The Syntax of Early English - Cryptm.org

grammar, do-support replaces movement of lexical finite verbs by showingthat their curves of change are each other’s converses, as in the following idealizedgraph:(19)Language change and grammar change 19By showing that do-support and the contexts in which the lexical finite verb ismoved have a complementary distribution, one gradually rising at the expenseof the other, Kroch shows the analytical power of the constant rate hypothesisas a statistical tool in tracking down grammar change. Work from this perspectiveis currently expanding, due to the increasing availability of languagecorpora that allow for syntactic research.It should be noted that this framework is primarily interested in synchronicvariation between older and newer forms that is parametrically determined; itis designed to monitor the time course of change; in and of itself, it has verylittle to say about the motivations that push any particular change forward.A good deal of synchronic variation is not conditioned by grammar-internalfactors. Language contact of various kinds and social factors are otherimportant sources of synchronic variation. Here again, we make a distinctionbetween grammar and language, or I-language and E-language: languagecontact and social factors are facts of E-language; these may trigger grammarchange because they change the language environment and hence may changethe input for the language learner. But they are phenomena that can be distinguishedfrom grammar change itself.1.3 Grammar change and language changeSo far we have discussed the notion of grammar change, as distinctfrom language change, concentrating on the acquisition process as the locusof (abrupt) grammar change. We have occasionally mentioned the frictionbetween such an approach and the graduality of language change observablein the data. In this section, we want to broaden this perspective and discuss