Periodic Reporting for period 3 - STARFISH (Sociolinguistic typology and responsive features in syntactic history)
Período documentado: 2023-10-01 hasta 2025-03-31
The aim of the project is to find out whether adult second-language acquisition can lead to changes in the syntax of a language in historical time. In particular, we're interested in whether there are syntactic features that are particularly favoured or disfavoured in languages historically characterized by a high proportion of adult second-language acquirers independently of what their first language is, and - if so - what these "responsive" features are. Our aim to better understand language change and syntax falls under basic research, which is of inherent importance to society.
We have been carrying out original empirical research in four areas: null subjects in Latin American Spanish, case loss in Balkan Slavic, grammatical gender loss in Middle English, and change in the distribution of subjunctive mood in Ibero-Romance. For Latin American Spanish, diachronic trends are masked by the nature of the data, but a major finding is that orality plays a key role in regulating the distribution of null subjects. We found that case loss in Balkan Slavic proceeds broadly along the lines predicted by case hierarchies, with cases higher in the hierarchy (e.g. instrumental) lost earlier and faster than cases lower in the hierarchy. As regards grammatical gender in Middle English, quantifiers and adjectives are affected by the change differently, and there is a strong regional element to the distribution. On the modelling side of the project, we have established a threshold for proportion of L2 learners at the population level in order for responsive features to be lost, and we have engaged with the literature on quantitative modelling of L2 learning effects in linguistic typology. More broadly, we have established and articulated a historical-corpus-based approach for testing questions of sociolinguistic typology in syntactic change.
The findings discussed above have not been remarked upon in earlier literature, so they go beyond the state of the art. We expect more empirical results on the historical corpus front, enabling us to take an overall stance on the issue of L2 learners and responsive features in syntactic change.