The major aim of this volume is to investigate infinitival structures from a diachronic point of view and, simultaneously, to embed the diachronic findings into the ongoing theoretical discussion on non-finite clauses in general. All contributions subscribe to a dynamic approach to infinitival clauses by investigating their origin, development and loss in miscellaneous patterns and across different languages.

This volume presents studies on pronouns in embedded contexts, and offers fundamental insights into this central area of research. Much of the recent research on pronouns has shown that embedded environments, such as clausal complements of attitude predicates, provide a window into the nature of pronouns. Pronouns in such environments not only exhibit familiar distinctions such as that between bound and referential pronouns; if they refer to the attitude holder, they also participate in a broader range of phenomena, e.g., distinguishing between a de se reading (involving a conscious self-directed belief) and a de re reading (involving an accidental belief about oneself). Topics covered include: the semantics of attitude reports that contain pronominal elements, the semantics of pronominal features and their connection to indexicality, new insights in the connection of pronominal typology and logophoricity or anti-logophoricity, and finally, the localization of embedded pronouns within a bigger picture involving the nature of perspective and the analysis of quasi-pronominal phenomena such as sequence of tense.

The book provides a formal analysis of root and complement clauses in Old Romanian, focussing on the combination of Balkan syntactic patterns and Romance morphology. It presents a new perspective on the manifestation of Balkan Sprachbund properties in the language, and on the nature of parametric differences in relation to other Romance languages.

This book presents theoretical and experimental analyses of the nature of early verbs. At around the age of two years old, children start to combine words and produce their first verbs. Verbal items appear later than nouns in a child’s speech and refer to the relational concepts in the world that are represented in syntax through the argument structure. The central set of data investigated here is based on the analysis of the features of first verbal productions in Italian. Since the appearance of verbs implies the mastery of a mapping procedure between syntactic positions and semantic roles, the syntactic regularities found for each lexical verb class suggest that the relation at the syntax-semantics interface is well-established early on. The non-adult-like sentences are those which involve the mastery of the scope-discourse semantic interface or higher functional syntactic categories. The analysis of the delay in the production and comprehension of some constructions here uncovers some general characteristics of language acquisition devices.

This volume addresses core issues on complement clauses, focusing on Portuguese (European, Brazilian and Mozambican varieties). It contributes to the discussion of complementation, providing an overview of how theoretical syntax and acquisition studies may combine to broaden our knowledge about the topic. The articles are organized in two sections, each one followed by a comment paper: the first section, more theoretical in its nature, gathers contributions analyzing major syntactic aspects of complementation in Portuguese, from a synchronic and a diachronic point of view; the second section includes articles on L1 and L2 acquisition of Portuguese complementation. Both sections especially focus on infinitival structures; mood selection and the interpretation of subjects in finite complement clauses are also topics of particular relevance. The volume is meant for researchers and students interested in formal syntax and acquisition in general and Portuguese syntax and acquisition in particular.

This volume presents sixteen new articles on the acquisition of Romance languages by both well-established researchers and vital new contributors to the field. Under a generative umbrella, the articles in this collection investigate the acquisition of French, Romanian, Spanish, Catalan, Italian and Portuguese across different contexts including first language acquisition, bilingual acquisition, specifically impaired first language acquisition, child L2 acquisition, second language acquisition, as well as first language attrition. This volume advances our understanding of how languages are acquired and how the study of Romance languages contributes to clarifying challenging open questions on the acquisition of key functional categories and other related phenomena. In particular, the articles included assess complexity as a relevant factor shaping children’s acquisition of syntactic and phonological structures, they refine crucial theoretical constructs such as parameter setting and language transfer, and propose language change as another crucial factor affecting the process of language acquisition and attrition.

An innovative exploration of the interface between grammar, meaning and form.