Syntactic Change

Question 1

basic mechanisms (3)

Answer 1

reanalysis
borrowing
restructuring

Question 2

reanalysis

Answer 2

ambiguity (structural and/or semantic) of a syntactic construction

Question 3

borrowing

Question 4

restructuring (in child language acquisition

Question 5

grammaticalization

Answer 5

lexical item (content word) becomes functional (grammatical) item
- usually involves reanalysis (ambiguity) and/or extension

Question 6

Constant Rate Hypothesis

Answer 6

when a given change/innovation appears, it may occur at different frequencies in different syntactic contexts, but the rate at which it increases over time is the same across all contexts