Alessandra Giorgi - Böcker

This book examines the interactions between the morphosyntax and the semantic interpretation of tense and aspectual forms in the Germanic and Romance languages. These languages diverge not only in their variety of tense and aspectual forms, but also in the distribution and interpretation of given forms. Adopting Noam Chomsky's minimalist framework, AG and FP attempt to provide theoretical explanations for the observed patterns of form and meaning which link the morphosyntactic properties of languages in both universal and language-particular constraints on interpretation.

When studying the two concepts of tense and aspect linguists have commonly kept apart their semantic and syntactic properties. The authors bridge the gap between the semantic and syntactic properties of verb tense and aspect, and suggest a unified account of tense and aspect using Chomsky's Principles and Parameters framework. They compare tense and aspect systems in Romance and Germanic languages, allowing them to hypothesize principles of universal grammar related to tense and aspect, as well as explain language-specific phenomena. "They have achieved results in the area of tense and aspect that go well beyond what had been done previously." Richard Kayne, CUNY (series editor)

This book considers the semantic and syntactic nature of indexicals - linguistic expressions, as in I, you, this, that, yesterday, tomorrow, whose reference shifts from utterance to utterance.There is a long-standing controversy as to whether the semantic reference point is already present as syntactic material or whether it is introduced post-syntactically by semantic rules of interpretation. Alessandra Giorgi resolves this controversy through an empirically grounded exploration of temporal indexicality, arguing that the speaker's temporal location is specified in the syntactic structure. She supports her analysis with theoretical and empirical arguments based on data from English, Italian, Chinese, and Romanian. Professor Giorgi addresses some difficult and longstanding issues in the analysis of temporal phenomena - including the Italian imperfect indicative, the properties of the so-called future-in-the-past, and the properties of Free Indirect Discourse - and shows that her framework can account elegantly for all of them. Carefully argued, succinct, and clearly written her book will appeal widely to semanticists in linguistics and philosophy from graduate level upwards and to linguists interested in the syntax-semantics interface.

This book considers important aspects of the syntax of sentences and their relation to the extra-sentential context. The relation between a sentence and the context is frequently reckoned to be in some sense ¨syntax-free¨, in that it is not syntactically represented but introduced post-syntactically by semantic rules of interpretation. Alessandra Giorgi develops a different perspective through an empirically grounded exploration of temporal indexicality: she argues that the speaker's temporal location is specified in the syntactic structure. She supports her analysis with theoretical and empirical arguments based on data mainly from English and Italian but also considering Chinese and Romanian. Professor Giorgi addresses some difficult and longstanding issues in the analysis of temporal phenomena - including the Italian imperfect indicative, the properties of the so-called future-in-the-past, and the properties of Free Indirect Discourse. She shows that her framework can account elegantly for all of them. Carefully argued, succinct, and clearly written her book will appeal widely to syntacticians and semanticists from graduate level upwards and to linguists interested in the syntax-semantics interface.

Alessandra Giorgi and Giuseppe Longobardi's important 1991 study of the argument structure of lexical projections, in particular of noun phrases, makes substantial advances in this relatively neglected area. Working within a Government and Binding framework, the authors present strong arguments in favour of the existence of empty categories, and evidence for the correct understanding of word order parameters and of Chomsky's Projection Principle. In particular, they elaborate and discuss a number of tests intended to define under which lexical and syntactic conditions an empty pronominal subject may or must occur in a Noun Phrase. The levels of structural attachment of the arguments of a head Noun are carefully established by supporting assumptions made in this domain with independent evidence. As well as its theoretical advances, this book provides a descriptive analysis of nominal structure in Romance, and compares it with corresponding structure in Germanic languages. It offers a valuable introduction to Italian phrase structure.