Abstract

Abstract The subject of this study will be three major levelling processes involved in the history of the German verb paradigm from Old High German to the present and on the basis of this albeit well-known data I shall be able to substantiate a claim often made about the relationship between linguistic change and the theory of generative-transformational grammar (TG theory). The claim is that TG theory is an appropriate framework in which to study linguistic change insofar as the distinction between the base and the transformational component in the grammar correlates, in part at least, with the distinction one may draw between that part of language which resists change most and that part of language which undergoes change easily. In as much as a “universal’ base component implies the same base component for all languages at all times and so specifies a part which does not lie within the domain of change, the claim is trivially true in the case of a grammar containing such a base component. It is assumed that such a base component does not exist or that if it exists it still requires justification of an empirical nature. For the purpose of this study the base component will be regarded as language specific and so the results of this study which apply to deep structure categories will be language specific results. That is to say, this paper shall not claim anything more than that, although one might have the feeling that the sort of base assumed here (and, therefore, the related results reached at the end of the paper) is not far removed from being universal.