The Limits of Syntactic Variation

by Biberauer, Theresa

• ISBN13: 9789027255150
• ISBN10: 9027255156
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-09-15
• Publisher: John Benjamins Pub Co

Summary

"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."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Parametric versus functional explanations of syntactic universals	p. 75
Three fundamental issues in parametric linguistics	p. 109
On the syntactic flexibility of formal features	p. 143
Expletives, datives, and the tension between morphology and syntax	p. 175
Mapping a Parochial Lexicon onto a universal semantics	p. 219
Aspect matters in the middle	p. 247
The null subject parameter and correlating properties: The case of Creole languages	p. 271
The Case-F valuation parameter in Romance	p. 295
Silent arguments without pro: The case of Basque	p. 311
Case morphology and radical pro-drop	p. 331
The macroparameter in a microparametric world	p. 351
Topic prominence and null subjects	p. 375
Non-configurationality: Free word order and argument drop in Turkish	p. 411
Diachronic stability and feature interpretability	p. 441
Can children tell us anything we did not know about parameter clustering?	p. 459
Parameter setting and input reduction	p. 483
Index	p. 517
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