Nonfinite Structures in Theory and Change [Hardcover]

This book seeks to answer the questions: why do grammars change, and why is the rate of such change so variable? A principal focus is on changes in English between the Anglo-Saxon and early modern periods. The author frames his analysis in a comparative framework with extended discussions of language change in a wide range of other Indo-European languages. He deploys Chomsky's minimalist framework in a fruitful marriage of comparative and theoretical linguistics within an argument that will be accessible to practitioners in both fields.

Introduction
1. Case Checking and Accord
2. Tense and Nonfinite Clauses
3. Null Subjects and Control
4. Plain and Conjugated Infinitives
5. West Greenlandic
6. Small Clauses and ECM
7. The ECM Innovation in English
8. Infinitives in Older English
9. The-IngParticiple and Perception Complements
10. English Gerundials
11. History of English Gerundials
12. Infinitive, Gerundive, Participle
Primary Sources
Editions of Older English Texts

D. Gary Miller is Professor of Classics and Linguistics at the University of Florida. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1969, with a dissertation onStudies in Some Forms of the Genitive Singular in Indo-European. He has authored some forty articles on Indo-European, Classical, and General Linguistics. His books includeComplex Verb Formation(1993) andAncient Scripts and Phonological Knowledge(1994).