Reanalysis and Conservancy of Structure in Chinese

Abstract

Abstract The relegation of syntactic variation to lexical features under the Minimalist Programme has led to a growing awareness that syntactic change should be characterized in the same way: by changes in the discrete features of individual lexical items. This insight has given rise to the following distinctively minimalist typology of syntactic change: (a) loss or gain of a feature driving movement; (b) grammaticalization as shift ‘up the tree’ to a functional category; and (c) reanalysis as relabelling: lexical items change categorial or projection ([±max, ±min]) features under preservation of hierarchical (c-command) relations. This chapter applies this typology to several well-known examples of syntactic change in Chinese. It shows that earlier analyses exaggerate the scope of syntactic change in the long-documented history of Chinese languages. The changes that are in fact attested can be characterized as featural change, without rearrangement of hierarchical structure.