Diachronic stability and feature interpretability

This contribution examines diachronic change in the Greek nominal phrase.

It proposes an analysis to capture the diachronic stability of certain syntactic

structures in the nominal domain, suggesting that points of stability reflect

macroparametric rather than microparametric choices, which are more

vulnerable to change and loss. Macroparametric choices are assumed to involve

choices pertaining to the presence versus absence in a grammar of functional

categories, while microparametric choices relate to the presence versus absence

of uninterpretable features on otherwise identical functional categories. The

difference in diachronic stability is linked to the generally “defective” status of

uninterpretable features in the human language faculty.

Published online: 17 September 2008
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.132.19pan