In all languages we can observe change over time. Such changes may have identifiable external causes, but those usually explain only why a process of change started at some point. In order to explain why the outcome of the change is as it is we need theories of grammar and internal linguistic structure.

The goal of the project on Linguistic Theory and Grammatical Change was to discuss and test out hypotheses about language internal conditions and causes of grammatical change over time, and thus formulate new theories of language change. This was done on the basis of empirical data from a variety of languages, and recent linguistic theory. The project concentrated on identifying principles and mechanisms which underlie syntactic change.

Each of the fellows contributed towards this effort by presenting their work, ideas, analyses and hypotheses to the other group members for discussion. Discussions might be concerned with the data and its interpretation, but more often about the analyses of it and the underlying theoretical assumptions. These discussions were often driven by the different language material presented, and by the different linguistic schools of thought represented within the group.

One central topic which came up repeatedly in our discussions, was the notion of grammaticalization, which means that there is a general tendency in language change for various elements to become more ‘grammatical’; content words become grammatical words (going to > gonna ‘future tense’), full words become clitics (I will > I’ll), clitics become affixes (Old Norse hestr+inn > hesten), etc. The reverse development is very rare, and the question is whether this common and almost unidirectional drift in languages is due to a property of language itself, or whether it follows from other principles of language acquisition and use. This question is closely related to notion of reanalysis in connection with first language acquisition. The group members arrived at CAS with quite diverging approaches to these questions, and this triggered theoretically important discussions in the group. Speaking for myself as a group leader, I have a feeling that through these discussions in our group, we reached, if not a consensus, at least a deeper understanding of the theoretical and empirical problems involved and of the approaches that can be made within the various theoretical frameworks.