SYNTACTIC VARIATION AND CHANGE IN PROGRESS - LOSS OF THE VERBAL CODA IN TOPIC-RESTRICTING AS FAR AS CONSTRUCTIONS

The construction as far as NP is a common topic restrictor in mdoern E nglish, but its verbal coda (goes/is concerned) is often omitted. We e xamine potential constraints on this variation and find significant ef fects for syntactic, phonological, discourse mode, and social variable s. The internal effects are also relevant to 'Heavy NP Shift' and othe r weight-related phenomena. Diachronic data on the as far as construct ion, and the evidence of synchronic age distributions and usage commen tators, suggest that the verbless variant has become markedly more fre quent in recent decades, allowing us a rare opportunity to study synta ctic change in progress. In addition to documenting the nature of vari ation and change in this construction, our study has larger implicatio ns for the study of syntax and sociolinguistic variation, and demonstr ates the value of integrating methods from different linguistic subfie lds (in this case, sociolinguistics and variation theory, historical l inguistics, corpus linguistics, and syntax).