is maintained as in (27a), whereas the V-final order is used in German as
in (27b).
(27) a. að henni/stelpunum líkuðu hestarnir Icelandic
that her-DAT/girls-the-DAT liked-3.PL horses-the-NOM
‘that she/the girls liked the horses’
b. dass ihr/den Mädchen die Pferde gefi elen German
that her-DAT/the-DAT girls the horses pleased
‘that the horses pleased her/the girls’
(Haider (2010: 23))
That is because, as shown in (28), t he verb movement is presumed because
of F
not assumed.^22
(28) a. að [FP henni/stelpunum [F’ líkuðu+F
líkuðu ]]]]
b. dass [VP ihr/den Mädchen [V’ die Pferde gefi elen]]
These differences of case and FP are summarized in Table 13.2.
This shows that the morphosyntactic change in English is considered to
proceed from the German type to the PDE type via the Icelandic type.
5 Adaptive and non-adaptive evolution of language
Lastly, we will argue about the raison d’être of case again and how (non-)
adaptively language changed on the basis of the dynamic model repeated below.
Chomsky often remarks that the initial evolution of language is more likely
connected to a tool for thought.^23 If he is on the right track, it is not words
but semantic features that are merged fi rst. The merged structure is realized at
LoT, which is connected to SEM1. As there are no words at this stage, no
word order and no case can be attested. What exists are only features and the
external merge operation putting them together. In this sense, LoT can be
considered as a perfect language unchanged through time.
Table 13.2 Typological difference on the basis of morphological case and functional
projections
m-Case F<pred> F<θ>German + − −
Icelandic + + −
Old English + − −
Middle English ± + ±
ModE & PDE − + +
Two aspects of syntactic evolution 207