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.

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.

The book is an invaluable contribution to both syntactic theoreticians and historical linguists.