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

摘要在西日耳曼史上，动词中心语及其补语的顺序变化很大。不仅在其中两种语言(英语和意第绪语)中，政府的方向从左转向右，而且偏离严格的最终秩序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研究这种变异和变化。我们将使用双管齐下的方法：(1)我们将试图通过比较结构分析来澄清变异的语法特征，(2)我们将运用定量的方法来明确支配变异的因素，并追踪该变异中长期趋势的时间进程。这项拟议的研究将大大有助于我们对西日耳曼历史的了解。此外，将我们的发现与普拉扎克和他的同事正在进行的一个类似的斯堪的纳维亚语言历史项目的结果进行比较，将会引起历史语法学家的兴趣。最后，虽然我们的研究重点关注句法变化的过程和性质，但我们的结果将有助于澄清西日耳曼语共时语法分析中一些悬而未决的问题。

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.