Reconstructing syntactic processes: An example from Siberia
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Abstract
Most problems in historical linguistics courses deal with phonology, some deal with morphology, but few deal with syntax. Also, problems in syntax courses virtually never concern diachronic aspects of syntax. This omission of diachronic syntax is regretable, although understandable. Many facets of a problem have to be understood before a diachronic syntactic analysis is conceivable: a thorough sketch of the syntactic systems of several different languages and/or of two or more separate stages of a single language must be available. Furthermore, areas other than pure syntax often have to be considered. Morphology, syntax and pragmatics should be singled out for attention here. Finally, most courses do not devote sufficient time to the mentodology of diachronic syntax to warrant problems from this area. Nevertheless, interest in diachronic syntax is steadily growing, making it more and more necessary for students to develop at least some familiarity with it. For this reason I have condensed the data in Ard (1978) and reformulated it into the style of an Ellery Queen novel. The reader should have enough data before the paper is over to discover how it was done and why.
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