Learnèd Syntax and the Romance Languages: the ‘Accusative and Infinitive’ Construction with Declarative Verbs in Castilian

Abstract

‘Learne`d’ syntactic influence is to be seen as a special case of language contact, the mechanism of which must form part of a general theory of language change and feature within the histories of individual languages. The identification of ‘learne`d’ syntactic features is especially problematic in the Romance languages, where Latin is both the lending and the parent language. In this article, I examine one case of learnéd syntactic influence which interestingly also suffers demise, and show that the many factors involved its rise and fall preclude a simplistic account of learnéd influence as mere imitative borrowing; they also shed light on the role of structural congruency in such influence and the apparent paradox that a construction can be favoured in one period and abandoned in another.

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