Syntactic reconstruction and demythologizing ‘Myths and the prehistory of grammars’

David Lightfoot's polemical paper, Myths and the prehistory of grammars addresses two topics. The first is reconstruction, particularly reconstruction of syntax; the second topic appears to be approaches which attempt to explain syntactic change, though Lightfoot deals with this more obliquely.

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of linguistics 2002-11, Vol.38 (3), p.599-618
Main Authors: CAMPBELL, LYLE, HARRIS, ALICE C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ancient languages
Comparative and classificatory studies
Comparative linguistics
Comparative method
Grammar
Harris, Alice
Historical linguistics
Language
Linguistics
Notes and Discussion
Prehistory
Protolanguages
Roberts, Ian
Syntactic change
Syntactics
Syntax
Topics
Verbs
Word order
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Description
Summary:David Lightfoot's polemical paper, Myths and the prehistory of grammars addresses two topics. The first is reconstruction, particularly reconstruction of syntax; the second topic appears to be approaches which attempt to explain syntactic change, though Lightfoot deals with this more obliquely.
ISSN:0022-2267
1469-7742
DOI:10.1017/S0022226702001706