This chapter addresses the history of the English system of clausal complementation. It is organised around four major questions. First, where do complement clauses (or CCs) come from? The history of English indicates that adverbial clauses can turn into CCs (e.g. lest-complements), or phrasal units undergo clausalisation (e.g. the gerund) – or both these mechanisms come into play (e.g. the to-infinitive). Second, what changes can CCs undergo? Changes to CCs may affect their internal syntax. For example, subjectless non-finite clauses have a strong tendency to develop subjects (e.g. ECM constructions, for…to-infinitives, secondary predicates). Often, CCs also undergo distributional change as they spread to new CC-taking predicates. The characteristic pattern is one of lexical diffusion. Third, how does the system change as a whole? English sees an unmistakable trend towards more non-finite complementation – a development known as the ‘Great Complement Shift’. This leads to a great number of variation hotspots, where finite CCs compete with non-finite alternatives, or non-finite alternatives compete among themselves. Fourth, what eventually becomes of CCs? At least two pathways of change appear to be open to CCs. In both cases CCs become more main-clause like. Either the matrix clause develops into an operator (i.e. an auxiliary or parenthetical), or the matrix clause disappears altogether, leading to insubordination.

Grammaticalisation is the gradual historical process through which English, like all languages, generates its grammatical material. It is underpinned by separate yet interconnected mechanisms of language change which result in the continuous formal and functional modification of lexical items in specific constructions and contexts. Its ultimate origin has been identified as metaphorical extension and as context-induced reinterpretation, but fundamentally lies in the approximate and inferential nature of linguistic communication. These processes and motivations are explored here through a number of case studies from the history of English, focusing in particular on the emergence of various tense markers, quantifiers and complex prepositions.

It is suggested that the label ‘back-formation’ is inaccurate from the point of view of language users, since there is no undoing of linguistic structure. Verbs like houseclean are not back-formations but exist as compounds in the minds of language users.

We take a look at fundamental principles that operate when social and/or regional varieties of English are in contact with each other or with other languages. We take a historical look at English and explore various contact settings which have shaped its development, from contact with Old Norse, Latin and Norman French to the present day. We discuss patterns of bilingualism and multilingualism, that is when speakers use two or more languages in their everyday lives. As the product of migration and colonization, different kinds of English have emerged in different locations around the world. We learn how new dialects emerge as a product of new-dialect formation and how contact-derived varieties such as pidgins and creoles develop under conditions of language contact, with emphasis on different theories of origins. Finally, we discuss the so-called Global Englishes which have emerged as a product of second-language learning around the world.

Chapter 2 presents the research on parameters within GB Theory. After classifying the parameters from Rizzi’s (2014) list into five different types, the chapter reviews the null subject parameter (Rizzi 1978), the parameterization of Subjacency (Rizzi 1978), and the parameter of S′-deletion (Chomsky 1981a). Some influential proposals which were originally formulated as non-parametric systematic differences are then reviewed, namely Huang’s (1982) insights on the locus of wh-movement, Kayne’s (1983) treatment of preposition stranding and epistemic verbs, and den Besten’s (1983) account of V2. The next section discusses Hale’s (1983) parameterization of the Projection Principle, Baker’s (1988) analysis of incorporation processes, Pollock’s (1989) split INFL hypothesis, and lastly, Koopman and Sportiche’s (1991) proposed cross-linguistic difference in nominative Case assignment. The chapter ends by covering some influential proposals concerning language acquisition, that is, Hyams’s (1986) hypothesis that parameters have preset default values, Manzini and Wexler’s (1987) parameterized notion of governing category, and finally, the latter’s link to the Subset Principle.

This chapter develops an approach to restructuring with control verbs in German that is based on the operation Remove. The approaches to restructuring in infinitival constructions developed over the last three decades postulate either uniformly monoclausal structures or uniformly biclausal structures, that is, they do not actually rely on a concept of syntactic restructuring. Against this background, the goal of this chapter is to outline an approach to restructuring with control verbs in German that radically departs from standard approaches in that it presupposes that genuine syntactic restructuring does indeed exist, and can be held responsible for conflicting pieces of evidence that suggest both a monoclausal and a biclausal structure. The chapter is organized as follows. Following an illustration of infinitival constructions in German, I present conflicting evidence for restructuring with control verbs in German: There are arguments for a monoclausal analysis and there are arguments for a biclausal analysis. The Remove-based approach is shown to capture both the evidence for monoclausality and the evidence for biclausality.

This chapter discusses the emergence of the HAVE perfect in English, paying particular attention to the development of the perfect participle, as a vehicle for discussing what causes directionality in language change, the English HAVE perfect being just one example of the emergence of a category which is a common property of Standard Average European. There are three main claims: that the change to a HAVE perfect only involves one strictly syntactic change, the reanalysis of a complement as an adjunct; that there are semantic changes in the participle driven by the bleaching of HAVE; and that the emergent new category of participle is driven by these semantic changes. The evolution of participles involves the creation of a new linguistic category, in a particular grammatical environment, which is analogous to an ecological niche in evolutionary change.

This chapter provides a further contribution to work on Word Grammar and language change. It explores particular developments in English derivational morphology in order to look in more detail at what kinds of changes occur in the language network over time. This relates to discussions in other cognitive linguistic theories about diachronic variation in the language network, especially in terms of changes to nodes and changes to links between nodes. The main claims that are made are as follows: (i) much change in the network is very local and involves micro-steps, but (ii) some changes can occur which involve more significant restructuring, for instance where language users have reanalysed a part of a word as a word in itself. Since the central goal of Word Grammar is to understand the grammar of words, such changes can be revealing in terms of the theoretical underpinnings of the framework.

This chapter reviews the existing Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) work on diachronic syntax and morphosyntax and shows how the tools of language description developed by RRG can also be used to account for several aspects of language change. Drawing evidence from developments which have occurred in a wide range of languages, it is argued that RRG allows for a more fine-grained analysis of diachronic processes than theoretically neutral approaches, that it answers fundamental questions about the nature and causes of syntactic change, and that it is not a mere tool of linguistic description, but a theory that makes falsifiable empirical predictions.

This chapter discusses phonological motivations for morpho-syntactic changes in history. In general, Old Chinese was monosyllabic, which means that the overwhelming majority of words were represented by a single syllable, regardless of whether they were content or function words. In Middle Chinese, the phonological system was dramatically simplified; the number of consonants and vowels was reduced, and the syllabic structures were simplified. To restore the phonological distinctions of lexical items, the language increased the number of syllables for words, typically by adding one syllable to originally monosyllabic words. This disyllabification tendency has lasted nearly two millennia since then. This new sort of prosodic unit stimulated the fusion of two monosyllabic items, a key factor for the emergence of the resultative construction and other grammatical morphemes.

Chapter 6 investigates the secreted type of CFs. It analyses twelve initial and fifteen final CFs by showing their secretion process, frequency, and profitability. Their diachronic analysis testifies to their relevance to present-day English.

Rule combination can contribute to morphological simplicity. Synchronically, rule combinations (like word combinations) are sometimes stored as formulaic units, and this fact contributes to a morphological system’s processing simplicity, since accessing a stored rule combination directly is simpler than decomposing that combination into its component rules for separate lookup. Stored, formulaic rule combinations may also contribute to diachronic simplifications of a language’s morphology, since they are the locus of reanalyses that may eventuate in “affix telescoping,” the development of a rule combination into a simple rule. But affix telescoping is not a monolithic phenomenon; it involves the reduction of a rule combination’s combinatory transparency along at least four dimensions. Thus, it is possible to find rule combinations that are progressing toward reanalysis as simple rules without yet having reached the point of reanalysis.

Chapter 2 is a survey of the definitions of CFs in main morphological accounts. CFs are then described as part of transitional morphology and compared with affixes and compound constituents.