| dc.description.abstract | The object of study in this thesis is the so-called autonomous morphology in Irish. Through a careful syntactic and historical analysis, it is shown that the autonomous morphology undergoes a reanalysis which in broad terms entails a change from passive to active. The syntactic constructions in question, as well as the fact that several of them occur with autonomous morphology at the same time, are shown to be cross-linguistically well established. The constructions in question are the canonical passive, the impersonal passive, and the active subject impersonal. The canonical and the impersonal passive differs from one another in terms of the patient argument: in the canonical passive, the patient argument takes the subject function, while the patient is the object in the impersonal passive. The impersonal passive is seen as subjectless in Irish. In the active subject impersonal construction, the agent is a phonologically null subject pronoun with an impersonal interpretation. The thesis shows that both the active subject impersonal construction and the canonical and the impersonal passive are found in Old Irish. Subsequently the impersonal passive takes the place of the canonical passive. Thereafter, the subjectless impersonal passive changes to active when it starts to be used with the phonologically null impersonal subject. In addition, it is shown that the autonomous morphology is used in a number of non-passive, subjectless constructions independently of the passive to active development. The theoretic background of the thesis is generative diachronic theory. This theory entails the idea that language change occurs when a child converges on a mental grammar which is slightly different from the grammar of the people around her. As a consequence, the construction types in question are reduced to overt properties that the child may use to analyse the sentences she hears. When these properties change, the child’s analysis changes, and so the language develops. | |