In the field of

linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

, syntactic change is change in the syntactic structure of a natural language.

Description

If one regards a language as

vocabulary A vocabulary is a set of familiar words within a person's language. A vocabulary, usually developed with age, serves as a useful and fundamental tool for communication and acquiring knowledge. Acquiring an extensive vocabulary is one of the la ...

within a particular syntax (with functional items maintaining the basic structure of a sentence and with the lexical items filling in the blanks), syntactic change plays the greatest role in modifying the physiognomy of a particular language. Syntactic change affects grammar in its morphological and syntactic aspects and is one of the types of change observed in language change. If one pays close attention to evolutions in the realms of phonology and morphology, it becomes evident that syntactic change can also be the result of profound shifts in the shape of a language, i.e. the effect of phonological change can trigger morphological reanalysis which can then engender changes in syntactic structures. Syntactic change is a phenomenon creating a shift in language patterns over time, subject to cyclic drift. The morphological idiosyncrasies of today are seen as the outcome of yesterday's regular syntax. For instance, in English, the past tense of the verb ''to go'' is not ''goed'' or any other form based on the base ''go'', but ''went'', a borrowing from the past tense of the verb ''to wend''. Massive changes may occur both in syntax and vocabulary and are attributable to either

creolization Creolization is the process through which creole languages and cultures emerge. Creolization was first used by linguists to explain how contact languages become creole languages, but now scholars in other social sciences use the term to describe ne ...

or relexification. Some theories of language change hypothesize that it occurs because the grammatical input children receive is ambiguous, so they analyze the underlying grammatical construction in a different manner. This reanalyzed grammar may create new ambiguities, which subsequent generations may analyze in another manner. In some cases, change can happen in a cyclic manner. For example,

prepositions Prepositions and postpositions, together called adpositions (or broadly, in traditional grammar, simply prepositions), are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in'', ''under'', ''towards'', ''before'') or mark various ...

can become reduced over time, until they are reanalyzed as case markers affixed onto the adjacent nouns. These case markers, in turn, may be lost over time, which will lead to the introduction of new prepositions. An example of syntactic change in English can be seen in the development from the verb second (V2) word order, used before the 15th Century, to the modern word order. Like other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, E ...

, Old and

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

had V2 word order. An example from Middle English is shown here, where ''nu'' 'now' is in first position, and the verb ''loke'' 'look' is in second position. 'Now it's for every man to look to himself.' (as cited in Roberts 2007: 59) Even though V2 was lost, verb raising was maintained in the 1600s in Early Modern English. Unlike in Modern English, the verb preceded

adverbs An adverb is a word or an expression that generally modifies a verb, adjective, another adverb, determiner, clause, preposition, or sentence. Adverbs typically express manner, place, time, frequency, degree, level of certainty, etc., answering que ...

and negation, as shown in (2). This word order is still apparent in

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 26 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

's writing.

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Further reading