Syntax and its Limits

In this book, leading linguists explore the empirical scope of syntactic theory, by concentrating on a set of phenomena for which both syntactic and nonsyntactic analyses initially appear plausible. Exploring the nature of such phenomena permits a deeper understanding of the nature of syntax and of neighbouring modules and their interaction. The book contributes to both traditional work in generative syntax and to the recent emphasis placed on questions related to the interfaces. The major topics covered include areas of current intensive research within the Minimalist Program and syntactic theory more generally, such as constraints on scope and binding relations, information-structural effects on syntactic structure, the structure of words and idioms, argument- and event-structural alternations, and the nature of the relations between syntactic, semantic, and phonological representations. After the editors' introduction, the volume is organized into four thematic sections: architectures; syntax and information structure; syntax and the lexicon; and lexical items at the interfaces. The volume is of interest to syntactic theorists, as well as linguists and cognitive scientists working in neighbouring disciplines such as lexical and compositional semantics, pragmatics and discourse structure, and morphophonology, and anyone with an interest in the modular architecture of the language faculty.

1 - Introduction
2 - Harmonic Derivationalism
3 - Reconstruction, Control, and Movement
4 - Linearizing Empty Edges
5 - Evidence for the Use of Verb Telicity in Sentence Comprehension
6 - Focus Intervention in Declaratives
7 - Root Phenomena as Interface Phenomena: Evidence from non-sententials
8 - 'Contrast' and its Relation to wa in Japanese and nun in Korean
9 - Adjuncts Within Words and Complex Heads
10 - Still Puzzled by Adjectival Passives?
11 - The Role of Syntax in Stress Assignment in Serbo-Croatian
12 - Allosemy, Idioms, and Their Domains: Evidence from adjectival participles
13 - The 'No Agent Idioms' Hypothesis
14 - On the Syntax and Semantics of the Japanese Comparative
15 - Bare Number
16 - Obligatory Resumption in Greek Free and Restrictive Relatves
17 - Ethical Datives: A puzzle for syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and their interfaces
18 - The Syntacticization of Discourse
19 - A Syntactic Answer to a Pragmatic Puzzle: The case of asymmetric "and"

Raffaella Folli is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Ulster. Her research interests are theoretical and comparative syntax and language processing, with special focus on the syntax-lexicon and the syntax-semantics interface. She has published her work in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry, Journal of Linguistics, Lingua, Trends in Cognitive Science among others, as well as in several edited volumes. Christina Sevdali is a lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Ulster. She received her BA from the University of Crete and her MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her main area of expertise is Ancient Greek syntax, but her research interests also include multilingual acquisition, and the syntax - morphology interface, particularly case. Her paper "Ancient Greek infinitives and Phases" will appear in Syntax and her collaboration with Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou on "Patterns of dative -nominative alternations" will appear in the Proceedings of NELS 41. Robert Truswell is Assistant Professor of Syntax at the University of Ottawa. Prior to that, he was a PhD student at University College London, and a postdoc at Tufts University and the University of Edinburgh. He has published on various aspects of the syntax-semantics interface, including Events, Phrases, and Questions (OUP, 2011), and has other research interests in diachronic syntax and the evolution of language.