Against the background of the past half century’s typological and generative work on comparative syntax, this volume brings together 16 papers considering what we have learned and may still be able to learn about the nature and extent of syntactic variation. More specifically, it offers a multi-perspective critique of the Principles and Parameters approach to syntactic variation, evaluating the merits and shortcomings of the pre-Minimalist phase of this enterprise and considering and illustrating the possibilities opened up by recent empirical and theoretical advances.

This second edition of Syntactic Theory: A Formal Introduction expands and improves upon a truly unique introductory syntax textbook. Like the first edition, its focus is on the development of precisely formulated grammars whose empirical predictions can be directly tested. There is also considerable emphasis on the prediction and evaluation of grammatical hypotheses, as well as on integrating syntactic hypotheses with matters of semantic analysis.

The Origins of Grammar: Evidence from Early Language Comprehension

How do children achieve adult grammatical competence? How do they induce syntactical rules from the bewildering linguistic input that surrounds them? The major debates in language acquisition theory today focus not on whether there are some sensitivities to syntactic information but rather which sensitivities are available to children and how they might be translated into the organizing principles that get syntactic learning off the ground.

The Meaning of Focus Particles - A Comparative Perspective

Focus particles--even, only, also, merely--play an important role in English in various syntactic and semantic domains such as coordination, focusing, emphatic reflexives, concessive constructions, and quantification. The syntactic properties of these expressions pose numerous problems for current syntactic frameworks and the highly context-dependent and subjective nature of their meaning presents a challenge for semantic theories.

Argument and Rhetoric. Adverbial Connectors in the History of English

the book is the first corpus-based study giving a comprehensive overview of English items which have been used as adverbial connectors ('conjuncts', 'linking adverbials'), from Old English to Present-Day English. The author analyses different characteristics of the make-up, functions and use of connectives, and considers morphological and syntactic factors as well as pragmatic, textlinguistic and socio-cultural aspects.