This volume contains seventeen papers on coordinating constructions in languages from different families and different continents (see p.vii for a world map showing the most important languages treated in this book). The definition of the term coordination will be discussed in some detail in §11 below. For the moment we take it for granted that coordinating constructions can be identified on the basis of their symmetry: A construction [A B] is considered coordinate if the two parts A and B have the same status (in some sense that needs to be specified further), whereas it is not coordinate if it is asymmetrical and one of the parts is clearly more salient or important, while the other part is in some sense subordinate.
Overt subjects are usually considered as a property of finite clauses. However, most Romance languages permit specified subjects in a broad range of infinitive constructions. Guido Mensching analyzes this phenomenon in stages of French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and other Romance varieties.
The essays in this volume, dating from 1991 onwards, focus on highly characteristic constructions of English, Romance languages, and German. Among clause-internal structures, the most puzzling are English double objects, particle constructions, and non-finite complementation (infinitives, participles and gerunds). Separate chapters in Part I offer relatively complete analyses of each. These analyses are integrated into the framework of Emonds (2000), wherein a simplified subcategorization theory fully expresses complement selection.
This book is a research monograph on impersonal si constructions (ISC) in Italian within the Minimalist program framework. The book offers a new point of view on ISCs, providing a new set of crucial data that were previously unknown, and pointing out many characteristics of ISCs that were overlooked before. It results in the introduction of additional means of syntactic analysis at the edge between narrow syntax and pragmatics.
Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English is a corpus-based investigation of cleft and pseudo-cleft constructions in contemporary English. It is the first study of such constructions to fully explore the view--now widespread among linguists--that any attempt to satisfactorily explain their structural and functional characteristics must refer to concepts directly related to their use in communication. Peter Collins states that it is necessary to invoke such discourse-relevant notions as information, topic and theme. By using a standard written corpus and a standard spoken corpus of British English, the author is able to analyze systematically the discourse-functions of clefts and pseudo-clefts, provide information on the frequency of these constructions in different genres, and prevent the 'tidying-up' found in examples devised by the linguist. Cleft and Pseudo-Cleft Constructions in English is an excellent study of the interrelations of grammar, pragmatics, and discourse, and a persuasive illustration of the importance of corpus-based approaches to linguistic description.
