Past Participle Agreement
A study on the grammaticalization of formal features
In this book, the traditional definition of ‘grammaticalization’ is challenged in the light of current developments in grammar theory. The main innovation of this approach is the focus on the feature composition of lexical items. From this perspective, the loss of past participle agreement in Catalan is analyzed on the basis of newly collected data as a consequence of the grammaticalization of formal features. The emergence of syntactic formal features through grammaticalization is understood as a last-resort repair mechanism for pragmatically costly derivations. Further far-reaching implications of this proposal under discussion are: the interplay between (re-)parametrization, economy, cyclicity, and grammaticalization; the characterization of free variation under a modified version of the Interface Hypothesis; and the precedence of syntactic over morphological change. This book is not only of interest to specialists in Romance languages but also to anyone working on diachronic linguistics.
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 265] 2020. xix, 236 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Published online on 26 November 2020
Published online on 26 November 2020
© John Benjamins
Table of Contents
-
Acknowledgements | pp. xi–xii
-
List of abbreviations and symbols | pp. xiii–xv
-
List of tables | pp. xvii–17
-
List of figures | pp. xix–19
-
Introduction | pp. 1–7
-
Part One. Past participle agreement in Romance languages: General properties and previous accounts
-
Chapter 1. General remarks on past participle agreement | pp. 13–38
-
Chapter 2. Optionality and language change: PPA as an interface phenomenon | pp. 39–66
-
Chapter 3. Past participle agreement in Catalan | pp. 67–84
-
Chapter 4. Standpoint and research outlines | pp. 85–88
-
Part Two. Theoretical background: Universal grammar and language change
-
Chapter 5. On clausal structure and universal grammar | pp. 91–102
-
Chapter 6. On grammaticalization and language change | pp. 103–116
-
Chapter 7. Subject-verb agreement revisited | pp. 117–128
-
Part Three. Past participle agreement in Catalan: An empirical study
-
Chapter 8. Data collection | pp. 131–148
-
Chapter 9. The PPA cycle | pp. 149–178
-
Chapter 10. Diachronic analysis of past participle agreement in Catalan: A grammaticalization approach | pp. 179–200
-
Concluding remarks | pp. 201–205
-
References
-
List of texts used in the Old Catalan corpus
-
Appendix I. List of texts used in the Old Catalan corpus | pp. 225–226
-
Appendix II. Acceptability judgment task for Modern Catalan | pp. 227–232
-
Index | pp. 233–236
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CFK: Grammar, syntax
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009060: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Syntax