Introduction. Generative diachronic syntax: word order and information structure

Abstract

In recent times, there has been an increasing concern for the interaction between information structure and syntax, and its effect in language change.1 The aim of this volume is to provide the reader with comparative research into the role of information structure in language change from a crosslinguistic perspective and to contribute to a better understanding of structural changes and their possible relation to information structure factors. From a synchronic standpoint, information packaging is jointly conveyed by semantics, prosody and syntax. In contrast, diachronic linguistics lacks the evidence of prosodic information, but it can still rely on the relation between discourse semantics and syntax in old written texts, as well as on the comparison with synchronic data, to set light on the phenomena involved in syntactic changes driven by information structural configurations. Concerning language change, it is generally accepted that the focus of investigation is on I-language and that language acquirers select cues that are robustly represented in main clauses of the Primary Linguistic Data of their environment so