Head/Complement Order in the History of the West Germanic Clause

在西日耳曼语的历史上，动词头及其补语的顺序变化很大。不仅在这两种语言（英语和意第绪语）中，政府的方向从左转向右，而且偏离严格的头部最终命令的频率也随着时间的推移发生了很大的变化。在这项研究中，我们打算通过对英语、德语和意第绪语进行详细的比较来调查这种变化和变化。我们将采取双管齐下的方法：(1)我们将尝试通过比较结构分析来澄清这种变化的语法特征，(2)我们将运用定量方法来指定控制这种变化的因素，并追踪这种变化的长期趋势的时间进程。所提出的研究将大大有助于我们了解西日耳曼的历史。此外，将我们的发现与普拉扎克及其同事正在进行的类似的斯堪的纳维亚语言历史项目的发现进行比较，将引起历史句法家的兴趣。最后，虽然我们的研究重点是句法变化的过程和性质，但我们的研究结果将有助于澄清西日耳曼语共时语法分析中一些尚未解决的问题。

ABSTRACT In the history of West Germanic, the order of verbal heads and their complements has been extremely variable. Not only has the direction of government switched from leftward to rightward in two of them (English and Yiddish), but the frequency of deviations from strict head final order has varied substantially over time. In this research, we intend to investigate this variation and change by undertaking a detailed comparison of English, German and Yiddish. We will use a two-pronged approach: (1) we will attempt to clarify the grammatical character of the variation by comparative structural analysis, and (2) we will apply quantitative methods to specify the factors governing the variation and to trace the time course of secular trends in that variation. The proposed research will contribute considerably to our knowledge of the history of West Germanic. In addition, a comparison of our findings with those of a similar ongoing project for the history of the Scandinavian languages undertaken by Platzack and his associates will be of interest to historical syntacticians. Finally, while the focus of our research concerns the course and nature of syntactic change, our results will help to clarify some unresolved problems in the synchronic grammatical analysis of West Germanic.