Crosslinguistic Research in Syntax And Semantics: Negation, Tense, And Clausal Architecture

"This book contains truly fundamental contributions concerning the functional makeup of the sentence by some of the very best specialists around the world."—Guglielmo Cinque, Dipartimento di Scienze del Linguaggio, Universita' Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy

"This collection's many outstanding contributions make it a volume that syntacticians and semanticists will want to study carefully."—Richard S. Kayne, professor, Department of Linguistics, New York University

"This is an illuminating and rich book where comparison is pursued very seriously; different languages are considered and analyzed with sophisticated theoretical tools in different domains of syntax and semantics. Its impact will be both on current research and on the formation of advanced students in linguistics."—Adriana Belletti, professor of linguistics, University of Siena

Presenting cutting-edge research in syntax and semantics, this important volume furthers theoretical claims in generative linguistics and represents a significant addition to present scholarship in the field. Leading scholars present crosslinguistic studies dealing with clausal architecture, negation, and tense and aspect, and the issue of whether a statistical model can by itself capture the richness of human linguistic abilities. Taken together, these contributions elegantly show how theoretical tools can propel our understanding of language beyond pretheoretical descriptions, especially when combined with the insight and skills of linguists who can analyze difficult and complex data.

Crosslinguistic Research in Syntax and Semantics covers a range of topics currently at the center of lively debate in the linguistic literature, such as the structure of the left periphery of the clause, the proper treatment of negative polarity items, and the role of statistical learning in building a model of linguistic competence. The ten original contributions offer an excellent balance of novel empirical description and theoretical analysis, applied to a wide range of languages, including Dutch, German, Irish English, Italian, Malagasy, Malay, and a number of medieval Romance languages. Scholars and students of semantics, syntax, and linguistic theory will find it to be a valuable resource for ongoing scholarship and advanced study.

Raffaella Zanuttini is an associate professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. She is the author of Negation and Clausal Structure and coeditor of Paths Towards Universal Grammar.

Hйctor Campos is an associate professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University. He is the author of De la Oracion Simple a la Oracion compuesta and coeditor of Evolution and Revolution in Linguistic Theory.

Elena Herburger is an associate professor in the department of Spanish and Portuguese at Georgetown University. She is the author of What Counts.

Paul H. Portner is an associate professor of linguistics at Georgetown University. He is the author of What Is Meaning? and a coeditor of Formal Semantics and the second edition of the Handbook of Semantics.

Contributors:
Paola Benincа, Universitа di Padova
Rajesh Bhatt, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Marcel den Dikken, CUNY Graduate Center
Liliane Haegeman, Universitй Charles de Gaulle Lille III
James McCloskey, University of California, Santa Cruz
Alice G.B. ter Meulen, University of Groningen
Toshiyuki Ogihara, University of Washington
Colin Phillips, University of Maryland, College Park
Bernhard Schwartz, McGill University
Henriлtte de Swart, Universiteit Utrecht
Lisa deMena Travis, McGill University