Principles and Parameters in a VSO Language

Ian Roberts grew up in North Wales and did his graduate work at the University of Southern California. He was previously Professor and Head of English Linguistics at the University of Stuttgart prior to his current post as Professor and Head of Linguistics at the University of Cambridge.

A significant body of research on the motivations for and mechanisms of word order variation (e.g., case, the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) etc.) have dominated recent work in minimalist principles and parameters syntax. Roberts' book provides a very important addition to this canon of work, bringing in new evidence from a relatively understudied language. ... In addition to this important technical and theoretical contribution, Roberts' book fills a gap in the literature on the syntax of the Celtic languages. ...this is work of importance not only to Celticists and VSO-ologists, but also to any syntactician seriously considering the nature and variation in word order derivation and constituent licensing.