Galves Charlotte et al (Editors). Parameter Theory and Linguistic Change

Oxford University Press, 2012. — xviii, 186 pages. — (Oxford Studies In Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 2). — ISBN: 978–0–19–965920–3.This book focuses on some of the most important issues in historical syntax. In a series of close examinations of languages from old Egyptian to modern Afrikaans, leading scholars present new work on Afro-Asiatic, Latin and Romance, Germanic, Albanian, Celtic, Indo-Iranian, and Japanese. The book revolves around the linked themes of parametric theory and the dynamics of language change. The former is a key element in the search for explanatory adequacy in historical syntax: if the notion of imperfect learning, for example, explains a large element of grammatical change, it is vital to understand how parameters are set in language acquisition and how they might have been set differently in previous generations. The authors test particular hypotheses against data from different times and places with the aim of understanding the relationship between language variation and the dynamics of change. Is it possible, for example, to reconcile the unidirectionality of change predominantly expressed in the phenomenon of "grammaticalization", with the multidirectionality predicted by generativist approaches? In terms of the richness of the data it examines, the broad range of languages it discusses, and the use it makes of linguistic theory this is an outstanding book, not least in the contribution it makes to the understanding of language change.Parameter theory and dynamics of change
Parameters in Old Romance word order: A comparative minimalist analysis
Microparameters in the verbal complex: Middle High German and some modern varieties
Language acquisition in German and phrase structure change in Yiddish
Extraposition of restrictive relative clauses in the history of Portuguese
Doubling-queembedded constructions in Old Portuguese: A diachronic perspective
Brazilian Portuguese and Caribbean Spanish: Similar changes in Romania Nova
Macroparametric change and the synthetic–analytic dimension: The case of Ancient Egyptian
A diachronic shift in the expression of person
The formal syntax of alignment change
The diachronic development of the Irish comparative particle
Deictic locatives, emphasis, and metalinguistic negation
Negative changes: three factors and the diachrony of Afrikaans negation
Romanian‘can’: Change in parametric settings
Prepositional genitives in Romance and the issue of parallel development: From Latin to Old French
Convergence in parametric phylogenies: Homoplasy or principled explanation?
Macroparameters and minimalism: A programme for comparative research