Welsh is often cited as an exemplary case of verb-initial language. While this is generally true of the language today, earlier written texts show widespread use of subject-initial, object-initial, and other word orders. David Willis challenges the conventional view that these orders were restricted to an artificial literary register, claiming instead that they were alive in spoken Welsh up until the Early Modern period. He looks at Middle Welsh word order within a Principles and Parameters framework, showing extensive parallelisms between Middle Welsh and verb-second systems in Germanic and Romance languages. He also provides rich documentation of syntactic change in Welsh, showing for the first time how the transition from the verb-second rule of Middle Welsh to the verb-initial system of Contemporary Welsh took place. He examines a case study of a verb-second system outside of the Germanic languages, investigates how such systems have come to be lost over time, and raises questions about the fundamental mechanisms of language change.

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.

An important contribution to general historical linguistics, and a milestone in Celtic linguistics ... an exciting and thought-provoking book, and indispensable reading for anybody interested in the history of Welsh syntax and/or in the P&P approach to syntactic change.