Formal mismatches and functional advantage in syntactic change: the case of Old and Middle Russian non-verbal predicates
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Nerea Madariaga [1]
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[1] Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea
Leioa, España
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- Localización: Diachronica: International Journal for Historical Linguistics = Revue Internationale pour la Linguistique Historique = Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Sprachwissenschaft, ISSN 0176-4225, Vol. 29, Nº 2, 2012, págs. 231-257
- Idioma: inglés
- Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
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Resumen
This paper relies on the idea that syntactic change stems from linguistic factors that are different in nature and, consequently, trigger different results. Specifically, I distinguish the causes, processes and results related to two different kinds of syntactic change, a ‘formal’ type of change vs. a ‘functional’ one. The hypotheses pursued here are the following: (i) Mismatches between the formal features a learner has acquired and certain data she receives during the language acquisition period lead to a syntactic change type, which restructures completely the syntactic derivation involved; (ii) The advantage of parsing one variant over parsing another triggers a different kind of change, namely one that affects specific instances or uses / registers of the crucial syntactic structure. To illustrate this, I analyze the role of functional advantage and formal changes in the historical development of the case system of Russian non-verbal predication.
