For a long time prepositions seemed to enjoy a clandestine status in linguistic research. This has changed with a novel path of inquiry into the inner structure of complex prepositional expressions. In a unique approach to the examination of the outer syntax of prepositions the author uses established and new syntactic and statistical tests to achieve a convincing hierarchy of thematic roles expressed by prepositional phrases.

The main goal of this book is to propose an analysis of aspects of the syntax of a subset of defective sentential domains: clausal domains that are deficient in terms of their specification for certain features. These features, including primarily tense and agreement, have in general been taken to play a central role in syntactic operations associated with subject realization and interpretation, Case marking and control. The class of such defective domains varies somewhat across languages, including in general gerunds and infinitives, and sometimes subjunctives.

This volume includes a selection of papers that address a wide range of acquisition phenomena from different Romance languages and all share a common theoretical approach based on the Principles and Parameters theory. They favour, discuss and sometimes challenge traditional explanations of first and second language acquisition in terms of maturation of general principles universal to all languages.

This volume contains 14 chapters, each reflecting a paper originally presented at the “Third International Symposium on the Languages Spoken in Europe and North and Central Asia” (‘LENCA-3’) held at Tomsk State Pedagogical University in Tomsk, a city in south-central Siberia, Russian Federation, during June 27-30, 2006. The symposium was organized to investigate a broad range of issues involving systems of coordination and subordination in complex sentences in the languages of Eurasia.