Syntactic Change Through Text Types

This volume focuses on the role of text-type comparison for the understanding of language change with reference to syntax. Documenting effective syntactic evolution and change is up against the “bad data” problem, which can be mitigated by comparing results from different types of text. The chapters delve into the measurable effects that text-type comparison has on establishing the chronology and causal vectors of syntactic evolution and change, with special reference to word-order, subject and person expression, and negation. Such comparisons thus also highlight the interplay of structural and sociolinguistic conditions of change.