Na'ama Pat-El

Languages change all the time; not in a grand, dramatic sweep, but rather slowly, feature-by-feature. And yet they also retain many features, which were inherited from their common ancestor. But how to explain these changes? What motivates them and can we detect any commonalities in their slow evolution? Even more difficult: how can we evaluate similarities between languages? My suggested project examines parallel development in syntactic reconstruction, and its implications to our understanding of stimuli of change. If two related languages share a pattern that is not inherited from their ancestral origin, there should be a traceable factor, which motivated the emergence of this pattern. I suggest that the stimulus for the change is a feature of the structure, i.e. a structural similarity shared by both languages which allowed for the change to take place. I further suggest the following definition of syntactic parallel development: parallel development is the independent development of similar changes in languages of common genetic origin because of their common genetic origin. On the basis of my initial work, I tentatively suggested that (i) languages with similar structures are amenable to use common solutions to common problems; (ii) the result of parallel development cannot be used for subgrouping, but they expose stimuli of change, which given (i) are likely to be repeated; (iii) understanding the causes of parallel development may help formulate better constraints on change; (iv) the result of parallel development-induced change may reflect shared structural features not otherwise easily reconstructable.