The Evolution Of Case In English: A Perspective Of Historical Syntax

During its historical development from a 'synthetic' language to an 'analytic' one,the English language underwent drastic decay of inflectional morphology.As a major sign of morphological inflections in English,case(forms) is disappearing during the development from Old English to Middle English,and then to modern English.This linguistic phenomenon deserves a thorough investigation,with an aim at exploring the tendency of the evolution of the English language and even all human languages.Meanwhile,the present study will provide empirical foundations for language universalism somehow.Some generative grammarians(e.g.Lyons,1966,p.218) pointed out that "'case" is not present in "deep structure" at all,but is merely the inflectional "realization" of particular syntactic relationships'.This standpoint blots out the universal 'Case'(abstract Case) in natural languages.However,many linguists today have already proved that Case is also present in "deep structure" of languages without overt morphological inflections. For this reason,we would rather uphold the definition by Blake(2001):"Our definition of case refers to marking dependent nouns for the type of relationship they bear to their heads"(p.1).Fillmore(1968) made two assumptions,namely "the centrality of syntax" and "the importance of covert categories".As for such,case is present in all natural languages irrespective of 'synthetic' or 'analytic',and morphologically inflectional or not. It is an indispensable aspect of language universalism.Different human languages may mark case in different ways,but they are basically alike in syntactic-semantic relations on deep level.In European linguistic circles,the study of case system can be traced back to the ancient Greek and Roman times.A great deal of research,early and late,has been devoted to an understanding of the history or evolution of case notions or of case morphemes. Nevertheless,few systematic studies focus hitherto on the evolution of case in English from a perspective of historical syntax.From a perspective of historical syntax,this thesis seeks to apply a set of mechanisms of syntactic change established by Harris and Campbell(1995) to investigating two different types of evolution in English,namely the evolution of overt case(on surface level) and that of case(on both surface and deep levels) in some specific syntactic structures.The research reveals that the two types of evolution can be expounded thoroughly with these mechanisms.The primary causes lie in the mutual operation performed by reanalysis and extension in the process.In addition,there happened momentous phonological changes(e.g.Great Vowel Shift in ME) during the development from ME to ModE.Influenced by phonological changes,together with pragmatic and analogical factors,many morphological inflections of case were syncretized.Furthermore,the evolution of some particular constructions possibly involved multiple analyses (exploratory expressions) coexisting in use with the original expression,which probably brought about certain structural ambiguity that thereby triggered off reanalysis.At the beginning,multiple analyses or 'exploratory expressions' might be produced by the existing grammar for emphasis,clarity and for other reasons.SOme of these 'exploratory expressions' would come to be accepted and finally gained 'legalized' status with the increasing frequency of use,and the evolution was thus completed.Actually,these 'exploratory expressions' acquired their legality only by means of reanalyzing certain syntactic-semantic relations.Some of the 'exploratory expressions' produced by reanalysis would develop into innovative case forms.The present thesis consists of six chapters.The first chapter serves as an introduction to this investigation.The rationale,significance and the layout of the thesis will be presented.Chapter Two gives a brief retrospect to the case studies and an introduction to the new later development in this field.Chapter Three provides a theoretical background for this study.The definition of case and case forms will be distinguished and pinpoint its implications in different theoretical frameworks.Previous studies in these domains,such as case and grammatical relations,theory of historical syntax,etc.,are reviewed. Significantly,three mechanisms of syntax change are introduced as approaches to illuminating the mystery of the evolution of case forms in English.Chapter Four first presents a panorama of case forms since Old English,drafting traces for evolution of case forms.Then,based on a framework of historical syntax,two types of analysis including category-labels-oriented analysis and constituency-oriented analysis will be examined so as to seek the causes for changes in case morphology.In Chapter Five,we examine how changes of case on both levels(deep and surface) were intermingling,or interfering with syntactic relationships,semantic relations,and even lexical and phonological changes. Harris' framework for historical syntactic change will be adopted in illuminating changes of case in particular syntactic constructions(i.e.impersonal construction in actives,direct and recipient constructions in Passives,etc.),which may evidence its validity in this scope with these mechanisms to some extent,if not always so.On the other hand,the relationship between evolution of case forms,word order,and causes for the evolution of case forms,general syntactic changes,even language and typology are also touched upon. Chapter Six concludes the thesis by summarizing the major findings of the study,and then pinpointing limitations,and finally making some prospects for future research.