GradEast > Courses > Summer School in Grammaticalization > Abstracts > Lecturers' abstracts > Abstract Lars Heltoft

Word Order Change and Paradigmatic Structure

Lars Heltoft

Word order can be conceived of as grammatical systems, much along with morphological systems, mutatis mutandis. Thus, word order systems and their change can be described in terms of change  of paradigmatic structure.

In the model presented, syntactic structure and word order are in principle different levels of analysis, and word order contrasts must often be formulated without reference to specific syntactic categories. And contrasts of word order are sign contrasts: They carry meaning and must be analysed both at the level of expression and at the level of content.

The idea is that the concept of a paradigm as developed in classical morphology can be generalised to cover also word order systems. And that this will be a useful tool in the description of word order change. Examples of regrammation will be taken from Old and Middle English, Old French and Modern French and in particular from the change from Old Scandinavian to Modern Mainland Scandinavian. They will illustrate the change of verb second clauses in the Germanic languages; the rise of subordinate clause word order in Scandinavian; the part played by word order in the decay of OV-order in Scandinavian; the role played by anaphoric and clitic pronouns in the word order systems of Old French and of Scandinavian; and finally, examples to show that a verb second system can change meaning without changing the basic verb second expression system.

Key concepts are to a large extent parallel to those needed in the study of the grammaticalisation of morphology: grammaticality, paradigmatic structure, reanalysis, and markedness.

Refernces

Nørgård-Sørensen, Jens, Lars Heltoft & Lene Schøsler (to appear). Connecting grammaticalisation. Chapter II: Topology (word order). Pdf-file.

Presentations of Danish topology in international languages are scarce, but here are two shorter ones and a study of the relationship between Old and Modern Scandinavian.

Faarlund, Jan Terje. 1989. "Discourse Functions and Syntax". CLS 25 (= Papers from the 25th Annual Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society). Part Two: Language in Context, Chicago Linguistic Society, 30-40.

Heltoft, Lars. 2003. "Iconic and categorical focus systems in Scandinavian". Structures of focus and grammatical relations ed. by Valéria Molnar & Jorunn Hedland. Linguistische Arbeiten.  Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 43-87.

Herslund, Michael. 2006. "La topologie du français à la lumière de deux autres systèmes. Le danois et l'ancien français". Lingvisticae Investigationes 29:1, 103-113.