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Renewal in the left periphery: economy and the complementiser layer 1
Author(s) -
Van Gelderen Elly
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-968x.2009.01216.x
Subject(s) - reflexive pronoun , demonstrative , linguistics , pronoun , element (criminal law) , specifier , sentence , head (geology) , personal pronoun , layer (electronics) , history , philosophy , political science , noun phrase , noun , law , geology , chemistry , organic chemistry , geomorphology
This paper examines cyclical changes involving complementisers, for instance, whether in the history of English. Whether starts out as a pronoun and after frequent topicalisation is reanalysed as an element in the left‐most layer of the sentence. The same is true with prepositional phrases that are fronted and then reanalysed as part of the CP layer. The paper uses a Minimalist approach in that it seeks answers for the linguistic changes in terms of Economy Principles such as Specifier‐to‐Head Reanalysis. It examines two sources of renewal of complementisers, full phrases such as demonstrative pronouns and heads such as the verbs that reanalyse as question particles in Chinese.