Word Order Change in Acquisition and Language Contact

Essays in honour of Ans van Kemenade

Editors

Bettelou Los

Pieter de Haan

Hardbound – Available

ISBN 9789027257260 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

e-Book –

ISBN 9789027264848 | EUR 105.00 | USD 158.00

The case studies in this volume offer new insights into word order change. As is now becoming increasingly clear, word order variation rarely attracts social values in the way that phonological variants do. Instead, speakers tend to attach discourse or information-structural functions to any word order variation they encounter in their input, either in the process of first language acquisition or in situations of language or dialect contact. In second language acquisition, fine-tuning information-structural constraints appears to be the last hurdle that has to be overcome by advanced learners. The papers in this volume focus on word order phenomena in the history of English, as well as in related languages like Norwegian and Dutch-based creoles, and in Romance.

[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 243] 2017. ix, 376 pp.

Publishing status: Available
Published online on 24 November 2017

https://doi.org/10.1075/la.243

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments | pp. ix–9

Chapter 1. Introduction

Bettelou Los and Pieter de Haan | pp. 1–5

Part I. Grammar change and information structure

Chapter 2. From OV to VO in English: How to Kroch the nut

Roland Hinterhölzl | pp. 9–34

Chapter 3. Word order and verb movement in Norwegian wh-questions: A comparison of production and judgment data

Marit Westergaard | pp. 35–56

Chapter 4. Conditional inversion and types of parametric change

Theresa Biberauer and Ian Roberts | pp. 57–77

Chapter 5. Optional V2 in modern Afrikaans: Probing a Germanic peculiarity

Theresa Biberauer | pp. 79–99

Part II. The first position in a Verb-Second language: Subjects and topics

Chapter 6. The information status of late subjects in passive main clauses in Old English

Gea Dreschler | pp. 103–125

Chapter 7. Position-related subject properties change in English

Erwin R. Komen | pp. 127–153

Chapter 8. Split coordination in Early English

Ann Taylor and Susan Pintzuk | pp. 155–183

Part III. Verb-Second effects

Chapter 9. Beowulf and Old English metre: Relics of a pre-V2 state?

Monique Tangelder and Bettelou Los | pp. 187–212

Chapter 10. The rise and fall of the passive auxiliary weorÃ°an in the history of English

Gertjan Postma | pp. 213–239

Chapter 11. What comes second: Cross-linguistic analyses of information structure in Dutch between English and German

Marianne Starren | pp. 241–262

Part IV. Particles in diachrony

Chapter 12. Verb particle combinations and word order change in Dutch-lexifier creole languages

Robbert van Sluijs, Pieter Muysken and Bettelou Los | pp. 265–290

Chapter 13. Parts and particles: The story of dÄ“

Nigel Vincent | pp. 291–310

Chapter 14. Exploring the role of information structure in the word order variation of Old English verb-particle combinations

Marion Elenbaas | pp. 311–333

Part V. Contrasting V2 and Non-V2 information structure

Chapter 15. The EFL teacherâ€™s nightmare: Information structure transfer from L2 English to L1 Dutch

Pieter de Haan | pp. 337–351

Chapter 16. Common framework, local context, local anchors: How information-structural transfer can help to distinguish within CEFR C2

Sanne van Vuuren and Rina de Vries | pp. 353–370

Index

“All in all, the book shows that the hypothesis-driven, empirically responsible study of syntactic variation and change that has been the hallmark of van Kemenade’s research over the years is alive and well, and continuing to break new ground.”

George Walkden, in Language Volum 94, Number 4 (2018)

Subjects