This volume brings together current research in theoretical syntax and its interfaces in the Polynesian language family, with chapters focusing on Hawaiian, Māori, Niuean, Samoan, and Tongan. Languages in this family present multiple characteristics of particular interest for comparative syntactic research, and in recent years, data from Polynesian languages has also contributed to advances in the fields of prosody and semantics, as well as to the study of parametric variation. The chapters in this volume offer in-depth analyses of a range of theoretical issues at the syntax-semantics and syntax-prosody interfaces, both within individual languages and from a comparative Polynesian perspective. They examine key topics including: word order variation, ergativity and case systems, causativization, negation, raising, modality and superlatives, and the left periphery of both the sentential and nominal domains. The findings not only shed light on the theoretical typology of Polynesian languages, but also have implications for linguistic theory as a whole.

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert