Language Acquisition and Change: A Morphosyntactic Perspective
Language Acquisition and Change: A Morphosyntactic Perspective
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Abstract
This book discusses diachronic change of languages in terms of restructuring of speakers’ internal grammatical knowledge: Under which circumstances does grammatical change come about? One answer in historical linguistics has been to invoke the child as principal agent of change. But efforts to construct a theory of diachronic change consistent with findings from psycholinguistics are scarce. Here, these questions are therefore addressed against the background of insights from research on monolingual and bilingual acquisition. Given that children are remarkably successful in reconstructing the grammars of their ambient languages, commonly held views need to be reconsidered according to which language change is primarily triggered by structural ambiguity in the input and in settings of language contact. In an innovative take on this matter, the authors argue that morphosyntactic change in core areas of grammar, especially where parameters of Universal Grammar are concerned, typically happens in settings involving second language acquisition. The children acting as agents of restructuring are either second language (L2) learners themselves or are continuously exposed to the speech of L2 speakers of their target languages. Based on a variety of case studies from Romance languages, this discussion sheds new light on phenomena of change which have occupied historical linguists since the XIXth century.
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Front Matter
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1
Variation and change in languages
Meisel Jurgen M. and others
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2
Language change across the lifespan
Meisel Jurgen M. and others
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The child as the locus and agent of grammatical change
Meisel Jurgen M. and others
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Structural Ambiguity as a Possible Trigger of Syntactic Change
Meisel Jurgen M. and others
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Language contact as a possible trigger of change
Meisel Jurgen M. and others
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Acquisition in multilingual settings: Implications for explanations of change
Meisel Jurgen M. and others
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Towards an explanatory theory of grammatical change
Meisel Jurgen M. and others
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End Matter
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