Scholars have often been puzzled by the fact that the basic word-order rule of Welsh seems to have changed twice in the last 1000 years. David Willis explores how and why these changes have taken place. He examines the relationship between the literary and spoken language throughout the history of Welsh, points out similarities between the rules of earlier Welsh and other European languages, and looks at the forces that cause languages to change over time.

• 1: Introduction


• 2: Syntactic Change


• 3: Verb-second in Middle Welsh


• 4: Verb-first in Middle Welsh


• 5: Subject Pronouns and the Expletive Construction


• 6: The Loss of Verb-Second


• 7: Pronouns and Complementizers


• 8: Conclusion


• Notes


• Appendices


• References