Blackwell Reference Online

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The various chapters of this Handbook have painted a fairly complete picture of what morphology is, what constructs are needed in the morphological component of a grammar, and how these constructs interact with one another and with other parts of the grammar. For the most part, the perspective taken on these questions has been purely synchronie; yet, as with all aspects of language (and indeed of human institutions in general), a diachronic perspective is possible as well, focusing on what happens to morphology through time. Thus in this chapter, several questions are addressed which are diachronic in their focus: • What can change in the morphological component? • What aspects of the morphology are stable? • Where does morphology come from? • What triggers change in the morphology? • Is a general theory of morphological change possible? Moreover, through the answers given to these questions, especially the first two, several examples of various types of morphological change are presented. The easy answer here is that just about everything discussed in the previous chapters as constituting morphology is subject to change, especially so once one realizes that regular sound change can alter the shape of morphs without concern for the effect of such a change in pronunciation on the morphological system. Thus, for example, once-distinct case endings can fall together by regular sound ... log in or subscribe to read full text