Ways of Structure Building

This volume addresses some of the most important approaches to the following key questions in contemporary generative syntactic theory: What are the operations available for (syntactic) structure-building in natural languages? What are the triggers behind them? and Which constraints are involved in the operations? Internationally recognised scholars and young researchers propose new answers on the basis of detailed discussions of a wide range of phenomena (Gapping, Right-Node-Raising, Comparative Deletion, Across-The-Board movement, Tough-constructions, Nominalizations, Scope interactions, Wh-movement, A-movement, Case and Agreement relations, among others). Their discussions draw on evidence from a rich variety of languages, including Brazilian Portuguese, Bulgarian, Croatian, English, German, Icelandic, Japanese, Spanish, Vata, and Vietnamese.

The proposals presented illustrate the shift in the locus of the explanation of linguistic phenomena that characterizes contemporary linguistic theory: a shift, in many cases, from a model which relies on properties of systems external to narrow syntax (such as the Lexicon or the Phonetic Form component) to one which relies on properties of the structure-building mechanisms themselves. The volume will interest researchers and students of theoretical linguistics from advanced undergraduate and above.

Myriam Uribe-Etxebarria is Associate Professor at the Department of Linguistics and Basque Studies, University of the Basque Country. Her research interest focuses on the syntax-semantics interface, with particular attention to the grammar of temporal relations, wh-questions, and focus. She is the author of Interface Licensing Conditions on Negative Polarity Items: A Theory of Polarity and Tense Interactions (UPV-EHU, 2004), and co-editor of Theoretical Issues at the Morphology-Syntax Interface (ASJU, UPV-EHU, 1997), Romance Linguistics: Theoretical Perspectives (John Benjamins, 1998), and Noun Phrases and Nominalization in Basque: Syntax and Semantics (John Benjamins, in press). She has published her work in various journals and edited volumes.

Vidal Valmala is Associate Professor of English Language and Linguistics at the University of the Basque Country. Among his research topics are ellipsis and the syntactic realization of topic and focus. He has published articles on floating quantification, fragments, VP-ellipsis, and Comparative Correlatives.