Renewal in the left periphery: economy and the complementiser layer

This paper examines cyclical changes involving complementisers, for instance, whether in the history of English. Whether starts out as a pronoun and after frequent topicalisation is reanalysed as an element in the left-most layer of the sentence. The same is true with prepositional phrases that are fronted and then reanalysed as part of the CP layer. The paper uses a Minimalist approach in that it seeks answers for the linguistic changes in terms of Economy Principles such as Specifier-to-Head Reanalysis. It examines two sources of renewal of complementisers, full phrases such as demonstrative pronouns and heads such as the verbs that reanalyse as question particles in Chinese.