The Linguistic Cycle

Elly van Gelderen is Regents’ Professor of English and Linguistics at Arizona State University, USA. Her most recent books include The Linguistic Cycle: Language Change and the Language Faculty (2011), The Diachrony of Meaning (2018), and Third Factors in Language Variation and Change (2022).

Preface

List of Tables

List of Figures

Abbreviations

1 Introduction

1 What is the linguistic cycle?

2 What kinds of cycles exist?

3 How and why to study cyclical change

3.1 The practical side

3.2 The theoretical side

4 Major questions in the study of cycles

5 Terminology

6 Conclusion and outline

Suggestions for further reading

Review questions and exercises

2 History

1 The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

2 The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

3 The mid and late twentieth century

4 Recent generative work

5 Recent functionalist work

6 Conclusion

Suggestions for further reading

Review questions

3 Micro cycles: Determiner and Verbal Cycles

1 Definition of a micro cycle

2 Determiner Cycles

3 Copula Cycles

4 Tense and Aspect Cycles

4.1 The Imperfective Cycle

4.2 The Perfective Cycle

4.3 Imperfective and perfective renewal in Basque

5 Mood Cycles

6 Voice Cycles

7 Conclusion

Suggestions for further reading

Review questions and exercises

4 Micro cycles: Polarity and Discourse Cycles

1 Negative Cycles

1.1 Jespersen’s Negative Cycle

1.2 Givón’s Negative Cycle

1.3 Croft’s Negative Cycle

2 Interrogative Cycles

3 Complementizer Cycles

4 Pragmatic Cycles

4.1 A definition

4.2 Temperal adverbs as sources

4.3 Emphatic Pronoun Cycles

5 Interactions between micro cycles

6 Conclusions

Suggestions for further reading

Review questions and exercises

5 Macro cycles

1 Definition of a macro cycle

2 Analytic to synthetic to analytic

3 Pronoun Cycles

3.1 Subject Cycle

3.2 Object Cycle

3.3 Morpheme Order

4 Case Cycles

5 Interactions involving macro cycles

6 Conclusions

Suggestions for further reading

Review questions and exercises

Appendix

6 Explanations and mechanisms

1 Clarity vs comfort

2 External factors

3 Construction Grammar

4 Early Minimalism: structural and featural economy

5 Later Minimalism: labeling and determinacy

6 Attractor states

7 Conclusions

Suggestions for further reading

Review questions and exercises

7 Conclusions and future directions

1 Insights from cycles

2 Criticisms of the cycle

3 Future directions

Suggested answers to the review questions and exercises

References

Indices