Gram - SEAS

3. 3 Reanalysis 51
In a major paper on syntactic change, Langacker defined reanalysis as: "change
in the structure of an expression or class of expressions that does not involve
any immediate or intrinsic modification of its surface manifestation" (1977: 58).
From this perspective, reanalysis involves a change in constituency, hierarchical
structure, category labels, grammatical relations, and cohesion (type of boundary )
(A. Harris and Campbell 1995: 61). Very often a single instance of reanalysis will
show several of these characteristics correlated with one another, as is the case
with fry and in the preceding paragraph. The examples of grammaticalization in
Chapter I are all examples of reanalysis that involve changes in constituency
(rebracketing of elements in certain constructions), and reassignment of morphemes
to different semantic-syntactic category labels: be going fo from be +
main verb + progressive aspect + purposive preposition to tense marker; let
liS from main verb + object to modal particle; and Ewe be from main verb to
complementizer. 3 Another example of several types of change is the reanalysis of
a construction consisting of a head noun and a dependent noun (3a) as a (complex)
preposition and head noun (3b):
(3) a. [[back] of the barn] >
b. [back of [the barn]]
The change from (3a) to (3b) probably did not happen in one step, but rather is the
outcome of a set of smaller changes. The point here is that the change illustrates
the first three of the five characteristics mentioned above. The rebracketing is an
instance of constituency change (what goes with what). The change in head noun
status is an instance of hierarchical structure change (what is dependent on what).
The reinterpretation of the noun back as an adposition in a complex prepositional
construction is an instance of category label change. Changes in grammatical
relations are illustrated by the development of subject out of topic mentioned
in Section 2.3 and by the requirement in E n glish that clauses have grammatical
subjects. An example of the latter is the change from (4a) to (4b) (multiple negation
was the norm in Old English; the many intermediate steps between (4a) and (4b)
are omitted):
(4) a. Donne l) am menn ne Iyst nan god don
when that-DAT man-DAT not wishes no good do-INF
(c. 1000, A!LS (Memory of Saints) 297: cited in Allen 1995: 86)
b. when the man doesn't wish to do any good
Changes in degree of cohesiveness have been illustrated by be going to > be gOflna,
let liS > let 's > lets. In both cases, a formerly separable morpheme has become
fused with the one that preceded it. Such changes always involve rebracketing