Macroparametric change and the synthetic–analytic dimension
Chris H. Reintges · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2012
Abstract Adopting Baker’s (2008) view that macroparameters exist beside microparameters, I explore the possibility that large-scale grammar change may be due to the diachronic resetting of a genuine macroparameter. A case in point is the drift from an agglutinative to an analytic morphological system in the course of Ancient Egyptian language history. The two systems differ from each other in terms of the basic syntactic operations. A constructive way of looking at the analyticization process is in terms of the dissociation of tense and finiteness features from lexical verb stems and the concomitant weakening of the v*P as a spellout domain.