Diachronic syntax lay, like the Sleeping Beauty, in a deathlike coma for the first half of this century. In the late sixties and seventies there was a flurry of activity as increasingly large numbers of linguists realised the importance of the subject, and attempted to hack their way through the thorns encircling the Sleeping Beauty's castle and into the central issues of the topic … [David Lightfoot's] is the first book which has attempted both to provide a fully-fledged theory of syntactic change, and to clarify the relationship between a theory of change and a theory of grammar. As such, [his] work is of great significance, since he may be viewed as the Prince who woke the Sleeping Beauty from her long sleep. Nevertheless, although he has woken her, he is not necessarily the answer to all her prayers. As with many pioneers, his work is perhaps more important for the questions it raises than for the solutions it provides.