Questions of Syntax

by Kayne, Richard S.

• ISBN13: 9780190863593
• ISBN10: 0190863595
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2019-04-19
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

There are far more syntactically distinct languages than we might have thought; yet there are far fewer than there might have been. Questions of Syntax collects sixteen papers authored by Richard S. Kayne, a preeminent theoretical syntactician, who has sought over the course of his career to understand why both these facts are true.

With a particular emphasis on comparative syntax, these chapters collectively consider how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. At issue, among other topics, are the relation between syntax and (certain aspects of) semantics, the relation between syntax and what appear to be lexical questions, the relation between syntax and morphology, the relation between syntax and certain aspects of phonology (insofar as silent elements and their properties play a substantial role), and the extent to which comparative syntax can provide new and decisive evidence bearing on these different kinds of questions. To Kayne, comparative syntax can shed light on what may initially seem lexical questions, and antisymmetry on the evolution of human language itself.

Taken as a whole, these essays elucidate the theoretical contributions of one the most influential scholars in linguistics.

Author Biography

Richard S. Kayne is Silver Professor of Linguistics at New York University. He received an A.B. in mathematics from Columbia College and a Ph.D in linguistics from M.I.T. He subsequently taught at the University of Paris VIII, at M.I.T., and at the CUNY Graduate Center. He has three honorary degrees and has previously published four collections of papers and two other books.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements

Section A. Comparative Syntax
Chapter 1 More Languages Than We Might Have Thought. Fewer Languages Than There Might Have Been
Chapter 2 Comparative Syntax
Chapter 3 Comparative Syntax and English Is To
Chapter 4 Having Need and Needing Have (with Stephanie Harves)

Section B. Silent Elements
Chapter 5 The Silence of Heads
Chapter 6 A Note on Some Even More Unusual Relative Clauses
Chapter 7 The Unicity of There and the Definiteness Effect
Chapter 8 Notes on French and English Demonstratives (with Jean-Yves Pollock)
Chapter 9 Some Thoughts on One and Two and Other Numerals
Chapter 10 English One and Ones as Complex Determiners
Chapter 11 Once and Twice
Chapter 12 A Note on Grand and its Silent Entourage

Section C. Ordering and Doubling
Chapter 13 Why Are There No Directionality Parameters?
Chapter 14 Toward a Syntactic Reinterpretation of Harris and Halle (2005)
Chapter 15 Locality and Agreement in French Hyper-Complex Inversion (with Jean-Yves Pollock)
Chapter 16 Clitic Doubling and Agreement in French Hyper-Complex Inversion

Bibliography
Index