersen (1973) proposed an influential model of diachronic change which shares crucial assumptions with the approach developed by Paul. Starting from the uncontroversial observation that children do not have direct access to the mental grammars underlying the language use of their parents and caretakers, one inevitably arrives at the conclusion that they must reconstruct their parents’ grammars. In doing so, children can only rely on the evidence encountered in the linguistic productions

the child as the locus of change  55 of the adults and on the guidance of the innate LMC, most importantly UG. In other words, UG constrains the grammatical properties of the linguistic productions of the earlier generation as well as the reconstruction process in the course of grammatical development by the subsequent one. But the very notion of grammatical change implies that speakers of a later generation develop a system which differs in at least one aspect from the one underlying the linguistic productions of the previous generation. In other words, the newly acquired grammars deviate from those of the previous generations, and each state of the developing system is subject to learnability conditions. It thus appears that grammatical change can only happen if the language-learning children interpret the cues contained in the primary data differently, as compared to the grammars underlying the speech production of the adults. This amounts to saying that the children acquiring an L1 must fail to reconstruct the target grammatical system in at least one point; the new system thus is the result of a reanalysis of parts of the target grammar. In sum, the task of explaining diachronic language change has largely been transferred to language acquisition studies, since grammatical reconstruction and reanalysis are processes happening in the course of acquisition. From this, in turn, it follows that the plausibility of the scenario suggested as an explanation of grammatical change needs to be tested against what is known about the mechanisms of language development. As we hope to be able to demonstrate in what follows, this scenario fares very well in that it confirms the important role of language learners as agents of grammatical change: since core properties of grammar cannot be altered in mature grammars, such alterations must happen in the course of transmission of grammatical knowledge, i.e. in the course of acquisition. Yet problems arise, surprisingly perhaps, with the claim that this seems to require partial failure of transmission and reanalysis of the target system by L1 learners. This assumption leads to what has been referred to as the paradox of grammatical change or ‘the logical problem of language change’ (Clark and Roberts 1993; Niyogi and Berwick 1995; see also Brandner and Ferraresi 1996). The paradox results from the fact that the PLD must, by definition, conform in all crucial properties to those of the grammars of the speakers (parents and

56  language acquisition and change caretakers) who produced them – yet on the basis of this kind of input, the children’s LAD with UG as its central component will necessarily constrain the developmental process in such a way that it reconstructs a grammar which is, again in all crucial aspects, identical to the one of the previous generation. It thus seems that, for principled reasons, grammatical reanalysis in the transmission of grammatical knowledge from one generation to the next should never happen. If we turn to empirical findings from L1 acquisition research, this suspicion is confirmed, for one finds virtually no support for the idea that developing grammars differ in core properties from those of their caretakers. Quite to the contrary, L1 research offers unambiguous evidence showing that healthy children always develop a full grammatical competence in the language to which they are exposed, irrespective of individual properties like intelligence, personality, etc. or of particularities of the learning environment, e.g. social settings, communicative styles of parents, and so forth. Although variables of this type determine the linguistic skills of individuals and thus the ways in which they use their language, native speakers never acquire only an incomplete knowledge of the grammar of their language. This statement should not come as a surprise if one considers the tasks of the language-learning child. The acquisition tasks are determined by the nature of human language and by the knowledge sources accessible to the language-learning child. If language is a species-specific, genetically transmitted capacity, it should be possible to identify a common knowledge base defining the shared properties of all possible human languages. But in order to account for the variability in the way these properties are instantiated in the various languages, the variation space tolerated across languages must also be determined. In the theoretical framework adopted here (cf. Chapter 1), UG, comprising invariant as well as parameterized grammatical principles, is conceived as a theory about this knowledge base. Moreover, UG is claimed to be the central component of the LAD and, more generally, of the LMC. Yet this covers only part of what needs to be achieved in language acquisition, for, quite obviously, not every property of a given grammar must conform to principles of UG. Rather, many grammatical phenomena are language-specific, representing particularities of individual

the child as the locus of change  57 languages about which UG has nothing to say. Consequently, the language-learning child cannot rely on UG in these instances but must learn them inductively. In this case, the most important knowledge source is the child’s linguistic environment, i.e. the PLD encountered in the input. This is to say that children must draw on at least two knowledge sources, UG and the PLD, applying two very different types of learning, namely the instantiation or triggering of innate knowledge provided by UG, as compared to input-based learning, i.e. learning in the more traditional sense, when relying on the PLD. In fact, since UG comprises invariant as well as parameterized principles, children face at least three types of learning tasks. Only one of these, namely inductive learning of properties specific to a given language, can be expected to result in a considerable amount of variability in the knowledge acquired by different learners, depending on such factors as frequency of occurrence of a form in the input, processing complexity required in perception, ­learning and use of a construction, linguistic skills of the learners, and so forth; cf. Meisel (2011a: 170ff.). When it comes to the instantiation of invariant universal principles, on the other hand, we do not expect to encounter any variation, either across learners or over time, given that all natural languages must conform to these principles, if our theoretical assumptions are correct. The latter type of learning task explains the uniformity, rate and ultimate success of L1 development. It thus constitutes part of the logical problem of language change, rather than contributing to its solution. As for the learning of constructions which do not fall within the realm of UG and which are particular to specific languages, variation is indeed expected to occur in the course of diachronic change, but it does not concern the grammatical properties with which we are concerned here, i.e. the ones characterizing typological differences between languages – in other words, grammatical core properties. From a diachronic perspective, changes of these core properties are most likely to happen in the domain of parameterized principles of UG, since the theoretical notion of parameter has been introduced precisely in order to define the variation space tolerated by UG across linguistic systems, synchronically as well as diachronically. For the language-learning child, fixing parameter

58  language acquisition and change values represents the third type of acquisition task, and it is of particular interest for our discussion because parameter setting must rely on information contained in the PLD as well as on the a priori knowledge provided by UG. It is for this reason that parameter setting differs from learning in the usual sense of the term, for it does not require incorporation of new information into the previously acquired knowledge: the relevant information is already part of the knowledge, prior to experience. In order to be able to set the parameter to one of the values offered by UG, the learner needs to identify the triggering evidence in the structural properties underlying the available input data. Parameter setting thus happens at the interface of a priori and acquired knowledge. Taking into account the challenges which children are facing when dealing with these different acquisition tasks, it should become apparent why we stated that explanations of diachronic change in terms of transmission failure are not supported by research analysing the development of core properties of grammars. Quite to the contrary, as mentioned above, studies on L1 development have shown that children typically attain full grammatical competence in the languages to which they are exposed, thus supporting the idea of an underlying developmental logic. In fact, there exists a broad consensus among child language researchers that L1 development exhibits the following characteristics: (i) ultimate success, i.e. all individuals develop full knowledge (I-language) of the target systems; (ii) fast rate of acquisition, i.e. large parts of the grammatical knowledge are acquired within one or two years; and (iii) uniformity of the course of acquisition, not only across individuals acquiring the same language, but also across languages; cf. Guasti (2002) or Meisel (2011a). These three properties suggest the existence of a guiding force of L1 development, and the LAD is a good candidate when looking for an explanation of the underlying logic of L1 acquisition. However, a solution of the paradox of grammatical change implies that this guiding force does not always lead to full success. Since this possibility is excluded by definition in the instantiation of invariant principles of UG, it can only happen – if at all – in parameter setting, i.e. in instances where innate and acquired knowledge interact when learners extract triggering evidence for a specific parameter value from the input data. The question to be asked, then, is whether

the child as the locus of change  59 parameters can be set to a wrong value in monolingual L1 or bilingual L1 (2L1) development. In view of the fact that this is a rather crucial issue for a theory of language acquisition, it is surprising to find that it is rarely addressed in the literature on monolingual acquisition. One reason for this apparent lack of interest in parameter mis-setting may be the repeatedly mentioned success of L1 learners. Yet ultimate success does not exclude the possibility that a parameter be set to a value different from the one required by the target system, as long as it is an option tolerated by UG. What appears to speak against a temporary or permanent missetting of parameters is the idea of ‘unambiguous triggers’; cf. Fodor (1998). What this means is that for every possible setting of a given parameter, there exists just one structural configuration triggering it; see Meisel (1995) for a summary of arguments supporting this idea. Note, however, that this need not entail the impossibility of incorrect, i.e. target deviant settings. If, for example, the surface properties of the PLD allow for competing grammatical analyses, these structurally ambiguous data can in principle contain more than one ‘unique’ trigger for different settings (Clark and Roberts 1993; Kroch 2001; Roberts 2007; see the discussion in Chapter 4). Provided the child learner arrived at only one of the possible analyses which happens not to be the one required by the adult grammar, the result would indeed be an instance of erroneous parameter setting triggered by an unambiguous trigger. A possible example of a structural configuration of this type is the surface SVO word order which is generated by grammars of verb-second as well as of non-verb-second languages. The underlying structures differ, however, in that the finite verb occupies a higher position in V2 languages (e.g. the head of CP), than in non-V2 languages (e.g. the head of TP). If the input data did not contain unambiguous evidence for a V2 grammar (e.g. XPVS, according to Clark and Roberts 1993), children might opt for the non-V2 setting of the parameter. Still, it is doubtful whether the scenario sketched out here captures the reality of L1 acquisition. Truly ambiguous sets of data may not really exist, at least not with respect to the triggering of parameter settings, because the PLD always seem to contain disambiguating information, as well. In order to distinguish between verb-second and non-verb-second languages, to mention this

60  language acquisition and change example again, learners can rely on constructions where the finite verb appears in third position, as in ADV-SVXsequences, which are not tolerated by V2 grammars. Unfortunately, only very few studies explicitly address the question of whether such situations actually arise in L1 acquisition; but see Fritzenschaft, GawlitzekMaiwald and Tracy (1990), Müller (1994), or Tracy (1991, 1995). We will return to this issue briefly in the next section of this chapter and, in more detail, in Chapter 4. For the time being, we can conclude that the available evidence from L1 acquisition research does not seem to support the hypothesis claiming that alterations of core properties of grammars happen in the process of grammatical reconstruction in the course of transmission of knowledge across generations. In fact, acquisition research has demonstrated convincingly that the LAD is of a rather robust nature. Yet we know, on the other hand, that such changes do happen and that they do not occur across the lifespan of adult speakers. This can be seen as the other aspect of the paradox, obliging us to reconsider the role of acquisition in diachronic change. One way to do this is to ask whether it is possible to identify particular conditions under which the LAD might fail, after all. We will explore some such possibilities in the following section. 3.2 Transmission failure as the solution of the logical problem of language change?

The robustness of the LAD is a well-established fact in acquisition research, where it has been evidenced by a wealth of results from studies on monolingual as well as bilingual children. It is strongly supported by the observation that children acquire their L1s with relative ease and successfully even in less than optimal settings, e.g. when the amount of exposure to the ambient languages is significantly reduced, as is necessarily the case for bilingual children. In fact, many of these investigations were triggered by the amazement about the observation that children are able to develop a native competence in every language to which they are exposed in a surprisingly short period of time and without being taught or coached, merely by being engaged in meaningful interactions with their caretakers and their peers. And if these speak more than one

the child as the locus of change  61 language, children normally acquire a native competence in each of them. Eventually, research interests shifted and focused more on the limits of the LMC. This is where the current discussion must pick up, reversing the habitual perspective on the learner. Rather than asking what enables children to acquire successfully the adult grammatical system, we must try to explain the possibility of unsuccessful or, rather, partially successful acquisition, if change is to be defined as ‘a failure in the transmission across time of linguistic features’ (Kroch 2001: 699). The question thus is whether factors can be identified which are likely to cause transmission failure to happen. Some such factors have been proposed in the literature on diachronic change, and the most important ones will be discussed in more detail in the following chapters, namely structural ambiguity of the PLD (see Chapter 4) and language contact resulting in conflicting evidence for children acquiring their language(s) in multilingual settings (see Chapter 5). The goal to be pursued in this discussion is twofold: on the one hand, the arguments presented in diachronic studies, concerning the respective roles of ambiguity and contact as causal factors for language change, will be critically reviewed. At the same time, we will ask whether they can plausibly be postulated as explanatory factors triggering reanalyses in the transmission of grammatical knowledge. The testing ground for the latter claim is the various types of language acquisition, i.e. monolingual L1 and 2L1 development as well as child L2 (cL2) and adult L2 (aL2) acquisition. An examination of these acquisition types should reveal which factors can explain diachronic change in core areas of grammar. It is in this sense that we intend to rely on an analysis of the present in order to explain the past. Before turning to the discussion of structural ambiguity and of language contact, we want to address very briefly another possible cause of grammatical change which is frequently mentioned in historical linguistics, namely changing frequencies in the use of particular constructions. The basic idea is that certain construction types may be used with decreasing frequency over time, possibly for stylistic or sociolinguistic reasons. If the pattern in question contains the structural information required to set a parameter to the target value, children might fail to fix the parameter on the correct value, once the frequency of occurrence of this surface

62  language acquisition and change pattern drops below a ‘trigger threshold’, i.e. if the frequency of use does not reach a ‘sufficient number of tokens’ (Randall 1992: 100). In what follows, we will briefly mention a number of reasons why this proposal, although not implausible in itself, cannot be maintained in the present context as a possible explanation of parametric change. First of all, no one has as yet been able to determine at least approximately what might qualify as a ‘sufficient number’ of occurrences. Parameter theory stipulates that minimal exposure to the data will be sufficient for the setting of a parameter. In fact, a single example encountered in the input could, in principle, suffice, but it is evident that this strong idealization cannot be maintained under realistic learning conditions. For a more exhaustive discussion of this issue we have to refer to Fodor (1998) or to Lightfoot (1991: 14), who reminds us that occasional exposure to divergent forms, e.g. a different dialect spoken by a house-guest or the language use of an L2 learner, ‘normally has no noticeable effect on a child’s linguistic development’. Still, the above-mentioned difference between learning in the traditional sense and triggering of genetically transmitted knowledge, as in the case of parameter setting, is an essential one which needs to be taken into account; see Carroll (1989). Learning requires more frequent exposure to the input, probably also over a longer period of time, and possibly it must rely on more salient data. It nevertheless results in more intra- and interindividual variation due to trial-and-error procedures, and it may still lead to inadequate preliminary hypotheses. Triggering differs from learning in each of these points; it is predicted to happen faster and to require less frequent and less simple input data, and the developmental pattern is expected to be more uniform across individuals. Note, however, that this does not inform us about how much exposure to the PLD is ultimately required. In other words, although all researchers who explicitly address this issue seem to agree that a minimum number of occurrences is a necessary prerequisite for parameter setting to be possible, neither principled arguments from language acquisition theories nor empirical evidence provided by analyses of child language enable us to estimate minimum frequencies. We know from experience that not every form present in the input automatically triggers the setting of the

the child as the locus of change  63 parameter for which it is relevant, that there is no evidence for repeated switching of parameter values, and that acquisition via parameter setting, although faster than inductive learning, does take some time, after all. But all this does not enable us to suggest a number reflecting at least approximately the threshold level. All one can conclude with a reasonable degree of confidence is that triggering elements need not be ‘high-frequency’ phenomena, contrary to what is claimed by Truscott and Wexler (1989: 160). Rather, triggering data must be of a sort which may plausibly be expected to be accessible to every child. But this has little or nothing to do with frequency. It merely means that the relevant information should not be contained only in what Lightfoot (1991) calls ‘exotic’ contexts. In this sense, it is reasonable to ask for ‘robust’ data, i.e. the triggering structure should typically occur in child-directed speech, it must be analysable by means of not yet fully developed grammars, and so forth. Frequency of occurrence, however, is not relevant; see Meisel (1995). In sum, in view of the fact that it is not possible to quantify the required minimum of occurrences for a structural property to be ‘learnable’, at least not for parameterized properties of grammars, the claim that grammatical change is caused by a decreasing frequency of use of a particular phenomenon cannot be substantiated. All attempts to explain diachronic change in this fashion, even if based on empirical observations, are thus futile. Lightfoot (1997), for example, argued in an analysis of changing word order patterns that a frequency of 17 per cent is not sufficient to trigger the setting of a parameter to a specific value, whereas a frequency of 30 per cent of occurrences does seem to have the expected effect. He concludes that ‘somewhere between 17% and 30% is a phase transition’ (Lightfoot 1997: 179). This line of argument is highly problematic. Not only is this figure much too high, considering what acquisition studies tell us about parameter setting, but also it is not possible to generalize from one particular case to developmental patterns, unless one can motivate this by means of sound theoretical deduction. Moreover, even if we were able to determine a ‘trigger threshold’ for L1 learners, the data available in diachronic studies do not provide the kind of information necessary to do so, for we would need to know how frequently a particular construction appears in

64  language acquisition and change child-directed speech, a kind of information which can normally not be extracted from historical documents. There is, in fact, no justification for the implicit claim that the data available for diachronic studies, especially medieval texts, might reveal reliable information about frequency of use in colloquial language, let alone child-directed speech. We therefore conclude that it is not possible to rely on alleged changes in frequency of particular phenomena in the PLD as a cause for grammatical reanalysis. Methodological problems make it virtually impossible to develop an argument of this type. But principled reasons also speak against the assumption that decreasing frequency alone, i.e. quantitative alterations, could be a sufficient cause for restructuring. Rather, the analysis of L1 developmental processes suggests that such effects require qualitative modifications, i.e. the grammatical nature of the input data needs to have changed as well. Unless the PLD contain some information about alternative options, the child has no other choice but to continue analysing the previous, i.e. the infrequent triggering data. Whether changes in frequency might cause reanalysis if reinforced by one of the other two factors, namely structural ambiguity or the presence of more than one grammatical system in the linguistic environment of the learner, still remains to be seen. Let us thus briefly consider these two factors from the perspective of language acquisition, before dealing with them in more detail in the next two chapters, referring to arguments offered and empirical evidence provided by studies of diachronic change. As for structural ambiguity, we will argue that hypotheses implying that it is a major causal factor triggering grammatical reanalysis are problematic in a number of ways. Most importantly, in order for it to be considered as a plausible solution for the developmental problem, such a claim cannot be based merely on the possibility of assigning more than one structural interpretation to a given surface pattern. Rather, it must predict in a non-ad hoc fashion which of the possible analyses learners will prefer. And not only this: it must also explain why the innovative option is the preferred one, rather than the one favoured by the grammar of the previous generation, for there would be no change otherwise. One possible solution to this problem would be to argue that faced with an ambiguous construction children opt for the less

the child as the locus of change  65 complex or simpler structural interpretation. As should be easily apparent, however, the force of this argument depends entirely on the definition of what can count as more or less complex or simple. Since these notions are intended to explain acquisition processes, we expect them to refer to acquisition difficulty or processing complexity, as defined, for example, by Processability Theory; cf. Pienemann and Keßler (2011). Surprisingly, however, the solutions offered in studies on historical linguistics attempt to explain the preference for one of the options in terms of principles of UG (Economy of Derivation); cf. Roberts (1993), among others. Under this approach, the Least Effort Strategy (LES), which is intended to explain the preference for the ‘simpler’ of two or more possible structural interpretations of ambiguous constructions, is defined in syntactic terms, referring to the length of syntactic chains. This can hardly be regarded as satisfactory, for it is common knowledge in linguistics and psycholinguistics, at least since the debate on the role of ‘derivational complexity’ in the 1970s, that increasing structural complexity does not necessarily result in more complex processing or learning mechanisms; cf. Valian (1997), among others. If, however, one wants to make such an argument, alleged learning or processing principles need to be defined in terms of learnability or processing considerations, and such claims must be shown to be empirically corroborated by psycholinguistic and acquisition research. As long as this kind of evidence is not provided, explanations of learners’ implicit choice in case of structural ambiguity, referring to the principle of economy, are mere stipulations. But even if it should turn out that a preference for structurally less complex interpretations can be motivated in psycholinguistic terms, a further problem arises which is still more important from the perspective of language acquisition. If the endeavour to reduce structural complexity is a decisive factor in grammatical development, one would not expect to find that the less economical option would ever be chosen by the language-learning child. Yet it is clearly the case that this occurs, as for example in acquiring the V2 effect: although verb-second languages exhibit the kind of surface ambiguity mentioned above, movement of the finite verb to a position above TP, e.g. to the head of CP as stipulated by the standard analysis of verb-second effects, is acquired without apparent difficulties and during a very early developmental phase. One might

66  language acquisition and change be tempted to surmise that language learners initially entertain the hypothesis that the finite verb raises only as far as TP, thus opting for the more ‘economical’ solution, and that they reanalyse their grammars subsequently, driven by further experience with the PLD. However, no empirical evidence has as yet been presented which would support such a proposal, and the fact that the V2 effect emerges particularly early in the course of L1 acquisition (see, for example, Clahsen 1988) speaks strongly against such a possibility. Moreover, this proposal must deal with yet another and indeed quite serious acquisition problem, since the ‘unlearning’ of acquired grammatical knowledge is a notoriously difficult problem for which no satisfactory solution has been proposed as yet. In other words, psycholinguistic considerations do not support the idea of economy-driven change as a convincing solution for the problem of explaining morphosyntactic change. In view of the rather serious objections raised against this hypothesis, it seems reasonable to explore the possibility of overcoming at least some of them by combining the ambiguity with the frequency argument. In other words, the question is whether significantly increasing frequencies in using a particular construction in the child’s linguistic environment, rather than its ‘simplicity’, could possibly lead the child to opt for a different setting of a parameter if this construction contained the relevant triggering information. But even if modified in this fashion, this suggestion is still flawed by a number of weaknesses. First of all, it could only be considered seriously if it were possible to identify an independent reason for what might cause such shifts in frequency to happen. This has been pointed out by Kaiser (2002: 114 ff), and we will not engage in speculations about what these reasons might be. Second, it should be noted that the argument only holds if the most frequently used pattern itself is not ambiguous, for otherwise both parameter values are favoured by the increasing number of uses. Third and most importantly, even if they appear less frequently in child-directed speech, constructions containing unambiguous evidence favouring the setting of a parameter to the value required by the grammar of the previous generation are unlikely to disappear abruptly and completely. They will therefore continue to be available in the primary data, and the child would have to ignore this evidence. The latter assumption, however, is in conflict with

the child as the locus of change  67 what research on L1 development has shown to be the case, namely that high frequency of occurrence is not a necessary requirement for children to be able to set parameters. In fact, this is precisely what has been claimed above to be the essential difference between learning and triggering. Yet, as has been argued by Fodor (1998), in the case of structural ambiguity, the acquisition mechanism refrains from fixing the parameter on one of the possible values until unambiguous evidence is encountered. In sum, if certain constructions allow for more than one grammatical analysis, our current understanding of processes of L1 acquisition suggests that the child will not be enticed to opt for the simpler solution but rather will opt for the one favoured by unambiguous evidence, even if the latter happens to be used significantly less frequently. We should add that it is not only insights from L1 acquisition research that speak against explanations of morphosyntactic change which attribute a decisive role to structural ambiguity. From the perspective of syntactic theory, this proposal does not fare much better. In fact, Hale (1998) as well as Lightfoot (2000) argue, referring to the choice between overt and covert verb movement, that reanalysis cannot be explained in terms of the LES. Hale (1998: 13) observes that in order for learners to be able to assign the simplest parse to an input string, they need to posit a numeration, determine that this numeration can converge at LF, and posit the appropriate features on the functional heads, allowing convergence at PF. He (1998: 14) concludes: ‘As Chomsky (1995: 227) has pointed out, Economy of Derivation is relevant only to the evaluation of derivations involving the same numeration. It cannot, therefore, be invoked to choose between these two competing hypotheses since they involve different numerations.’ If this observation is correct – and we indeed believe that it is – the ambiguity argument should be abandoned as an explanation of diachronic change in core domains of grammar. We will return to this issue in Chapter 4 where we discuss some of the hypotheses on diachronic change which nevertheless rely on this argument. The last factor which has been suggested as a major cause of parametric change in diachronic syntax and which is to be considered briefly from the perspective of acquisition research is language contact. It is probably the most frequently mentioned causal factor in historical linguistics, and we will therefore return to this

68  language acquisition and change discussion in Chapter 5 and to its psycholinguistic implications in Chapter 6. At this point, we merely want to introduce this topic and highlight some problems related to it. To the extent that language contact is indeed of crucial importance for explanations of diachronic grammatical change, this is a direct consequence of what has been stated earlier in this section. The LAD has been found to be sufficiently robust to deal successfully with low-frequency and ambiguous data, enabling children to reconstruct fully the grammatical systems underlying the language use of their caretakers, even under less than optimal circumstances. It is therefore plausible to hypothesize that grammatical reanalyses are triggered by positive evidence. In other words, the cues causing learners to reanalyse the PLD and to construct grammars differing in at least one crucial property from those of the previous generation are most likely to be present in the PLD. This is quite obviously the case in bilingual settings. When children are exposed to two languages, facing the task of acquiring two grammatical systems simultaneously, they necessarily encounter information about alternative parameter values in the input. It is at least imaginable that learners perceive this as an instance of conflicting evidence. Considerations of this sort are undoubtedly the rationale for postulating language contact as a major, if not the decisive, causal factor of diachronic change. Unfortunately, studies in historical linguistics frequently fail to address the question of which psycholinguistic mechanisms might be involved here. In fact, they rarely distinguish between children and adults as potential agents of change in situations of language contact. Those who do acknowledge that this is only likely to happen in the course of transmission of grammatical knowledge across generations tend to assume that conflicting evidence in the input data is a sufficient reason for children to incorporate fragments (e.g. specific parameter values) of one grammar into the other. Lightfoot (1999: 12), for example, stipulated that children in this kind of setting would ‘converge on a single grammar . . . in a kind of creolization’. The plausibility of this hypothesis thus depends entirely on the well-foundedness of the implicit assumption that learners exposed to two or more languages will either assemble structural properties of these grammatical systems into a unitary system (fusion of grammar) or ­transfer particular features of one grammar into the other one.

the child as the locus of change  69 Interestingly, these two issues, namely early differentiation of grammatical systems and the nature and amount of cross-linguistic interaction in the course of 2L1 development, are the two most thoroughly studied and most frequently discussed problems in research on child bilingualism. We can therefore refer to a large body of studies carried out since the early 1980s if we want to know whether fusion or transfer are indeed plausible explanations of grammatical change triggered by language contact. The fact that studies in historical linguistics have ignored this type of work almost completely reflects the deplorable fragmentation of research in the domain of language development. At this point, we must refrain from summarizing even the most pertinent results from studies on the acquisition of bilingualism; see Meisel (2001) for a critical overview of work on the problems at stake here or De Houwer (2009) for a more comprehensive summary of research on child bilingualism. We will return to some of these issues in Chapter 6. What can already be retained here is that the available evidence shows that fusion of grammatical systems or creolization is not what normally happens in the simultaneous acquisition of two or more languages. Rather, it demonstrates that children are capable of differentiating the grammatical systems from early on. In fact, conflicting evidence on parameter values has been argued to be a major cause for the differentiation of systems and for not treating this type of variability as a property of a single system; see Meisel (1993). In other words, this represents yet another bit of evidence supporting the claim that the LAD is an efficient and robust learning device. It is, in fact, an endowment for multilingualism, enabling children to differentiate grammatical systems from very early on. At the same time, these findings speak strongly against the stipulation that language contact will result in grammatical fusion in 2L1 acquisition. As we will see later on (cf. Chapter 6), bilingual children are also able to develop their linguistic systems independently, thus avoiding alterations of their grammatical knowledge as a result of cross-linguistic interaction. All this amounts to saying that we are forced to conclude that none of the factors considered in this chapter are likely causes of grammatical change in the course of intergenerational language transmission. Importantly, scenarios involving language

70  language acquisition and change contact do not actually represent instances of transmission failure, anyway, since they imply that the cues triggering change are, in fact, present in the PLD and are analysed correctly by the children. Therefore, if fusion or cross-linguistic interaction of grammars did happen, the ‘failure’ of the learners would consist of attributing specific grammatical properties to the wrong system rather than of a target-deviant reanalysis of the PLD. As we have seen, this is not the case in monolingual or multilingual L1 development, but as we will argue in Chapters 5 and 6, it can occur in cL2 or aL2 learning. 3.3 Conclusions

The goal of this chapter has been to determine which processes and mechanisms operating in L1 development can be evoked as possible explanations of diachronic grammatical change. Given that core properties of grammar like those resulting from the setting of parameterized principles of UG cannot be altered during adulthood, language acquisition must necessarily play a crucial role in grammatical change. This has led scholars of historical linguistics to hypothesize that the language-learning child is the principal agent of change, and some have predicted that the kind of change discussed here must necessarily be the result of transmission failure. This is to say that children must reconstruct the grammatical system underlying the language use of the previous generation in the course of intergenerational transmission of grammatical knowledge, but they may fail to be entirely successful in doing this; instead, they reanalyse particular constructions and set parameters to different values from those of the grammars of their parents and caretakers. The plausibility of this line of argument depends, however, on whether transmission failure can be shown actually to happen in L1 development, for only what is possible in contemporary acquisition processes can reasonably be invoked as an explanation of processes which happened in the past. We have tried to show that insights from L1 research do not, in fact, support the idea of transmission failure affecting core properties of grammars. Paradoxically, the demonstrated robustness of the human LMC

the child as the locus of change  71 in general, and of the domain-specific LAD in particular, turns out to be the major obstacle to explaining morphosyntactic change in terms of transmission failure in L1 acquisition. It is much less probable and occurs less frequently than is commonly assumed in diachronic linguistics. The LAD can, for example, cope with a significant reduction of input, and it is not easily misled by ambiguous data or by triggering information from more than one linguistic system. More specifically, we have argued that neither changes in the frequency of use of particular constructions, nor structural ambiguity of constructions or exposure to conflicting evidence in contact situations, suffice as explanations of changes of parameter settings. The evidence scrutinized may not be sufficient to rule out definitely that morphosyntactic change can be enhanced by one of these factors. But it should have become apparent that explanations of diachronic change should at least not be in conflict with what is known about mechanisms of grammatical development, and that is not sufficient to entertain stereotypical notions of acquisition. For the time being, we are led to conclude that the factors scrutinized here do not provide plausible explanations of change when examined from the acquisition perspective. Dialect or language contact, for example, may indeed be a necessary cause of grammatical change (see Thomason and Kaufman 1988), but in view of the results of extensive research on L1 development in bilingual settings, one arrives at the conclusion that it is certainly not a sufficient condition for reanalysis to happen. We might add that the insight that grammatical systems are considerably less prone to radical changes than is commonly assumed is not entirely new in historical linguistics. From a generative perspective, this amounts to saying that parametric changes are not as common as had previously been claimed; see Kaiser (1998, 2002). The Inertial Theory (Keenan 2002; Longobardi 2001) even asserts that syntactic change should, ideally, not happen at all and must therefore be caused by external factors. Yet since we know that, in the reality of the history of languages, such changes do arise, we must continue to search for these factors and for possible internal ones as well. We will thus discuss the role of structural ambiguity and of language contact in more detail in the following two chapters, and we will return to simultaneous and successive bilingual acquisition in Chapter 6, thus continuing our quest for causal

72  language acquisition and change factors of grammatical reanalysis resulting in ­ morphosyntactic change. NOTES

1. This corresponds to the Uniformitarian Principle; cf. Labov (1994: 21–3), who refers to the discussion of this principle by Christy (1983). According to Christy, it was Whitney (1867: 253) who first applied the Uniformitarian Principle, originally proposed for geology, to the study of languages. Christy (1983: 82) also mentions that Brugmann (1897: 1–2) had already referred to Whitney’s contribution. 2. ‘It is obvious that the language-learning processes are of prime importance for the explanation of changes in language use, that they represent the primary cause for these changes’ (our translation). 3. For a more detailed discussion of these views, see Murray (2010).

chapter 4

Structural ambiguity as a possible trigger of syntactic change

I

f we relate syntactic change to child language acquisition, we need to identify possible factors that trigger a reanalysis of the input. In generative theories, ambiguity has been argued to be such a triggering factor, and it has been attributed a central role as a possible cause of diachronic change. In this chapter, we will discuss some of these proposals and their application to a specific case of syntactic change, namely the loss of verb-second placement in Old French. We will show that the assumption that structural ambiguity is the principal cause of word order change in the history of French is problematic from an empirical as well as a theoretical perspective. We will further discuss principled arguments against parametric ambiguity as a useful concept for the explanation of syntactic change. Section 4.1 introduces the notion of structural ambiguity and contrasts it with parametric ambiguity as it is generally understood in theories of language acquisition and diachronic change. Section 4.2 presents a number of generative proposals that refer to parametric ambiguity as a possible source of diachronic change (e.g. Clark and Roberts 1993; Kroch 2001; Yang 2002; Roberts 2007). Since the loss of V2 properties in Old French has played a central role in contributions aiming at supporting the claim that ambiguous input is an important trigger of diachronic change, we will take a closer look at this phenomenon. Section 4.3 provides arguments against parametric ambiguity as a driving force in diachronic change. Section 4.4 concludes this chapter.

74  language acquisition and change 4.1 Syntactic ambiguity and diachronic reanalysis

Syntactic ambiguity generally refers to syntactic structures whose surface properties allow for more than one interpretation. Sentence (1), for instance, is a classic case of ambiguity, because it can be assigned two different meanings: (1)

I saw the boy with the binoculars.

(1) can be interpreted either as meaning that the boy has binoculars ([the boy [with the binoculars]]) or as stating that the speaker has binoculars ([saw [the boy] [with the binoculars]]). The ambiguity of (1) results from the possibility of interpreting the PP with the binoculars either as being an attribute to the noun phrase the boy or as an adverbial phrase adjoined to the main clause. Structural ambiguity can therefore be seen as a reflection of the so called principle of compositionality or Frege-Principle, according to which the meaning of a compound expression is a function of the meanings of its subparts and of the syntactic operations by which they are combined (Frege 1892; Partee 1984). Properly speaking, the syntactic structure of the sentence is itself not ambiguous, for each syntactic derivation has only one interpretation. It is the possibility of assigning two different structural descriptions with two distinct interpretations to one and the same surface string of words that turns the sentence ambiguous. In (1) each of the possible structural descriptions is related to its own interpretation, and each interpretation has its own structural description. One can thus say there is a 1:1 mapping of (syntactic) form and meaning, although the sentence is perceived as ambiguous. Native speakers of the language are able to discriminate the two structures and to assign the respective interpretations to each of them – they are able to disambiguate the surface chain because they (implicitly) know that sentence (1) can have two different structures and two different truth values. Therefore, syntactic structures are in fact not ambiguous for adult native speakers, for these are able to assign the appropriate grammatical structure(s) to each sentence of their L1. Structural ambiguity as described so far refers to the availability

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  75 of two interpretations of one surface string. However, as correctly pointed out by Harris and Campbell (1995: 71), what is referred to as structural ambiguity in theories of language change ‘is an ambiguity of a sort slightly different from the usual understanding of it’. With respect to diachronic change, structural ambiguity is understood as a prerequisite for syntactic reanalysis. It refers to the potential of a sentence to be attributed two different structural descriptions and does not necessarily imply two different meanings. Reanalysis is defined as ‘a mechanism which changes the underlying structure of a syntactic pattern and which does not involve any modification of its surface manifestation’ (Harris and Campbell 1995: 6).1 It introduces a new structure when a sentence has a second potential structure. One example given by Harris and Campbell (1995) refers to a change in the structure of relative clauses in Georgian. According to Harris and Campbell (1995: 68f.), the relative clause in (2) exemplifies the fact that Old Georgian allows for a construction in which the head noun (mama) reflects the case of the relative pronoun (romel) (‘regressive case attraction’). (2) Old Georgian mama-y igi šen-i, romel-i xedavs father-NOM the-NOM your-NOM, which-NOM s/he.see.it daparul-sa mogagos man šen sxadat secret.DAT he.reward.you he.NAR you openly ‘Your father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly.’ (Mt. 6: 6 Ad.; cited Harris and Campbell 1995: 69)

Without case attraction, the head noun would show narrative case as illustrated in (3): (3) mama-man man šen-man, romel-i xedavs father-NAR the-NAR your-NAR which-NOM s/he.see.it daparul-sa secret.DAT

According to Harris and Campbell (1995), the structure of the ­relative clause in (2) is (4).

76  language acquisition and change (4) Old structure of the relative clauses: mama(-i) [romel(-)i xedavs daparul-sa]RC mogagos father-NOM which-NOM s/he.see.it secret.DAT he.reward.you HN RelPro man he.NAR RP (Harris and Campbell 1995: 69)

However, because of case attraction by the head noun, the relative clause could potentially also be attributed the structure of a head-internal relative clause as shown in (5). In fact, as argued by Harris and Campbell, (5) is the innovative structure, introduced by reanalysis of (4). (5) Innovative structure through reanalysis: [mama(-i) romel(-)i xedavs daparul-sa]RC mogagos father-NOM which-NOM s/he.see.it secret.DAT he.reward.you N RelPrt man he.NAR RP (Harris and Campbell 1995: 69)

Essential for reanalysis to be possible, therefore, is the principled availability of two possible analyses. The authors assume that ‘for reanalysis to take place . . . a subset of the tokens of a particular constructional type must be open to the possibility of multiple structural analyses, where one potential analysis is the old one (applicable to all tokens) and the other potential analysis is the new one (applicable to a subset)’ (Harris and Campbell 1995: 72). According to Harris and Campbell (1995) this implies neither opacity nor necessarily the loss of the old structural option. From the perspective of generative linguistics, ‘reanalysis is intimately bound up with parameter change’ (Roberts 2007: 123). Because parametric change is assumed to happen in the course of child language acquisition, as we have discussed in Chapter 3, the notion of ambiguity has to be related to the process of language acquisition. As shown by Fodor (1998), this means that a

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  77 given surface string in the input can (potentially) be assigned two ­analyses/two conflicting parameter values by the learner. The author illustrates this for the following example.4 Sentence (6) is compatible with the English parameter settings [SV, VO and −V2] and with the German parameter settings [SV, OV and +V2]. (6)

Mary saw me.

According to Fodor (1998), the learner must discover the correct combination of parametric values. In the absence of unambiguous evidence, this might cause the following problem: Suppose, for example, that the current grammar has the values SV, OV, and −V2 (regardless, for now, of how these were arrived at). These do not license (1),5 so at least one para­meter needs to be reset. Resetting either the ­ complement-head parameter from OV to VO, or the V2 parameter from −V2 to +V2, would accommodate (1); nothing about (1) indicates which is correct. This is parametric ambiguity. What could or should a learner do in these circumstances? (Fodor 1998: 2) Generative theories of diachronic change assume that in cases of parametric ambiguity the learner may choose the innovative option and thus reanalyse the input in terms of a new parametric choice. In this sense, parametric ambiguity is a clue to the puzzling logical problem of language change discussed in Chapter 3 and repeated below: If the trigger experience of one generation permits members of that generation to set parameter pk to value vi, why is the trigger experience produced by that generation insufficient to cause the next generation to set pk to vi? (Clark and Roberts 1993) It should be clear from what has been said so far that the nature of the triggering experience is decisive for the successful acquisition of a parameter. But what kind of information can possibly function as a trigger or cue for a given parameter? Roberts (2007) (building on prior work by Clark and Roberts (1993) and Roberts and Roussou (2003)) provides the following definition of the

78  language acquisition and change trigger as a substring of the input that expresses the value of a given parameter: P-expression: A substring of the input text S expresses a parameter pi just in case a grammar must have pi set to a definite value in order to assign a well formed representation to S. Trigger: A substring of the input text S is a trigger for parameter pi if S expresses pi. According to this definition, a given input string qualifies as a trigger for a parameter if the parameter specification is a necessary condition for the string to be generated. According to Roberts (2007: 133f.)6 reanalysis takes place ‘given a class of strongly ambiguous strings in relation to a particular parameter in a given corpus, and where a simpler representation is associated with one value rather than the other’. Weak and strong ambiguity are defined as follows: a. P-ambiguity: A substring of the input text S is strongly P-ambiguous with respect to a parameter pi just in case a grammar can have pi set to either value and assign a well formed representation to S. b. A strongly P-ambiguous string may express either value of pi and therefore trigger either value of pi. c. A weakly P-ambiguous string expresses neither value of pi and therefore triggers neither value of pi. Roberts (2007) further stipulates that only in the case of strong P-ambiguity does reanalysis take place. If both options of a given parametric are available, the simpler and more economical option is chosen, whereas the more complex option is unlearnable. According to Roberts (2007), the more economical option is the one that involves fewer syntactic operations. It is, however, questionable whether this kind of structural economy (of representation) is indeed psycholinguistically relevant in language acquisition. We will discuss this question in more detail in Section 4.3. Here,

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  79 it suffices to state that ambiguity alone does not trigger change. Economy seems to be an additional factor that has to be involved. Strong P-ambiguity may be the result of morphological changes, e.g. the loss of verb morphology may lead to the loss of verb movement. With respect to the loss of verb movement in Early Modern English, Roberts (2007: 134) argues that although Early Modern English contains strings expressing a positive value of the V-to-T parameter (e.g. example (7a), with negation following the finite verb), the frequency of simple sentences like (7b), which are strongly P-ambiguous, and sentences with finite modals and auxiliaries like (7c), which are weakly P-ambiguous, together with the loss of verbal morphology, led to a reanalysis and the loss of V-to-T movement (the less economical option). (7) a. if I gave not this accompt to you ‘if I didn’t give this account to you’ (c.1557: J. Cheke, Letter to Hoby; Görlach 1991: 223; Roberts 1999: 290, 2007: 134) b. John walks. c. I may not speak.

This means that P-ambiguous sentences can cause parametric change although unambiguous evidence for the other setting is still available in the input. This is reminiscent of Kroch’s (2001) idea of competing grammatical systems, which is motivated by the observation that children have access to two (or three) different substrings of structures in the input: one that unambiguously assigns value vi (7a) and two (7b, 7c) which express either two different parameter values (7b) or no parameter value at all (7c). According to this approach, the decisive condition for parameter change to take place is that the frequency of occurrence of the unambiguous structure drops in the child’s linguistic environment and ends up being less frequent than the ambiguous one. The relevance of frequency is also stressed in Yang’s (2002) account of parametric change. Yang (2002) assumes that in two grammars, G1 and G2, a proportion of expressions is incompatible with G1 and a proportion of expressions is incompatible with G2. Which of the different options (G1 or G2) finally prevails depends on their fitness. Therefore, in Yang’s (2002) model, ‘the outcome of

80  language acquisition and change language acquisition is determined by the compatibilities of grammars with linguistic evidence in a Darwinian selectionist manner’ (Yang 2002: 132). The fitness of a grammar is defined in terms of its ‘penalty probability’. The penalty probability ci represents the probability that a grammar Gi fails to analyze an incoming sentence and gets punished as a result. (Yang 2002: 31) The penalty probability of the grammars determines the outcome of language acquisition in so far as the fitter grammar is claimed to win. One example mentioned by Yang (2002: 31) is the penalty property of an SVO (non-V2) grammar in a V2 environment: because 70 per cent of the matrix sentences in modern V2 languages are SVO, an SVO grammar in a V2 environment therefore has a penalty probability of 30 per cent, because 30 per cent of the input does not conform to it. According to Yang (2002), language change takes place when the advantage of grammar G2 is greater than that of G1. The discussion so far has shown that the term ‘structural ambiguity’ as referred to in theories of language change implies not necessarily that a sentence has two different underlying structural descriptions in the mind of the native speaker, but rather the principled possibility of attributing two different structural descriptions (or parameter settings) to a word order pattern. Sentences which are P-ambiguous in this sense are assumed to cause diachronic change if they are more economical and/or occur more frequently than a competing older structure in the input to child language acquisition. In the next section, we will argue that this scenario is questionable for the following reasons: first, because P-ambiguity runs against the definition of a trigger in terms of P-expressions; second, because frequency is not decisive in parameter setting, as children only need a minimal amount of unambiguous evidence in order to set a parameter (see Fodor 1998). A prominent case of parametric change referred to by Clark and Roberts (1993), Roberts (2007) and Yang (2002) in order to illustrate their proposals is the change of verb placement in Old French, more precisely the change from a verb-second to a non-verb-second language, which we will discuss in more detail in the next section. We will

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  81 show that a closer look at the empirical facts reveals that the evidence presented in favour of ambiguity as a trigger for diachronic change is not conclusive in this case. 4.2 Parametric ambiguity and the loss of V2 in Old French

It has often been observed that postverbal subjects regularly occur in declarative and interrogative main clauses of Old French, as opposed to what one finds in contemporary French. (8) a. ModF *Puis entendirent-ils un coup de tonnerre. ‘Then they heard a clap of thunder.’ b. OF Lors oirent ils venir un escoiz de tonoire. ‘Then they heard come a clap of thunder.’ (Clark and Roberts 1993: 320)

In sentences like (8b), the finite verb usually appears after the first constituent, in the second position of the clause. This structural option has been interpreted as an effect of a generalized verbsecond rule in Old French (Thurneysen 1892; Adams 1987, 1988a; Roberts 1993; Vance 1997; Yang 2002; among many others) which has been lost in the history of French. In structural terms, the verb-second property is analysed as movement of the finite verb to C° followed by movement of another constituent to the preverbal position (SpecCP). Verb-second placement in this structural sense is generally considered to be a parameterized option, and therefore the question arises of how the parametric change can be accounted for. More concretely: what caused the loss of verb-second in Old French and how did it proceed? How can the parametric change be explained in the context of language acquisition or parameter (re) setting? To our knowledge, the most elaborated and concrete answer to this question is provided by Clark and Roberts (1993). Because the authors assume that ambiguity of the input is one of the crucial factors inducing the parametric change, we will present and discuss this proposal in more detail in this chapter. According to Clark and Roberts (1993: 323), the following data

82  language acquisition and change exemplify the parametric difference between the non-V2 grammar of modern French (9a–c) and the verb-second grammar of Old French (10a–c). (9) a. ModF Jean aime Marie. Jean loves Marie b. ModF Hier Jean est parti. yesterday Jean has left c. ModF Où est-il allé? where did he go

The modern French sentence in (9a) expresses SVO word order, which is P-ambiguous with respect to verb movement to either I or C. According to the analysis by Clark and Roberts, verb movement to I is more economical/less complex than verb movement to C and should therefore be favoured by the learner. The analysis of SVX as verb movement to I is also supported by verb-third structures like (9b), which are incompatible with a verb-second grammar and have to be analysed as adjunction to IP. According to Clark and Roberts (1993), example (9c) does not contain structural information representing evidence regarding the parameter setting because modern French subject clitics do not count as independent units. According to Clark and Roberts (1993) the following word orders are available in Old French: (10) a. OF (Et) lors demande Galaad ses armes. (XVS) (and) then asks Galahad (for) his arms b. OF Aucassins ala par le forest. (SVX) Aucassin went through the forest c. OF Si firent grant joie la nuit. (XV(S)O) so (they) made great joy the night d. OF (Mais) ou fu cele espee prise . . . ? (whVSO) (but from) where was that sword taken e. OF Ne nos connoissez vos mie? (whVSO) NEG us know you not

(10b) and (10c) are P-ambiguous because the sentences can reflect verb movement either to C or to I. According to the authors, the more economical/less complex option cannot, however, be chosen

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  83 in this case, because Old French also exhibits the word order given in (10a), which these authors characterize in the following way: ‘a V2 declarative (as in modern Germanic languages, conjunctions like “and” and “but” do not count in the computation of V2; these elements can be external to CP when they conjoin CPs)’. Clark and Roberts (1993: 228) assume that XVS order as in (10a) unambiguously triggers V2 and nominative case assignment under government. Here, a third condition for parametric change to take place is brought into play, namely the availability of an unambiguous trigger. Therefore, according to Clark and Roberts, despite the presence of ambiguous data which provide a more economical option, the availability of unambiguous evidence prevents parametric change from happening and favours the choice of the more economical structure. The interrogatives in (10d) and (10e) provide additional evidence for verb movement to C, but as interrogatives, they cannot trigger a verb-second grammar. Old French is characterized as a stable V2 system, because the unambiguous evidence for the more complex structure provided by examples like (10a) weighs more heavily than the pressure in favour of the simpler structure in the P-ambiguous cases (10b–c). An additional factor favouring a V2 analysis is the frequency of XVS sentences. The authors give the following percentages for (X)VS and SV(X) order (based on the first 100 matrix declaratives with overt subjects in six representative texts evaluated by Roberts (1993)): (X)VS = 58 per cent against SV(X) = 34 per cent. The loss of verb-second is argued to be related to independent changes in Middle French which caused the triggering experience to be instable. According to Clark and Roberts (1993), the higher frequency of SVO and the introduction of new word order options like the one in (11) especially caused an erosion of the V2 system, because verb third orders like (11) are incompatible with a V2 analysis. (11) OF Lors la royne fist Saintre appeller. (XSV) then the queen had Saintre called

Although the unambiguous trigger for V2 (XVS) still existed in Middle French, it became less frequent: (X)VS = 10 per cent;

84  language acquisition and change SV(X) = 60 per cent in the late fifteenth century (figures from Marchello-Nizia 1979). Other related changes which are said to obscure the evidence in favour of V2 are the emergence of a separate series of nominative clitics (leading to the emergence of XSV) and the development of left-dislocation structures with resumptive pronouns (Kroch 1989). According to this line of argument, the crucial difference between Old and Middle French consists in the fact that the unambiguous evidence for a verb-second grammar, namely XPVS structures, became less frequent and could not trigger a verb-second grammar any more (cf. Kroch 2001; Yang 2002). The underlying assumption is that once the unambiguous trigger is no longer frequent enough in the input, the more economical option of the ambiguous trigger is chosen. One problem with this view is that it is difficult to determine what ‘frequent enough’ means, as we have already mentioned in Chapter 3 and as we will further discuss in Section 4.3. Frequency is also attributed a very important role in Yang’s (2002) model. As mentioned in the previous section, parametric change presupposes an advantage of grammar G2 (SVO, −V2, Modern French) over G1 (V2, Old French). More sentences must be incompatible with the V2 grammar of Old French than with the SVO grammar of Modern French. Yang (2002: 135) assumes that a V2 grammar represents an advantage for the generation of XVSO and OVS word orders whereas an SVO grammar represents an advantage for SXVO, XSVO orders. According to Yang, 30 per cent of the sentences in a V2 languages like Dutch or German are XVS clauses. Therefore, the advantage of a V2 grammar over SVO is 30 per cent in these languages. In Middle French, however, the existence of null subjects has reduced the advantage of a V2 grammar to only 5–18 per cent, leading to the ultimate loss of V2. To sum up the proposals presented so far: they argue that learners of Old French acquire a verb-second grammar because: (i) XPVS as an unambiguous trigger of V2 is available in the input, and (ii) XPVS order is very frequent (58 per cent of sentences in the input). The verb-second property is lost in Middle French because the input no longer provides the appropriate triggering experience, because (i) XVS became less frequent, and (ii) SVX

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  85 and XSV became more frequent, the latter especially due to the cliticization of pronominal subjects. In the remainder of this section we will show that the scenario resulting from the aforementioned proposals is problematic in several respects: first, because XVS sentences do not represent unambiguous triggers for verb movement to C, since this word order pattern is also generated by non-verb-second grammars; and second, because sentences with postverbal subjects (inversion) do not, in fact, represent as much as nearly 60 per cent of the input in Old French. As demonstrated by Rinke and Meisel (2009), XVS orders are very common in non-verb-second languages, as for instance in the Romance null subject languages. (12) It In questa università hanno studiato molti linguisti. in this university have studied many linguists (Pinto 1997: 155) (13) Ptg A tarte comeu a Joana. the tarte ate the Joanne (Ambar 1999: 32)

Therefore, not only SVO sentences are ambiguous with respect to their structural analysis, but XPVS clauses as well.7 Constructions of this type are superficially identical to those involving verbsecond placement, but in Romance null subject languages they are generally assigned a different underlying representation, with the finite verb placed in T° and the postverbal subject occupying its base position (SpecνP). One could object that the structures in (12) and (13) represent cases of so-called free inversion (also possible in OF), which is structurally different from V2 inversion. The difference is, however, only visible in sentences containing complex verb constructions like (14a) and (14b). (14a) is a clear case of free inversion where the subject occurs to the right of the participle and within the vP domain. In (14b) the subject appears between the auxiliary and the participle, a word order that is often found in passive constructions.

86  language acquisition and change (14) a. OF Et dedenz ces .VIII. jorz furent venuz tuit li and within these 8 days had arrived all the vessel et les barons ships and the barons ‘And during these 8 days all the ships and the barons had arrived.’ (Villehardouin) b. OF Einsint fu le conseil acordé. so was the advice granted ‘So the advice was granted.’ (Villehardouin)

The possibility of having a subject placed between auxiliary and participle does not, however, necessarily imply a higher subject position, because the participle position in Old French is variable and the participle itself could also stay within the vP domain to the right of the subject. In addition, as shown by the following modern Portuguese example (15), this word order pattern is also possible in modern non-V2 languages. (15) Ptg Nesse dia, tinha a Maria emprestado os seus melhores that day AUX the Mary lent the her best discos ao Pedro. records to Pedro ‘On this day, Mary lent her best records to Pedro.’ (Ambar 1992: 80)

Moreover, if only the presence of a realized subject and complex verb group counts as a trigger, this trigger is (i) very infrequent in OF and (ii) not unambiguous in the sense that both options (AuxSPart and AuxPartS) are existent to the same extent, i.e. one finds a slight quantitative preference for the second option. Also, the verb-second trigger is not only less frequent but also less economical in the sense of Roberts (1993). In fact, there is no unambiguous word order trigger for V2 because all word orders with the verb in second position are ambiguous with respect to a verb-second analysis. In terms of Yang’s (2002) model, this means that a V2 grammar never has an advantage over an SVO grammar, at least with respect to XVS sentences. The only

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  87 constructions providing unambiguous evidence relating to the V2 parameter are actually the ones which trigger the non-V2 setting, namely sentences with more than two constituents in sentenceinitial position or verb-initial sentences with a postverbal subject, both being incompatible with a verb-second analysis.8 Regarding the frequency of the different structures in Old French texts, we analysed two Old French texts from the thirteenth century. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 are taken from Rinke and Meisel (2009). Tables 4.1 and 4.2 show that in the texts investigated, XVS structures occur systematically, but they are not as frequent as predicted and do not amount to 58 per cent of the data, as suggested by Roberts (1993). Note that in calculating the frequency of inversion structures in the corpora the totality of the data should be taken into consideration, not only the sentences with overt subjects. Moreover, rhymed poetic texts do not provide reliable information about this type of word order phenomena, because certain word order patterns are chosen in order to adhere to rhythmic patterns. In the two narrative prose texts from the thirteenth century which we analysed, 27.2 per cent of the declarative main clauses in the Table 4.1 General overview of the distribution of subjects in Villehardouin (first 1,180 main clauses coded) V1

V2

V3 Total %

Subject type

(et-Vf) Adv Partic./ DO Pred. Sub. IO SV Infin. clause

Preverbal DP Preverbal pronoun Postverbal DP Postverbal pronoun Null subjects Total

– –

– –

 52   0 105 157

– –

– –

– –

– –

– –

263 28  291 24.7 147 25  172 14.6

214 1  18 0

12  6

3 0

 6  2

0 1

– –

220 3 452 4

15 33

3 6

44 52

2 3

–  5  397 33.6 410 63 1180 100

 5  293 24.8  0   27  2.3

© Rinke and Meisel (2009) Table 1 in ‘Subject-inversion in Old French: Syntax and information structure’ in Kaiser and Remberger (eds) Proceedings of the workshop ‘Null-subjects, expletives, and locatives in Romance’ (Arbeitspapier Nr. 123), University of Konstanz et-Vf = sentences with the coordinated conjunction (and)+finite verb; Partic.= participles; Pred. = predcative noun; Sub.clause = subject clause

88  language acquisition and change Table 4.2 General overview of the distribution of subjects in Sept Sages (first 1,073 main clauses coded) V1

V2

V3 Total %

Subject type

(et-Vf) Adv Partic./ DO Pred. Sub. IO SV Infin. clause.

Preverbal DP Preverbal pronoun Postverbal DP Postverbal pronoun Null subjects Total

– –

– –

  3   4 144 151

– –

– –

– –

– –

– –

267 17  284 26.5 292 29  321 29.9

 47 0  31 0

 0  6

0 0

 0  9

1 2

– –

168 0 246 0

 6 12

3 3

34 43

3 6

–  6  364 33.9 559 53 1073 100

 0   51  4.8  1   53  4.9

© Rinke and Meisel (2009) Table 1 in ‘Subject-inversion in Old French: Syntax and information structure’ in Kaiser and Remberger (eds) Proceedings of the workshop ‘Null-subjects, expletives, and locatives in Romance’ (Arbeitspapier Nr. 123), University of Konstanz et-Vf = sentences with the coordinated conjunction (and)+finite verb; Partic.= participles; Pred. = predcative noun; Sub.clause = subject clause

Villehardouin text and 9.7 per cent in the Sept Sages text exhibit inversion. In the first text, the number of postverbal subjects is particularly frequent, because the text is a chronicle and therefore contains many unaccusative verbs and many sentences introducing new characters. These contexts are known to trigger inversion because the subjects of unaccusatives are in fact internal arguments and tend to occur in postverbal position when they represent new information. In spite of the relatively high frequency of inversion sentences, the Villehardouin text also contains a quantitatively higher number of examples providing evidence against rather than in favour of a verb-second analysis: 18.6 per cent of the data represent verb-third structures and verb-initial clauses (19 per cent in the Sept Sage text).This result is not surprising, however, if we keep in mind that Old French is a null subject language; verb-third constructions are therefore rare, because the subject is not realized in one third of all declarative main clauses. If, then, it is correct to assume that XVS order in Old French is ambiguous with respect to verb placement, verb movement to C will necessarily be ruled out because it does not constitute the

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  89 more economical option (as in the case of SVO orders of Modern French), given the fact that an analysis in terms of V-to-T movement is also available and involves fewer movement operations. In addition, a verb-second analysis is excluded because no unambiguous word order pattern exists which would favour the setting of the parameter to the +V2 value. On the other hand, unambiguous evidence against the verb-second analysis is indeed available, although it is not very frequent because of the null subject property of the language, i.e. subjects are not frequently realized overtly. To sum up our arguments: we have shown that the proposals building on XVS as the frequent and unambiguous trigger of V2 in Old French cannot be maintained in view of the results obtained by our analysis of the above-mentioned corpora. XVS order is not particularly frequent and, more important for the discussion in this chapter, it is not an unambiguous word order with respect to a possible V2 analysis. Therefore, XVS order cannot be a trigger for a V2 grammar in the sense of Roberts (2007) because it does not represent a P-expression of it, as a positive setting of the V2 parameter is not a necessary condition for this word order to be generated. From this it follows for Yang’s (2002) model that neither XVSO nor OVS represents an advantage for a V2 grammar, for this word order is not incompatible with the type of SVO grammar ­represented by Latin and the modern Romance null subject languages. Therefore, OF is clearly not a V2 language; it only exhibits word order patterns which are either ambiguous (SVX, XVS, . . .) or represent an advantage for a non-V2 grammar (XSV, VX). One could object that it is exactly this degree of ambiguity in the data from thirteenth-century Old French that triggered the loss of inversion at the end of the fourteenth/beginning of the fifteenth centuries. However, there are two problems with this interpretation of the facts. First, in the thirteenth century, Old French still made systematic use of inversion. Consequently, a trigger which enabled children to acquire this option must still have been available. Moreover, we have to ask how V2 can possibly be acquired in the modern Germanic V2 languages if XVS and SVO are both ambiguous word orders, considering that, according to Lightfoot (1997: 225), 70 per cent of all sentences of a V2 language exhibit SVO and 30 per cent VS order.

90  language acquisition and change If it is true that every word order pattern can in principle be attributed at least two different underlying structural analyses, the central questions are (i) how do children cope with this ambiguity and(ii) can ambiguity really be attributed this central role in ­explanations of diachronic change? 4.3 Parametric ambiguity and triggering experience

In the preceding section, we have argued that the diachronic scenario developed by Clark and Roberts (1993) cannot account for the word order change from Old French to Modern French. Recall that their central assumption was that the presence of unambiguous input (XVS, V to C) triggers the acquisition of V2, although ambiguous input is also available. If the frequency of the unambiguous trigger decreases, the child will opt for the more economical option of the ambiguous word order (SVO, V to T). Given the fact that, in principle, every superficial word order pattern is ambiguous with respect to its underlying grammatical structure, it is questionable whether superficial word order patterns can at all be triggers for parametric options. As pointed out by Meisel (2011a: 50), parameter setting is a task that involves the interaction of information drawn from innate knowledge and knowledge gained by experience, in the sense that children have to discover the adequate structural option on the basis of know­ ledge provided by UG and by a grammatical analysis of the input: ‘parameter settings are triggered not by primary data, but as a result of grammatical analysis’ (Meisel 2011a: 52). The exact role of P-ambiguous evidence in the acquisition process is not clear, because the concept of P-ambiguity is incompatible with the notion of trigger as defined by Roberts (2007). ‘Ambiguous’ sentences cannot be triggers of a parameter value because they are not P-expressions of the parameter. A string (S) represents a P-expression only if the setting of a parameter to a definite value is a necessary condition to generate S. If the setting of the parameter to a specific value is not a necessary condition for the substring to be generated (because other structural interpretations are possible), it simply cannot be a trigger for the parameter. This

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  91 is especially relevant in all instances where the input still exhibits unambiguous evidence for a given parameter value (like example (7a) above). As has been pointed out by Fodor (1998), the assumption that ambiguous input could possibly trigger parametric choices presupposes a serial system (‘select one analysis and revise it later’) which ignores ambiguity in the sense that it does not distinguish between ambiguous and unambiguous input. The problem is that, ­according to Fodor, a serial approach to ambiguities results in ‘garden paths’. At a choice point the learner adopts an analysis and proceeds without attention to the existence of alternatives. It is bound to make a wrong selection sometimes . . . that mistake may than distort other choices that arise later, engendering more mistakes. (Fodor 1998: 3) Fodor argues in favour of the assumption that only unambiguous input can trigger parametric choices. All risks are eliminated if learners wait for decisive evidence . . . There is no reason to suppose that it slows down or prevents attainment of the target grammar. Though the number of trigger types is reduced, their quality is improved, so less effort is wasted making wrong grammar changes and ­correcting them. (Fodor 1998: 26) According to Roberts’ (2007) own proposal, P-ambiguity alone cannot trigger reanalysis, so more than ambiguity must be at play. The following three factors are also considered to be crucial: (i) an economy condition (the new setting of the parameter has to be more economical than the older one); (ii) lack of frequency of a given structure; and (iii) additional change, e.g. morphological change. With respect to economy or simplicity, it is questionable whether economy of derivation can indeed be related to psycholinguistic factors determining the acquisition process and how it would actually be implemented in a psycholinguistically motivated model. Economy of derivation refers to a mathematical algorithm

92  language acquisition and change and as such it does not imply that a more economical derivation is more easily processed than a more complex one. In fact, it has been argued (Jackendoff 2011; Seuren 2012) that processing complexity is independent of the number of syntactic operations. Yet the assumption that the frequency of the triggering experience plays a crucial role is not unproblematic either, for the very notion of ‘parameter’ implies that frequency of the triggering experience is not a relevant criterion. The trigger of a parameter does not have to occur particularly frequently – this is part of the definition of parameters. It is also unclear what ‘sufficiently frequent’ to set the parameter value means. We have already discussed this question in Chapter 3. Different authors give different thresholds for how frequent a trigger should be: 7 per cent should be sufficient according to Yang (2002), while between 17 and 30 per cent is assumed in Lightfoot (1997). Even if we knew how frequent a trigger should be in the input, how can we possibly derive the input frequency of a structure in child language acquisition from the study of diachronic texts? As we have shown with respect to the two texts investigated in Section 4.2, word order is information structurally determined, and the choice of word order patterns by an author depends on the storyline and the nature of the text. Concerning the third factor, namely additional changes, a close connection between morphological and syntactic changes has traditionally been assumed. One example is the loss of a relatively free word order in Latin and the emergence of a relatively fixed word order in Romance, both attributed to the loss of Latin case morphology (cf. Vennemann 1974). Another example is the loss of verb movement to T in the history of English, which has been attributed to the loss of verbal morphology: We then proposed that the loss of much verbal agreement, particularly plural endings in both simple tenses, led to the loss of the morphological expression of the V-to-T para­ meter. (Roberts 2007: 137) According to Roberts (2007), the loss of verbal endings caused ambiguity in the P-expression of the V-to-T-parameter and led to the parametric change.

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  93 From the perspective of child language acquisition, it seems clear that a close relation between the acquisition of syntax and inflectional morphology exists. In languages with a rich inflectional system like Spanish, for instance, the early development of related syntactic categories (TP) is favoured. Children converge early on the properties of the null subject parameter (Bel 2003) and produce root infinitives to a lesser extent than in languages without rich verbal morphology like English. However, the exact relation between the acquisition of inflectional morphology and syntax is still a matter of debate and there is clearly no one-to-one relation between the acquisition of morphological markings and syntactic parameters (e.g. the null subject parameter) or the diachronic loss of morphological marking and word order changes. 4.4  Summary and conclusions

In this chapter we discussed the notion of structural ambiguity and its possible relevance for diachronic change. We have shown that what is referred to as structural ambiguity in theories of language change does not necessarily imply structurally ambiguous sentences with two different underlying structures and two interpretations. Structural ambiguity as a possible explanation for diachronic reanalysis refers to the possibility of a sentence’s being attributed two different structural descriptions in the course of language acquisition. With respect to the specific case of word order change from Old French to contemporary French, we concluded that none of the surface word order patterns occurring in the OF data can be regarded as unambiguous evidence for a positive setting of the V2 parameter. We have also argued that it is questionable whether superficial word order patterns – whether ambiguous or not - can at all be triggers of parametric choices. We also believe that we have shown that P-ambiguity runs against the definition of a trigger because triggers have been defined in terms of P-expressions for which the respective setting of a parameter is a necessary condition. We conclude that ambiguous triggers are an oxymoron and children have to have access to

94  language acquisition and change unambiguous evidence in order to set the parameter to a given value; see Fodor (1998) for a detailed discussion of this issue. In sum, we propose that even a minimal amount of unambiguous evidence (the relevant cues in the sense of Lightfoot (2006)) relating to the parameter settings of the parent generation is sufficient to enable children to develop the grammar of the preceding generation. Consequently, the presence of allegedly ambiguous trigger data will not distract them, not even if the frequency of these data increases. Structural ambiguity alone is unlikely to suffice as a cause for reanalysis in the course of diachronic change. NOTES

1. Cf. also Langacker’s definition of reanalysis: ‘I will define “reanalysis” as change in the structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface manifestation’ (Langacker 1977: 58). 2. HN = head noun; RelPro = declinable relative pronoun; RP = resumptive pronoun. 3. N = the noun relativized, no longer the head noun; RelPrt = non-declinable relative particle. 4. See also Gibson and Wexler (1994). 5. Referring to our example (6). 6. Timberlake (1977): ambiguity is a prerequisite of diachronic change. 7. Roberts (1993: 173) admits that the fifteenth-century inversion in interrogative sentences introduced by a wh-element is in most cases ambiguous with respect to the placement of subject and verb because it can represent a case either of free inversion (V in Agr and S in VP) or of simple inversion (V in C and the subject in SpecAgrP). He argues that at this stage the triggering experience of simple inversion becomes opaque because it is unambiguously triggered only in the presence of a transitive verb with compound tense and with a non-pronominal subject. Given the fact that we are concerned with declarative word order here, we will not discuss this further. 8. Exceptions to this generalization do, of course, exist in verb-

structural ambiguity as a trigger of change  95 second languages like German, e.g. verb-initial sentences in narrative contexts and verb-third sentences with certain types of adverbs. Those word orders are not in conflict with a verbsecond grammar because they involve an empty narrative operator in sentence-initial position (V1), or they are lexically restricted (V3).

chapter 5

Language contact as a possible trigger of change

T

he discussion in the previous chapter has cast doubt on the plausibility of a scenario according to which structural ambiguity, in the sense of P-ambiguity, can be held responsible for grammatical restructuring in the process of L1 acquisition. In this chapter, we will examine whether language contact is a more likely candidate to induce grammatical change. Our focus is, again, on phenomena related to morphosyntax. The chapter is introduced by Section 5.1, where we will discuss general assumptions concerning contact-induced diachronic change, focusing on the concepts of structural borrowing, convergence and shift-induced interference. Whereas many scholars assume a rather sceptical view with respect to cross-linguistic influence at the level of the grammatical system (Meillet 1921, 1938; Sapir 1927; Weinreich 1979), Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 14) state that ‘any linguistic feature can be transferred from any language to any other language’. They propose two main mechanisms, namely structural borrowing and shift-induced interference, which we will discuss in more detail. We will argue that direct structural borrowing is a problematic concept because in the relevant contexts where it has been proposed that this happens, alternative explanations are equally plausible. On the one hand, it has been proposed that structural similarity between contact languages may arise not only as a consequence of structural borrowing, but also due to universal processes of grammaticalization which operate on superficially similar or equivalent constructions (Heine and Kuteva 2003). On

language contact as a possible trigger of change  97 the other hand, as proposed by Silva-Corvalán (1998), language contact can lead to changes of an already existing form within a language, either with regard to its frequency of use or concerning its linguistic and pragmatic contexts of occurrence. In view of these alternative mechanisms which may lead to the same surface effects, it is far from being obvious how structural borrowing could possibly be identified and whether it is at all possible to do so (see also Poplack and Levey 2010). The second mechanism mentioned above, shift-induced interference, however, which consists in changes brought about by an imperfect learning of a language by a group of speakers with a different native language background (cf. also Thomason 2001), provides a more plausible scenario of contactinduced interference and has been discussed as a possible causal factor of language change in generative research (see e.g. Kroch and Taylor 1997; Weerman 1993; Meisel 2011b); we will return to this issue in the following chapter (Section 6.2). In a second step, in Section 5.2, we will discuss and evaluate the empirical evidence against or in favour of an influential role of language contact with a particular focus on case studies regarding the emergence of the V2 property of medieval French, in 5.2.1, and the loss of its pro-drop property, in 5.2.2. Section 5.3 draws some conclusions from the preceding discussions and emphasizes the decisive role of input from L2 speakers for children acquiring an L1 in order to explain the restructuring of grammars. 5.1 Mechanisms of contact-induced syntactic change: Structural borrowing and contact-induced interference

The possibility of contact-induced grammatical influence is a hotly debated issue in the literature on language contact and change. Since Meillet’s (1921: 82) claim that ‘[t]he grammatical systems of two languages . . . are impenetrable to each other’, many authors have followed this view, claiming that morphosyntax is most resistant to influence in a language contact situation (Sapir 1921).1 Weinreich (1979) is less sceptical about the possibility of grammatical interference in general. Even so, he mentions a number of conditions that favour or disfavour cross-linguistic grammatical

98  language acquisition and change interference. He argues that, in general, free forms are more likely to be borrowed than bound morphemes.2 With respect to Haugen’s (1950) study of loanwords, Weinreich (1979: 35) states that ‘[t]he fuller the integration the less likelihood of its transfer’. Therefore, inflectional morphemes are less likely to be borrowed than grammatical words like prepositions, which are in turn less likely to be transferred than referential items, i.e. fully fledged words like nouns, verbs, adjectives and independent adverbs or completely unintegrated interjections (cf. Haugen’s (1950) ‘scale of adoptability’). However, interjections constituted only 1.4 per cent of loanwords in Haugen’s own count whereas 75 per cent of the loanwords were represented by nouns. This is unexpected because ­interjections – in view of their structural independence – should be at least as transferable as nouns. In an attempt to explain this apparent contradiction, Weinreich (1979: 37) speculates that ‘under different structural or cultural contact conditions, the ratio might be different’. However, contemporary grammatical theorizing offers the possibility of a syntactic explanation for the contradiction between Haugen’s (1950) hierarchy and his empirical results which does not have to resort to the stipulation of cultural conditions. Since interjections are functional categories located at the CP domain, they are expected to behave like grammatical words rather than lexical categories. Therefore, Haugen’s hierarchy can be brought into agreement with his empirical findings if the major distinction is not the one between bound and free forms but rather the one between lexical and functional categories. From the generative perspective, it is expected that functional and lexical categories behave differently with respect to borrowing because functional categories are assumed to be the locus of syntactic variation whereas lexical categories are cross-linguistically universal. This amounts to saying that lexical categories can freely be integrated into another language while syntactic borrowing is virtually not possible. We will discuss this in more detail in Section 5.1.1. Concerning grammatical relations like agreement or syntactic dependence, Weinreich (1979: 38) assumes that ‘[a]ll types of interference can affect every type of relation: order, modulation, agreement and dependence’ and that ‘[e]xamples of all kinds could be cited without limit, for the misapplication and neglect of

language contact as a possible trigger of change  99 grammatical relations is well attested’. Weinreich gives a number of examples and refers to the speech of bilinguals, which may ‘establish the interlingual equivalence of the morphemes or categories’ if there is ‘either . . . FORMAL SIMILARITY or a SIMILARITY IN PREEXISTING FUNCTIONS’ (p. 39, capitals in the original). Formal similarity means that the speakers take these two categories to be equivalent because of similarity in form (e.g. Yiddish op with English up). Similarity in preexisting functions plays a role when bilingual speakers endow a construction of language A with a function existing in language B (e.g. English present tense with the past tense interpretation of German Präsens: ‘How long are you here?’ instead of ‘How long have you been here?’ (Weinreich 1979: 40)). However, if there is formal similarity and similarity in pre-existing functions, can we really speak about contact-induced grammatical change, and how can the effect of contact be proved? These q ­ uestions will be addressed in Section 5.1.2. In many cases, the examples given by Weinreich (1979) refer to misapplications (or innovations) taken from the speech of L2 learners and may (subsequently) be adopted by the language community. Finally the type of grammatical interference resulting in the disappearance of grammatical categories should be referred to. One need only think of a foreign language classroom where English-speaking students fail to distinguish cases, genders, or aspects in a foreign language. In situations of natural language contact, the same process occurs. (Weinreich 1979: 42) The influence of L2 acquisition on language contact-induced grammatical change – implicit in Weinreich’s argumentation, although he does not systematically distinguish between simultaneous and sequential bilinguals – cannot be emphasized strongly enough and will be discussed in more detail in Section 5.1.3. 5.1.1  Structural borrowing Weinreich’s (1979) view that interference at the level of the grammatical system is contingent on a number of structural conditions, such as bound vs. free elements, explicit vs. implicit relations, and

100  language acquisition and change pre-existing similarity in patterns, is questioned by Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 15), who claim that ‘though it is true that some kinds of features are more easily transferred than others …, social factors can and very often do overcome structural resistance to interference at all levels’. While lexical borrowing, i.e. ‘the incorporation of a lexical item from one language into another, with only the recipient system operative’ (Poplack and Meechan 1998: 129), is a fairly common and uncontroversial phenomenon in situations of language contact,3 the question of whether language-specific word order patterns and grammatical structure can be borrowed from one language into another has met with considerable scepticism and has triggered contradictory claims in the research literature, as already mentioned above. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 91) argue that, given the right sociocultural circumstances, any linguistic constraint on the stability or vulnerability of language structure may be overruled by extralinguistic factors and that ‘anything goes’ in situations of language contact. These authors distinguish between two fundamentally different kinds of cross-linguistic interference, namely borrowing and substratum interference (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 3f., ch. 3). Under this view, borrowing is a typical phenomenon in situations where the languages in contact are maintained. Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 37) define it as ‘the incorporation of foreign features into a group’s native language by speakers of that language’. Even though the authors concede that it is first and foremost lexical material which is borrowed from one language into the other, they claim that borrowing of morphosyntactic structure is not uncommon, provided that the contact situation is maintained over a considerable period of time and that the speakers exhibit a high degree of bilingual competence (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 37, 47f.). It is important to emphasize that according to this scenario the agents of contact-induced change resulting from borrowing are native speakers of the recipient language. This is different in situations of language shift where one of the languages in contact is given up in favour of the other. The shifting speakers adopt as an L2 the language with which they are in contact. If the group of shifting speakers is large enough, substratum interference from their former native language may affect the speech community as

language contact as a possible trigger of change  101 a whole, including speakers of the target language (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 38ff.). The agents of contact-induced change due to language shift are therefore native speakers not of the recipient language, but of the source language. Shift-induced interference will be a matter of closer inspection in Section 5.1.3. Other authors, like Silva-Corvalán (1998), propose that grammatical structure is particularly robust and resistant to external influence. She disagrees with Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) view that morphosyntactic structure can be borrowed. Two questions lie at the heart of this controversial issue: first, whether grammatical structure can be incorporated from a source into a target or recipient language with speakers of the target language as agents, and second, whether there is a need for congruency between the source and the target language in the respective grammatical domain. With regard to the first question, Harris and Campbell (1995) are proponents of a theory according to which foreign syntactic patterns may indeed be incorporated into another language. They ‘use the term borrowing to mean a mechanism of change in which a replication of the syntactic pattern is incorporated into the borrowing language through the influence of a host pattern found in a contact language’ (p. 51, bold in the original). As a case in point, they adduce the emergence of prepositions out of relational nouns in Pipil (Harris and Campbell 1995: 126f.), a Mesoamerican language spoken in El Salvador and neighbouring countries. This is illustrated in (1) below, taken and adapted from these authors. (1a) exemplifies the innovative use of pak ‘on’ as an ordinary preposition, arguably modelled on the contact language Spanish. Originally, ihpak (‘on it’) was a relational expression, i.e. a possessed noun root used as a locative, as shown in (1b). Pak was a nominal element, meaning ‘position above’, and i- was a third person singular possessive prefix meaning ‘its’. (1) Pipil a. pak me: sah on table b. i-hpak ne me: sah 3SG.POSS-on the table ‘on the table’ (adapted from Harris and Campbell 1995: 126, example (5))

102  language acquisition and change Since Pipil lacked prepositions altogether, the authors argue that structural borrowing from Spanish is the most likely scenario accounting for this change. Silva-Corvalán (1998), on the other hand, argues ‘against the existence of syntactic borrowing’ (p. 226, italics in the original) and claims that only lexical items or pragmatic constraints may undergo a direct transfer from one language to another. Such lexical or pragmatic borrowing may, however, trigger accommodation of the grammars in contact to a certain degree, eventually leading to structural convergence (p. 228). Such convergence is restricted, according to this author, to grammatical domains where the target grammar already exhibits the respective structural option at a time before contact takes place. In other words, syntactic convergence requires structural congruency between the languages in contact in the affected domains. In fact, ‘structural convergence’ in this sense is not convergence of syntactic structures but the association of an already existing construction in the target language with new pragmatic functions inherited from a parallel construction existing in the source language. One of the examples discussed by Silva-Corvalán (1998) will suffice to illustrate this point. Referring to Landa (1995), the author mentions the case of Basque Spanish. This variety of Spanish allows for null objects with definite reference, as in (2). In the same context, Standard Spanish (or ‘General Spanish’, in Silva-Corvalán’s terms) requires a pronominal object. (2) a. Basque Span b. General Span

No encuentro el libro de Alarcos. ‘I can’t find Alarcos’ book.’ Yo tengo uno; si quieres te Ø presto. ‘I have one; I can lend Ø to you if you want.’ Yo tengo uno; si quieres te lo presto. ‘I have one; I can lend it to you if you want.’ (Silva-Corvalán 1998: 239, example (28))

Since Basque also allows for zero objects, the pattern shown for Basque Spanish in (2b) could be interpreted as a case of structural borrowing from Basque into Spanish. Yet, as example (3) shows, non-contact Spanish also allows for zero objects, but only if they have non-specific reference.

language contact as a possible trigger of change  103 (3) General Span a. ¿Compraste pan? ‘Did you buy bread?’ b. Sí, Ø compré. ‘Yes, I did.’ (Silva-Corvalán 1998: 239, example (29))

Silva-Corvalán’s argument is that rather than resulting from direct structural transfer from Basque into Spanish, language contact triggered the extension of the pragmatic functions associated with null objects in Spanish to include those with a definite and/or specific reference as well. If the argument that many, if not all, instances of purported structural borrowing are rather cases of lexical or pragmatic borrowing has general validity, studies like the one dealing with prepositions in Pipil would need to be reconsidered. Instead of integrating prepositions from Spanish into their own grammar by means of syntactic borrowing, speakers of Pipil might have associated an already existing structural option, i.e. relational nouns, with the pragmatic value associated with prepositions in the contact language, i.e. Spanish. As a result of this, the languages exhibit apparent convergence which, however, remains a surface phenomenon. It does not affect the core grammatical properties of the languages involved. Heine and Kuteva (2003) propose, in fact, an explanation of the emergence of prepositions in Pipil which differs from that suggested by Harris and Campbell (1995) and which is very much in line with Silva-Corvalán’s proposal. According to Heine and Kuteva’s account of contact-induced grammaticalization, speakers of the target language (the replica language, in their terminology) are assumed not to borrow a grammatical category directly from the source, or model, language, incorporating it into their grammar. They rather recognize ‘similar’ concepts across languages (Heine and Kuteva 2003: 531) and develop categories which are equivalent to those in the model language, using, however, material from their own, replica, language. These categories may then undergo processes of grammaticalization, guided by universal mechanisms like desemanticization, i.e. the loss of referential and the gain of functional meaning, decategorialization, i.e. the ‘loss of morphosyntactic properties’ (p. 559), or erosion, i.e. the ‘loss of phonetic substance’

104  language acquisition and change (p. 535). For such cases, the authors use the term ‘ordinary grammaticalization’ (p. 533). As an alternative scenario, the grammaticalization in the replica language is assumed to proceed on the model of grammaticalization processes which have taken place in the model language (‘replica grammaticalization’). According to Heine and Kuteva (2003: 535), the emergence of prepositions in Pipil is an instance of ordinary contact-induced grammaticalization: under the influence of contact with Spanish, a language with prepositions, speakers of Pipil draw on relational nouns and grammaticalize them, according to the above-mentioned universal mechanisms of grammaticalization, into a grammatical category which is equivalent to Spanish prepositions. What has taken place here is not transfer of a grammatical structure from one language into another, but language-internal change subject to universal and not contact-specific mechanisms and constraints. Nevertheless, contact plays a crucial role since it is the recognition of equivalence relations between the two languages which induces the change at the outset. Heine and Kuteva (2003) propose that even apparent cases of contact-induced word order change can, in fact, be explained by the use of an already existing structural option in the replica language and its pragmatico-functional extension in usage under the influence of language contact, rather than drawing on the model of a direct structural transfer from the model to the replica language. As an example of such ‘word order change without word order change’ (pp. 545f.), the authors refer to the Papua New Guinean languages Takia, a Western Oceanic language, and Waskia, a Papuan language. While earlier varieties of Western Oceanic languages exhibited SVO word order and prenominal determiners, Takia has evolved, on the model of Waskia, into an SOV language with postnominal determiners.4 Referring to Ross (2001), the authors argue that speakers of Takia did not borrow postnominal determiners from Waskia. They rather made use of an already existing construction in earlier Western Oceanic, namely a postnominal deictic morpheme, e.g. a, attached to a pronominal suffix, ña, which shows person and number agreement with the preceding noun, as shown in (4a) below. Following universal mechanisms of grammaticalization, this deictic morpheme developed into an ordinary determiner, an in (4b), which is equivalent in function and distribution to its counterpart in Waskia, mu in (5).

language contact as a possible trigger of change  105 (4) Grammaticalization a. Proto-Western Oceanic *a tamwata a- ña det man that- 3SG ‘the man’ b. Takia tamol an man det ‘the man’ (Heine and Kuteva 2003: 547, citing Ross 2001: 142) (5) Waskia kadi mu man det ‘the man’ (Heine and Kuteva 2003: 546)

The case studies dealing with these and other contact-related phenomena show that structural convergence between two languages rarely, if ever, implies direct transfer of structure from a source to a target language. Speakers rather take advantage of equivalence relations between the languages in contact. In structural domains where the two or more languages exhibit congruency and where there is an overlap of semantic or pragmatic functions, at least to a certain degree, language contact may act as a catalytic factor on the spread of an already existing structural variant and foster a change of its semantic or pragmatic interpretation which might otherwise have failed to occur. 5.1.2  Structural convergence If it is correct to assume that pre-existing structural congruency is a precondition for language contact-induced change in the domain of syntax, as suggested by Weinreich (1979), Silva-Corvalán (1998), and Heine and Kuteva (2003), among others, then the question arises whether ‘structural convergence’ is possible at all. On the other hand, the possibility of structural convergence cannot be excluded a priori. The central question is how it can be demonstrated to have happened in specific situations of language contact.

106  language acquisition and change Frequently, arguments in favour of this assumption are supported merely by referring to rates of occurrence. Yet, as Torres Cacoullos and Travis (2011: 243) emphasized, frequencies of use alone do not suffice to infer changes of the underlying linguistic system; see also Poplack and Tagliamonte (2001: 92), or Rinke and Elsig (2010a). With respect to language use, a more valid measure to verify the stability or change of a structural variant is the complex interplay of intralinguistic and extralinguistic (i.e. social and stylistic) factors which condition the choice of this variant. If it can be shown that the constraint hierarchy of these factors remains stable, even in cases where the frequency of use changes, or that it matches the constraint hierarchies of other, non-contact, varieties of the same language, explanations in terms of contact-induced change or convergence need to be discarded. Torres Cacoullos and Travis (2011) investigated whether New Mexican Spanish is converging with English in the overt realization of the first person singular subject pronoun yo ‘I’, rather than using the Spanish null subject. At first sight, a higher rate of subject expression in the presence of code-switching between English and Spanish, as compared to monolingual Spanish speech, seems to corroborate the assumption of convergence. Yet the analysis of the factors conditioning variable choice reveals that overt yo expression in New Mexican Spanish is subject to the very same constraints as in non-contact varieties of Spanish: overt yo is favoured by a previous realization of yo, by psychological verbs, by switch reference contexts, and by ambiguous verb morphology. Also, there is no influence of the degree of bilingual English–Spanish competence on the constraint hierarchies conditioning yo expression. Instead, the authors detect a priming effect: the expression of yo is favoured by an overtly realized yo in the immediately preceding context. This is a cross-linguistic effect, i.e. use of English I also favours a subsequent overt yo. Since subject expression in English is nearly categorical, stretches of Spanish speech with intervening English code-switches necessarily have a higher rate of subject expression than monolingual Spanish speech. Besides this effect, the constraint hierarchies remain the same, both in monolingual Spanish speech and in English– Spanish code-switching mode. This is a strong argument against the hypothesis of convergence, even when understood in terms of approximating patterns of use instead of direct structural borrowing.

language contact as a possible trigger of change  107 The hypothesis of convergence was also rejected by Poplack (1997) in her analysis of the use of the subjunctive in Quebec French. She concluded that there was no clear evidence in favour of the assumption that speakers of Quebec French show a progressive loss of constraints triggering the choice of the subjunctive rather than of the indicative or the conditional in the presence of English. Neither the level of bilingual competence in English and French nor the francophone or anglophone majority status of the neighbourhood of residence had a consistent effect resulting in less frequent use of the subjunctive.5 Poplack (1997) argues that the widespread belief that Quebec French loses the subjunctive is mainly due to the fact that normative Standard French is often taken as the standard of comparison. Yet no oral vernacular variety, whether contact or non-contact French, is subject to the categorical and, more often than not, arbitrary rules prescribed for the standard variety. In order to assess the hypothesis of grammatical convergence, it is hence of vital importance to go beyond the analysis of mere rates of frequency and to provide methodologically sound standards of comparison when analysing a contact variety of a language. Poplack and Levey (2010: 391) suggest ‘that much of the evidence brought to bear on contact-induced change – diachronic as well as synchronic – either fails to demonstrate that change has occurred, and/or if it has, that it is the product of contact and not internal evolution’. The authors propose that in order to corroborate the claim of contact-induced grammatical change, a number of considerations have to be taken into account. First of all, an instance of diachronic change has to be established. According to Poplack and Levey (2010: 394) ‘[t]he first step in establishing the existence of change is comparison over time’. A systematic comparison of the outcome of an alleged case of change with an earlier stage should reveal a qualitative or quantitative difference. Crucially, internal variability cannot be equated with change, and an appropriate reference variety has to be chosen (pre-contact variety, vernacular variety, etc.) in order to avoid ‘invidious comparisons’ (p. 395). In addition, language change in the sense of diverging linguistic behaviour (language use) is socially embedded and ‘should be observable (at least to some degree) in the speech of the relevant members of the community (e.g., the younger cohort, if

108  language acquisition and change spearheaded by youth; the highly bilingual, if induced by contact, etc.)’ (p. 396). The authors argue that linguistic change cannot be taken to have occurred as long as it cannot be shown to have diffused in the linguistic community. Once the actual fact of change has successfully been established, the next step is to prove that it has indeed been caused by language contact and not by internal evolution. Poplack and Levey (2010) offer the following criteria: A candidate for contact-induced change in a contact variety is present in the presumed source variety and either 1) absent in the pre-contact or non-contact variety, or 2) if present (e.g., through interlingual coincidence), is not conditioned in the same way as in the source, and 3) can also be shown to parallel in some nontrivial way the behaviour of a counterpart feature in the source. (Poplack and Levey 2010: 398) Crucially, by establishing these criteria, Poplack and Levey (2010) pass the burden of proof to the investigator who wants to claim that change has occurred and that it is indeed caused by language contact. They conclude that Contact induced change is not an inevitable, nor possibly even a common, outcome of language contact. Only more accountable analyses of more contact situations will tell. In the interim, the burden of proof is on those who claim that it has occurred. (Poplack and Levey 2010: 412) The investigation of language contact-induced change includes the examination of the speech of bilingual speakers, which may ‘represent individual dimensions of the contact axis’ (Poplack and Levey 2010: 399). The proficiency in the majority language, the speaker’s disposition to code-switch or individual and social attitudes towards the languages can be relevant (Appel and Muysken 1987; Backus 2005; Joseph 2007; King 2005; Muysken 2000; Romaine 1995; Thomason 2001; Winford 2003). However, bilingualism as such is not a sufficient condition for contact-induced change to occur. This is true for convergence at the level of language use, as pointed out by Poplack and Levey (2010), and even

language contact as a possible trigger of change  109 more so with respect to convergence at the level of grammatical competence. The ‘logical problem of language change’ refers not only to monolingual L1 acquisition, but also to 2L1 acquisition, as pointed out by Meisel (2011b): All the available evidence suggests that fusion of grammatical systems is not what normally results from the simultaneous acquisition of two or more languages. Rather, it indicates that children are capable of differentiating the grammatical systems from early on, and conflicting evidence on parameter values has been argued to be the major cause of the differentiation of systems and for not treating this type of variability as a property of a single system; see Meisel 1993. (Meisel 2011b: 129) Meisel (2011b) concludes that a reorganization of grammars is only likely to happen when L2 acquisition is involved, either in that L2 speech occurs in the input to which the learners are exposed or because the learners themselves are L2 speakers. He proposes two possible scenarios where contact-induced grammatical change is plausible: This refers, on the one hand, to situations where non-native speakers of the language to be acquired by children constitute the predominant group in their linguistic environment . . .; on the other hand, this also includes settings where learners acquire one of their ambient languages as a second language. (Meisel 2011b: 141) We will discuss this issue in much more detail in Chapter 6, but we may already mention here that the important role of L2 learners for contact-induced change has indeed been emphasized repeatedly in the literature; see also the reference to Weinreich (1979), above. L2 acquisition is also invoked in publications investigating situations of shift-induced interference (Thomason and Kaufman 1988), and in generative studies on contact-induced syntactic change (Kroch and Taylor 1997; Kroch 2001; Weerman 1993). We will discuss these concepts in more detail in the next subsection.

110  language acquisition and change 5.1.3 Contact-induced interference/Shift-induced interference In the previous section, we argued that it is unlikely that language contact may cause a grammatical change if only native speakers of the changing language are involved, e.g. in processes of borrowing. We rather propose that grammatical restructuring requires a scenario in which L2 acquisition is involved; see Chapter 6.2. According to Thomason and Kaufman (1988), this is also the case in situations of language shift, since this refers to instances where grammatical innovations are introduced into the target language via non-native speakers of the language in question. The innovators of language change through shift-induced interference give up using their native language, the substratum, in favour of the contact or target language. Since this typically happens when they are adults, the target is acquired as an L2, showing all typical features of L2 acquisition, like, first and foremost, morphosyntactic and phonological influence from the substratum variety. Lexical influence only plays a minor role and happens, if at all, at a later time during the contact situation (Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 39, 55). If the number of innovators is large enough, the result is ‘imperfect group learning’ (p. 38). The innovations or ‘errors made by members of the shifting group in speaking the TL [target language] then spread to the TL as a whole when they are imitated by original speakers of that language’ (p. 39). It is therefore unlikely that the target language will undergo a shift-induced change when the shifting group is too small or when their members have acquired a high degree of bilingual competence (p. 47). Given the necessary sociolinguistic context, shift-induced interference may take as little as one generation to occur (p. 41). Importantly, borrowing and shift-induced interference are two phenomena of contact-induced language change which differ in virtually all respects: borrowing primarily targets the lexicon, but shift-induced interference targets phonology and morphosyntax; borrowings are introduced by native speakers of the changing language, but shift-induced interference is exerted by speakers of the source language; structural change through borrowing requires a long-term contact situation, if it happens at all, but the effects of shift-induced interference may be observed after a very short period

language contact as a possible trigger of change  111 of time; a high degree of bilingual competence in the contact languages favours borrowing (even though it is not a necessary factor) but prevents shift-induced interference. All these differences can be ascribed to the fact that borrowing involves L1 acquirers and shift-induced interference L2 acquirers as the agents of the change. As a case in point, language contact between Northern Middle English and Old Norse has been invoked as the crucial factor in the emergence of an English V2 grammar in which the verb moves to C° rather than to I° only (Kroch and Taylor 1997) and for the change of OV to VO order in English (Weerman 1993). As regards the verb-second property, Kroch and Taylor (1997) argue that Old English as well as Southern Middle English were V2 languages in which the verb only moved as far as I°. Postverbal subject DPs were licensed in situ due to the rich agreement morphology of the inflectional head. Topics were CP-adjoined and passed through SpecIP on their way into the left periphery. This configuration allowed for certain V3 structures in which a pronominal, clitic, element intervened between the topic and the verb, as in (6). (6) OEng Ælc yfel je mæg don each evil he can do (WHom, 4.62, Kroch and Taylor 1997: 302, example (4a))

Other contexts featured categorical V2 order, such as wh-questions with a wh-word other than the subject, sentence-initial þa and þonne ‘then’, preposed negated and subjunctive verbs, and verbfirst order in narrative inversions (Kroch and Taylor 1997: 303). Northern Middle English, on the other hand, featured the ­verb-second order in nearly all contexts in which a non-subject constituent appeared clause-initially. Kroch and Taylor (1997) argue that this is evidence in favour of a V2 grammar with verb movement to C° instead of I°. According to the authors, the CP-V2 grammar of Northern Middle English was a result of language contact with Scandinavian, although Old Norse was an IP-V2 language just like Old and Southern Middle English. The influence could hence only have been indirect. Kroch and Taylor (1997) relate the emergence of the CP-V2 grammar of Northern Middle English to another characteristic property of this variety, namely ‘the reduction of the relatively rich Old English agreement system

112  language acquisition and change to one with almost no person distinctions’ (p. 322). In their view, this ‘simplification is the result of imperfect L2 learning of English by the Norse invaders of the 9th to 11th centuries’ (p. 318). They further state that these L2 learners must have constituted a large enough group of speakers to influence the language of the forthcoming generations. As a document in support of this, the authors refer to a substratum effect, namely the appearance of grammatical markers of Norse origin in Northern Middle English. In the same vein, Weerman (1993) proposes that the change from OV to VO word order in Northern Middle English was due to contact with Old Norse. The V2 property of Old English brought about many contexts in which the underlying OV order was overwritten by superficial VO order. Weerman (1993) argues that L2 learners tended to overgeneralize this VO order to contexts where OV would in fact have been in order. If the linguistic performance of these L2 learners constituted the PLD to which child language acquirers were exposed, the next generation might have reset the parameter to VO as the default value. According to Weerman (1993), this was precisely what happened in Northern Middle English in the last two centuries of the first millennium when Vikings attacked and invaded the Danelaw, i.e. that part of central and north-east England which was under the influence of Danish invaders in the ninth century. The Vikings abandoned their native Scandinavian varieties in favour of English as an L2. In contrast to Old Norman, the influence of Old Norse was prevalent in informal rather than in formal contexts and registers. It affected the whole society and not only the upper classes. Furthermore, the region which was most affected by the Viking invasions was also the one which provided the first texts with an underlying VO order and which laid the foundation of Modern English (Weerman 1993: 921f.). As a case of shift-induced interference – a term which is, however, not used by Weerman (1993) – it also complies with the two basic requirements for this type of contact-induced change established by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) and discussed above, i.e. a large enough size of the population providing substratum influence and their lacking full bilingual competence. As Weerman (1993: 919) puts it, ‘[f]irst of all the group of L2 learners should be substantial enough in comparison to the original population. Further, this group should be in a situation in which

language contact as a possible trigger of change  113 it is not very likely that it could acquire “perfect” Old English.’ Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 39) state that native speakers of the target language, i.e. English, may imitate errors of the shifting speakers, without, however, going into further detail on how this imitation can plausibly be explained. It is only via this adoption of innovations by native speakers of the target language that shift-induced interference can be incorporated into the grammar of the target language and thereby lead to grammatical change. Weerman (1993) proposes that peripheral rules play a central role in this process. Peripheral rules are ‘tricks’, in Weerman’s terms, learned in addition to the structural constraints and rules provided by UG and the respective parameter settings. Even though peripheral rules may produce an output which is in conflict with a particular parameter value, the parameter setting remains intact. Old English, for example, exhibited many deviations from a strict OV grammar, i.e. cases in which constituents were extraposed to a position following the finite verb and triggering a surface SVO order even in contexts where OV would be expected to be ­obligatory; see (7). (7) OEng þæt he andette [NP his scrifte] [NP ealle his synna] that he confess his confessor all his sins (Weerman 1993: 911, example (15b))

It is true that such deviations violate the head-direction para­ meter, but since it relates to a peripheral rule of Old English, this should not prevent children who acquire the language as an L1 from setting the parameter correctly. Parametric change is expected to occur, however, when L2 acquisition is involved, for example in the children of the Viking invaders, who acquired English as a mother tongue based on the L2 output of their parents. The spread to English speakers with no Scandinavian descent proceeds, according to Weerman (1993: 923), via speakers who acquire their mother tongue as an L2 at a later time than those who acquire it as an L1. If these speakers exaggerate the above-mentioned deviations from the head-direction parameter by adding peripheral rules, the parameter setting may change from one generation to the next. Unfortunately, Weerman (1993) remains relatively vague as to how exactly this spread of the change to English native speakers

114  language acquisition and change may have proceeded. For example, he does not state explicitly the specific socio-historical circumstances which, according to his hypothesis, might have resulted in a certain number of speakers of English being delayed in the acquisition of their mother tongue, thus resulting in an instance of L2 acquisition. The diffusion of a shift-induced interference from source to target language speakers would hence still require some further concretization. In Chapter 6 we will elaborate on the question of how the explanation of diachronic language change in terms of parameter resetting, like the ones described by Kroch and Taylor (1997) and Weerman (1993), can be accommodated with insights gained from research on L1 and L2 acquisition. At this point, we can say that, once a parameter has been set to a specific value, it cannot be reset any more during an individual speaker’s lifetime. Language change, and in particular grammatical change, is hence an intergenerational and not an intragenerational phenomenon. The hypothesis that language change or parametric change, to be more precise, is restricted to contexts where L2 acquisition is involved leads us ‘to the prediction that parametric changes occur less frequently than is normally assumed’. More specifically, ‘[t]his prediction is corroborated by the fact that a number of alleged instances of diachronic changes of settings of syntactic parameters can be explained differently’ (Meisel 2011b: 124). This will be our concern in the next section. 5.2 Case studies

In this section, we will again consider two phenomena of structural change in medieval French with a particular focus on the question whether language contact may be invoked as a causal factor. In a first step, in Section 5.2.1, we discuss the emergence of the verbsecond property in Old French. While Latin, the common source of all Romance languages, and late Middle French are non-verbsecond languages, Old French has been claimed to exhibit a verbsecond grammar, very much like the Germanic languages. Even though the possibility cannot be excluded that this phenomenon has purely language-internal roots, as Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 128) acknowledge, many studies interpret the superstrate

language contact as a possible trigger of change  115 influence of Frankish in the second half of the first millennium as the decisive factor in the emergence of this property. In Section 5.2.2 we will turn our attention to the loss of the prodrop property of Old French. Some researchers have attributed the loss of null subjects in the history of French to direct (Kuen 1958) or indirect (Hilty 1968) Germanic influence. We will discuss the arguments that have been put forward in favour of this view and argue that no convincing evidence for Germanic influence has been provided and that, to the extent that this influence exists at all, it operates at the level of performance and does not affect ­grammatical competence. 5.2.1  The verb-second property of Old French As has already been pointed out in Section 4.3, Old French featured word order patterns which are reminiscent of modern Germanic languages: the subject could appear postverbally whenever a nonsubject constituent initiated the clause. These word order patterns have been interpreted as evidence for the verb-second property of Old French (cf. Le Coultre 1875; Thurneysen 1892). In generative research, it has been proposed that Old French was positively specified with regard to the verb-second parameter (cf. Adams 1987; Labelle 2007; Mathieu 2007; Platzack 1995; Roberts 1993, 2007; Vance 1997). While the generative literature remains relatively quiet as regards the question of whether contact with Germanic can be held responsible for the verb-second patterns in Old French, such a contact-based explanation has nevertheless been advanced repeatedly, e.g. by Mutz (2009), Posner (1996: 53), Thomason and Kaufman (1988) or von Wartburg (1969). According to Mutz (2009: 61), [m]ehrere lautliche und morphosyntaktische Merkmale des Französischen werden dem Einfluss des Fränkischen zugeschrieben bzw. es wird dem Fränkischen in Bezug auf diese Merkmale eine katalysierende Kraft beigemessen für bereits in der Sprache angelegte Entwicklungstendenzen, so z.B. . . . bestimmte Satzkonstruktionen (wie V2-Stellung) im Altfranzösischen.6

116  language acquisition and change Thomason and Kaufman (1988: 128) consider contact a likely candidate for the emergence of the verb-second property in Old French since it is present in the contact languages, Germanic and French, but absent in the source language, Latin. The authors state that ‘Old French had an obligatory verb-second rule in prose, and such a rule is unknown elsewhere in Romance’ (p. 128). However, they acknowledge that ‘[i]nternal explanations have also been proposed for these and other features claimed to be of Germanic origin’ (p. 128) and that the role of language contact remains an open issue. According to von Wartburg (1969: 66), [l]e respect que les Francs portaient au latin et l’habitude qu’ils avaient de parler un idiome plus compliqué les empêchaient de trop toucher au système morphologique et syntactique [sic!] de la nouvelle langue, qu’ils parlèrent d’abord en même temps que leur langue propre, avant de l’adopter définitivement. Toutefois, le système morphologique et syntactique [sic!] du français n’a pas été sans subir aussi l’influence du francique.7 He further specifies that la loi qui veut que la deuxième place dans la phrase soit réservée au verbe . . ., n’est connue, parmi les langues romanes, que du français, qui l’a en commun avec les langues germaniques. (p. 66)8 But language contact has also been invoked in relatively recent work on the Germanic properties of Old French. Mathieu (2009: 345), for example, states that the ‘influence of Germanic on what was to become French may have been through contact, first through the invasion of Gaul by the Francs, and second, by the Normans in the North-West’. The question then is whether verb-second patterns in Old French indeed reflect the syntactic consequences of Germanic influence. Research on the role of language contact conducted within the comparative approach of variationist sociolinguistics has cast some doubt on studies reporting frequencies of occurrence alone, as already mentioned above. A constraint hierarchy

language contact as a possible trigger of change  117 has instead been proposed as the single most important standard of comparison. Poplack and Levey (2010: 400) define it as ‘the configuration of environmental factors affecting the probability that a given variant form will be selected, along with the direction of their effects’. Although it is undoubtedly true that these environmental factors, i.e. factors of language use, tell us little about the underlying grammar of a morphosyntactic phenomenon – i.e. they cannot shed light on the question whether the V2 parameter in Old French was set to a positive value due to contact with Germanic – they do shed light, however, on the question of whether language contact can be considered as a likely external causal factor in the emergence and maintenance of verb-second patterns, regardless of whether they mirror an underlying V2 grammar or not. The comparative approach serves to assess the role of language contact. It relies on the following conditions: If the hierarchy of constraints conditioning the variable occurrence of a candidate for change . . . in a contact variety is the same as that of its pre-contact precursor, while differing from that of its presumed source, no structural change has taken place. If it features a constraint hierarchy different from those of both its pre-contact precursor and the presumed source, we can infer that change has occurred, but not one that is contact-induced. Only when a candidate for change in a contact variety features a constraint hierarchy different from that of its pre-contact precursor, but parallel to that of its presumed source, can we conclude in favor of contact-induced change. (Poplack and Levey 2010: 400f.) These conditions place a relatively heavy burden of proof on all those studies advocating language contact as the decisive factor in processes of language change. Elsig (2012) applied these criteria to the verb-second clauses in Old French. He analysed declarative matrix clauses, i.e. the relevant context in which the verb-second order can be observed, in the two contact languages, namely Old French and Middle High German. The data were extracted from thirteenth-century charters stemming from a language contact region.9 The focus of this study was on the so-called conflict sites, ‘structural and/or functional differences, typically manifested as a

118  language acquisition and change 60% 50%

Middle High German charters (N = 435)

40%

Old French charters (N = 452)

232

50

30% 20% 10% 0%

3 42 V1

83 SV INV

120 XV no INV

140 V 3

25 V1

88 SV INV

104 XV

V 3

no INV

Figure 5.1  Distribution of subject–verb inversion (INV) across four different word order patterns in declarative matrix clauses in Middle High German and Old French (V1 = verb-first; SV = subject–verb; XV = nonsubject–verb; V≥3 = verb preceded by more than one constituent) © Elsig (2012) Figure 1 in ‘Subject–verb inversion in 13th century German and French. A comparative view’ in K. Braunmüller and C. Gabriel (eds), Multilingual individuals and multilingual societies, John Benjamins

conflict in constraint hierarchies’ (Poplack and Levey 2010: 400, italics in the original). Figure 5.1 shows a distribution of the word order patterns observed in these data. While the occurrence of declarative matrix clauses with a subject (SV) or a non-subject (XV) in preverbal position is expected in a verb-second grammar, clauses with the verb in first (V1) or third position (V≥3) should be excluded. The frequencies in Figure 5.1 show, however, that the distribution in the German data is surprisingly similar to that in the French ones. With a majority of V≥3 clauses, Middle High German appears to have converged, if at all, with Old French rather than the other way around. But these are the mere frequencies of occurrence, neglecting the particular contexts and environmental factors. The most important of these is subject–verb inversion. In a strict verb-second grammar, this should occur whenever a non-subject constituent initiates the clause. As Figure 5.1 shows, the majority of V≥3 clauses in German occur in inversion contexts whereas inversion in V≥3 is virtually non-existent in French. Elsig (2012) found that upon closer inspection, most of the German V≥3 clauses contain a preposed conditional or relative clause in first position, followed by a short resumptive element, either the subject in preverbal position,

language contact as a possible trigger of change  119 as in (8), or another pronoun or adverb triggering subject–verb ­inversion, as in (9). (8) MHG welle-nt aber die Houeſezen ir want-PRS.3PL however the residents[NOM.PL] their reht an der Houeſtete vn an dem right[ACC.SG] on the farm and on the buwe duffe verkovff-en ſie ſvl-ent buildings upon sell-INF they[NOM.PL] shall-PRS.3PL ez von erſt biete-n dem houeherren it[ACC.SG] from first offer-INF to.the landlord[DAT.SG] ‘But if the residents want to sell their right on the farm and on the buildings thereupon, they shall offer it first to the landlord.’ (MHG, IV.3482.564.46, Elsig 2012: 230, example (7)) (9) MHG Jſt aber dc ſi niht vberein is[PRS.3SG] however that they not into.an.agreement mugent kummen, ſo ſul-nt ſi might enter so shall-PRS.3PL they[NOM.PL] kieſ-en ein obeman . . . elect-INF a conciliator[ACC.SG] ‘However, if they do not come to an agreement, they shall elect a conciliator . . .’ (MHG, V.N64.045.10, Elsig 2012: 230, example (6a))

Axel (2007: 227–33) discusses occurrences of this word order type in Old High German and claims that the preposed adverbial clause is external to the matrix clause and remains so until the Early New High German period. She relates this construction to an archaic pattern of the juxtaposition of clauses with Indo-European roots, the ‘correlative diptych’ (cf. Haudry 1973). According to Axel, ‘these clauses are adverbial relative clauses which are adjoined to the root node of their respective matrix clause and which are resumed by an ±overt pro-adverb form in the clauseinternal modifier position’ (2007: 233). If this analysis is correct and the fronted conditional clause indeed appears in a CP-adjoined position, then the V2 syntax of the matrix clause remains intact. In Old French, there exists no such restriction on the nature of the element intervening between the preposed adverbial clause and

120  language acquisition and change the finite verb, as example (10) illustrates. Here, a complex subject DP, li diz coinſ de lucenborc ne ſu har ‘the aforementioned count of Luxemburg nor his heir’, initiates the matrix clause which follows the fronted conditional clause. Unlike in the German data, the subject is not a short and resumptive element but a full DP. (10) OF et ſe il auen-oit que por lo and if it happen-IPFV.3SG that for the dit Conte de lucenborc [. . .] Gagi-er aforementioned count of Luxemburg remunerate-INF auen-iſt acunne meſcheance de mort [. . .] happen-SBJV.PST.3SG none misfortune of death li diz coinſ de lucenborc ne the aforementioned count[NOM.SG] of Luxemburg nor ſu har n=an porr-oient his heir NEG-therefrom can-COND.PRS.3PL rienſ demand-er . . . nothing[ACC.INDF] claim-INF ‘And if it happened that no deadly misfortune [. . .] took place which could prevent the remuneration of the count of Luxemburg [. . .], neither the aforementioned count of Luxemburg nor his heir could claim anything . . .’ (OF, 167. wIV443 1278 April 28, Elsig 2012: 231, example (8))

If sentences as in (8) and (9) do not instantiate a true V≥3 word order and can therefore not be taken as evidence against a V2 analysis of Middle High German, the same argument should hold for the French data, and (10) would consequently be compatible with an analysis of Old French in terms of a V2 grammar. Yet the observations that there are apparently no restrictions whatsoever on the type and nature of the preverbal constituent in the French data, and that examples of subject–verb inversion in this context are almost non-existent, suggest that structural differences between the two languages do exist. The lack of inversion would be expected, for example, if the Old French verb remained in T° whereas the Middle High German verb rose to C°. The preverbal position in French, SpecTP, would then host some kind of subject while the preverbal position in German, SpecCP, would host the resumptive pro form.

language contact as a possible trigger of change  121 Table 5.1 Variable rule analysis of subject–verb inversion in non-null subject declarative matrix clauses (synthesis of Tables 1 and 2 in Elsig 2012: 233f.) Middle High German

Input value (INV) Initial constituent  Object  PP  Adverb   Adverbial clause   Relative clause Range Verb type  Auxiliary  Modal  Unaccusative  Transitive  Unergative Range Subject: (pro)nominal  Nominal  Pronominal Range Subject definiteness  Indefinite  Definite Range

FW %

N

.69   – – .84 .45 .12 72   .62 .56 .36 .36   27   .60 .45 15   .75 .44 32

302 435    45  45  26  26  54  56 122 152  13  30        48  61 170 228  45  73  39  73         108 141 194 294        71  81 231 354    

 69.4 100.0 100.0  96.4  80.3  43.3    78.7  74.6  61.6  53.4    76.6  66.0    87.7  65.3  

Total N

Old French FW %

N

Total N

.29   .98 .97 .78 .13 – 85   /  /  /  /  /      .59 .44 15   [.51] [.20]  

29.2

132 452

89.6 46.5 88.9  3.5  0.0  

 43  33  16   6   0  

 48  71  18 171   3  

48.3 27.9 10.0 29.4 33.3  

 43  43   8  37   1  

 89 154  80 126   3  

32.6 26.8  

 61 187  71 265    

16.7 29.7  

  3  18 129 434    

FW = factor weight; N = number; ‘Unaccusative’ comprises unaccusatives, passives, reflexives and predicatives; / = factors and factor group were not included in the stepwise logistic regression

The variable rule analysis conducted with GoldVarb X (Sankoff, Tagliamonte and Smith 2005) and displayed in Table 5.1 confirms that preposed adverbial (conditional) clauses represent a conflict site in the above-mentioned sense. The relevant numbers are highlighted in bold in the table. In the Old French data, they strongly disfavour subject–verb inversion, as shown by the factor weight of only 0.13; in the German data, on the other hand, they have no, or at most a minor, disfavouring influence on inversion (factor weight = 0.45).10

122  language acquisition and change An account of the Old French grammar which locates the verb in T° and the subject in SpecTP would also be consistent with the observation that clause-initial objects, prepositional phrases and adverbs trigger subject–verb inversion only variably in French, but categorically in German; cf. example (11). (11) OF et pour touteſ ceſ chozeſ deuant diteſ le and for all these things before said the dit conte de lucembourc requíert . . . aforementioned count of L. requires . . . ‘And for all the aforementioned things, the aforesaid count of L. requires [. . .]’ (OF, 90. wIV066 1268 March 3, Elsig 2012: 231, example (9))

Two further differences between the two languages show that subject–verb inversion in Middle High German and in Old French is not conditioned in exactly the same way. First, the verb type does not have an independent effect on variable choice in Old French, but interacts with the type of the initial constituent (see Elsig 2012: 235 for details). Second, the definiteness or indefiniteness of the subject yields statistical significance in German, but not in French. If the interplay of environmental factors can be considered to be a ‘portion of the grammar underlying the variability’ (Poplack and Levey 2010: 400), we can conclude that thirteenth-century German and French do not draw on exactly the same grammars to produce surface patterns exhibiting subject–verb inversion. Of course, the term ‘grammar’ as it is used in this sense is distinct from the ‘grammar’ that refers to the speaker’s internal grammatical knowledge. Quantitative results as shown in Table 5.1 hence do not allow us to draw direct conclusions about the V2 character of Old French. But they do enable us to assess the likelihood that language contact is responsible for the apparent verb-second patterns in the two languages. Coming back to the criteria established by Poplack and Levey (2010), the results in Table 5.1 show that a c­ ontact-based explanation of subject–verb inversion appears to be rather unlikely, at least for the thirteenth century. Of course, the possibility cannot be excluded that subject–verb inversion in thirteenth-century French could have been an outcome of a language contact situation in earlier times, considering the fact that the Frankish influence on

language contact as a possible trigger of change  123 French (or rather the lingua romana rustica) existed as early as in the middle of the first millennium: it could then have developed differently from inversion in German. As regards the level of I-language (cf. Chomsky 1986: 21ff.), the results of Elsig’s (2012) study provide at least indirect evidence that subject–verb inversion in Old French can probably not be ascribed to the same grammatical properties which produce inversion in Middle High German. It is well known that the verb-second property was firmly entrenched in Middle High German (cf. Axel 2007), and the data analysed and discussed here all comply with this property, even the apparent exceptions (as in (8) and (9)). Old French, on the other hand, exhibits word order patterns which cannot easily be accommodated with a verb-second grammar, as shown by the canonical subject–verb order after a PP illustrated in (11). It therefore seems plausible to look for some different reason why Old French featured subject–verb inversion. As reported in Chapter 4, Rinke and Meisel (2009) draw a parallel between Old French and modern Romance null subject languages which also have subject–verb inversion, but are not, however, verb-second languages. According to these authors’ analysis, the postverbal placement of the subject does not result from some syntactic constraint but is pragmatically conditioned, i.e. preverbal subjects tend to be associated with a topic reading whereas subjects expressing information focus would be realized postverbally; see also MarchelloNizia (1995). This account offers an alternative explanation of inversion in Old French, and since it does not assume an underlying V2 grammar, it does not face the difficulty of having to explain constructions which are incompatible with a verb-second grammar. To sum up, the comparison of subject–verb inversion in (non-null subject) declarative matrix clauses extracted from Old French and Middle High German charters from the thirteenth century revealed important differences in the environmental factors which favour the choice of inversion over non-inversion. This makes language contact with the V2 language German an unlikely explanatory factor when it comes to accounting for postverbal subjects in Old French, at least as far as the thirteenthcentury varieties are concerned. In this regard, our findings are concordant with those reported by Kaiser (2000), who studied the influence of contact between different dialectal varieties of

124  language acquisition and change twelfth- and thirteenth-century Old French on the supposed loss of the verb-second property. He was not able to find any parametric differences between the varieties studied, and he concluded that contact could therefore not be confirmed as a decisive factor in the development of this property. In order to assess the role of contact during earlier times, it would be necessary to analyse further comparative data. 5.2.2  The loss of the pro-drop property of Old French Almost all Romance languages and dialects are characterized by the pro-drop property: subject pronouns need not be phonetically realized unless this is required for pragmatic reasons. This principle is referred to by Chomsky (1981) as the ‘Avoid Pronoun Principle’. The realization of a pronominal subject is a marked option and usually restricted to contrastive or emphatic contexts, as illustrated for Spanish in examples (12a, b). (12) a. Span Canto. sing[1SG] ‘I sing.’ b. Span Yo canto. I sing[1SG] ‘I sing.’

French differs in this respect from most Romance languages because it requires the realization of a subject pronoun in the unmarked case. In marked (emphatic or contrastive) contexts, the unstressed nominative pronoun is doubled by means of a strong pronoun, originally an accusative form. (13) a. ModF *Chante. sing[1SG] b. ModF Je chante. I sing ‘I sing.’ c. ModF Moi, je chante. I[ACC] I sing[1SG] ‘I sing.’

language contact as a possible trigger of change  125 Given the fact that Latin, the ancestor of the Romance languages, was a null subject language and exhibited the same behaviour as the one illustrated by (12), the question arises of how to explain the divergent behaviour of French. This question has been addressed in many publications since the earliest times of Romance linguistics (Foulet 1924, 1935; Franzén 1939; Kuen 1958; Wartburg 1943; among many others). Some approaches attempt to account for the obligatory realization of subject pronouns in French – already noticeable as a tendency in Old French – by independent intralinguistic developments like sound changes or word order changes (Foulet 1924; Franzén 1939; Wartburg 1943; among others). Others have argued in favour of language contact with Germanic as a decisive factor (esp. Kuen 1958; to a lesser extent also Hilty 1968). In the following section, we will briefly summarize this discussion. According to Foulet (1924, 1935), the erosion of verbal endings as a result of regular sound change (loss of coda consonants) and the syncretisms caused by these developments made it necessary to realize the pronominal subject in order to disambiguate between different possible referents. Kuen (1958), however, rejects this hypothesis. He argues that pronominal subjects were already overused in Old French, at a time when verbal endings were still present (twelfth/thirteenth century). A second hypothesis associates the increasing frequency of the realization of subject pronouns in Old French with word order changes. Franzén (1939) explains this as a manifestation of a tendency ‘exprimer le sujet avant le verbe, l’agent avant l’action’.11 Walther von Wartburg (1943) assumes that the realization of preverbal subject pronouns made it possible to maintain verb-second order in Old French in cases where no other constituent could occupy the sentence-initial position. Although all the developments mentioned so far – the erosion of verbal endings, the tendency towards subject–verb order and verb-second placement – may well have contributed to the increase in the use of subject pronouns in Old French, these hypotheses do not explain, according to Kuen (1958), why the loss of null subjects only affected certain areas of the Romance world, namely the north of France, the Rhaeto-Romance Alps and some areas in northern Italy (in dialects like Piedmontese, Emilian and Venetian). Kuen

126  language acquisition and change (1958) argues that all these areas were occupied by Germanic peoples during the Migration Period in the early Middle Ages and that the Germanic dialects exerted a strong influence on the Romance vernacular in these areas. Nordfrankreich, die rätoromanischen Alpen und Oberitalien haben eine Bedingung gemeinsam, die sonst überall fehlt: sie sind in der Völkerwanderungszeit von germanischen Völkern besetzt und so stark durchsetzt worden, daß deren Sprache tiefen Einfluß auf die Sprache der dort lebenden Romanen ausüben konnte: Nordfrankreich von den Franken, die rätoromanischen Alpen von den Alemannen und Baiern, Oberitalien von den Longobarden. (Kuen 1958: 306)12 Kuen (1958) provides some evidence for language contact-induced changes in this area and, interestingly, he highlights the importance of the bilingual population in the north of France after the conquest by the Franks. The high degree of bilingualism in this area is mirrored, according to Kuen (1958), by a large number of loanwords and place names with Germanic origin. However, as discussed in the first sections of this chapter, contact-induced influence at the level of the lexicon does not automatically imply transfer at the level of syntax. According to Kuen (1958), the most convincing argument in favour of Germanic influence on Old French is that, during the medieval age, none of the European languages showed a systematic realization of subject pronouns except for the Germanic dialects and the Romance dialects in contact with Germanic. Es wäre ein unwahrscheinlicher Zufall, wenn im frühen Mittelalter die Neigung zur doppelten Bezeichnung des Subjekts in allen Personen durch Personalpronomen und Endung innerhalb von ganz Europa nur in den germanischen und in den unter germanischem Einfluß stehenden romanischen Sprachen aufgekommen wäre, ohne daß ein Zusammenhang bestünde. (Kuen 1958: 322)13 However, as argued in Section 5.1.2, the mere fact that language contact existed and that structures developed in a parallel fashion

language contact as a possible trigger of change  127 does not necessarily prove that language contact was the cause of the change. Hilty (1968) also attributes an important role to contact with Germanic, but he admits that the influence of the Germanic languages led not to an innovation in Old French but rather to an acceleration of an already existing tendency. Hilty (1968) assumes that northern French differed in two ways from its sister languages: first, with respect to the existence of noncontrastive pronouns, and, second, concerning the restriction of realizing non-contrastive pronominal subjects in preverbal position. Although, according to Hilty (1968), the tendency to realize a pronominal subject already existed in Late Latin, this use, as well as the placement of these pronouns exclusively in preverbal position, could only become prevalent as a general rule under the influence of West Frankish. The arguments by both Kuen (1958) and Hilty (1968) are based on the assumption that in the medieval period, northern and southern French dialects differed substantially from each other with respect to the realization of subject pronouns. It is also assumed, especially in Kuen’s (1958) article, that the realization of subject pronouns in northern French dialects differs from that in other medieval Romance languages, especially Old Spanish. In a next step, we will show that neither of these two assumptions can be maintained. Rinke and Sitaridou (2004) investigated the realization of subject pronouns in four regional varieties of the medieval period, all from the northern part of France. They compared them to Old Occitan, a prototypical null subject language. If subject realization in the northern French dialects was influenced by Germanic, we should expect to find considerable differences between the texts from northern France and the Old Occitan text. In order to ensure that the texts indeed exhibit dialectal features we selected texts with a high dialectal coefficient according to Dees’ (Dees 1987) Atlas des formes linguistiques des textes littéraires de l’ancien français (Table 5.2).14 Table 5.3 shows the distribution of empty subjects and pronominal subjects in the different texts.15 This table is organized geographically from north to south: Liège, Lille, Île de France, Alsace, Toulouse. It shows that the Old Wallon text, which represents the northernmost dialect, exhibits the highest proportion of

128  language acquisition and change Table 5.2 Coefficient of dialectal features in four regional texts (according to Dees 1987) Texts

Coefficient of dialectal features

Sept Sages Clari Médicinaire liégeois Li Sermon Saint Bernart

90 (Seine-et-Marne) 97 (Somme, Pas-de-Calais) 94 (Wallonie) 74 (Moselle)

Table 5.3  Comparative table of null subjects in Old French dialects Pronominal subjects

Old Wallon Old Picard Francien Old Mosellan Old Occitan

Null subjects

Total of sentences considered

N

%

N

%

N

%

 12  60 123 114  31

 9.4 31.1 54.7 66.7 24.1

115 133 102  57  98

90.6 68.9 45.3 33.3 75.9

127 193 225 171 129

100 100 100 100 100

N = number.

null subjects, even higher than the Old Occitan text. The Picard text is comparable to Old Occitan, whereas the Francien and the Old Mosellan texts show a higher proportion of pronominal subjects. The analysis of the different dialectal texts leads to the following conclusions. First, it is not the case that the northern French dialects generally exhibit a high proportion of pronominal subjects. Second, it is not the case that the number of null subjects differs systematically and substantially from that found in langue d’oc. Moreover, it can be concluded that although some of the texts show a high rate of pronominal subjects, all the dialects have to be characterized as null subject languages in terms of their grammatical parameterization, because null subjects are licensed in all texts. Therefore, if the Germanic languages exerted an influence on the realization of null subjects in northern French dialects of the medieval period, it would have concerned language use (an over-realization of subjects) and not the grammatical system. What the numbers in Table 5.3 suggest is that some medieval

language contact as a possible trigger of change  129 northern French dialects (some more than others) showed a higher frequency of pronominal subjects than is to be expected for a null subject language. It can also be shown that pronominal subjects could be used in non-contrastive contexts, as shown in example (14). (14) OF Li autres sagesi si estoit si chiches et si the other sage PART was so thrifty and so avers qu’ ili ne voloit riens despendre, avaricious that he NEG wanted nothing spend Et quanque ili pooit avoir ili retenoit. and as.much.as he could have he retained ‘The other sage was so thrifty and avaricious that he did not want to spend anything, and he retained as much as he could have.’ (Sept Sages, p. 17, l.8)

Such effects are reminiscent of contemporary language contact situations between pro-drop and non-pro-drop languages (e.g. English–Italian, English–Greek, English–Spanish) – and even between two null subject languages – where an increase of subject use in the null subject language has been reported (cf. Lipski 1985; Silva-Corvalán 1994; Tsimpli, Sorace, Heycock and Filiaci 2004; Otheguy, Zentella and Livert 2007; among many others). Crucially, as shown by Tsimpli et al. (2004), the underlying grammatical competence of the speakers is not affected. However, two objections against language contact as an influential factor have to be made. First, as shown by Dufter (2010), an ‘overuse’ of overt pronominal subjects is not restricted to northern French dialects or other Romance contact varieties but is also observed in medieval Spanish. And second, one must take into account that the distribution of pronominal subjects in Old French differs not only quantitatively but also qualitatively from that in prototypical null subject languages. Dufter’s (2010) study builds on Menéndez Pidal’s (1932) observation concerning two Old Spanish texts (Estoria de Espanna and Conde Lucanor) that ‘[e]n ambos textos se ven los mismos defectos de la época arcáica, tales como la gran inhabilidad que revela el abuso del pronombre él’ (Menéndez Pidal 1932: 29).16 Dufter (2010) shows that a coreferential pronoun is used in contexts in

130  language acquisition and change which its realization would imply a non-coreferential reading in a prototypical null subject language, (15a), as shown by the fact that, in modern versions of the same text, the pronoun is omitted to avoid misunderstandings, (15b). (15) a. OSp Desta razôn no plogo mucho al for-this reason not pleased much to-the hermitañoi, ca éli conosçía muy bien al hermit because he knew very well the rey king. (Luc fol. 130v; Dufter 2010: 58) b. OSp Al ermitañoi le pesó mucho, pues Øi To-the hermit Cl regrets a lot still conocía muy bien al rey. knew very well the king ‘The hermit regretted it a lot because he knew very well the king.’ (Luc JV pag. 40; Dufter 2010: 58)

In fact, the modern version of the text exhibits only half as many personal pronouns as the medieval version of the same text. Dufter (2010) also compares a Latin text (De officiis by Cicero) with its Old Spanish translation by Alfonso de Cartagena in 1422 and notes that the Spanish writer introduces a number of personal pronouns where the Latin text did not exhibit any. This is especially true for subordinate clauses. Subordinate clauses also show special properties concerning the realization of subjects in Old French, because null subjects are only licensed in Old French subordinate clauses under special conditions (in particular with topicalization; for a more detailed analysis cf. Rinke 2003). In addition, a number of analyses have demonstrated that the realization of null subjects in main clauses is also constrained by syntactic conditions, namely the correlation between verb-second placement and the licensing of null subjects (Adams 1987, 1988b; Roberts 1993; Vance 1997). Nevertheless, it is not at all clear how these constraints could be motivated, directly or indirectly, by language contact. Moreover, as observed by

language contact as a possible trigger of change  131 Roberts (1993), Vance (1997) and others, null subjects disappear in the sixteenth century, but not simultaneously with other structural phenomena which are assumed to depend on the pro-drop parameter. Subject–verb inversion disappears as early as around 1400. Independently from subject–verb inversion, null subjects are used increasingly before they disappear, especially in subordinate clauses. The loss of null subjects in the history of French can therefore not be attributed to language contact, either directly or indirectly. Instead, the variability of subject use in Old and Middle French and the ultimate loss of null subjects in Modern French are related to a restructuring process in the paradigm of nominative subject pronouns in the history of French (Kaiser 1992; Vance 1997: 288–93; Roberts 1993: 160–6; Marchello-Nizia 1999: 102–3; among others). This process can be described in terms of a stepwise grammaticalization of strong nominative pronouns which develop first into topic markers and later into agreement markers. In Old French, pronominal subjects occur postverbally in topicalization contexts and already show certain properties of weak or clitic elements in this position, e.g. they cannot be contrastively stressed, nor can they be coordinated, be modified, be separated from the finite verb, or occur in isolation. During the Middle French period, these properties extend to preverbal nominative pronouns. As argued by Vance (1997), the distribution of null and pronominal subjects during this period is related to the allomorphy between person/ number distinctions and pronominal subjects, and pronominal subjects finally prevail. One can thus say that in Middle French, pre- and postverbal pronominal subjects are D°-heads which lose pragmatic force: they no longer occur as postverbal topic-markers in contexts of topicalization, and their distribution is even less determined by the pragmatic context (prominence, emphasis). In addition, accusative pronouns emerge in subject position, (16), and begin to be doubled by the weak nominative forms, as in the fifteenth-century example (17). (16) MF Moy, désirant

honneur et plaisance, comme I wishing honour and pleasure as gentil homme, de tout mon povoir, ay, ou nom de gentleman of all my might have in name of

132  language acquisition and change

Dieu et de la doulce vierge Marie, de God and of the gentle virgin Mary of monseigneur sainct George, et de saint Anthoine, his lordship Saint George and of Saint Anthoine acceptée et accepte vostre requeste, [. . .] accepted and accept your request

‘I, wishing honour and pleasure, as a gentleman, by all my might, have, in the name of God and of the gentle Virgin Mary, of his lordship Saint George and of Saint Anthoine, accepted and accept your request . . .’ (Monstrelet, Chronique, p. 14) (17) MF Il l’a dit et moy je l’ordonne/ Mais toy tu he it-has said and I I it-order/ but you you n’es de rien habille. NEG-are of nothing skilled ‘He said it and I order it./ But you have not skills at all.’ (Marchello-Nizia 2006: 133, citing Zink 1997: 151)

Another indication of semantic bleaching as part of the grammaticalization process is the rise and spread of overtly realized pronominals in non-referential contexts. (18) MF Mais s’il est ainsi, Menexène, nous conclurons encores but if it is so Menexène we will.undertake still un coup comme nous avons desja faict une fois, […] a job as we have already done one time ‘But if it is so, Menexène, we will plan another job like the one we have already done one time, [. . .]’ (Bonaventure des Périers, I, Le discours de la queste d’amytié dict Lysis de Platon, p. 25)

We therefore conclude that the particularities of subject realization and omission, as they are already attested in Old French and even more clearly in Middle French, as well as the ultimate loss of null subjects in French, are clearly related not to language contact but to a grammaticalization process affecting the paradigm of subject pronouns.

language contact as a possible trigger of change  133 5.3 Conclusions

In this chapter, we discussed the role of language contact in contexts of morphosyntactic change. As a starting point, we took Thomason and Kaufman’s (1988) distinction between borrowing and shiftinduced interference. The agents of contact-induced change due to borrowing are native speakers of the target language into which the new feature is incorporated. A high degree of bilingual competence and a long-lasting contact situation represent favourable contexts for this type of change. Our review of the literature has shown that the borrowing of morphosyntactic structure is considerably less common than that of lexical items. And even in cases where structural borrowing at first sight appears to be the most plausible option, this explanation remains controversial. This is the case, for example, with the emergence of prepositions in Pipil. Authors like Silva-Corvalán (1998) and Heine and Kuteva (2003) stress the important role played by equivalence relations between the languages in contact. Rather than transferring structural properties directly from one language to another, speakers perceive relations of structural equivalence in the contact languages and modify the semantico-pragmatic functions of the respective constructions to a limited degree. This amounts to saying that in cases where two contact languages become increasingly similar in a given structural domain, the grammars do not actually converge. Rather, what changes is the way in which the respective constructions are used, i.e. the contexts in which they occur, the pragmatic functions ­associated with them, or their semantic interpretation. Yet convergence has been shown to be much less common than suspected, even in studies which focus on language use rather than on the underlying grammatical knowledge of the speakers. This is to say that convergence has been invoked too easily in cases where only frequencies of occurrence were compared (Torres Cacoullos and Travis 2011) or where the prescriptive standard variety was taken as a basis of comparison (Poplack 1997). When the hierarchy of environmental factors and constraints is taken as a measure and when the language undergoing change is compared to the appropriate benchmark varieties, convergence can often be excluded as an explanation. But even if we do not assume a social perspective on contact-induced language change in the speech community, focusing instead on the

134  language acquisition and change individual in a language contact setting as in 2L1 acquisition, we do not find cross-linguistic influences at the grammatical level leading to a fusion of grammatical systems. Rather, grammars develop independently and in a target-like manner. Neither low frequencies of occurrence nor ambiguous input data provide a sufficient explanation of contact-induced change. On the basis of these considerations, we have argued that grammatical change in terms of parameter resetting due to language contact is less common than is generally assumed, and we have illustrated this claim by means of case studies from our own research on the verb-second property of Old French and on the loss of null subjects in this language. We have shown that the contexts which favour verb-second patterns in Old French are distinct from those in Middle High German. This challenges a contactbased explanatory account according to which Old French adopted the Germanic V2 grammar. We have also shown that the decline of null subjects in Old and Middle French followed universal patterns of grammaticalization and that it was not contingent on the contact situation with German. In neither case could we confirm a grammatical change at the parametric level. We have therefore shifted our attention away from situations in which the putative agents of contact-induced change are native speakers of the target language to situations where L2 acquisition is involved. Our claim, to be presented and explained in more detail in Chapter 6, is that target-deviant grammatical acquisition may occur in settings where children acquire a language as an early L2 or where the PLD are provided by L2 speakers. The latter can also be observed in cases of shift-induced interference where a large group of speakers abandons the use of their mother tongue for the benefit of an L2. Imperfect group learning and substratum influence from their L1 at the morphosyntactic level are favourable environmental factors for a parameter resetting in the subsequent generation. As a case in point we referred to studies on the verb-second property and the change from OV to VO order in Old English. While L2 acquisition might indeed represent the single most decisive cause of a parameter resetting in situations of language contact, it still remains to be shown how these innovations are eventually adopted by native speakers of the target language. We will discuss these and related issues in more detail in the following chapter.

language contact as a possible trigger of change  135 NOTES

1. ‘Nowhere do we find any but superficial morphological interinfluencings’ (Sapir 1927: 217). 2. ‘The transfer of morphemes which are as strongly bound as inflectional endings in many European languages seems to be extremely rare’ (Weinreich 1979: 31). 3. It must be noted, however, that the question of how to decide whether a single lexical item with foreign language origin can be considered a borrowing, integrated into the system of the target language or a code-switch, with only the grammar of the source language active, is in fact a matter of controversy (cf. Poplack, Sankoff and Miller 1988; Poplack and Meechan 1998; Poplack 2012). 4. The tendency of languages with SVO word order to use prepositions rather than postpositions, which tend to appear in languages with SOV order, was first noted by Greenberg (1966); cf. his Universals 3 and 4. 5. Poplack’s field research took place in Canada’s National Capital Region, one part of which (Ottawa) is located in Ontario and the other (Gatineau) in Québec; see Poplack (1989). Majority or minority status of English and French varies respectively from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. 6. ‘Several phonological and morphosyntactic features of French are attributed to the influence of Frankish or Frankish is ascribed a catalytic force with regard to these features for developmental tendencies already inherent in the language, such as . . . certain sentence constructions (like V2 order) in Old French’ (our translation). 7. ‘The respect which the Franks demonstrated for Latin as well as their habit of speaking a more complicated language prevented them from manipulating too much the morphological and syntactic system of the new language, which they initially spoke at the same time as their own language, before adopting it definitely. However, the morphological and syntactic system of French has not remained without influence from Frankish’ (our translation). 8. ‘The rule which requires that the second position within the sentence be reserved for the verb . . . is known, among the

136  language acquisition and change Romance languages, only in French, which has it in common with the Germanic languages.’ 9. A corpus of Old German original charters up to the year 1300 (based on Wilhelm, Newald, de Boor, Haacke and Kirschstein 1932–86, electronic edition; a corpus of OF charters, 1237–81, edition of the charters of Countess Ermesinde (1226–47) and of Count Henry V (1247–81) of Luxembourg (based on Wampach 1935–55, electronic edition by Holtus, Overbeck and Völker 2003). 10. Factor weights closer to 1.0 favour the choice of the variant in the presence of the respective factor; factor weights closer to 0.0 disfavour it. Factor weights in square brackets are statistically not significant. 11. ‘to express the subject before the verb, the agent before the action’ (our translation). 12. ‘The north of France, the Rhaeto-Romance Alps and northern Italy have one factor in common which is lacking everywhere else: they were occupied by Germanic peoples during the Migration Period and intermingled with them so much that their language could exert a strong influence on the language of the Romance population living there: the north of France by the Franks, the Rhaeto-Romance Alps by the Alemanni and the north of Italy by the Longobards’ (our translation). 13. ‘It would be an unlikely coincidence if in the early medieval period the tendency for a double expression of the subject in all persons by a personal pronoun and a verbal ending should have arisen only in the Germanic languages and the languages under Germanic influence and nowhere else in Europe without there being a connection’ (our translation). 14. Dees’ dialectal coefficient expresses the frequency of dialectal features in the texts comprised in Dees (1987). 15. The numbers are taken from Rinke and Sitaridou (2004) but are organized and presented differently. 16. ‘Both texts show the same deficiency of the archaic era, such as the great incompetence that manifests itself in the abuse of the pronoun él’ (our translation).

chapter 6

Acquisition in multilingual settings: Implications for explanations of change

T

he preliminary conclusion which we can draw from the discussion in the preceding chapters, having scrutinized various attempts at explaining the relationship between language development and diachronic change in the domain of morphosyntax, confirms that language acquisition must be attributed a crucial role in explanations of grammatical change. Yet transmission failure across generations in L1 development turned out to be an unlikely cause for grammatical reanalysis when it comes to accounting for changes of core properties of grammars. Neither variable input frequencies nor apparently conflicting evidence resulting from structural ambiguity, encountered in the data to which the language-learning child is exposed, result in transmission failure in monolingual L1 acquisition. Rather, the LAD was revealed to be a robust enough device to enable children to reconstruct successfully the grammatical competence of their caretakers, even under less than optimal circumstances, thus avoiding structural reanalysis in the domains of grammar under discussion. Scenarios involving language contact, however, might trigger structural change after all, as surmised in Chapter 3 (Section 3.2) and in Chapter 5. We will therefore have a closer look at language acquisition in multilingual settings in order to determine whether this assumption can be corroborated by what is known about the learning mechanisms and the grammatical knowledge ultimately attained under such circumstances. Note that this review of research on the acquisition of bilingualism in childhood, to the

138  language acquisition and change extent that it confirms the claim that language contact situations result in grammatical reanalysis, will not necessarily oblige us to reconsider our rejection of the role of transmission failure as a possible cause of grammatical change. If, that is, the triggering cues are present in the PLD in multilingual settings and are analysed correctly by the children, the ‘failure’ is not one of transmission. The problem rather is that these cues are not part of the grammatical system underlying the language of the previous generation but are part of a different, possibly a non-native linguistic system. 6.1  Simultaneous bilingualism

Let us begin by examining the simultaneous acquisition of two or more languages from birth in bi- or multilingual settings.1 We thus intend to continue the debate on the role of language contact, the issue already discussed at some length in the preceding chapter, approaching it, however, from a psycholinguistic perspective, focusing on the learner. The underlying problem motivating this approach relates to the question of whether a more complex learning situation, like the one which bilingual children are facing, might result in qualitative differences in the ultimately attained grammatical knowledge or in the course of acquisition, as compared to monolingual children. If, for example, bilinguals failed to differentiate from very early on the languages to which they are exposed, they might end up assigning a triggering experience encountered in utterances from language La to language Lb, setting the corresponding parameter in the grammar of the latter language to the value required by the grammar of the former one, i.e. they might transfer parameter values to the other language. Moreover, bilingual learning contexts also differ from monolingual settings in that the learners have access to a significantly reduced amount of input from each of their languages. Even if we were to assume that each language was present for exactly the same amount of time in a child’s linguistic environment – a probably not really plausible assumption, either for family or for societal bilingualism – the time of exposure of a bilingual learner to each language would amount to only half of what might be considered as

acquisition in multilingual settings  139 normal for a monolingual child, and less than half of this in settings where one of the languages is dominant, quantitatively and perhaps also qualitatively. Consequently, proposals for quantitative constraints on the learnability of particular grammatical phenomena need to take this fact into account; i.e. if bilinguals successfully acquire a construction which is claimed to require a certain frequency of occurrence in the PLD in order to be learnable, the required minimal frequency cannot be higher than half or less of the frequency of occurrence observed with monolingual learners. The two issues addressed here, namely the differentiation of grammatical systems and the nature of the PLD, have been investigated in much detail since the early 1980s or so. This research on early bilingualism has been mainly concerned with the question of whether it is possible to develop a competence and a proficiency in use in each of a bilingual’s languages which would be qualitatively equivalent to those of the respective monolinguals. These studies have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt not only that this is possible but that bilingual children achieve these goals without going through a phase of fusion or confusion; see De Houwer (1995, 2009) or Meisel (2001, 2004) for state-of-the-art summaries of relevant research findings. In fact, it is generally acknowledged that the morphosyntactic systems of the target languages are normally differentiated as of the earliest developmental phases. In what follows, we will therefore summarize only briefly the evidence supporting this claim, and we will then address, also briefly, the more controversial question of whether two systems can be kept separate, during the further course of linguistic development, or whether they are likely to interact. The main finding concerning the differentiation of grammatical systems is that, when compared to monolingual L1 learners, children acquiring two or more languages simultaneously do not exhibit qualitative differences, either in their grammatical know­ ledge during early phases of development, or in the subsequent course of acquisition, or in their ultimately attained grammatical knowledge. Simultaneous acquisition has therefore been qualified as multiple L1 acquisition. In other words, the presence of another language in the environment and in the minds of learners does not result in substantive differences between bilingual or monolingual L1 development. Consequently, if we consider children acquiring

140  language acquisition and change multiple L1s as potential agents of diachronic change, their success in differentiating grammatical systems demonstrates that language contact does not qualify as a sufficient cause for grammatical change. The empirical evidence for the claim that grammatical know­ ledge is differentiated from very early on (the Differentiation Hypothesis) is provided by numerous studies investigating a large variety of language pairs; see, among others, De Houwer (1995), Köppe (1997) or Meisel (2004, 2007b). These investigations have shown that early bilinguals (i) distinguish functionally between their languages2 as early as around age 1;10; (ii) develop distinct grammatical properties in the respective languages before age 2;0, having barely reached a mean length of utterances (MLU) value of approximately 2.0; and (iii) pattern with their monolingual peers in developing grammatically distinct but superficially equivalent expressions, as required by the target systems. Earlier research had hypothesized that bilingual children initially develop a unitary system before eventually succeeding in distinguishing their languages; cf. the three-stage model suggested by Volterra and Taeschner (1978). This claim was mainly motivated by the fact that bilingual children tend to mix their languages, although not all of them do so, and those who do, mix to varying degrees. But so do adult bilinguals, and their codeswitching is a communicative skill rather than an indication of a failure to differentiate the underlying knowledge systems. In fact, in order for bilinguals to be able to switch from one language to another, within a conversation, within a turn or even within an utterance, separation of languages is a logical prerequisite. That code-switching is indeed a special skill is also corroborated by the fact that adult bilinguals who are equally proficient in both languages tend to switch more often than those who are less proficient in one language. Moreover, it has been observed that switching is constrained by pragmatic and grammatical principles, and this is also the case for early bilinguals; see Köppe and Meisel (1995). That language mixing during early developmental phases cannot simply be interpreted as reflecting an underlying unitary grammatical system is perhaps best demonstrated by the type of evidence for structural differentiation mentioned above, i.e. the emergence of functionally equivalent constructions for which the

acquisition in multilingual settings  141 two languages require different grammatical solutions or different types of use. An example of the former is the acquisition of the grammatical regularities underlying the placement of verbs, e.g. contrasting the simultaneous acquisition of a verb-second and a non-verb-second language in French–German bilingualism. As has been mentioned before, e.g. in Chapter 3 (Section 3.2), German differs from Romance languages in that it requires finite verbs to be placed in clause-second position in constructions where topicalized elements appear clause-initially. German also exhibits underlying OV order as opposed to the VO order of Romance languages. In developing a target-like competence in each of these languages, children must therefore distinguish between finite and non-finite verbs and set the verb movement as well as the OV/VO parameter to their appropriate values. Monolingual German and French children exhibit target-like OV/VO order as soon as they use multi-word utterances, and they place finite verbs in V2 or V3 position, respectively, as soon as the relevant contexts appear, as is illustrated in Table 6.1. Already during the earliest phase when they do not yet mark finite verbs systematically, children prefer OV order in German and VO in French. Finiteness is instantiated in the developing grammars during phase II; in German, verb-second placement emerges in IIa and is used consistently in IIb. In French, on the other hand, V3 order is used when a non-subject constituent appears in initial position. Table 6.1  Verb placement in monolingual L1 development Phase

Monolingual German

Monolingual French

I

Variable word order, but clause-final position preferred No finiteness Non-finite V in final position Finite V in second and in final position Finite V categorically in second position Subordinates emerge V systematically in final position

Variable word order, Predominantly SVO, some VOS No finiteness SVO, sVOS, SsVO, XsVO Finite V preceding pas

IIa IIb III

SVO

s = clitic subject pronoun. In French, subject clitics are analysed as finiteness markers. As required by the adult norm, they are combined with finite verb forms in L1 child language, never with non-finites.

142  language acquisition and change Table 6.2  Verb placement in bilingual German–French L1 development Phase I Verbs in clause-final position in German VOS in French

– never in French – never in German

Phase II V2 phenomena in German XsV (V3) in French Non-finite V in clause-final position in German

– never in French – never in German – never in French

Bilingual children exhibit the same kind of development as their monolingual counterparts, and this amounts to saying that they use different word orders in the two languages right from the start, i.e. when the first multi-word utterances are used, approximately at MLU 2.0; see Table 6.2 and examples3 for early German V2 in (1) and French V3 in (2). (1) a. Ger da fährt die Caroline there goes (the) Caroline b. Ger da war das there was that c. Ger da in tasche musst du das there in (the) bag must you (put) this (2) a. Fr là elle est cassée there she is broken b. Fr ici on peut dormir here one can sleep c. Fr un petit peu ça pique a little bit it stings

Caroline, 2;03 Ivar, 2;03 Pascal, 2;02 Caroline, 2;02 Ivar, 2;05 Pascal, 2;04

Not only do bilinguals develop distinct grammatical properties in each of their languages, they also use equivalent constructions differently in each language, as required by the respective target norms. This can be illustrated by the results of a study on Portuguese-German children analysed by Hinzelin (2003). Figures 6.1 and 6.2 (Hinzelin 2003: 128, 121) illustrate the use of subject pronouns by Daniel, a Brazilian Portuguese (BP) child. In both languages, significant changes happen with the acquisition of finiteness at 2;7 (German) and 2;8 (Portuguese). The diagrams show

acquisition in multilingual settings  143

Figure 6.1  Daniel: Pronominal subjects: German © Hinzelin (2003) ‘The acquisition of subjects in bilingual children: Pronoun use in Portuguese-German children’ in Müller (ed.), (In)vulnerable Domains in Multilingualism, John Benjamins subj.om./t.d = subject omissions/target-deviant uses; pron.subj & t.d. = pronominal subjects/target-deviant uses. Target-deviant subject omissions, i.e. instances where subjects may be omitted in the target language, are not counted here.

that as of this point of development the frequency of use of subjects approaches that of the adult target usage. Before this point, only very few subjects are supplied and virtually no pronominal ones, i.e. zero in BP and five in German. Note that although Portuguese is a null subject language, subjects are omitted in only 25 per cent of the possible contexts of occurrence in colloquial BP. Leaving details of this analysis aside, what matters for the present purpose is that in his use of pronominal subjects and in the pattern of subject omissions, Daniel distinguishes the two languages from early on and across the entire period of observation. The increase of supplied subjects in BP during later phases reflects the fact, mentioned above, that they are omitted only rarely in colloquial language. Importantly, Daniel behaves in each of the two languages like the respective monolinguals. This brings us to the other problem mentioned above, also related to the Differentiation Hypothesis. Although it is generally agreed that bilingual children are able to differentiate the grammars of their languages from early on, there is some controversy

144  language acquisition and change

Figure 6.2  Daniel: Pronominal subjects: Portuguese © Hinzelin (2003) ‘The acquisition of subjects in bilingual children: Pronoun use in Portuguese-German children’ in Müller (ed.), (In)vulnerable Domains in Multilingualism, John Benjamins

concerning the question of whether these systems develop autonomously or whether they interact in the course of subsequent development. In the current context, cross-linguistic interaction is of interest only if it affects the ultimately attained grammatical knowledge and can thus be considered as a potential source of grammatical reanalysis resulting in diachronic change. This, however, is not the case, as we will briefly explain in what follows. A detailed review of the still ongoing debate on cross-linguistic interaction in bilingual development is beyond the scope of this chapter, and we have to refer to Meisel (2007b) for a preliminary summary of its results. The question was first raised explicitly by Paradis and Genesee (1996), whose discussion of this issue led them to the conclusion that the available empirical evidence does not support the claim that interdependent developments affect mental representations of grammatical knowledge. Subsequent research pursued this question, asking whether it might not be the case that some parts of morphosyntax rather than grammar as a whole be affected by interdependent developments. The question, in other words, is whether there exist ‘vulnerable domains’ of grammar (Meisel 2001: 36). The strongest case for such a hypothesis, focusing on structural causes of interdependence rather than on external ones like the

acquisition in multilingual settings  145 dominance of one language in the child’s linguistic environment, was proposed by Hulk and Müller in various publications, e.g. in their seminal papers Hulk and Müller (2000) and Müller and Hulk (2001). Their claim is that interdependence only happens at the interface level where grammar interacts with other cognitive systems, provided that surface properties of a given construction are ambiguous in one language, allowing for more than one structural interpretation, whereas the other language provides evidence in favour of one of these options. This is, of course, essentially the ambiguity argument again, which we discussed at some length in Chapters 3 and 4. Since, at this point, we are only concerned with psycholinguistic aspects of this issue, it must suffice to mention again that the plausibility of the scenario suggested by Hulk and Müller (2000: 228) depends entirely on the assumption that linguistic data occurring in one of a bilingual child’s languages can serve as input for the other one. This alleged possibility, however, is in conflict with the fact that phonological and lexical properties guide the child towards a specific language already at an age well before complex syntactic constructions emerge; see Bosch and Sebastián-Gallés (2001). In fact, neurophysiological research (Friederici, Friedrich and Christophe 2007) has shown that as early as at age 5 months infants can distinguish between the stress patterns of languages like German and French, and this provides them with the kind of information which subsequently enables them to differentiate the linguistic systems. But although the ambiguity argument is very unlikely to hold, the observation by Hulk and Müller (2000) that cross-linguistic interaction may be restricted to the interface level between syntax and pragmatics has proven to be of considerable interest. Serratrice, Sorace and Paoli (2004), for example, suggested that coordinating syntactic and discourse-pragmatic information represents a complex task for the learner, and findings of this type led to the Interface Hypothesis (IH), originally proposed for L2 acquisition and subsequently extended to early phases of L1 attrition and to 2L1 acquisition; see Tsimpli et al. (2004), Sorace and Filiaci (2006) or Sorace (2011). What matters for the purpose of our discussion is whether the effects observed in these studies result in qualitative changes of grammatical knowledge. This, however, does not seem to be the case. Hulk and Müller (2000: 227), for example, state that ‘[c]ross-linguistic

146  language acquisition and change influence . . . is not to be taken as mixing or fusion, but it could show up as facilitation/acceleration, delay, or transfer’. Similarly, proponents of the IH (Sorace 2011: 5) argue that ‘structures involving an interface between syntax and other cognitive domains present . . . protracted indeterminacy (in bilingual L1 acquisition)’. This, however, does not imply that syntactic core properties are affected. Sorace and Filiaci (2006), for example, observed that near-native speakers of L2 Italian, a null subject language, accepted sentences with overt pronouns which native speakers rejected, but they did not differ from Italian native speakers in their interpretation of null subjects. Similar results were obtained with bilingual children acquiring a null subject and a non-null subject simultaneously, and even with bilinguals acquiring two null subject languages like Spanish and Italian; cf. Sorace (2011: 4 ff., 14). Quite obviously, in none of these cases has the null subject parameter been set to the non-null subject value. Findings like these speak strongly against the idea that cross-linguistic interaction at interface levels might affect parameter settings in developing grammars. Rather, cross-linguistic influence can be interpreted as resulting from mechanisms of language use or of language processing, as is hinted at by Sorace (2011: 14). This explanation can also account for the fact that cross-linguistic interaction does not emerge in all contexts where the necessary conditions are met, but rather in the speech of some children in some instances. It is for these reasons that cross-linguistic interaction is claimed to be the result of online activation of the other language; cf. Meisel (2007b). We know, in fact, that both languages are always activated when bilinguals engage in verbal interaction; see Green (1998) or Grosjean (2001). The explanatory hypothesis favoured here thus states that linguistic interdependence occurs when the activation of the other language is not fully inhibited (see Hulk 2000),4 and it may well be that external factors like dominance or the quantity and quality of input trigger such instances of interaction. This brings us to the second issue mentioned at the beginning of this section, concerning the amount and the nature of the input data. As stated above, the exposure of bilinguals to each of their languages is necessarily more limited than that of the respective monolinguals. However, as we have just seen, this limited amount of contact with the target languages is normally sufficient for

acquisition in multilingual settings  147 bilingual children to differentiate the grammatical systems from very early on and to develop the two systems autonomously during subsequent acquisition phases. But common logic suggests that a threshold must exist and that children will not be able to acquire a native competence if the amount of exposure to a language does not attain this minimum. It is, indeed, not uncommon to find that bilinguals use one of their languages less proficiently than the other one, and one might suspect this to be an indication of unsuccessful acquisition, because bilingual as opposed to monolingual children do not necessarily risk pathological consequences if they fail to develop a native competence in one of their languages. The question then is whether the weaker language (WL) exhibits qualitative rather than merely quantitative differences from the stronger language. A more protracted rate of development, for example, counts as a quantitative difference, since a grammar which develops more slowly need not differ, in its ultimate state, from that of a monolingual or balanced bilingual child; see Bonnesen (2005, 2006), among others. As for qualitative differences, it has been argued that a WL may resemble an L2; see, for example, Schlyter (1993) or Schlyter and Håkansson (1994). If it is correct to assume that L2 acquisition differs in some respects fundamentally from L1 development (we will return to this issue in Section 6.2), an L2-like WL might indeed be a plausible candidate for an only partially successful case of grammatical acquisition. Yet a closer look at the development of WLs reveals that these do not seem to exhibit qualitative differences from the language(s) of monolingual or balanced bilingual children; see Meisel (2007a). The arguments in support of the claim that a WL resembles an L2 rely primarily on the observation that speakers of the WL either temporarily fail to use grammatical expressions which are obligatory in the target language, or, more importantly, use forms or constructions which are not normally attested in the speech of L1 speakers of this language. Yet a scrutiny of developmental patterns reported for WLs shows that these ‘unusual’ constructions are used infrequently and that they emerge only after a phase during which the target constructions have already been used. Moreover, both construction types are used simultaneously, and the ‘unusual’ ones fade out eventually. Temporary usage of this type cannot be explained in terms of

148  language acquisition and change parametric changes. Not only is repeated resetting of parameters a highly improbable option for principled reasons (cf. Clahsen 1991), but fundamental reorganizations of mental grammars are particularly costly processes in terms of cognitive capacities; see Pienemann (1998). In sum, a bilingual’s WL typically develops more slowly, and it may temporarily lack some grammatical means required by the target language. Whether this is likely to entice bilinguals to resort to their other language, or whether activation of the other language results from an insufficiently developed capacity to inhibit the language which is not selected at this moment, is difficult to decide. We also do not know much about what causes a language to develop as a weak one. The nature of the input is commonly regarded as a crucial factor, but it is not always true that the language which develops as a WL is less accessible than languages in settings where children attain a more balanced knowledge of both grammars. We can only speculate that at least in some such cases children do not fully exploit the possibilities offered by the linguistic environment. At any rate, what matters in the context of the present discussion is that the WL of children acquiring two L1s does not differ from the stronger one in core grammatical properties. Consequently, settings in which one language is weaker than the other are not prone to lead to transmission failure of the sort which might explain reanalysis in diachronic change. Nevertheless, as mentioned above, drastically reduced exposure to the target language will certainly result in at least partial acquisition failure. Recall the concept of sensitive phases presented in Chapter 1. It implies that exposure to the appropriate kind of data during the optimal developmental periods is a necessary condition for a native grammatical competence to be attainable. This amounts to saying that exposure to data containing the information which triggers the setting of the relevant parameters must reach the required threshold level during the appropriate age period in order to be effective. Acquisition failure is therefore predicted to result from severely limited access to the PLD during sensitive periods. As for the question of what counts as sufficient input, it is currently not possible to quantify the lower limit, but that some threshold exists is more than plausible. It is, of course, possible to acquire the phenomena in question at a later point of development,

acquisition in multilingual settings  149 but delayed acquisition is likely to result in an L2 rather than a native competence, as has been argued by Meisel, Elsig and Bonnesen (2011); see also Section 6.2. At any rate, such a situation which might result in acquisition failure is only likely to arise in bilingual settings; in contexts, that is to say, where children can acquire one grammar fully and do not risk pathological consequences if they fail to do so in the other language to which they have been exposed from birth. An acquisition setting of this sort which has recently attracted much attention in linguistic research is that of heritage language learners, where a societal minority language is also the non-dominant language in children’s learning environment. It has been argued that in such situations of reduced input, children are likely to acquire the grammar of their parents’ language only incompletely; cf. Polinsky (2006), Montrul and Potowski (2007) or Montrul (2008), among many others. Unfortunately, the notion of ‘incomplete acquisition’ is not defined with the desirable precision in the literature on heritage languages. Rather, its meaning shifts as it is used by different authors. Generally speaking, it refers to instances where ‘an individual fails to learn the entire system of a given language’ (Polinsky 2006: 194) or where the acquisition of certain aspects of grammar do not reach age-appropriate levels of mastery (Montrul, Bhatt and Bhatia 2012: 142). Montrul (2008) extends the meaning of incomplete acquisition to include cases of ‘temporary incompleteness’. In the present context, we are only concerned with cases where incompleteness is a property attributed to the final state of grammatical knowledge acquired by 2L1 learners. Since we want to know whether heritage language learners qualify as potential agents of diachronic change, probably the most important issue relating to the idea of incomplete acquisition concerns the nature of the knowledge ultimately attained. If it constitutes a grammar conforming to the principles of UG, not withstanding the fact that it lacks properties of the ancestor language, it can be regarded as a divergent but not necessarily incomplete representation of grammatical knowledge, a distinction suggested by Sorace (1993) for L2 grammars. Heritage language learners may thus acquire the heritage language as an L2, or they may be 2L1 learners of the heritage language. In fact, they represent an extremely heterogeneous

150  language acquisition and change group of learners, and virtually all acquisition types have at some point been subsumed under the label of heritage language learners. What matters for the present purpose is that, provided the scenarios just alluded to are realistic ones, both L2-like and 2L1 heritage language learners might indeed acquire grammars which differ in core properties from those of the previous generation. At this point, it will be useful to remember that the Incompleteness Hypothesis was originally proposed for L2 acquisition and that incompleteness was defined as a type of representational deficit of grammatical systems; cf. Schachter (1990, 1996). We will return to the issue of qualitative differences between L1 and L2 acquisition in Section 6.2. If we adhere to this definition of grammatical incompleteness, the question is whether learners of heritage languages will indeed acquire them as L2s although they have been exposed to them from birth and thus have had access to the relevant PLD during the sensitive periods of grammatical development. Note that the latter has been argued to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for learners to be able to acquire a native competence, for, as we emphasized above, the amount of exposure to a language must attain an as yet undefined quantitative threshold. In fact, a clarification of the problem of what might constitute a ‘sufficient condition’ for successful (2)L1 development is potentially the most important insight which studies of heritage languages can be expected to contribute to the theory of language acquisition. To our knowledge, however, this problem has not yet been addressed in a systematic fashion; for the time being, we are therefore not able to estimate even approximately the threshold which needs to be attained. Irrespective of how it will ultimately be defined, it is to be expected that some heritage language learners will fail to attain this threshold and will thus indeed acquire heritage languages as L2s. At least for these learners, we may expect to observe grammatical reanalyses which affect core properties of grammar. This is less obvious, however, for those heritage language learners who develop a grammar divergent from the linguistic system of the ancestor language, this divergent grammar being qualitatively not distinct, and thus an L1- and not an L2-type grammar. To our knowledge, none of the grammatical simplifications or instances of incomplete acquisition on which heritage language studies report seem to

acquisition in multilingual settings  151 concern aspects of narrow syntax. They rather tend to result in a reduction of the array of devices encoding a grammatical notion like Case or Tense–Modality–Aspect. In fact, the same reductions are frequently also attested in varieties of the full language; see Polinsky (2006). This can be interpreted as an acceleration of ongoing processes of diachronic change in the heritage language. In response to our question about the nature of the grammatical knowledge attained, we can thus conclude that these divergent systems certainly represent instances of grammatical change, but, on the basis of our current knowledge, we can also say that they do not seem to affect core grammatical properties. This conclusion confirms the above-mentioned results of studies investigating the development of the WL in non-balanced bilinguals. Only if our prediction is confirmed, according to which simultaneous bilingualism can result in incomplete and thus L2-like acquisition of grammars if exposure to one of the languages is drastically limited, can we expect to find changes of core properties of grammars. In sum, the robustness of the LAD, mentioned in Chapter 3 and evidenced by the virtually unfailing success of monolingual L1 development, is confirmed by research investigating the simultaneous acquisition of two L1s. Consequently, scenarios invoking language contact, to the extent that they refer to simultaneously acquired languages, do not fare much better than attempts to explain diachronic change by transmission failure in monolingual settings. Only in cases where severely reduced accessibility of the PLD of one language results in the acquisition of one L1 and one L2, rather than in 2L1 development, can bilingual children be expected to act as agents of change affecting their L2, even if this is the L1 of their parents. 6.2  Successive bilingualism

Our review of research findings by studies of monolingual as well as bilingual L1 acquisition led us to conclude that core grammatical properties are unlikely to be affected by transmission failure in L1 development. This has been shown to be true even for nonbalanced bilinguals; i.e. children who strongly prefer one of their languages, normally the one which is dominant in their immediate

152  language acquisition and change learning environment, may acquire the other one at a slower rate, but the grammars of the WLs are not qualitatively distinct from those developed by monolinguals or balanced bilinguals. In other words, the available evidence does not support the idea that grammars of WLs are incomplete or contain properties resulting from reanalyses in the domains of grammar under discussion. This provides strong support for the claim that the LAD is robust enough to enable children to reconstruct the grammatical competence of their caretakers successfully, even under less than optimal circumstances, e.g. with respect to quantity and quality of the input to which children are exposed. Importantly, the fact that two or more grammatical systems need to be differentiated and developed simultaneously does not exceed the possibilities of the LAD either. But this remarkable robustness and flexibility of the capacity to acquire language and languages is limited, after all, by the developmental schedule of human cognition, which in turn is determined to a large extent by maturational changes of the brain. These claims follow from the hypothesis, introduced and explained in Chapter 1 (Section 1.2), that there is a critical period for language acquisition. More precisely, it is hypothesized that there exist optimal periods for the instantiation of specific grammatical phenomena which become accessible to the child as a result of neural maturation. They do not, however, remain fully accessible for an indefinite period of time but fade out at later points of development; see Meisel (2010, 2013). As a consequence, with increasing AO, it becomes more and more difficult for children to acquire complete native grammatical competences in their target languages. If these claims and assumptions are correct, we should indeed expect to find instances of incomplete acquisition in successive acquisition of languages, as is postulated by the Incompleteness Hypothesis, referred to in Section 6.1. At this point, we should mention that these and related ideas have been the topic of a controversial debate since at least the mid-1980s among acquisition researchers working within the framework of generative linguistics. The issue at stake is whether L2 acquisition not only exhibits a set of substantial differences from L1 development, but whether it actually results in incomplete or deficient mental representations of the target grammars. This is obviously not the place for an in-depth discussion of the nature of

acquisition in multilingual settings  153 linguistic knowledge acquired by L2 learners; see Meisel (2011a) for a detailed treatment of these and related issues. For the purpose of the current discussion it suffices to observe that there exists a very broad consensus that L2 differs in important aspects from L1 development. More importantly, it is generally agreed that these differences include more peripheral as well as core properties of grammars. This is to say that grammatical parameters can be set, at least temporarily, to non-target values if, for example, settings of parameters are transferred from the L1 to the L2 grammar. The disagreement among L2 researchers concerns the question of whether these deficiencies are permanent properties of L2 grammars or whether it is possible to make amends by subsequently resetting parameters to the target values. Independently of how this question is answered, the instantiation of target-deviant parameter values undoubtedly constitutes an instance of transmission failure. Thus, as opposed to monolingual or bilingual L1 development, L2 acquisition is definitely characterized by cases of transmission failure. We can therefore be brief in the following summary of properties in which L2 acquisition differs from L1 development and focus on aspects which might shed some light on processes which are likely to shape morphosyntactic change. Successive language acquisition differs in at least three fundamental ways from L1 acquisition. The first difference is probably the least important one since it relates to quantitative rather than qualitative aspects of the developmental process: rate of L2 acquisition is typically slower, i.e. over a more protracted period, than L1 development. More importantly, one finds a broad range of variation in L2, across individuals and within learners over time, as opposed to the uniformity of L1, chronologically and across children. Most importantly, whereas all L1 children are successful in acquiring a native competence, this is clearly not the case for L2 learners. Whether it is at all possible to acquire a native competence in an L2 is a matter of controversy, but near-native or nativelike learners are clearly the exception. In fact, nativelikeness can only be attained if AO happens in childhood, probably before age 8, as Abrahamsson and Hyltenstam (2009) have shown. Considering the fact that success, uniformity and rate of L1 development have been explained as resulting from the guidance by the LAD and particularly by UG (cf. Guasti 2002), the lack of

154  language acquisition and change these characteristics in L2 acquisition seems to suggest that it is not or at least not fully constrained by UG. This is, in fact, what is claimed by the Fundamental Difference Hypothesis (FDH), first proposed by Bley-Vroman (1989). Alternatively, it has been argued that UG remains completely accessible and that the observed differences are caused by secondary factors influencing the course of acquisition, one such factor being that the knowledge systems available to learners in the initial state are substantially different in the two acquisition types, since previously acquired linguistic knowledge shapes the initial state in L2 but not in L1 acquisition. Yet although they may account for some of the variation observed with L2 learners, considerations of this sort cannot explain the lack of success in L2 given that they postulate full accessibility of UG. Assuming partial inaccessibility of UG fares much better in this respect, for it does not exclude the possibility that some learners might acquire a near-native proficiency in the L2. At the same time, it can account for the fact that L2 learners vary considerably in how successful they are in achieving this goal. Moreover, it predicts that L2 acquisition is more protracted and less uniform than L1 development, for in cases where they cannot activate UG knowledge L2 learners will resort to inductive learning. Not only does this require more robust evidence provided by the PLD and more time for the learners, but also it is to be expected that not all of them will do equally well in applying these learning mechanisms. In sum, L2 acquisition is characterized by protracted hypothesis-testing in grammatical domains where L1 children succeed within a short period of time; see Meisel (2011a: 144 ff.) for a more detailed discussion of these issues. It is important to note that the approach outlined here does not imply that L2 learners are not guided by the LAD at all. The approach rather amounts to saying that some of the principles and mechanisms which shape L1 become inaccessible in the course of development, most crucially principles of UG. According to Smith and Tsimpli (1995), only parameterized principles are subject to the effects of maturational changes, i.e. precisely those grammatical properties which define the core domains of grammars presently under discussion. In other words, L2 learners are not able to rely in the same way as L1 children on parameter setting as an acquisition mechanism, and although they can make use of previously acquired

acquisition in multilingual settings  155 grammatical knowledge, they cannot fix the value of a parameter not instantiated in L1, nor can they ‘reset’ parameter values in which the two grammars differ. This does not mean that they cannot acquire the surface properties related to a given parametric choice. But they will have to rely on other types of learning mechanisms, and neither these mechanisms nor the acquired linguistic knowledge are necessarily constrained by UG. Non-parameterized principles of UG, however, constrain L2 acquisition in essentially the same way as they do in L1. Consequently, L2 knowledge ­conforms partly but not entirely to principles of UG. If, then, L2 and L1 acquisition result in fundamentally different kinds of knowledge in some domains of grammars, the question arises as to when in the course of linguistic development the changes occur which have such important effects. Again, we need not be concerned with details concerning the precise age range at which this happens, but we do want to know whether child or only adult L2 learners count among the possible agents of diachronic change. Linguistic as well as neuropsychological research suggests that the age ranges at approximately 3–4 and at around 6–7 years are particularly crucial ones for the development of syntactic and morphological knowledge. We therefore refer to successive language acquisition as child L2 (cL2) acquisition if onset of acquisition falls into the age period from shortly before 4 to 7 or 8 years. cL2 shares crucial properties with aL2 acquisition, and both differ from monolingual as well as bilingual L1 development. This is to say that changes happen earlier than hypothesized by Penfield and Roberts (1959), who argued that decreasing brain plasticity results in such effects as of approximately age 9, and certainly earlier than during puberty as argued by Lenneberg (1967); see Hyltenstam and Abrahamsson (2003) for a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey of studies on these questions. Summing up, we can thus state that strong evidence supports the hypothesis according to which successive acquisition of languages exhibits instances of acquisition failure if AO occurs at around age 4 or later. Although we are still far from being able to identify all grammatical properties which are vulnerable at this early age, an increasing number of studies on child L2 acquisition suggest that these include many in the domain of inflectional

156  language acquisition and change morphology as well as some aspects of syntax; see Meisel (2004, 2009). Importantly, neuroimaging studies support the hypothesis that AO is a major cause for L1–L2 differences in processing grammatical information and that important changes happen at around age 4 and again at 6–7. They thus confirm the assumption that L1–L2 differences are primarily due to neural maturation; cf. Meisel (2010). To conclude, we may safely assume that transmission failure is likely to happen in delayed acquisition. In other words, L2 learners, children or adults, are prime candidates as possible agents of change, at least as far as change via transmission failure is concerned. This is the picture which emerges very clearly from our scrutiny of research investigating various types of language acquisition, in the present and in previous chapters of this volume. It confirms an assumption made from the outset of our discussion, namely that morphosyntactic change of the type captured by the notion of parametric change will only happen in the course of language transmission. As has been argued in Chapter 2, no currently available evidence suggests that such changes might occur over the lifespan of speakers, affecting their L1 grammars. At the same time, however, we have seen that L1 learners, monolinguals as well as bilinguals, are unlikely agents of grammatical change. Thus, from the point of view of acquisition research, the only scenario according to which diachronic change can plausibly be expected to occur as a result of transmission failure is one involving successive acquisition of languages, i.e. when adults or children acquire one of the ambient languages as an L2. This possibly includes learners of heritage languages who acquire incomplete grammatical know­ ledge. In all of these cases, cL2 or aL2 acquisition is the locus of change. Importantly, there exists another scenario in which L2 speakers play a crucial role in diachronic change, namely as role models rather than as agents of change, in situations where they provide the input for mono- or bilingual children acquiring an L1. Weerman (1993) was the first to draw attention to this fact, arguing that exposure to speakers who are themselves second language learners with an imperfect command of the target language can result in grammatical change. This is not, however, an instance of acquisition failure, because, in this scenario, change is triggered by

acquisition in multilingual settings  157 information contained in the PLD. This is to say that the speech of L2 learners which serves as input for L1 learners contains the triggers necessary for reanalysis, possibly because L2 learners transfer parameter settings from their L1 into their L2. In other words, although L2 acquisition is the only context where transmission failure is a likely possibility, grammatical reanalysis can also happen in mono- or bilingual L1 development if the triggering information is present in samples of speech to which learners are exposed – a situation most likely to occur if L2 learners of the target language are the linguistic role models. This conclusion, according to which L2 acquisition makes significant contribution to the solution of the transmission problem, leads, however, to another problem concerning the diffusion of change; cf. Labov (2007). The question is how L2 learners can possibly influence the entire speech community. In order for the scenarios sketched out in this section to gain in plausibility, language-external factors causing linguistic change need to be taken into account, and it must be shown that the social and demographic factors characterizing imaginable settings favourable for change can indeed be expected to prevail. These include a broad and sustained influence of the L2 speakers on the new generation, as early as during the transmission period, in the case of change triggered by L2 speakers. Similar conditions must be met if child L2 learners are the agents of change. Both scenarios require that the appropriate settings are sufficiently common and long-lasting for the possible changes to be able to spread. We will return to these questions in the following section. 6.3 Implications and consequences for historical linguistics

The findings by research on language acquisition on which we reported in Chapter 3 and in the preceding sections of the present chapter show clearly that changes of core grammatical properties, in general, and transmission failure, in particular, are much less likely to happen than is commonly assumed in the literature on diachronic syntax. This insight must have consequences for the theory of diachronic change, for it strongly suggests that such changes

158  language acquisition and change should also occur less frequently in the history of languages than is claimed to be the case in the literature on historical linguistics. This suspicion has indeed been confirmed by our scrutiny of alleged changes in a few case studies, presented in Chapters 4 and 5. There, we arrived at the conclusion that some of these changes are not actually instances of grammatical restructuring. We therefore decided to reverse the logic of the investigation, examining settings which, according to the common wisdom, should favour change, namely contact-induced grammatical reanalyses. But this led again to a partially negative result in that it revealed that language contact does not result as easily in cross-linguistic interaction and change of grammatical properties as much of the literature on language contact wants us to believe, even in contexts which have been claimed to trigger processes of this sort. The purpose of these exercises has not been to demonstrate that parametric changes do not occur in the history of the languages discussed, like, for example, French. Such a proposal would be absurd in view of the obvious fact that changes of this type are attested in a wide variety of languages, including French and other Romance languages; we will return to this question almost immediately. The crucial point to be made here rather is that the insights gained from language acquisition research are fully in line with what is revealed by morphosyntactic analyses of diachronic varieties of the respective languages, provided we look beyond surface properties. At first sight, however, the conclusion at which we arrived in our review of acquisition research appears to stand in blatant conflict with claims and hypotheses broadly defended in studies of diachronic grammar. The former postulates that transmission of knowledge about grammatical core properties rarely fails across generations, even under less than optimal conditions – yet the latter detected multiple cases of grammatical restructuring in the course of diachronic evolution of languages. This contradiction vanishes, however, if some of the alleged parametric changes turn out to be of a more superficial nature, as we have argued to be the case. Importantly, this conclusion is in tune with a line of grammatical theorizing which views grammars as particularly stable systems, not prone to radical changes. The Inertial Theory (Keenan 2002; Longobardi 2001) mentioned in Chapter 3 even asserts that syntactic change should, ideally, not happen at all, unless it is triggered by external factors.

acquisition in multilingual settings  159 As we have tried to show, on the basis of a discussion of two alleged syntactic changes in the history of French, not only did previous studies of these phenomena fail to make a plausible case in attempting to identify the external causes for fundamental restructuring, but their morphosyntactic analyses of the constructions in question are at best ambiguous in this respect and therefore do not provide conclusive evidence that fundamental changes did occur. Let us briefly recapitulate the arguments which led us to conclude that no such change affected the verb-second property attributed to Old French (OF) or the null-subject property of OF. As for the possible causes of such changes, we argued in Chapter 4 that neither the frequency of use of particular surface constructions nor structural or parametric ambiguity of surface word order patterns is a plausible cause for a change from a V2 grammar in Old French to a non-V2 grammar in Middle French. Moreover, we showed in Chapter 5 that contact between thirteenth-century regional varieties of OF and regional varieties of the V2 language German is not a likely explanation of the occurrence of postverbal subjects in Old French. Also in Chapter 5, we presented empirical evidence against the claim that language contact might have caused French to change from a null subject to a non-null subject language. These findings may appear to lead to a dead end, leaving us without explanations of the changes under discussion. But if neither of the two alleged changes actually occurred, no explanation is needed. This may at first appear as a cheap and easy way out of an otherwise serious dilemma. But this is not the case if the arguments hold which we presented in Chapters 4 and 5 to the effect that neither the evidence concerning the causal factors nor the structural analyses of the construction in question speak in favour of reanalyses in these domains of grammar. Concerning the latter, it has indeed been argued repeatedly that the medieval varieties of Romance languages, including OF, exhibited the V2 effect. The loss of this property would thus be an instance of parametric change. The main reason why OF has been analysed as a V2 language is the occurrence of postverbal subjects, interpreted as reflecting verb movement to a higher structural position like C°. The subject would then appear in either preverbal (SpecCP) or postverbal position (SpecTP or SpecvP) if a nonsubject constituent occurs sentence-initially. Modern French is

160  language acquisition and change argued to have lost the first option, i.e. the finite verb moves only to T°, and the subject generally occupies the preverbal position (SpecTP). As a result, V3 orders become possible. Yet V3 patterns which are not licit in a V2 language are also attested in OF. This led Kaiser (2002) and others to reject the V2 analysis for medieval Romance languages. Our own research lends support to this conclusion. We argued that subject–verb inversion in OF is not a reflection of a verb-second property of the Germanic type. It is, instead, structurally and distributionally equivalent to similar constructions with postverbal subjects in modern Romance non-V2 null subject languages like Spanish or Portuguese, where XPVS order is commonly explained as resulting from finite verbs raising to T° with postverbal subjects remaining in their base position (SpecvP). Apparent verb-second placement in OF is thus not the result of movement of the verb and some other constituent to the CP-domain; it rather reflects the fact that the subject remains in situ, where it is associated with a focus interpretation or is part of a focused clause; see Petrova and Rinke (2012). All this amounts to saying that superficially equivalent word order patterns may reflect structurally different grammatical properties. Consequently, OF was never a V2 language and no parametric change from V2 to non-V2 occurred in the history of French. The same argument can be made for other medieval Romance languages, as for example for Old Portuguese (OP); cf. Rinke (2005, 2007, 2009). Concerning the alleged change of French from a null subject to a non-null subject language, the situation is slightly more complex. A closer look at Old French reveals, however, that the evidence for the claim that it differs from Modern French in its settings of the null subject parameter is far from being convincing; see Kaiser and Meisel (1991). Our hypothesis is that Colloquial French never underwent a change of this sort. Standard French, however, which emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries under the influence of massive prescriptive efforts, did not preserve the null subject property of Old French. The changes which happened in OF as of the thirteenth century primarily concern pronominal subjects; they lost their status as independent constituents and turned into clitics and eventually into quasi-affixes generated in the head of T (or Infl); see Bonnesen and Meisel (2005). In Colloquial French, these subject clitics function like agreement

acquisition in multilingual settings  161 suffixes in modern Romance null subject languages. As Rinke and Elsig (2010b) observed, null subjects disappeared rather abruptly at around 1600; see also Roberts (1993) or Vance (1997). Kaiser and Meisel (1991) interpreted this as confirmation of their claim that subject clitics have been reanalysed as verbal affixes and are therefore used almost categorically. If, however, pronominal subjects are not actually functioning as subjects but are agreement markers, Colloquial French continues to be a null subject language. From this it follows that no parametric change occurred in the evolution from Old French to Modern French concerning the null subject property of its colloquial variety. We believe that the empirical facts and the grammatical analyses briefly recapitulated here already show that the claim that some of the alleged parametric changes did not actually happen is not merely a cheap and easy way out of a dilemma. We further contend that the approach advocated here, abandoning the idea of parametric changes in these two cases, offers a much more plausible view of the evolution of Romance language, especially if one considers their history not only since medieval times. After all, it is generally agreed that contemporary Romance languages exhibit underlying VO order and that most of them are null subject and V3, i.e. non-V2, languages. They thus differ in the first property (VO) from their common source, Latin. This change had already happened during the period when the Ancient Romance languages emerged, i.e. before the ninth century. It thus follows that if medieval varieties of the modern Romance languages had indeed been V2 as well as null subject languages, the setting of the parameter characterizing V2 languages should have changed twice in the course of this evolution from Latin via Vulgar Latin and Medieval Romance to Modern Romance, from non-V2 to V2 and again to non-V2. Although this diachronic trajectory cannot be ruled out for principled reasons, it certainly exhibits a somewhat suspicious developmental pattern. Note further that, according to this scenario, French would have undergone an additional parametric change from a null subject (Old French) to a non-null subject language. Let us emphasize once again that our approach is not supposed to suggest that language contact plays no significant role as a factor favouring grammatical change. But we do think that there exist

162  language acquisition and change compelling reasons to acknowledge that transmission failure in 2L1 acquisition is much less likely to happen than is surmised by many scholars studying language contact in historical linguistics. Simply pointing to language contact situations will certainly not do as an argument in support of grammatical changes, especially not if the alleged changes refer to possible reanalyses in core domains of grammar. Importantly, acquisition research suggests that transmission failure is much less likely to occur when languages are acquired simultaneously than in successive acquisition of l­anguages – and even less in monolingual settings. We must therefore also acknowledge that speakers and learners of L2s play a crucial role in processes of diachronic change, and this insight needs to be accounted for in theories of diachronic change. As already mentioned at the end of the previous section of this chapter, this conclusion raises a potentially problematic question concerning the diffusion of change across individuals within a linguistic community. Acquisition processes happen in individuals, and although developmental uniformity is a well-established fact in acquisition research, attesting to the fact that individuals do not proceed through multiple idiosyncratic developmental processes, there is no a priori reason to believe that a large group of ­individuals – sufficiently large to exert influence on the speech community as a whole – will arrive at identical grammatical reanalyses, unless they are exposed to identical triggering experiences. Having argued that L2 learners play a crucial role in this process, the question is whether one can develop scenarios in which this insight is taken into account and which can plausibly be assumed to have occurred in the history of languages. Is it plausible to assume, in other words, that L2 learners exert influence on the entire speech community? After all, this presupposes a broad and sustained influence, and it implies either that an L2 which is typically a minority language eventually becomes the dominant or even the only language of this speech community, or that L2 learners will serve as the predominant linguistic role models for a new generation. In order for this to happen and changes to spread in the speech community, the social and demographic factors characterizing settings favourable to change must have prevailed for an extended period of time. Note that these considerations almost certainly exclude heritage language speakers as potential agents of diachronic change, even if

acquisition in multilingual settings  163 it can be demonstrated that they acquire grammars which differ in core properties from those of the previous generation. Since they belong, by definition, to a societal minority whose language is the non-dominant one even in intra-family communication, heritage language learners are the least likely group to exert a significant influence on learners of the majority language. Scenarios where learners can have a deep and sustained influence on the native speakers of their L2 do, however, exist, and they are, in fact, not as unusual or improbable as one might believe. For example, in societies with a small number of native speakers and in which exogamy is institutionalized so that every marriage brings a speaker of some other language into the community, it is possible that these L2 learners influence the linguistic community as a whole. Another type of context in which this can happen is one where attempts are made to revitalize endangered languages or to reintroduce already extinct languages. These efforts may be instigated by an ethnic group striving to preserve their cultural identity, typically as a minority within a larger political unit, or this group may become the socio-politically dominant one, at least within a region, due to political changes. A contemporary example of the latter case is the situation in the Basque Country and especially in the Autonomous Basque Community in Spain. The fascist government (1939–75) had banned the use of the Basque language (Euskera) until 1965, and considerable efforts have subsequently been made to strengthen its role and to encourage its use. The majority of today’s speakers of Euskera learned it as an L2, and this is probably also true for the larger part of the caretakers of children acquiring Basque. It is therefore to be expected that the grammar of the language will be altered under the influence of these L2 speakers. Studies of ongoing grammatical changes in Euskera are still scarce, but the available research of this type, e.g. Almgren and Barreña (2005), supports the prediction that colloquial speech is influenced by these so-called ‘new’ speakers of Basque. Majority languages are most likely to be influenced by L2 speakers in constellations of profound societal upheavals, e.g. as a result of the loss of large parts of the population. The migration of the peoples would certainly count as an example, and one can speculate that it had an important impact on the formation of the Romance languages. This might contribute to an explanation of

164  language acquisition and change the above-mentioned fact that they exhibit underlying VO order, whereas Latin, their common ancestor, was an OV language. Parametric change thus occurred in the course of the evolution of Ancient Romance Languages from Latin via Vulgar Latin. To mention another example, it is perhaps not a coincidence that we find that several European languages, e.g. French and English, underwent substantial changes during the fourteenth century and that grammatical innovations abound in texts written during the third quarter of the century. This is precisely the period when the Plague led to massive migrations, primarily within countries, but the ‘other language’ may of course also be another dialect. The disease reached Sicily in 1347 and subsequently spread towards Western Europe. Its various attacks between 1350 and 1550 resulted in repeated drastic reduction and subsequent growth of populations in many parts of Europe, as is observed by Johansson (1997), who analyses the example of eastern Normandy (Johansson 1997: 133 ff.), where the population level fell around the year 1385 to 45 per cent as compared to 1314 and rapidly grew to 65 per cent around 1410, although it still did not exceed 80 per cent of the 1314 level at around 1550. These dramatic demographic changes may well have led to situations like the ones described above. We will refrain from further speculations, hoping that the ones presented here suffice to show that it is plausible that situations may arise where L2 speakers will exert an important influence on the native speakers of a language and on the linguistic community as a whole. NOTES

1. We do not distinguish here between multilinguals acquiring two languages as opposed to those acquiring three or more languages. Rather, we subsume all these learners under the term ‘bilinguals’. 2. This is evidenced, for example, by the fact that their choice of language and their switching behaviour are determined by the addressee; cf. Genesee (1989), among others. 3. These examples are taken from the DuFDE corpus collected by the research project DuFDE (Deutsch und Französisch

acquisition in multilingual settings  165 – Doppelter Erstspracherwerb/German and French – Simultaneous Acquisition of two First Languages), which was carried out at the University of Hamburg (principal investigator J. M. Meisel), funded from 1986 to 1992 by the DFG (German Science Foundation). A description of the project and the data collection procedures is given by Köppe (1994). 4. Some authors maintain, however, that cross-linguistic interaction can affect the grammatical knowledge of bilingual children, e.g. Yip and Matthews (2000) and Matthews and Yip (2011). In their study of a bilingual boy acquiring Cantonese and English simultaneously, they find that wh-in-situ is transferred from the dominant language, Cantonese, into English, and they conclude that this boy ‘passed through a stage at which wh-phrases are commonly left in situ’ (Yip and Matthews, 2000: 198). Their analysis reveals, however, that the first occurrence of a wh-expression in the child’s English is one with the wh-word in initial position and that clause-initial wh-elements co-occur with those left in situ at every moment during the child’s linguistic development. This shows that the boy did not, in fact, proceed through a phase during which his grammar in English lacked wh-movement. Rather, he seems to be oscillating between the options offered by the two grammars, as is predicted by the hypothesis according to which bilinguals may fail to inhibit one of the two grammars and access both knowledge bases when using one language.

chapter 7

Towards an explanatory theory of grammatical change

T

hroughout this book, we have focused on processes and mechanisms of diachronic change affecting core properties of grammars, i.e. linguistic domains referring, for example, to parameterized principles of UG. We were mainly concerned with the questions of which language-external and -internal factors induce speakers to reorganize their grammatical knowledge and who the innovators are in such instances of parametric change. We paid particular attention to the relation between language acquisition and diachronic change and scrutinized different acquisition scenarios with respect to their explanatory power for diachronic change. As a first take on the matter, it turned out to be of crucial importance to determine for each particular instance of a linguistic change whether it actually involves parametric change or rather some other type of change not affecting parameter settings. In addition, we have to distinguish between grammatical change and change at the level of language use. As an example of this, we have come across a number of cases which are clearly not accompanied by a restructuring of the underlying grammars, as for instance the increasing preference in choice of the quotative be like over other lexical alternatives in Toronto English (Tagliamonte and D’Arcy 2009), briefly alluded to in Chapter 2. More importantly, however, we were able to show that a number of morphosyntactic changes, which were often attributed in the literature to some underlying parametric change, upon closer inspection were revealed not to

towards a theory of grammatical change  167 be instances of it. This is the case, for instance, in the decrease and eventual loss of Old French XV order, reminiscent of the Germanic verb-second grammar but different from it in crucial respects, above all with regard to the seemingly unrestricted capacity of this variety to also allow V3 sequences in the very same contexts; cf. Chapter 4 and Section 5.2.1. In the following sections, we will briefly summarize our main findings and arguments developed in Chapters 2–6 of this book, and then try to suggest a more general view on the topic of our study. Our objective has been to develop a theory of language change, and in particular grammatical change, which is consonant with the empirical findings from research on language acquisition, since children in the process of language development have been claimed to be the principal agents of grammatical change. 7.1  Two perspectives on generational change

In Chapter 2, we started out by considering principles and regularities of language change which have emerged from research within the variationist paradigm. In contrast to our approach to this matter, this framework rejects the distinction between a speaker’s competence as a homogeneous grammatical knowledge base of which core grammar forms part, and his or her performance, which is less regular, more arbitrary and hence more variable. Instead, it is assumed that languages are inherently variable, i.e. that variability characterizes all domains of a language and not only subparts of it (Labov 1969; Weinreich et al. 1968). Consequently, variationist research on language change does not differentiate between changes which imply parameter resetting and changes which occur in language use without having grammatical repercussions. In spite of these conceptual differences, the descriptive generalizations obtained from variationist research on language change prove highly useful when assessing cases of supposed parametric change. This claim is corroborated by our discussion of four different patterns of language change, namely generational change, communal change, age grading and lifespan change. Of these, only generational change implies intra-speaker stability in his or her linguistic behaviour after the age of adolescence. Instances of

168  language acquisition and change communal change, age grading or lifespan change are all characterized by changes in the language use of adult individual speakers. One particular observation in this regard turned out to be especially notable, in our view, to wit the fact that changes with a systemic import for the linguistic system can only be observed in instances of generational change (see Chapter 2). These are changes which not only affect isolated surface forms of the language but are accompanied by grammatically more deeply entrenched modifications in a range of related structural areas (cf. Sankoff and Blondeau 2007). As an example of this, we have mentioned the Northern Cities Shift (Labov 2007, 2010), in which a change of one vowel triggers subsequent changes of other vowels. Only children and adolescents proved to be able to adopt faithfully in all its detail the complex set of conditioning factors characterizing this change. The change hence progressed via transmission from one generation to the next and incrementation in the younger generations. Diffusion, on the other hand, i.e. the adoption of innovative patterns by adult speakers, only targeted individual sounds and isolated items, as can be observed when considering the spread of the vowel change in the St Louis corridor. This shows that only child and adolescent speakers have the capacity to participate fully in complex changes and to drive them forward. Further evidence in favour of this was provided by studies investigating language change in an individual speaker’s lifetime and, notably, at an adult age. Sankoff and Blondeau (2007) were able to find some individuals who participated at an adult age in a generational phonological change which was currently taking place in their sociolinguistic environment. However, the change targeted only the place of articulation of an individual sound, namely the apical or dorsal realization of /r/ in Montreal French. It had no other implications for the linguistic system. So far, all the available evidence suggests that adult speakers are not capable of adopting more complex types of change which affect more than one ­particular surface form. Even though research on language change conducted within the variationist paradigm primarily focuses on patterns of language use, its empirical findings and generalizations are surprisingly concordant with those obtained from research on language acquisition and change in a UG-based framework. This concerns in particular

towards a theory of grammatical change  169 the observation that the language of the individual speaker stabilizes at some point after or during childhood and can henceforth neither undergo fundamental grammatical change nor incorporate structural core innovations any more. If generational change is the only type of change which allows for grammatical restructuring, then child language acquisition is of special concern when attempting to explain mechanisms of language change. In Chapter 3, we focused on the role of the child as the alleged principal agent in processes of language change. We based our discussion on the assumption that the acquisition of a speaker’s native language during childhood is fundamentally different from language learning at a later age (the FDH). We claim that this first and foremost concerns the parameterized principles of UG which are set by the language-acquiring child to the respective target values in the course of a process characterized by deductive learning. Speakers only have a delimited time window in childhood at their disposal, after which parameter (re)setting becomes impossible (the CPH). Subsequently, parameterized structural properties can only be learned via mechanisms of inductive learning, similar to the learning of non-parameterized domains of grammar.1 This implies that only child language acquirers are able to incorporate grammatical innovations with systemic import into their mentally represented knowledge of grammar, and it is only during this developmental phase that changes of core grammatical properties are conceivable. The child language learner has therefore often been regarded as the main innovator in processes of language change. However, we have shown in Chapter 3 that the claim identifying child language learners as the sole agents of diachronic change affecting core properties of grammars is difficult to maintain when tested against empirical evidence. Research on language acquisition has demonstrated that the LAD is robust enough to ensure an acquisition process which happens fast and in a uniform way in all speakers of a language and which is ultimately fully successful. In other words, there is no evidence suggesting that the language-learning children assign a different structural analysis to the surface phenomena from that of the grammars of the speakers of their parental generation, provided these learners have sufficient access to the PLD. This is true even when the evidence in favour of the required analysis occurs at a low frequency in the PLD or

170  language acquisition and change when the PLD contain structurally ambiguous word orders, i.e. surface orders which could be assigned either the conservative or the innovative analysis; see the discussion in Chapters 3 and 4. 7.2 Structural ambiguity and language change

The assumption that children base their decision about which analysis to assign to a certain surface word order pattern on unambiguous rather than on ambiguous data stands in conflict with studies which attribute a decisive role in processes of language change to structural ambiguity. Roberts (1993, 2007), for example, claims that children prefer the derivationally more economical analysis to the less economical one if both are sufficiently available in the input. Ultimately, the former will prevail over the latter. However, such proposals lack psycholinguistic support since they have not even attempted to demonstrate that derivationally more costly analyses result in higher processing loads when processed by the language-learning children (cf. Meisel 2011b: 128). In Chapter 4, we introduced the notions of P-expression and P-ambiguity (proposed by Clark and Roberts 1993; Roberts 2007). The former refers to a surface word order which clearly instantiates a certain parameter setting, i.e. P-expressions provide unambiguous data in the input which should allow for the setting of parameters to the target value. P-ambiguity refers to cases in which different structural analyses and hence different parameter settings may account for the same surface realizations, such as the SVO order in V2 and non-V2 languages (‘strong’ P-ambiguity). The occurrence of surface word orders in which a non-subject constituent precedes the finite verb in declarative main clauses (XV), or in which a subject DP intervenes between a finite verb and a participle in compound tenses, has often been taken as an instance of unequivocal evidence in favour of a supposed V2 grammar of Old French; cf. Clark and Roberts (1993) and Yang (2002). In other words, sentences exhibiting these word order properties are interpreted as P-expressions in the language. It has been proposed that P-ambiguous sentences, such as SVO clauses, or sentences which are clearly incompatible with a V2 grammar, such as clauses featuring the verb in third or later position, do not represent a threat to

towards a theory of grammatical change  171 the maintenance of the V2 grammar as long as the P-expressions in favour of it represent a sufficiently large part of the input to language acquirers. The loss of V2 in OF is attributed to the decline of XVS orders and the increase of ambiguous word order patterns (SVO). We argued against the alleged property of XV clauses and of compound tenses with intervening subject DPs to serve as P-expressions in favour of a V2 grammar, since the same surface word orders can be observed in non-V2 languages and notably in modern Romance null subject languages like Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. Rather than exhibiting P-expressions of a V2 analysis, the input only contains P-ambiguous data (XV and SVO clauses) and P-expressions which are incompatible with a V2 grammar (V3 clauses). We inferred that, contrary to frequent claims, the grammar of Old French was not of the V2 type. Most importantly, however, we identified structurally unambiguous data as the decisive factor allowing children in the process of language acquisition to construct the grammatical knowledge of the language which they are acquiring; see also Fodor (1998). In conclusion, neither structural ambiguity nor the frequency of occurrence of certain constructions proved to be a sufficient ­condition triggering changes of core properties of grammars. 7.3  Language contact and language change

In view of this provisional result of our discussion, we turned in Chapter 5 to language contact and examined in more detail its alleged role as a potential language-external trigger of diachronic change. Given that analyses of 2L1 acquisition had shown that children are able to acquire two or more languages just as monolingual speakers do, it was obvious from the onset that the situation was more complex than that of a simple cause-and-effect relationship. In bilingual acquisition, mutual influence between languages does exist, but it does not affect the core grammatical properties of the languages involved. Rather, the children differentiate from early on the grammatical systems of the languages they acquire. Bilingualism, i.e. language contact in the individual speaker, hence does not constitute a sufficient condition for language change either. Studies of language contact at the social level, i.e. in the speech

172  language acquisition and change community, often report instances of structural transfer or borrowing from one language to the other; see, for example, Harris and Campbell (1995). Heine and Kuteva (2003) and Silva-Corvalán (1998), however, demonstrated that cross-linguistic interference mainly occurs in domains where the languages in contact bear surface-structural equivalence. Language contact hence does not generally result in a direct transfer of grammatical structure from one language to the other. Instead, it may target the pragmatic functions associated with structures which are superficially equivalent (cf. Silva-Corvalán 1998: 226). In Chapter 5, we referred to a number of cases in language contact situations in which a certain word order is used in the same pragmatic contexts as its superficially equivalent counterpart in the contact language and where it deviates in this regard from non-contact varieties (see, e.g., the emergence of prepositions in Pipil or the use of null objects in Basque Spanish; cf. Heine and Kuteva 2003; Silva-Corvalán 1998). In neither of these cases is syntactic convergence involved. We have seen that many cases of alleged grammatical borrowing can better be accounted for by adopting this alternative perspective according to which the grammars of the languages in contact remain unaffected by the contact scenario. Not only core grammatical properties of linguistic knowledge have proven to be extraordinarily robust and resistant to effects resulting from external factors like language contact. Studies carried out within the variationist paradigm have shown that sociolinguistic variables are not likely to be transferred either from one language to the other. Even though mere frequencies of occurrence might suggest otherwise, in many cases the comparison of environmental factors conditioning variant choice in the contact languages disconfirms the allegedly influential role of language contact. It has been shown that it is not sufficient merely to compare rates of occurrence between contact varieties or to contrast the contact variety with a prescribed standard. Such studies often overestimate the role of language contact and draw erroneous conclusions. In order to assess the role of language contact, constraint hierarchies need to be examined instead. It is also necessary to study benchmark varieties which reflect actual language use and are in a sociolinguistically relevant way related to the contact variety under study; see Poplack and Levey (2010).

towards a theory of grammatical change  173 Our discussion of two case studies of Old French examined two syntactic properties which according to some authors changed in the diachronic development of the language from the Middle Ages, one concerning its supposed V2 character and the other one its character as a null subject language. Our goal was to examine whether these changes indeed happened and, most importantly, whether they are likely to have been triggered by language contact. As we have shown earlier, our discussion of Old French constructions which supposedly represent instances of structural ambiguity provided evidence against rather than in support of an analysis in terms of a V2 grammar. A quantitative analysis of the contexts in which subject–verb inversion (XVS) and verb-third constructions were used in both Middle High German and Old French did not provide supporting evidence either for the hypothesis that Old French was a V2 language of the Germanic type or that this supposed V2 property was brought about by language contact with German. Rather, the set of environmental factors conditioning variable choice between inversion and non-inversion revealed an important conflict site (cf. Poplack and Meechan 1998) between the two languages: in the context of fronted adverbial clauses, inversion is nearly absent from Old French, unlike in the Middle High German data. This particular case demonstrates again that the similarity of surface word order patterns or similar rates of occurrence in two contact languages are no valid measures for assessing the actual influence of language contact. The relevant information can rather be gained by comparing the contexts in which the respective variants are used. If the environmental factors have different effects in the supposed source variety and in the target, then language contact is unlikely to be the cause of the similarity. Rates of occurrence are clearly not a reliable source of evidence either when it comes to decide on the setting of parameters in grammars underlying this kind of use. This is clearly evidenced by our analysis of the null subject property of Old French. Note that the null subject parameter merely specifies the structural prerequisites which must be met in order to allow for the subject position to remain lexically empty. The question, however, of in which contexts and at what rate overt pronouns may occur depends not on the parameter setting but on pragmatic factors, such as emphasis, contrast or information structure. In other words, the frequency

174  language acquisition and change of subject omission or realization does not tell us anything about the parametric setting in the grammar. A potentially higher use of overt subject pronouns in contact areas with non-null subject languages can therefore not be taken as evidence in favour of the claim that the null subject parameter has been set to the non-null subject option or that it is weakened, in some sense yet to be specified. Rather, our discussion revealed that the decline of the frequency of use of null subjects in Old French is a direct consequence of the grammaticalization of nominative pronouns, turning from topic markers into agreement markers. From our review of studies of contact-induced change, we concluded that grammatical change is unlikely to occur when the members of the speech communities in contact perfectly master their languages, i.e. if they acquire these as L1s. When, on the other hand, a substantial part of the population acquire the language undergoing a change as an L2 or when L2 speakers constitute an important source of PLD for children who acquire the language, we expect grammatical change to be a more likely consequence. L2 acquisition is characterized, as we have argued, by fundamental differences from L1 development, primarily due to the fact that L2 learners are not able to alter (i.e. to set or reset) values of parameterized principles of UG. It is therefore precisely in this domain of core grammar that we expect change to occur when L2 learning is involved. Two case studies, which we referred to in Chapter 5, show that this scenario, which attributes a major role in diachronic change to L2 speakers, is indeed not as far-fetched as it might appear to be at first sight. Kroch and Taylor (1997) and Weerman (1993) analysed the influence of contact with Old Norse on language change in English, focusing on the OV word order and the verb-second property respectively. They too found that L2 acquisition played a decisive role in these processes of grammatical change. Similar cases of change were discussed by Thomason and Kaufman (1988) as instances of substratum interference in situations of language shift. These studies agree on the observation that sociolinguistic settings involving L2 acquisition can only lead to grammatical change if the L2 speakers constitute a large enough group within the speech community and if the L2 learners have only limited access to native speakers and will therefore acquire only an

towards a theory of grammatical change  175 imperfect knowledge of the target language (see Thomason and Kaufman 1988: 47; Weerman 1993: 919). From this it follows that the social conditions allowing for grammatical change to occur are of a very specific and restricted nature. 7.4 A reappraisal of the role of L1 acquisition in diachronic change

The hypothesis that diachronic change affecting core properties of grammars is contingent on the involvement of L2 learning requires a reconsideration of the role of child L1 acquisition in processes of language change. The generative research literature frequently considered children as the main innovators in situations of change, since children reconstruct, and possibly reanalyse, the language of their parental generation in the course of language acquisition. In Chapter 6, we therefore turned our focus to the question of how to re-evaluate children’s role as possible agents of change, examining their possible contribution from this new perspective. We based our argument on the insights and empirical findings gained from research on 2L1 acquisition. These studies demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that grammars of languages acquired simultaneously are separated from early on and that there is no evidence indicating fusion of the grammatical systems of the two or more languages. Rather, bilingual children develop a competence in each of their L1s which is qualitatively not distinct from that of the monolingual speakers. As for instances of language mixing, which undoubtedly occur in bilingual speech, we argued that they cannot be taken as evidence for a failure to differentiate the languages. According to the IH (Serratrice et al. 2004), cases of cross-linguistic interaction are most likely to happen at the interface between morphosyntax and pragmatics. They can also be explained as resulting from specific demands on language processing, but they are not the result of cross-linguistic influence affecting mental grammars, and certainly not at the core grammatical level. This even holds true for cases in which one of the languages develops as the weaker one. On the basis of these and similar observations, we concluded that language contact may perhaps be regarded as a necessary but certainly not as a sufficient condition for grammatical change to

176  language acquisition and change take place. Deviations of the acquired grammatical knowledge from the original target system are only to be expected under very specific conditions, namely when the children have a drastically limited access to the PLD during the sensitive phases of their language acquisition process. Depending on the quantity and quality of the input available to the children and on the specific sociolinguistic conditions given in the learning environment, different scenarios are conceivable which might result in an incomplete or only partially successful acquisition process. Simplifying somewhat the conclusions at which we arrived in our discussion in Chapter 6, two alternative scenarios deserve closer attention. One is that the reduced or deficient input prevents the child from acquiring the language as an L1, in which case we are dealing with an instance of cL2 acquisition. According to this scenario, the children acquire the language, typically one of several in a bi- or multilingual setting, as an L2. Alternatively, the child does acquire the ambient language or languages fully, but with some parameter values set differently from those in the grammars of the preceding generation, due to the fact that speakers providing the input data are L2 learners of the languages in question. Given this second scenario, however, the structural innovations are triggered by structural information contained in the input. Importantly, in neither case are children who acquire the changing language as an L1 the innovators of the change. On this account, we are looking not at a case of transmission failure but at a setting where the changes have already happened in that they are attested in the speech of L2 learners. 7.5  A reappraisal of morphosyntactic change

Ascribing to L2 learners the role of agents of innovation in situations of language change, or more precisely of parametric change, implies that change should be restricted to those situations where the sociolinguistic context provides a favourable basis for an influential role of L2 speakers. In a reverse conclusion, parametric changes should occur much less often than is commonly assumed, since not every change which has been claimed to be parametric in nature can be related to the involvement of an important number of L2 learners. At the outset of this chapter, we emphasized how

towards a theory of grammatical change  177 important it is to examine thoroughly whether a particular morphosyntactic change is in fact reflecting core grammatical restructuring or whether it rather represents a surface phenomenon leaving the underlying grammar unchanged. We have shown that a number of alleged parametric changes in the history of French can better be explained without positing an underlying and radical grammatical change. This concerns not only the alleged verb-second property (see Chapter 4 and Section 5.2.1) but also the null subject property of Old French (see Chapter 6 for discussion). In these cases, surface word order variability could in fact be shown to be due to non-syntactic factors, such as information structure in the case of apparent V2 or the morphological status of nominative pronouns in the case of the null subject property. It therefore turned out to be crucial to examine each instance of a morphosyntactic change carefully and to exclude other potential explanations before concluding that it involves parametric change. The argument that, upon closer inspection, many morphosyntactic changes turn out not to be parametric in nature should certainly not be understood as a negative message, relegating the phenomena under discussion to the domain of language use and dismissing them as of secondary importance or even as irrelevant for syntactic research. Quite to the contrary: these phenomena of language change require careful treatment and attention from the analyst. In fact, we did consider alternative explanations and stressed the importance of investigating the interface levels, e.g. the one between syntax and pragmatics, in order to explain those instances of surface word order variation which, in our view, cannot be ascribed to changes of core properties of grammar. We have tried to show that, if we take these considerations into account, we arrive at explanations which have the advantage of being able to rely on scenarios which are plausible from a psycholinguistic perspective and which are compatible with insights gained from research on language acquisition. 7.6 Conclusions

Our objective, pursued in this book, was to contribute to a theory of language change which is consistent with insights gained from

178  language acquisition and change research on language acquisition, and notably on L1 acquisition. Our focus of research was on those phenomena which have been shown to be exceptionally stable and resistant to external influence, i.e. on phenomena pertaining to the domain of morphosyntax, and which it has been proposed form part of the speakers’ core grammar. The core grammar has been argued to constitute the essential part of the speakers’ internal grammatical knowledge. It consists of the principles provided by UG (see Chomsky 1981). The theory of UG therefore sets the framework of our considerations. The main motivation for our study consisted in the conflicting evidence provided by the observations that, on the one hand, some parts of a language, especially parts of its morphosyntax, are particularly stable in the long term, but that, on the other hand, they indeed do change from time to time. As an example, we may mention the OV order of Latin, which has turned into a VO order in all Romance languages. Based on the assumption that such cases of morphosyntactic change affect the speakers’ core grammar, our main research question hence consisted in defining the conditions which incite the speakers to restructure and alter their core ­grammatical knowledge. Language change can be understood as a case of variation on a diachronic axis between a conservative system which is on the decline and an innovative linguistic system which eventually prevails and replaces the conservative one. Since we were concerned with linguistic properties which are supposedly part of the speakers’ core grammar, we had to restrict our attention to those domains where the core grammar allows for such a kind of variation. We argued that parameterized principles constitute the relevant domain. In contrast to the invariant principles of UG, these allow for language-specific settings. In our understanding, they may instantiate different settings not only when comparing languages but also when comparing dialectal, diaphasic, diastratic or – and this is relevant for our purpose – diachronic varieties of the same language. There is more than sufficient evidence, as we argued in Chapter 3, supporting the assumption that core grammatical properties including language-specific parameters are acquired early in childhood and that parameters, once set to a specific value, cannot be

towards a theory of grammatical change  179 changed any more in the lifetime of the individual. Research on language change carried out within the framework of UG has therefore identified the language-acquiring child as the agent of systemic changes in grammars. As a natural implication of this approach, one would have expected that research on diachronic change should take advantage of the empirical and psycholinguistic insights gained from research on child L1 acquisition. This, however, is not the case. The principal flaws in these accounts, which ignore the reality of language acquisition but rely heavily on the idea that diachronic change happens primarily in the course of intergenerational transmission of grammatical knowledge, relate to the fact that they do not provide empirically substantiated explanations of why and under which circumstances children supposedly interpret the input data in structurally different terms from the generation producing the input. Throughout this book, we critically assessed the factors and scenarios which have been mentioned in favour of the language-acquiring child as principal agent and innovator in processes of language change. The two most important factors discussed in the literature are language contact and structural ambiguity in the input data. With regard to the former, it is essential to distinguish between the effects of language contact which can be observed in speech communities and those which occur in the individual speaker. The speech community and patterns of language use therein have been the focus of research within the variationist paradigm. It hence tackles the phenomenon of language change from a different perspective from the one we adopted in our study. Yet we argued that the insights emanating from this research will also be relevant for studies, like ours, focusing on the grammatical knowledge of the speakers, for we take this knowledge to be shared by all the members of the speech community and we take the individual speaker to be an idealized speaker-listener and hence a representative member of this community. Variationist research has identified the ranking and hierarchies of environmental factors conditioning the use or non-use of certain forms as most relevant when it comes to explaining their occurrences and distribution in actual language use, and notably as more relevant than mere frequencies of occurrence. In Chapter 2, we saw that linguistic forms which are contingent on a complex set of environmental factors conditioning their use can

180  language acquisition and change only faithfully be transmitted from one generation to the child or adolescent speakers of the next generation, but that they do not spread via diffusion among the adult members of a speech community. The discussion in Chapter 5 then addressed the question of under which conditions these forms may be transferred from one language to another as a result of language contact. Even though the interpretation of rates of occurrence or the comparison with a prescribed standard variety of the respective language might suggest otherwise, the analysis of the environmental factors in many cases speaks strongly against an influential role of language contact in the development of these forms. Language contact is hence less often the cause of a change at the level of language use than commonly assumed. The same argument holds, though for different reasons, for language contact within the individual speaker. Our arguments provided in Chapter 3, focusing on the core grammar, showed that under normal, non-pathological conditions, children have the capacity to acquire more than one language without passing through a stage of fusion of the grammatical systems involved. Empirical research on 2L1 acquisition has instead confirmed that children are able to differentiate the multiple grammars from early on, and develop a competence in each of them as if they were monolingual speakers of the respective languages, even if one of the languages develops as the weaker one. Thus, although we know that only children have the capacity to reorganize and restructure their grammatical knowledge in the process of L1 acquisition, there is no empirical evidence indicating that language contact triggers this kind of reorganization, provided that the input data contain the relevant structural information. It is precisely the nature and composition of the input data which are in the focus of the argument drawing on structural ambiguity as the main trigger for grammatical reanalysis. It has been suggested that the occurrence of surface word order patterns in the input data which are compatible with more than one syntactic analysis in terms of their derivation may give rise to a structural reanalysis on the part of the language acquirers. However, no convincing argument has been presented so far which would explain the reasons that drive the child to assign a different structural

towards a theory of grammatical change  181 analysis to a certain construction from that of his or her parental generation. Accounts linking acquisition strategies to principles of derivational economy are psycholinguistically inconclusive and unsatisfactory when tested against the insights gained from research on child L1 acquisition. We have also shown that it is a rather questionable approach, both from an empirical and from a theoretical point of view, to attribute particular importance to the rates of occurrence and the relative proportion of ambiguous and unambiguous constructions in the input, since properties of core grammar do not per se depend on the frequency of use of related constructions. If, on the other hand, we base our considerations on the empirical findings gained from research on language acquisition, we have to conclude that children use the structurally unambiguous rather than the ambiguous data as a resource to construct mental grammars reflecting their grammatical knowledge of the language. To summarize, neither language contact nor structural ambiguity represents a sufficient condition for an explanation of language change. While contact might be a necessary condition, ambiguity does not even appear to be so, since the arguments in its favour are primarily motivated by considerations inspired by a theory of grammar postulating preference for derivationally more economical structures in the course of language acquisition. These, however, remain unsupported by empirical research. This conclusion led us to explore alternative causes for input properties which might prevent the child from acquiring the target grammar completely. We demonstrated that a target-deviant parameter setting is unlikely to occur in the context of L1 acquisition, even when language contact and structural ambiguity are involved. This necessarily turns the focus away to settings in which the language undergoing a change is not acquired as a first or native language, since it is in this context that parameter setting or resetting is arguably not possible any more. In Chapters 5 and 6, we drafted an explanatory model which highlights the important role of L2 acquisition in the process of core grammatical change, and we backed up our argument with reference to case studies supporting our analysis. Deviations from the parametric target setting are expected to occur either when the children acquire the respective language as an L2 or when the PLD are provided by L2 learners of

182  language acquisition and change this language. In either case, L1 acquirers can be excluded as the principal agents or innovators of the change. If our assumption is on the right track, i.e. that core grammatical change requires the agency of L2 learners, because language acquisition research informs us that only in L2 acquisition do we find that learners fail to achieve a target-compliant acquisition of the grammar, then diachronic change of core grammatical properties is expected to happen only rarely, given that settings where L2 speakers heavily influence a linguistic community are rare. In fact, our reviews and analyses of a number of morphosyntactic diachronic changes have cast considerable doubt on the widespread assumption that they all involve parametric changes. Instead, we were able to show that the respective changes can better be explained in terms of surface word order variability conditioned by pragmatic, e.g. information-structural, factors within the limits of a stable grammatical system which does not undergo a change over time. To conclude, we have based our discussion of language change on the premise that syntax is particularly stable and resistant to external influence, in line with the Inertia Theory (cf. Keenan 2002). Evidence in favour of this stability has been adduced throughout this book, based on a variety of types of empirical evidence, interpreted from different theoretical perspectives. In doing so, we attempted to develop a theory of language change which takes into consideration findings emanating from research on language acquisition. However, our discussion of several instances of morphosyntactic change has shown that a change of surface word order properties is not necessarily the result of an underlying grammatical change. It is hence of prime importance to examine each particular change carefully and to exclude other potential explanations before concluding that the grammar has in fact been restructured. Explanations in terms of grammatical change need to be consistent with grammatical theorizing, but they must also be plausible from a psycholinguistic point of view, and they have to be consistent with insights gained from language acquisition research. We believe that we have shown that grammatical change should only be expected to occur in the context of very specific sociolinguistic settings, which, importantly, attribute a crucial role to L2 learners.

towards a theory of grammatical change  183 NOTE

1. Even if one were to assume that L2 learners can set parameters after the critical period, this would not entail that they can reset parameters of their formerly acquired L1.

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Index

2L1 acquisition see acquisition acquisition bilingual first language (2L1) acquisition, 59, 61, 69, 109, 134, 149, 151, 162, 171, 175, 180 child second language (cL2) acquisition, 61, 155, 176 failure, acquisition failure, 148–9, 155–6 first language (L1) acquisition, 1, 8, 11–12, 37, 49, 55–60, 66–7, 70, 137, 141, 154, 180–1 incomplete acquisition, 56, 149, 150, 152, 156, 176 second language (L2) acquisition, 13, 17, 62, 99, 109–10, 113–14, 134, 147, 149–57, 162, 174, 176, 181 simultaneous acquisition, 68–9, 109, 138–9, 151, 162, 175 age grading, 22–4, 34, 36, 48 age of onset of acquisition see AO agents of change, 18, 31, 52–5, 68, 70, 100, 111, 133–4, 140, 149, 155–7, 162, 167, 169, 175, 179, 182 ambiguity, 76, 79, 81, 89, 91, 145, 181 P-ambiguity, 78, 80, 90–3, 170 parametric ambiguity, 77, 90, 159 strong ambiguity, 78–9, 170 structural ambiguity, 11, 64–7, 71–4, 80, 93, 96, 137, 159, 170–3, 179–81 syntactic ambiguity, 74 weak ambiguity, 78 Ancient Romance see Romance AO, 12–13, 152–5, 171 apparent time (change) see change attrition, 1, 6, 26, 145 Avoid Pronoun Principle, 124 Basque see Euskera Basque Spanish see Spanish

bilingual, 1, 9, 60, 68–71, 99, 100, 106–8, 111–12, 133, 138–49, 157, 175 biological, 4, 5, 7 borrowing, 100, 110, 133, 172 lexical borrowing, 32, 98, 100 structural borrowing, 96–7, 100–3, 106, 110, 133, 172 Brazilian Portuguese see Portuguese catastrophic change see change change, 110, 148 apparent change, 18 apparent time change, 23, 26–7, 33, 48 catastrophic change, 46 change from above, 31, 36 change from below, 29 communal change, 22–5, 34, 36, 48, 167 contact-induced change, 18, 96–100, 104–13, 117, 126, 133–4, 174 generational change, 22–7, 33–6, 49, 53, 167–9 lifespan change, 20, 23–5, 34, 36, 167 locus of change, 7, 53, 156 maturational change, 12–13, 152, 154 parametric change, 16, 18, 20, 50, 52, 57–8, 62, 67, 71, 76, 79, 81, 83–4, 92, 113–14, 148, 156, 158–61, 164, 166–7, 176–7, 182 real time change, 48 cL2 acquisition see acquisition code-switching, 106, 140 Colloquial French see French communal change see change competence, 3, 6–13, 26, 33, 56–60, 100, 106–7, 109, 111–12, 115, 129, 133, 137, 139, 141, 147–8, 150, 152–3, 167, 175, 180 competing grammars, 40, 43, 47, 59, 79 complex see complexity complexity, 57, 65, 92 structural complexity, 65 conflict site, 117, 121, 173

index  201 constraint hierarchy, 106, 116–17 contact-induced grammaticalization see grammaticalization convergence, 67, 96, 102–8, 133, 172 core grammar, 20–5, 30–9, 46–9, 167, 174, 178–81 core properties see core grammar CPH, 12, 169 Critical Period Hypothesis see CPH cue, 11, 48, 55, 68, 70, 77, 94, 138 developmental problem, 6, 7, 64 differentiation hypothesis, 69, 109, 139–43 diffusion, 31–2, 36, 114, 157, 162, 168, 180 dominance, 145–6 economy (structural), 65–7, 78, 91, 181 English, 8, 23, 28, 32, 77, 92–3, 99, 106–7, 129, 164–6 Early Modern English, 79 Modern English, 112 Northern Middle English, 111–12 Old English, 111–13, 134 Southern Middle English, 111 Euskera, 163 failure see transmission failure first language acquisition see acquisition Frankish, 115, 122 West Frankish, 127 French, 6, 39, 141, 145, 158–64, 177 Colloquial French, 44, 160 Middle French, 83–4, 114, 131–4, 159 Modern French, 82–4, 89–90, 131, 159–60 Old French, 7, 44, 73, 80–93, 114–34, 159–60, 167, 170, 173, 177 Quebec French, 22, 34, 35–50, 107, 168 Standard French, 107, 160 frequency, 2, 18, 28–9, 39, 57, 61–71, 79–80, 83–4, 87, 90–2, 97, 106–7, 125, 129, 139, 143, 159, 169, 171–3, 181 frequency of use see frequency functional category, 15, 98 Fundamental Difference Hypothesis, 154 fusion, 68–9, 109, 134, 139, 146, 175, 180 generational change see change German, 6, 77, 84, 99, 118–19, 122–3, 134, 141–2, 145, 159 Middle High German, 117–18, 120–3, 134, 173 Old High German, 119 Germanic, 83, 89, 114–16, 125–8, 134, 160, 167, 173 GoldVarb X, 121 grammaticalization, 44, 96, 104, 131–4, 174 contact-induced grammaticalization, 103 Greek, 129 heritage language, 149–50, 156, 162 homogeneity, 5, 10, 20, 39, 167 homogeneous see homogeneity

incomplete acquisition see acquisition incrementation, 37 invariant principles see principles inversion, subject-clitic inversion, 22, 38–9, 42–4, 46 L1 acquisition see acquisition L2 acquisition see acquisition LAD, 12, 56–60, 68–71, 137, 151–4, 169 language acquisition see acquisition Language Acquisition Device see LAD Language Making Capacity see LMC language shift, 96, 100, 109, 113, 133, 174 shift-induced interference, 110 Latin, 89, 92, 114, 125, 130, 161, 178 Vulgar Latin, 161, 164 lect, 2 lifespan change see change lingua romana rustica, 123 LMC, 12–13, 56, 70 locus of change see change logical problem of language change, 55–7, 77 loss of verb movement see verb movement maturational change see change Medieval Romance see Romance mental grammar, 3, 10–11, 53–4, 148, 175, 181 mental representation, 2–3, 7, 11, 21, 53, 144, 152 Middle French see French Middle High German see German Minimalist Program, 9 mixing, 8, 140, 146, 175 Modern English see English Modern French see French Modern Romance see Romance multilingual, 8–9, 17, 61, 69–70, 138, 176 neogrammarian, 3–4, 9 New Mexican Spanish see Spanish Northern Cities Shift, 32, 168 Northern Middle English see English null subject, 11, 15–17, 45–6, 84–93, 115, 123–34, 143, 146, 159–61, 171–7 null subject language see null subject null subject parameter see null subject null subject property see null subject Occitan, Old Occitan, 127–8 Old English see English Old Norman, 112 Old Norse, 111–12, 174 Old Occitan see Occitan Old Portuguese see Portuguese Old Spanish see Spanish omission, 132, 143, 174 OV/VO parameter, 77, 111–13, 134, 141, 164, 174, 178 P-ambiguity see ambiguity panel study, 34

202  language acquisition and change parameter, 11, 14–15, 18–20, 54–62, 66, 77–82, 90–3, 114, 138, 146–8, 154, 170, 178 parameter resetting, 15, 59, 66, 70, 77, 81, 112–14, 134, 148, 153–7, 167–9, 174–6, 181 parameterized principles, 13, 15–16, 25, 56–7, 70, 154–5, 166, 169, 174, 178 parameter setting see parameter parameter values see parameter parameterized principles see parameter parametric ambiguity see ambiguity parametric change see change penalty probability, 80 performance, 5, 115, 167 P-expression, 78, 80, 90, 93, 170 Pipil, 101, 103–4, 133, 172 PLD, 8–11, 18, 30, 55–64, 68–70, 112, 134, 138–9, 148–51, 154, 157, 169, 174–6, 181 Portuguese, 86, 142, 160, 171 Brazilian Portuguese, 142 Old Portuguese, 160 primary linguistic data see PLD Principle of Compositionality, 74 principles (UG), 10–17, 54–6, 65, 149, 154–5, 178 invariant principles, 15–16, 54–8, 178 Principles and Parameters Theory, 14 processing, 11–12, 53, 57, 65, 92, 146, 170, 175 pro-drop see null subject Quebec French see French real time (change) see change reanalysis, 18, 42, 45–7, 55–6, 61, 64–70, 75–9, 91–3, 137–8, 144, 148–52, 157–8, 161–2, 175, 180 reconstruction, 54–6, 60, 68, 70, 137, 152, 175 relative clause, 75–6, 118–19 relative pronoun, 75 relative pronoun see relative clause restructuring, 2–3, 6–7, 16–18, 21, 31, 37, 39, 47, 52–3, 64, 96–7, 110, 131, 158–9, 166, 169, 177, 180, 182 Romance, 85, 92, 114, 116, 124–6, 129, 141, 158, 163, 178 Ancient Romance, 161, 164 Medieval Romance, 127, 159, 160–1 Modern Romance, 89, 123, 160–1, 171 second language acquisition see acquisition semantic bleaching, 132 sensitive period see sensitive phase sensitive phase, 13, 26, 148, 150, 176 shift see language shift shift-induced interference see language shift simultaneous acquisition see acquisition soapbox style, 43 Southern Middle English see English Spanish, 93, 101–2, 104, 129, 146, 160 Basque Spanish, 102, 172 New Mexican Spanish, 106 Old Spanish, 127, 129–30 speaker-listener, 3, 5–6, 9–10, 179

speech community, 4–10, 20–4, 31–7, 52–3, 100, 133, 157, 162, 172–4, 179 stable variation see variation Standard French see French strong ambiguity see ambiguity structural ambiguity see ambiguity structural borrowing see borrowing structural complexity see complexity subject omission see null subject subject-clitic inversion see inversion substratum interference, 100, 174 SV-order (SV), 104, 113, 118, 170 Syntactic ambiguity see ambiguity Takia, 104 transfer, 17, 68–9, 96–8, 100–5, 126, 133, 138, 153, 157, 172, 180 transmission, 11, 16–17, 28–9, 32, 37, 49, 52, 68, 157–8 transmission failure, 58, 61, 70, 137, 151–3, 156–7, 162 trend study, 33 trigger, 15, 18, 57–9, 62, 77–8, 83–6, 89–90, 92–3, 138, 157 triggering experience see trigger UG, 6, 10–17, 21, 30, 54–6, 113, 153, 178 unambiguous evidence, 66, 77–80, 83, 89–91, 94 Universal Grammar see UG V2 see verb-second variability see variation variable rule analysis (Varbrul), 121 variation, 1, 6, 14, 20, 22, 30, 57, 98, 153, 178 stable variation, 22, 34, 39 variationist sociolinguistics, 22–3, 29, 116, 167, 179 variety, 1, 20, 43, 106–7, 117, 133, 172, 178 verb movement, 40, 43, 65, 81–2, 85, 88, 111, 141, 159, 160 loss of verb movement, 43, 79, 92 verb movement parameter, 53 verb movement parameter see verb movement verb second, 83 verb-second, 17, 59, 65, 73, 77, 80–9, 111, 114–17, 123, 130, 134, 142, 159, 160–1, 170, 173 vernacular reorganization, 28 VO-order see OV/VO parameter V-to-T movement see verb movement Vulgar Latin see Latin vulnerable domains, 144 Waskia, 104–5 weak ambiguity see ambiguity weaker language, 147–8, 175, 180 West Frankish see Frankish wh-criterion, 40 yes/no questions, 38–9, 43–8 Yiddish, 99