Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- 1. Variation and change in languages -- 2. Language change across the lifespan -- 3. The child as the locus and agent of grammatical change -- 4. Structural ambiguity as a possible trigger of syntactic change -- 5. Language contact as a possible trigger of change -- 6. Acquisition in multilingual settings: Implications for explanations of change -- 7. Towards an explanatory theory of grammatical change -- References -- Index