Causality at the Interfaces: Non‐Syntactic Triggers of Syntactic Change

This chapter demonstrates how syntactic change may be the result of (an interplay of) changes outside the core domain of syntax, focusing on the history of English. English changed from a flexible V2 language which allowed OV/VO variation to a strict SVO language. The synchronic variation in early English is strongly governed by the pragmatic and semantic interfaces to express discourse and scope relations. This functionality is lost, but is compensated for by a stronger reliance on prosody and the recruitment of alternative syntactic structures to express discourse relations. This suggests that it is not the interface that changes first, but the syntax. It is argued that the source of the macroparametric changes should be found in the smaller building blocks of language, such as phonology and morphology, which build up to eventually, via syntax, change the expression of pragmatic relations. The grammaticalization of the definite determiner, the emergence of the secondary negator, and the grammaticalization of auxiliaries will be argued to play a key role in the change to a strict SVO language. It is also suggested that a potential source for the initiation of these changes is L2 contact situation, under the assumption that syntactic variations modulated by the interfaces are particularly hard to acquire for nonnative speakers.