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.

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.

This volume focuses on cutting-edge research in the history of the English language, while reflecting the diversity that exists in the current landscape of English historical linguistics. Chapters showcase traditional as well as novel methodologies in historical linguistics, work on linguistic interfaces, and on mechanisms of language change.

The contributions of this volume offer new perspectives on the relation between syntax and information structure in the history of Germanic and Romance languages, focusing on English, German, Norwegian, French, Spanish and Portuguese, and both from a synchronic and a diachronic perspective. In addition to discussing changes in individual languages along the syntax–information structure axis, the volume also makes a point of comparing and contrasting different languages with respect to the interplay between syntax and information structure. Since the creation of increasingly sophisticated annotated corpora of historical texts is on the agenda in many research environments, methods and schemes for information structure annotation and analysis of historical texts from a theoretical and applied perspective are discussed.

This volume offers a selection of papers from the Eleventh International Conference on English Historical Linguistics held at the University of Santiago de Compostela. From the rich programme (over 130 papers were given during the conference), the present twelve papers were carefully selected to reflect the state of current research in the fields of English historical syntax and morphology. Some of the issues discussed are the emergence of viewpoint adverbials in English and German, changes in noun phrase structure from 1650 to the present, the development of the progressive in Scots, the passivization of composite predicates, the loss of V2 and its effects on the information structure of English, the acquisition of modal syntax and semantics by the English verb WANT, or the use of temporal adverbs as attributive adjectives in the Early Modern period. Many of the articles tackle questions of change through the use of methodological tools like computerized corpora. The theoretical frameworks adopted include, among others, grammaticalization theory, Dik's model of functional grammar, construction grammar and Government & Binding Theory.

No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

Syntax puts our meaning (“semantics”) into sentences, and phonology puts the sentences into the sounds that we hear and there must, surely, be a structure in the meaning that is expressed in the syntax and phonology. Some writers use the phrase “semantic structure”, but are referring to conceptual structure; since we can express our conceptual thought in many different linguistic ways, we cannot equate conceptual and semantic structures. The research reported in this book shows semantic structure to be in part hierarchic, fitting the syntax in which it is expressed, and partly a network, fitting the nature of the mind, from which it springs. It is complex enough to provide for the emotive and imaginative dimensions of language, and for shifts of standard meanings in context, and the “rules” that control them. Showing the full structure of English semantics requires attention to many currently topical issues, and since the underlying theory is fresh, there are fresh implications for them. The most important of those issues is information structure, which is given full treatment, showing its overall structure, and its relation to semantics and the whole grammar of English. As of October 2024, this e-book is Open Access under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license.