This work investigates the syntax of the higher portion of the functional structure of the clause using comparative data from hundreds of Northern Italian dialects. The area contains dialects that are different in most ways yet homogenous syntactically, making it an ideal ground for analyzing micro-variations in syntax. The book sheds new light on debated problems such as subject-clitic inversion, verb movement and subject positions, and the structure of the higher functional phrases.

This volume collects original theoretical work on the syntax and morphology of Italian and a wide range of Italian dialects. It contains contributions by such leading figures as Cecilia Poletto, Guglielmo Cinque, and Richard Kayne, and examines topics such as the syntax of "ne," the internal structure of personal pronouns, the syntax/morphology interface, and functional projections at the clausal level.

This collection of previously unpublished articles examines Noam Chomsky's Extended Projection Principle and its relationship to subjects and expletives (works like "it" that stand for other words). Re-examining Chomsky's proposition that each clause must have a subject, these articles represent the current state of the debate, particularly with respect to the theory's universal applicability across languages. Presenting an international and highly respected group of contributors, the volume explores these questions in a variety of languages, including Italian, Finnish, Icelandic, and...

The Romance Languages document remarkable variations in subject word order in different constructions, and have various restrictions in their occurrence. No consensus has emerged on what the paramaters are for such variations. This volume does not attempt to create a consensus, but tries to represent and bring into dialogue the different sides of the debate.

Syntactically speaking, it has long been known that noun phrases are parallel to clauses in many respects. While most syntactic theories incorporate this principle, nouns have generally been regarded as inferior to verbs in terms of their licensing abilities, and nominal projections have been regarded as less complex than verbal projections in terms of the number of functional categories that they contain. Ogawa, however, argues that clauses and noun phrases are perfectly parallel. This book provides a unified theory of clauses and noun phrases, ultimately helping to simplify numerous thorny...

This volume presents the first results of a long-term research project, funded by the Italian government, which aims at mapping out the fine functional structure of sentences, nominal phrases, and other major phrases making up sentences. In particular, it examines the functional structure of DPs (determiner phrases) and IPs (inflection phrases).

Marit Julien investigates the relation between morphology and syntax, or more specifically, the relation between the form of inflected verbs and the position of those verbs. She surveys 530 languages and shows that, with the exception of agreement markers, the positioning of verbal inflectional markers relative to verb stems is compatible with a syntactic approach to morphology.

This is the first book on the syntax of the Niger-Conger language family, which includes most of the languages of sub-Saharan Africa. Aboh, who is a native speaker of one of the languages (Gungbe) discussed, analyzes different aspects of the syntax of the "Kwa" language group. Aboh also suggests how grammatical pictures for these languages can shed some light on Universal Grammar in general.

This volume collects important recent articles by Richard Kayne, one of the top formal linguists in the world. Although the articles range widely in topic and theme, they hang together in that they illustrate the power of the comparative approach, and that they reinforce Kayne's view that syntax is generally more complex than it first appears. As with other volumes in this series, the audience for the volume will be formal linguists and syntacticians around the world.

In this book, Hinterholzl provides a comprehensive study of three salient phenomena of West Germaic, namely scrambling, remnant movement and restructuring, and discusses their interrelatedness. In particular, restructuring is shown to break down into remnant movement of the major phases of the infinitival clause, accounting for the formation of verb clusters and the transparency of restructuring infinitives.