This volume contains twelve chapters on the derivation of and the correlates to verb initial word order. The studies in this volume cover such widely divergent languages as Irish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Old Irish, Biblical Hebrew, Jakaltek, Mam, Lummi (Straits Salish), Niuean, Malagasy, Palauan, K'echi', and Zapotec, from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, including Minimalism, information structure, and sentence processing. The first book to take a cross-linguistic comparative approach to verb initial syntax, this volume provides new data to some old problems and debates and explores some innovative approaches to the derivation of verb initial order.

This volume contains 12 chapters on the derivation of and the correlates to verb initial word order. The studies cover such widely divergent languages as Irish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Old Irish, and Biblical Hebrew.

This volume contains twelve chapters on the derivation of and the correlates to verb initial word order. The studies in this volume cover such widely divergent languages as Irish, Welsh, Scots Gaelic, Old Irish, Biblical Hebrew, Jakaltek, Mam, Lummi (Straits Salish), Niuean, Malagasy, Palauan, K'echi', and Zapotec, from a wide variety of theoretical perspectives, including Minimalism, information structure, and sentence processing. The first book to take a cross-linguistic comparative approach to verb initial syntax, this volume provides new data to some old problems and debates and explores some innovative approaches to the derivation of verb initial order.

This collection of papers brings together the most recent crosslinguistic research on the syntax of verb-initial languages. Authors with a variety of theoretical perspectives pursue the questions of how verb-initial order is derived, and how these derivations play into the characteristic syntax of these languages. Major themes in the volume include the role of syntactic category in languages with verb-initial order; the different mechanisms of deriving V-initial order; and the universal correlates of the order. This book should be of interest to scholars who work on theoretical approaches to word order derivation, typologists, and those who work on the particular grammars of Celtic, Zapotec, Mixtec, Polynesian, Austronesian, Mayan, Salish, Aboriginal, and Nilotic languages.

Particles are words that do not change their form through inflection and do not fit easily into the established system of parts of speech. Examples include the negative particle "not," the infinitival particle "to" (as in "to go"), and do and let in "do tell me" and "let's go." Particles investigates the constraints on the distribution and placement of verbal particles. A proper understanding of these constraints yields insight into the structure of various secondary predicative constructions. Starting out from a detailed analysis of complex particle constructions, den Dikken brings forth accounts of triadic constructions and Dative Shift, and the relationship between dative and transitive causative constructions--all of them built on the basic structural template proposed from complex particle constructions. Drawing on data from Norwegian, English, Dutch, German, West Flemish, and other languages, this book will interest a wide audience of students and specialists.

Looking at the grammars of Hebrew and several varieties of Arabic, Shlonsky examines clausal architecture and verb movement and the role of agreement in natural language, using Chomsky's Government and Binding approach.