The book investigates the little studied syntax of the dialects of southern Italy. In addition to providing a descriptive account of a wide range of syntactic phenomena, the discussion shows how the model of language embodied in Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Program can be profitably extended to the study of the syntax of southern Italian dialects, focusing on such topics as Case-marking and finite, infinitival and participial complementation.

This book was first published in 2010. The study of Romance languages can tell us a great deal about sentence structure and its variation in general. Focusing on the dialects of Italy - including the islands of Sardinia and Sicily - the authors explore three thematic areas: the nominal domain, the verbal domain and the left periphery of the clause. The book gives fresh attention to the dialects, arguing that they offer an unprecedented degree of variation (not found, for example, in Germanic languages). Analysing a host of data, the authors show how the dialects can be used as a test-bed for...

This book examines the grammatical changes that took place in the transition from Latin to the Romance languages. The emerging language underwent changes in three fundamental areas involving the noun phrase, verb phrase, and the sentence. The impact of the changes can be seen in the reduction of the Latin case system; the appearance of auxiliary verb structures to mark such categories tense, mood, and voice; and a shift towards greater rigidification of word order. The author considers how far these changes are interrelated and compares their various manifestations and pace of change across...

The Oxford Guide to the Romance Languages is the most exhaustive treatment of the Romance languages available today. Leading international scholars adopt a variety of theoretical frameworks and approaches to offer a detailed structural examination of all the individual Romance varieties and Romance-speaking areas, including standard, non-standard, dialectal, and regional varieties of the Old and New Worlds. The book also offers a comprehensive comparative account of major topics, issues, and case studies across different areas of the grammar of the Romance languages.

The volume...

Change is an inherent feature of all aspects of language, and syntax is no exception. While the synchronic study of syntax allows us to make discoveries about the nature of syntactic structure, the study of historical syntax offers even greater possibilities. Over recent decades, the study of historical syntax has proven to be a powerful scientific tool of enquiry with which to challenge and reassess hypotheses and ideas about the nature of syntactic structure which go beyond the observed limits of the study of the synchronic syntax of individual languages or language families. In this timely...