The central idea of Dynamic Antisymmetry is that movement and phrase structure are not independent properties of grammar; more specifically, that movement is triggered by the geometry of phrase structure. Assuming a minimalist framework, movement is traced back to the necessity for natural language to organize words in linear order at the interface with the perceptual-articulatory module.Andrea Moro uses this innovative perspective to analyze several empirical domains, focusing on small clauses, split wh-movement, and clitic constructions. In a final speculative chapter, he examines the general consequences for the design of grammar implied by Dynamic Antisymmetry.The book is self-contained, with a synopsis of current theories of movement and a synthetic presentation of the theory of antisymmetry. An appendix presents the essentials of a unified theory of copular sentences, which plays a central role in the argument and has several important consequences for syntax, for example, for expletives and locality.Linguistic Inquiry Monograph No. 38

This research monograph is an empirical and theoretical study of clause-final verbal complexes in the history of German. The book presents corpus studies of Middle High German and Early New High German and surveys of contemporary varieties of German. These investigations of the verbal complex address not only the frequencies of the word orders, but also the linguistic factors that influence them. On that empirical basis, the analysis adopted is the classic verb-final approach, with alternative orders derived by Verb (Projection) Raising. Verb Raising in these historical and modern varieties is subject to morphological, prosodic, and sociolinguistic restrictions, suggesting that the orders in question are not driven by narrow syntax but by their effects at the interface with phonology. This study will be of interest to students and scholars studying the diachronic syntax of German, West Germanic dialect syntax, and the relationship between prosody and word order.

This volume is the first to present a detailed survey of the systems of verb-verb complexes in Asian languages from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective. Many Asian languages share, to a greater or lesser extent, a unique class of compound verbs consisting of a main verb and a quasi-auxiliary verb known as a 'vector' or 'explicator'. These quasi-auxiliary verbs exhibit unique grammatical behaviour that suggests that they have an intermediate status between full lexical verbs and wholly reduced auxiliaries. They are also semantically unique, in that when they are combined with main verbs, they can convey a rich variety of functional meanings beyond the traditional notions of tense, aspect, and modality, such as manner and intensity of action, benefaction for speaker or hearer, and polite or derogatory styles in speech. In this book, leading specialists in a range of Asian languages offer an in-depth analysis of the long-standing questions relating to the diachrony and geographical distribution of verb-verb complexes. The findings have implications for the general understanding of the grammaticalization of verb categories, complex predicate formation, aktionsart and event semantics, the morphology-syntax-semantics interface, areal linguistics, and typology.

The monograph focuses on the typological differences between the four most widely spoken Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian) and Czech. Utilizing data from InterCorp, the parallel corpus project of the Czech National Corpus, the book analyses various categories (expression of potential non-volitional participation, iterativity, causation, beginning of an action and adverbial subordination) to discover differences and similarities between Czech and the Romance languages. Due to the massive amount of data mined, as well as the high number of languages examined, the monograph presents general and individual typological features of the four Romance languages and Czech that often exceed what has previously been accepted in the field of comparative linguistics.

In this volume, Germen de Haan gives a multi-faceted view of the syntax, sociolinguistics, and phonology of West-Frisian. The author discusses distinct aspects of the syntax of verbs in Frisian: finiteness and Verb Second, embedded root phenomena, the verbal complex, verbal complementation, and complementizer agreement. Because Frisian has minority language status and is of interest to sociolinguists, the author reviews the linguistic changes in Frisian under the influence of the dominant Dutch language and, more generally, reflects on how to deal with contact-induced change in grammar. Finally, in three phonological articles, the author discusses nasalization in Frisian, the putatively symmetrical vowel inventory of Frisian, and the variation between schwa + sonorant consonants and syllabic sonorant consonants.

Many languages have constructions in which verbs cluster. But few languages have verb clusters as rich and complex as Continental West Germanic and Hungarian. Furthermore the precise ordering properties and the variation in the cluster patterns are remarkably similar in Hungarian and Germanic. This similarity is, of course, unexpected since Hungarian is not an Indo-European language like the Germanic language group. Instead it appears that the clustering, inversion and roll-up patterns found may constitute an areal feature. This book presents the relevant language data in considerable detail, taking into account also the variation observed, for example, among dialects. But it also discusses the various analytical approaches that can be brought to bear on this set of phenomena. In particular, there are various hypotheses as to what is the underlying driving force behind cluster formation: stress patterns, aspectual features, morpho- syntactic constraints? And the analytical approaches are closely linked to a number of questions that are at the core of current syntactic theorizing: does head movement exist or should all apparent verb displacement be reduced to remnant movement, are morphology and syntax really just different sides of the same coin?