Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English (Oxford Studies in the History of English)

__Information Structure and Syntactic Change in the History of English__ is the first book to apply information structure as it relates to language change to a corpus-based analysis of a wide range of features in the evolution of English syntax and grammars of prose in long diachrony. Its unifying topic is the role of information structure, broadly conceived, as it interacts with the other levels of linguistic description, syntax, morphology, prosody, semantics and pragmatics. The volume comprises twelve chapters by leading scholars who take a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. Their work affirms, among other things, that motivations for selecting a particular syntactic option vary from information structure in the strict sense to discourse organization, or a particular style or register, and can also be associated with external forces such as the development of a literary culture. Cover 1 Contents 6 Preface 8 Notes on Contributors 10 1. On the Interplay of Syntax and Information Structure: Synchronic and Diachronic Considerations 16 PART ONE: Syntax and Information Structure: From Verb-Second/Object-Verb to Subject-Verb-Object 32 2. The Loss of Verb-Second and the Switch from Bounded to Unbounded Systems 34 3. The Effect of Information Structure on Object Position in Old English: A Pilot Study 60 4. Word Order, Information Structure, and Discourse Relations: A Study of Old and Middle English Verb-Final Clauses 79 5. Syntax and Information Structure: Verb-Second Variation in Middle English 100 PART TWO: Developing a Grammar of Prose: Syntax and Information Structure after 1500 132 6. Discourse Status and Syntax in the History of English: Some Explorations in Topicalization, Left-Dislocation, and There-Constructions 134 7. Givenness and Word Order: A Study of Long Passives from Early Modern English to Present-Day English 152 8. The Connectives And, For, But, and Only as Clause and Discourse Type Indicators in 16th- and 17th-Century Epistolary Prose 177 PART THREE: Information Structure and Nonfinite Clauses 210 9. The Role of the Accessibility of the Subject in the Development of Adjectival Complementation from Old English to Present-Day English 212 10. Latin Absolute Constructions and Their Old English Equivalents: Interfaces between Form and Information Structure 241 PART FOUR: Information Structure and the Internal Structure of the Noun Phrase 256 11. Why a Determiner? The Possessive + Determiner + Adjective Construction in Old English 258 12. Functional Shifts and the Development of English Determiners 284 13. The Proximal and Distal Perspectives in Relation to the Position of Directional Modifiers in the English Noun Phrase 314 Index 344 A 344 B 345 C 345 D 346 E 347 F 347 G 347 H 348 I 348 L 349 M 349 N 349 O 349 P 349 R 350 S 351 T 352 U 352 V 352 W 352 The unifying topic of this volume is the role of information structure, broadly conceived, as it interacts with the other levels of linguistic description, syntax, morphology, prosody, semantics and pragmatics.