Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA) provides a platform for original monograph studies into synchronic and diachronic linguistics. Studies in LA confront empirical and theoretical problems as these are currently discussed in syntax, semantics, morphology, phonology, and systematic pragmatics with the aim to establish robust empirical generalizations within a universalistic perspective.
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Asymmetry in Grammar
More LessAsymmetry in Grammar: Syntax and Semantics brings to fore the centrality of asymmetry in DP, VP and CP. A finer grained articulation of the DP is proposed, and further functional projections for restrictive relatives, as well as a refined analyses of case identification and presumptive pronouns. The papers on VP discuss further asymmetries among arguments, and between arguments and adjuncts. Double-object constructions, specificational copula sentences, secondary predicates, and the scope properties of adjuncts are discussed in this perspective. The papers on CP propose a further articulation of the phrasal projection, justifications for Remnant IP movement, and an analysis of variation in clause structure asymmetries. The papers in semantics support the hypothesis that interpretation is a function of configurational asymmetry. The type/token information difference is further argued to correspond to the partition between the upper and lower level of the phrase. It is also proposed that Point of View Roles are not primitives of the pragmatic component, but are head-dependent categories. Configurationality is further argued to be required to distinguish contrastive from non-contrastive Topic. Compositionality is proposed to explain cross-linguistic variations in the selectional behavior of typologically different languages.
The papers in syntax include contributions from Antonia Androutsopoulou and Manuel Español-Echevarría, Dana Isac, Edit Jakab, Cedric Boeckx, Julie Anne Legate, Maria Cristina Cuervo, Jacqueline Guéron, Niina Zhang, Thomas Ernst, Manuela Ambar, Jean-Yves Pollock, Anna Maria Di Sciullo, Ilena Paul and Stanca Somesfalean.The papers on semantics include contributions of Greg Carlson,Peggy Speas and Carol Tenny, Chungmin Lee, and James Pustejovsky.
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Augenkommunikation
More LessThe book sketches a systematics of non-verbal communication. It contains the following separate chapters: movement potential and expression repertoire; clinical literature on the eye’s movement potential; eye movement viewed from the perspective of communicative action; eye communication as part of non-verbal communication; detailed analysis of deliberate avoiding the addressee’s eye focus.
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Austronesian and Theoretical Linguistics
More LessThe Austronesian language family is the largest language family in the world, yet its members are relatively little studied, particularly from a formal perspective. Interestingly, because these languages exhibit typologically unusual properties, they pose important challenges to linguistic theory. Any theory that postulates a grammar that is common to all languages must take into account the particular characteristics of this language family. The contributions to this volume comprise five chapters on phonology and twelve chapters on syntax, all addressing aspects of these Austronesian challenges. The volume presents new data, new analyses of old data, and comparisons of closely related languages, as well as comparisons to languages outside of the language family. Taken together they form a unique picture of Austronesian linguistics. This volume will be of interest to researchers and students in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, and language typology, as well as scholars of Austronesian languages.
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Auxiliary Selection in Italo-Romance
More LessThis book proposes a new solution to the long-standing puzzle of auxiliary selection in Romance languages, in particular Italian. The following questions are addressed: why the perfect auxiliary appears in the two forms be and have within a single language, what drives this distribution, and how cross-linguistic data can be accounted for. The solution to these issues consists of an Agreebased analysis that accounts for auxiliary selection in root clauses and restructuring in Standard Italian and in Italo-Romance varieties, which is also compatible with participle agreement. By answering these questions, the book also touches upon more theoretical and foundational problems, such as the distribution of labor between syntax, morphology and the lexicon, and the conditions on the operation Agree (in particular, multiple probing, locality, and minimality). This work contributes to the discussion in the fields of formal morpho-syntax, theoretical linguistics, and Romance linguistics.
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Balkan Syntax and Semantics
More LessThe book deals with some syntactic and semantic aspects of the shared Balkan Sprachbund properties. In a comprehensive introductory chapter, Tomić offers an overview of the Balkan Sprachbund properties. Sobolev, displaying the areal distribution of 65 properties, argues for dialect cartography. Friedman, on the example of the evidentials, argues for typologically informed areal explanation of the Balkan properties. The other contributions analyze specific phenomena: polidefinite DPs in Greek and Aromanian (Campos and Stavrou), Balkan constructions in which datives combine with impersonal clitics or non-active morphology (Rivero), Balkan optatives (Ammann and Auwera), imperative force in the Balkan languages (Isac and Jakab), clitic placement in Greek imperatives (Bošković), focused constituents in Romanian and Bulgarian (Hill), synthetic and analytic tenses in Romanian (D'Hulst, Coene and Avram), "purpose-like" modification in a number of Balkan languages (Bužarovska), Balkan modal existential “wh”-constructions (Grosu), child and adult strategies in interpreting empty subjects in Serbian/Croatian (Stojanović and Marelj), conditional sentences in Judeo-Spanish (Montoliu and Auwera).
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The Bantu–Romance Connection
More LessThis landmark volume is the first work specifically designed to explore the extent to which striking surface morpho-syntactic similarities between Bantu and Romance languages actually represent similar syntactic structures. In particular, it explores the timely and much debated issues of verbal morphology and agreement, the structure of DPs, and word order/information structure, with the goal of providing a better understanding of the structure of the different languages investigated, and the implications this holds for syntactic theory more generally. All of the papers draw on data from both Bantu and Romance languages, providing a framework for much-needed further comparative research on the nature of linguistic structure, its diversity and constraints, and the implications this has for learnability/acquisition. The volume also provides an important precedent for incorporating insights from Bantu linguistic structure into mainstream of syntax research.
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Bare Argument Ellipsis and Focus
More LessThis monograph explores the syntax and information structure of bare argument ellipsis. The study concentrates on stripping, which is identified as a subtype of bare argument ellipsis typically associated with focus sensitive particles or negation. This monograph presents a unified account of stripping located at the syntax-information structure interface and argues for a licensing mechanism which is strongly tied to the focus properties of the construction. Under this view, types of bare argument ellipsis such as stripping and pseudostripping, which have received different treatments in the literature, are shown to be subject to the same licensing mechanism. This analysis is also extended to instances of bare argument ellipsis in embedded contexts, which have received little attention in the literature so far. Integrating theoretical and experimental reasoning, this study presents a series of experiments investigating the extraction, prosody and context properties of stripping and thus arrives at a comprehensive and unified account.
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Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese
More LessOver the last three decades, Brazilian Portuguese bare nominals have turned into a hot topic in the cross-linguistic study of nominal syntax and semantics. This contribution is the first comprehensive, book-length treatment of the issue, covering both the long-standing discussion about the adequate analysis of these forms as well as the establishment of a solid empirical basis for future research. The book goes further than previous accounts in also taking into consideration the phonetic-phonological dimension, showing the advantages of a more comprehensive account. The empirical section outlines an innovative approach in which different methods and data types are combined and focuses on the underresearched definite / specific / referential uses and interpretations of bare singulars. The book also addresses the traditional topics in the study of bare nominals – genericity, the mass/count distinction, NP-internal plural agreement, the NP/DP distinction, and syntax-semantics-phonology interface questions – in the light of the new findings.
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Bavarian Syntax
More LessDialect syntax has proven to be an invaluable data source for theoretical syntax, and theoretical syntax has provided useful analytical tools for uncovering fascinating grammatical properties of dialects. In the 1980s, the assumption that there must be more than one structural position in the left periphery of the clause was confirmed (among others) by so-called "doubly filled COMPs" in Bavarian (e.g. the co-occurrence of a wh-phrase and a complementizer), and in the 1990s, Northern Italian dialects provided the main empirical evidence for Rizzi’s extended theory of the left clausal periphery (the so-called "Split-C-hypothesis"). Among German dialects, Bavarian played a prominent role from the beginning: in addition to doubly-filled COMPs we find phenomena such as complementizer agreement, partial pro-drop, pronominal clitics, extractions from finite clauses introduced by complementizers, negative concord, parasitic gaps, or double possessors, all of which are fascinating and highly relevant for theoretical syntax. The contributions in this volume investigate and analyze a wide range of topics from Bavarian syntax with the focus on implications for general theoretical questions. This volume is of interest for any linguist interested in syntactic theory and dialect syntax.
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Beyond Coherence
More LessThe overarching theme of this volume is one of the central concerns of syntactic theory: How local is syntax, and what are the measures of syntactic locality? It is argued here that movement and anaphoric relations are governed by a unified concept of locality: the phase. On an empirical level, Beyond Coherence brings together three strands of research on German syntax: ‘coherence’, the study of (reduced) infinitive constructions; the possessor dative construction, with a dative nominal playing the dual role of possessor and affectee; and binding, the distribution of anaphors and pronominals. These apparently disparate areas of research intersect in that the locality constraints on the possessor dative construction and binding allow the two phenomena to serve as probes for infinitival clause size. Offering a Minimalist ‘possessor raising’ and phase-based binding account, this work culminates in a discussion of the phase as the key to the various opacity effects observed in the book.
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Beyond Emotions in Language
More LessThis book sheds new light on the puzzle of psychological predicates in a cross-linguistic perspective by looking at them from a variety of angles at the interfaces between event structure, lexical and viewpoint aspect, syntax and information structure. The individual chapters focus on Polish and Spanish psych verbs, which manifest new overt contrasts that often remain covert in languages such as English, e.g., aspectual distinctions, the peculiarities of dative constructions, or the role of information structure in determining the word order. One of the main contributions of the book lies in positing a new typology of basic event types enriched with the initial boundary events. Moreover, due attention is devoted to dative experiencers as compared to accusative experiencers. Although couched in the generative tradition, the main insights presented in this collection are theory neutral and may be of interest to linguists of all persuasions.
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Beyond Markedness in Formal Phonology
More LessIn recent years, an increasing number of linguists have re-examined the question of whether markedness has explanatory power, or whether it is a phenomenon that begs explanation itself. This volume brings together a collection of articles with a broad range of critical viewpoints on the notion of markedness in phonological theory. The contributions span a variety of phonological frameworks and relate to morphosyntax, historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, biolinguistics, and language typology. This volume will be of particular interest to phonologists of both synchronic and diachronic persuasions and has strong implications for the architecture of grammar with respect to phonology and its interfaces with morphosyntax and phonetics.
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Bidirectional Optimality Theory
More LessBidirectional Optimality Theory (BiOT) emerged at the turn of the millennium as a fusion of Radical Pragmatics and Optimality Theoretic Semantics. It stirred a wealth of new research in the pragmatics‑semantics interface and heavily influenced e.g. the development of evolutionary and game theoretic approaches. Optimality Theory holds that linguistic output can be understood as the optimized products of ranked constraints. At the centre of BiOT is the insight that this optimisation has to take place both in production and interpretation, and that the production-interpretation cycle has to lead back to the original input. BiOT is now generally interpreted as a description of diachronically stable and cognitively optimal form–meaning pairs. It found applications beyond the semantics-pragmatics interface in language acquisition, historical linguistics, phonology, syntax, and typology. This book provides a state of the art overview of these developments. It collects nine chapters by leading scientists in the field.
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Biolinguistic Investigations on the Language Faculty
More LessThe papers assembled in this volume aim to contribute to our understanding of the human capacity for language: the generative procedure that relates sounds and meanings via syntax. Different hypotheses about the properties of this generative procedure are under discussion, and their connection with biology is open to important cross-disciplinary work. Advances have been made in human-animal studies to differentiate human language from animal communication. Contributions from neurosciences point to the exclusive properties of the human brain for language. Studies in genetically based language impairments also contribute to the understanding of the properties of the language organ. This volume brings together contributions on theoretical and experimental investigations on the Language Faculty. It will be of interest to scholars and students investigating the properties of the biological basis of language, in terms the modeling of the language faculty, as well as the properties of language variation, language acquisition and language impairments.
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Boundaries, Phases and Interfaces
More LessThis book approaches the concept of boundary, central in linguistic theory, and the related notion of phase from the perspective of the interaction between syntax and its interfaces. A primary notion is that phases are the appropriate domains to explain most interface linguistic phenomena and that the study of (narrow) interfaces helps to understand conditions on the internal structure of the Language Faculty. The first part of this volume is dedicated to introducing the notion of boundary, cycle and phase, and also the current debates regarding internal interfaces, in particular, the syntax-phonology, syntax-semantics, syntax-discourse, syntax-morphology and syntax-lexicon interfaces, in order to show how the notion of boundary/phase is related to (or even determines) most of their characteristics. The four sections of the second part deal with (morpho)phonology/ syntax and the role or boundaries/phases; the syntax-discourse and syntax-semantics interface; and the lexicon-syntax interface, while the notion of boundary/phase cross-cuts the main topics addressed.
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Brazilian Portuguese, Syntax and Semantics
More LessThis book opens with Angelika Kratzer and Luigi Rizzi talking about contemporary issues, such as non-recursiveness of focus and the semantics of topics. The chapters climb down the spine from the left periphery to DP: the value of subjunctive across the history of German, expressive expressions in Brazilian Portuguese, left and right dislocation and the speaker’s perspective in Italian, Brazilian double subjects and left dislocated topic, long versus short wh-movement in Brazilian Portuguese and Quebec French, low adverbs and the raising of the verb in Brazilian Portuguese, ellipsis and null objects in Brazilian and European Portuguese, and bare singulars in Brazilian Portuguese. The chapters propose original accounts for language variation and historical changes, most of them focusing on Brazilian Portuguese, a challenge to syntax and semantics. Thus, the volume contributes to Brazilian and Portuguese Linguistics, as well as to general and contemporary research on syntax and semantics of natural languages.
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Case, Referentiality and Phrase Structure
More LessThis book proposes that the two “independent” conditions on argumenthood, namely, case and referentiality, are strongly correlated and have to be associated with each other in syntax as syntactic features. It shows that languages exhibit variation in the way this association is implemented in their syntax, which presents an explanation for the differences observed in their phrase structure in terms of (non-)configurationality. Thus, this book not only presents an innovative overarching theory for case and referentiality, but also aims to bring a new look at the issues of (non-)configurationality. It specifically argues for parameterization of functional categories associated with case and referentiality, which has certain implications not only for the acquisition but also for the diachronic development of functional categories. Providing rich comparative data from typologically different languages such as Turkish, Chinese, Hungarian, English and Japanese, this book is of particular interest to typologists as well.
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Causatives in Minimalism
More LessThis monograph studies issues of current minimalist concern, such as whether differences in the expression of argument and syntactic structure can all be attributed to the parameterization of specific functional heads. In particular, this book studies in-depth the extent to which variation in the expression of causation, available both intra- and crosslinguistically, can be accounted for by appealing only to the microparameterization of the causative head, Cause, as previously argued for by linguists such as Pylkkänen. It concludes that the microparameterization of Cause may explain some major characteristics associated with causatives, but it cannot be regarded as the only explanation behind variation in these structures. The book includes relevant discussion on argument structure and looks in detail at languages, such as the Uto-Aztecan Hiaki, that have not received much attention before. It is mostly intended for an audience interested in theoretical approaches to argument structure and variation.
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Challenging Clitics
More LessChallenging Clitics deals with multiple sides of cliticisation from different theoretical frameworks and with data from a number of different languages. Unlike many other books on clitics where clitics are considered from a mere syntactical point of view, this book also discusses the acquisition of clitics; the role of the PF in cliticisation; the morphophonological aspects of cliticisation; and historical change – to name but a few of the approaches presented. As such this collection presents cutting edge theoretical considerations as well as new data on clitics. Taken together, the contributions in this volume not only provide insight into the extremely complex nature of clitics, but also into derivations and structures in language that go beyond the study of clitics themselves.
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Choosing a Grammar
More LessThis book investigates the role that ambiguous evidence can play in the acquisition of syntax. To illustrate this, the book introduces a probabilistic learning model for syntactic parameters that learns a grammar of best fit to the learner’s evidence. The model is then applied to a range of cross-linguistic case studies – in Swiss German, Korean, and English – involving child errors, grammatical variability, and implicit negative evidence. Building on earlier work on language modeling, this book is unique for its focus on ambiguous evidence and its careful attention to the effects of parameters interacting with each other. This allows for a novel and principled account of several acquisition puzzles. With its inter-disciplinary approach, this book will be of broad interest to syntacticians, language acquisitionists, and cognitive scientists of language.
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