If one regards a language as vocabulary within a particular syntax (with functional items maintaining the basic structure of a sentence and with the lexical items filling in the blanks), syntactic change plays the greatest role in modifying the physiognomy of a particular language.
If one pays close attention to evolutions in the realms of phonology and morphology, it becomes evident that syntactic change can also be the result of profound shifts in the shape of a language.
Syntactic change is a phenomenon creating a shift in language patterns over time and is subject to cyclic drift.
For example, prepositions can become reduced over time until they are reanalyzed as case markers affixed onto the adjacent nouns.
(as cited in Roberts 2007: 59) Even though V2 was lost, verb raising was maintained in the 1600s in Early Modern English.