A vast body of research has proposed that Ancient Greek exhibits a fairly free word order, unconstrained by purely syntactic principles, and only determined by stylistic and expressive factors. Successive investigations have explored the possibility that at least a portion of the Ancient Greek clause structure conforms to already attested linguistic tendencies, according to various theoretical frameworks. This paper contributes to the debate by investigating a rather understudied clausal domain, namely the mood-tense-aspect portion of the clause structure (the so-called tense phrase, TP), with the help of a novel diagnostic, i.e. adverb placement. We argue that a hierarchical structure can be envisaged for the Classical Greek TP. We examine the position of the finite verb and the distribution of subject and object DPs in relation to the order of a series of temporal-aspectual adverbs. By adopting Cinque's adverb hierarchy, we show that the relative order of adverbs obeys the hierarchical structure proposed there for functional categories. If a fixed position for adverbs is assumed, as in Pollock (1989) and Cinque (1999), they can be used as markers to determine the position of other constituents in the clause, such as verbs and DPs. We then demonstrate that verb placement as well as the subject/object DP position with respect to various adverbs can be well accounted for within the cartographic model.

The categoric loss of verb particles in the history of French remainsproblematic in diachronic accounts of Medieval French syntax and Romance syntax in general. There is surprisingly little convergence in the literature about the cause of change and previous quantitative studies in the last 10 years are inconclusive about whether or not the particles pattern as a single unified change or as a series of gradual low-level lexical changes. To ad-dress this issue, we test the hypothesis that the Constant Rate Effect (CRE;Kroch1989) applies to this phenomenon by examining the time course ofchange of four verb particles: jus‘down’, fors/hors ‘out’, arrière ‘back’ and avant ‘forward’ as they appear in 770 texts that date from 1150 to 1699. Our findings, supported by the statistical tools of logistic regression and mixed-effects Poisson regression, establish that the particles change at a constant rate, consistent with an analysis whereby the loss of each particle is a reflex of an underlying grammatical change. The study is preceded by a description of the syntax of Medieval French verb particles from a generative perspective. The findings have important implications for the typological shift involving resultative secondary predication that occurred during the evolu-tion from Latin to Modern French.

Special issue inspired by the workshop “Whither Reanalysis?” (Humboldt University Berlin, 1–2 March 2019). Dedicated to the memory of Uli Detges.

Parametric Stability and Word Order Change: The Case of Middle French

Do the wealthy stay healthy? Rich agreement and verb movement in early English

V2 Beyond Borders: The Histoire Ancienne jusqu'à César

Verb-second and verb-first in the history of Icelandic

Review of Cristofaro & Zúñiga (eds.), 'Typological Hierarchies in Synchrony and Diachrony'

Proceedings of the 21st Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) Conference, which was held at Arizona State University in June 2019.

Voice neutrality in Hittite infinitives: a restructuring analysis

Review of Breitbarth, Lucas & Willis (2020), The history of negation in the languages of Europe and the Mediterranean, volume II: Patterns and processes

Proceedings of the 20th Diachronic Generative Syntax (DiGS) Conference, which was held in York, UK, in June 2018.

Review of Hundt, Mollin & Pfenninger (2017), 'The changing English language'

Published as part of the Historical Syntax section of Language. Articles reproduced here with authors' permission.

The grammaticalisation of an auxiliary and a copula: the Arabic 'sit' participle

A syntactic approach to the grammaticalization of modal markers in Middle Chinese: The modal dāng 當 

Testing causal associations in language change: The replacement of subordinating then with when in Middle English

Review of Van Gelderen (2018), 'Analyzing Syntax Through Texts'

Review of Yáñez-Bouza et al (2019), Categories, constructions, and change in English Syntax

Review of Gianollo (2018), Indefinites between Latin and Romance

Patterns for differential object marking in the history of Romanian

Review of Ledgeway & Roberts (eds.) (2017), Cambridge Handbook of Historical Syntax

Narrative infinitives, narrative gerunds, and the features of the C-T system

Review of Van Goethem, Norde, Coussé & Vanderbauwhede (eds.) (2018), Category change from a constructional perspective

Published as part of the Historical Syntax section of Language. Articles reproduced here with authors' permission.