The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

218 The syntax of early EnglishIt is likely that this reanalysis took place initially in existing sentences of thetype It is bad (for) you to say things like that, and that the new constructionsin (9) are an effect of it. As usual, it is only through the emergence of whatwould earlier have been ungrammatical constructions that we can obtain evidencefor reanalysis.What has happened in the case of reanalysis shown in (10) is that the childon the basis of the grammatical rules available to her guesses at the structure(rule) of the grammar that has produced this particular construction. Thechild may deduce the rule that corresponds to the older structure, but she mayalso postulate an innovative structure (based on some other pattern) whichproduces the same surface structure but also some ‘wrong’ or certainly innovativeresults (the examples in (9)). This is what Andersen (1973) calls abduction,and – as we saw in chapter 1 – is important in language change becauseit is the only type of ‘logical inference which can introduce and create novelideas’ (McMahon 1994: 94). The notion of abduction is closely related to thatof reanalysis as many analysts see it.The innovative structure will of course be based on certain features of theprimary data that the language learner is exposed to. There must be a triggeringexperience, and it is here that the mechanism of analogy plays an importantrole. In fact, analogy can be regarded as an important factor not just inlanguage learning but in learning of all kinds (see Itkonen 1994, Holyoak andThagard 1995) because it is a way of patterning and interpreting the world.When applying it to cases of syntactic change during acquisition, as we aredoing here, it is useful to distinguish two subtypes: analogy may either extendan existing construction or it may create a new construction on the basis of agrammatical pattern used elsewhere (for more discussion of how this kind ofanalogy works, see Hofstadter 1995: 200 ff.). It is this latter subtype that is veryclose to the concept of reanalysis used by many historical linguists. The ‘input’pattern that forms the basis for creative analogy in the case at hand is the fixedSV word order pattern. It makes it possible for the child to reanalyse the preverbalNP in (10a) as a subject rather than an indirect object, even if the relevantNP clearly has an oblique case form.It is likely that children often abduce through creative analogy during theacquisition process. Most abductions, however, do not stick, and get ironedout. New structures only get established if the same abduction process iscarried out by many speakers (and perhaps not just children but also adults).This generally seems to happen in cases where surface strings have becomeambiguous. In any case of syntactic innovation due to reanalysis of ambiguoussurface strings, the causes for the emerging ambiguity therefore have to beexplained for the account to be complete.