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

本次会议的目的是提供一个论坛，讨论最近的工作历史变化的句法系统的背景下，生成语法。 历史变化是变异的一种特殊形式。 人们可以发现语法变化很小的情况：在两个抽象系统中可能只有一个差异。 如果我们能以这种方式分离出变异点，那么我们就可以问为什么新的系统会在某个特定的时间点出现在儿童身上，这可能会阐明儿童获得句法能力的方式。 在这一视角下，语言变化的研究与语言变异和语言习得的研究相融合。会议将重点关注屈折系统变化的句法效果，例如考察形态格系统丢失的影响。 一个古老的直觉是，具有丰富屈折变化的语言与具有贫乏屈折变化的语言具有不同的句法类型。 现在，最简方案中的工作假定句法操作和形态特征之间存在紧密联系：任何元素（中心语或短语范畴）向任何功能位置的移动只有在需要检查形态特征时才会发生。 这个问题将构成会议的中心焦点。总之，会议将解决句法理论中的一个主要问题，并扩大历史语言学家和习得主义者之间的对话，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.