The Acquisition of Branching

Abstract

Abstract In my diachronic analysis of Latin syntactic and morphological units I have demonstrated that Latin LB structures, which were inherited from PIE, have been replaced with their RB equivalents which dominate in Modern French, and, second, that this change was not limited to this linguistic lineage. The shift from left to right branching is indeed characteristic of all Indo-European languages. The diachronic analysis in terms of branching has thus revealed that syntactic as well as morphological changes that at face value may appear random and unrelated are governed by the same underlying universal principle: the c9mprehensive reversal of the order in hierarchical units. In contrast to the claims of traditional teaching, the emerging of analytic forms in morphology and the tendency toward a stricter word order in syntax are but secondary effects. Although I have observed a change in branching, I have not been able to determine which structure has been the first to undergo this change. Data on the very first modification might have informed us on the cause of the observed shift. Moreover, diachronic evidence from Italic languages does not corroborate the chronology of the SOV - SVO reorganization proposed by Lehmann (1971) or Vennemann (1974), who based their claim essentially on evidence from Germanic languages. Although the beginning of the development is lost in the mist of time, combination of IndoEuropean data makes it possible to put forth a hypothesis about the nature of the structures that were the first to undergo the revealed change. The elements that in the analysis of Latin are shown to be the first to change branching arc the adjective, the adposition, and the relative clause.