In the field of

linguistics Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

, syntactic change is change in the

syntactic In linguistics, syntax ( ) is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure (constituency ...

structure of a

natural language A natural language or ordinary language is a language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change. It can take different forms, typically either a spoken language or a sign language. Natural languages ...

Description

If one regards a language as

vocabulary A vocabulary (also known as a lexicon) is a set of words, typically the set in a language or the set known to an individual. The word ''vocabulary'' originated from the Latin , meaning "a word, name". It forms an essential component of languag ...

within a particular syntax (with functional items maintaining the

basic structure Basic or BASIC may refer to: Science and technology * BASIC, a computer programming language * Basic (chemistry), having the properties of a base * Basic access authentication, in HTTP Entertainment * ''Basic'' (film), a 2003 film * Basic, on ...

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 Language change is the process of alteration in the features of a single language, or of languages in general, over time. It is studied in several subfields of linguistics: historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, and evolutionary linguistic ...

. 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. 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 and is 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 ...

relexification In linguistics, relexification is a mechanism of language change by which one language changes much or all of its lexicon, including basic vocabulary, to the lexicon of another language, without drastically changing the relexified language's grammar ...

. Some theories of language change hypothesize that it occurs because the grammatical input that children receive is ambiguous and so they analyze the underlying grammatical construction in a different manner. The 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 Adpositions are a class of words used to express spatial or temporal relations (''in, under, towards, behind, ago'', etc.) or mark various semantic roles (''of, for''). The most common adpositions are prepositions (which precede their complemen ...

can become reduced over time until they are reanalyzed as

case Case or CASE may refer to: Instances * Instantiation (disambiguation), a realization of a concept, theme, or design * Special case, an instance that differs in a certain way from others of the type Containers * Case (goods), a package of relate ...

markers affixed onto the adjacent nouns. The 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, which was used before the 15th century, to the modern

word order In linguistics, word order (also known as linear order) is the order of the syntactic constituents of a language. Word order typology studies it from a cross-linguistic perspective, and examines how languages employ different orders. Correlatio ...

. Like other

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, 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 spoke ...

, 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 pe ...

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 Early Modern English (sometimes abbreviated EModEFor example, or EMnE) or Early New English (ENE) is the stage of the English language from the beginning of the Tudor period to the English Interregnum and Restoration, or from the transit ...

. Unlike in

Modern English Modern English, sometimes called New English (NE) or present-day English (PDE) as opposed to Middle and Old English, is the form of the English language that has been spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England England is a Count ...

, the verb preceded

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

and

negation In logic, negation, also called the logical not or logical complement, is an operation (mathematics), operation that takes a Proposition (mathematics), proposition P to another proposition "not P", written \neg P, \mathord P, P^\prime or \over ...

, as shown in (2). That word order is still apparent in

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 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.

Description

See also

References

Further reading