In the field of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, syntactic change is change in the

syntactic In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency), ...

structure of a

natural language In neuropsychology, linguistics, and philosophy of language, a natural language or ordinary language is any language that has evolved naturally in humans through use and repetition without conscious planning or premeditation. Natural languages ...

Description

If one regards a language as

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

within a particular syntax (with

functional item In the framework of Noam Chomsky's Minimalist Program, items of the lexicon are of two types: with or without substantive content. Items of the former category are called lexical items, whereas items of the latter category are functional items. Func ...

s maintaining the

basic structure The basic structure doctrine is a common law legal doctrine that the constitution of a sovereign state has certain characteristics that cannot be erased by its legislature. The doctrine is recognised in India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, and ...

of a sentence and with the lexical items filling in the blanks), syntactic change plays the greatest role in modifying the physiognomy of a particular language. Syntactic change affects grammar in its morphological and syntactic aspects and is one of the types of change observed in

language change Language change is variation over time in a language's features. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistics. Traditional theories of historical linguistics identify ...

. If one pays close attention to evolutions in the realms of phonology and morphology, it becomes evident that syntactic change can also be the result of profound shifts in the shape of a language, i.e. the effect of phonological change can trigger morphological reanalysis which can then engender changes in syntactic structures. Syntactic change is a phenomenon creating a shift in language patterns over time, subject to cyclic drift. The morphological idiosyncrasies of today are seen as the outcome of yesterday's regular syntax. For instance, in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, the past tense of the verb ''to go'' is not ''goed'' or any other form based on the base ''go'', but ''went'', a borrowing from the past tense of the verb ''to wend''. Massive changes may occur both in syntax and vocabulary and are attributable to either

creolization Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ne ...

relexification In linguistics, relexification is a mechanism of language change by which one language changes much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, with the lexicon of another language, without drastically changing the relexified language's gramm ...

. Some theories of language change hypothesize that it occurs because the grammatical input children receive is ambiguous, so they analyze the underlying grammatical construction in a different manner. This reanalyzed grammar may create new ambiguities, which subsequent generations may analyze in another manner. In some cases, change can happen in a cyclic manner. For example,

prepositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

can become reduced over time, until they are reanalyzed as case markers

affix In linguistics, an affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word or word form. Affixes may be derivational, like English ''-ness'' and ''pre-'', or inflectional, like English plural ''-s'' and past tense ''-ed''. They ar ...

ed onto the adjacent nouns. These case markers, in turn, may be lost over time, which will lead to the introduction of new prepositions. An example of syntactic change in English can be seen in the development from the verb second (V2) word order, used before the 15th Century, to the modern word order. Like other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...

Old Old or OLD may refer to: Places *Old, Baranya, Hungary *Old, Northamptonshire, England *Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD) *OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...

and

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English p ...

had V2 word order. An example from Middle English is shown here, where ''nu'' 'now' is in first position, and the verb ''loke'' 'look' is in second position. 'Now it's for every man to look to himself.' (as cited in Roberts 2007: 59) Even though V2 was lost, verb raising was maintained in the 1600s in Early Modern English. Unlike in Modern English, the verb preceded

adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering que ...

and

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical complement, is an operation that takes a proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P or \overline. It is interpreted intuitively as being true when P is false, and false ...

, as shown in (2). This word order is still apparent in

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's nation ...

's writing.

Description

See also

References

Further reading