Diachronic Generative Syntax Conference, College Park, Maryland, May 21-23, 2000

这次会议的目的是提供一个论坛，讨论生成语法背景下句法系统历史变化的最新工作。历史变迁构成了一种特殊形式的变异。人们可以发现语法差异很小的情况：在两个抽象系统中可能只有一个单一的差异。如果一个人能以这种方式分离变异点，那么人们就可以问，为什么新系统会在某个时间点出现在儿童身上，这可能会解释儿童获得句法能力的方式。在这个视角下，语言变化的研究与语言变异和语言习得的工作相结合。会议将集中讨论屈折系统变化的句法影响，例如考察形态格系统丢失的影响。一种古老的直觉是，词尾变化丰富的语言与词尾变化不大的语言有着不同的句法。最简方案中的研究假设句法操作和形态特征之间存在紧密的联系：任何成分(中心语或短语类别)只有在需要检查形态特征时才会移动到任何功能位置。这就提出了一个问题，即强/弱区别如何匹配形态特征。总而言之，会议将讨论句法理论中的一个主要问题，并扩大历史语言学家和习得论者之间的对话，假设他们的工作是相互启发的。

The goal of this meeting is to provide a forum for the discussion ofrecent work on historical change in syntactic systems in the context ofgenerative grammar. Historical change constitutes a particular form ofvariation. One can find cases where grammars vary only minimally: theremay be just a single difference in two abstract systems. If one canisolate points of variation in this way, one can then ask why the newsystem should have emerged in children at a certain point in time, andthis may illuminate the way in which children acquire their syntacticcapacities. Within this perspective, the study of language change isfused with work on language variation and the acquisition of language.The meeting will focus on the syntactic effects of changes ininflectional systems, for example examining the effects of the loss ofmorphological case systems. It is an old intuition that languages withrich inflection have a different kind of syntax from languages with poorinflection. Now work within the Minimalist Program posits a tightconnection between syntactic operations and morphological features:movement of any element (head or phrasal category) to any functionalposition takes place only when required to check morphological features.This raises the question of how strong/weak distinctions matchmorphological properties. This question will constitute the central focusof the meeting.In summary, the meeting will address a major question in syntactic theory andextend the dialogue between historical linguists and acquisitionists, onthe assumption that their work is mutually enlightening.