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Syntactic change


In the field of linguistics, syntactic change is the evolution of the syntactic structure of a natural language.

If one regards a language as vocabulary cast into the mould of a particular syntax (with functional items maintaining the basic structure of a sentence and with the lexical items filling in the blanks), syntactic change no doubt 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.

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, as could be expected, but went, a borrowing from the past tense of the verb to wend.

Over time, syntactic change is the greatest modifier of a particular language. Massive changes may occur both in syntax and vocabulary and are attributable to either creolization or relexification. Some theories of language change hypothesize that it occurs because the grammatical input children receive is ambiguous, and so they analyze the underlying grammatical construction in a different manner than previous generations did. This reanalyzed grammar, in turn, may create new ambiguities, which subsequent generations may analyze in yet another manner.

In some cases, change can happen in a cyclic manner. For example, prepositions 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.


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