Department of French and Italian

In this seminar we will examine both (1) the overarching theoretical questions about the nature of syntactic change that arise in the generative tradition (e.g. the possible roles of first and second language acquisition, parameter setting, variation and grammar competition, language contact, information structure, changes in other parts of the grammatical system, etc.) and, in order to address these questions from an empirical standpoint, (2) many specific case studies from the recent and long-term histories of French and Romance, English and Germanic, and various other languages. Students with one semester or more of generative syntax background will find this course accessible.  The semester project can be on French or another Gallo-Romance language (for F671) or any language (for L760) and can be based either on data collected by the student from primary texts or on data primarily from the secondary literature.

Joint listed with LING-L760 Diachronic Syntax