Explaining language change: A three step process

of overt morphologically motivated alternations in frequency,
or perhaps simply arising as a chance fluctuation in frequency.
3 Case example
3.1 Introduction
While Modern Icelandic exhibits a virtually uniform VO order
in the VP, Older Icelandic had both VO and OV order, as well
as several ‘mixed’ word order patterns. In Hróarsdóttir (1996,
2000), several generative accounts for the parameter change in
the history of Icelandic are discussed; that is, the abrupt loss of
the OV word order patterns in the beginning of the 19th
century. All these accounts have been in terms of the universal
base hypothesis, arguing that the parameter change has to do
with a) the fact that overt object movement in the old language
is covert in the modern language (1996), b) the loss of a PredP
movement (extraction of VPs out of VPs) (2000), or c) the fact
that Modern Icelandic only has incoherent complements, while
Older Icelandic had coherent complements as well. After the
loss of coherent complements, no long movements
(restructuring effects) could take place. More exactly, TP would
have had the possibility of being defective in the old language,
while in Modern Icelandic it cannot. Consequently, the VP
moves only to the lowest TP in the modern language, and OV
orders are ruled out (2000).
These proposals might all the correct, or at least one of
them. However, they are all insufficient, as they all have in
common that they are unable to explain why the parameter
change took place. In this section, we argue that the parameter
change in question was due to a change elsewhere in the
system, that is, in the information structure. In other words, we
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