Some thoughts on language development and linguistic diachrony: A case study in Spanish

One mutual goal of linguistic theory and learning theory is to determine what kinds of parametric changes are possible (and which are more natural) in human language. The present paper discusses implications of the syntactic change evidenced in the history of Spanish for the minimalist approach to syntax, on the one hand, and the theory of language acquisition, on the other. In particular, it attempts to characterize how the notion of economy may be defined and characterized in diachronic investigation. In this connection, it argues that the replacement of covert operations by overt operations is compatible with a particular notion of diachronic economy and the language acquisition process. The paper concludes that one-dimensional notion of economy is not quite sufficient to capture the nature of natural language.