Josef Bayer - Böcker

This work provides a detailed treatment of the syntax of focusing particles in a cross-linguistic perspective. The derivation of logical forms is shown to be under the control, not only of the ECP and subjacency, but also of directionality of government and the particular word-order parameter that holds in a given language: head-final languages systematically disallow certain derivations or readings that are available in head-initial languages. The reason is that heads that deviate in their selection properties from canonical head-finality project a directionality barrier. Various strategies are explored by which this barrier can be circumvented. Although the theory is developed mainly on the basis of the head position in German, it can be directly used to explain constraints on the scope of Wh-in-situ in Bengali and closely related languages.

German is a language which has received a lot of attention in linguistics, and data from German had a substantial in?uence on the formation of linguistic theory. The in?uence this language had so far on psycholinguistics and on s- tactic processing in particular is much more limited, although the last 10 years have seen a growing interest in psycholinguistic investigations of German. The present monograph will build on earlier work and develop it further toward an account of syntactic comprehension on the basis of theoretical as well as - perimental investigations. The verb-?nal nature, the free order of constituents, and the morphological Case system of German offer a rich domain for exp- rations which will be shown to reshape our knowledge about human sentence processing in general. Much of the research which led to this monograph has been carried out at theFriedrichSchiller UniversityJenaandhasbeenconcluded atKonstanzU- versity. Our research has been supported between 1997 and 2005 by grant Ba 1178/4 of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under the title L- guage Comprehension and Variable Word Order - Syntactic and Extrasyntactic Factors in Processing German Sentences.We are indebted to the DFG for this continuous support over the years, and in particular to Dr. Manfred Briegel and Dr. Susanne Anschutz for their administrative help.

Syntactic complexity has always been a matter of intense investigation in formal linguistics. Since complex syntax is clearly evidenced by sentential embedding and since embedding of one clause/phrase in another is taken to signal recursivity of the grammar, the capacity of computing syntactic complexity is of central interest to the recent hypothesis that syntactic recursion is the defining property of natural language. In the light of more recent claims according to which complex syntax is not a universal property of all living languages, the issue of how to detect and define syntactic complexity has been revived with a combination of classical and new arguments. This volume contains contributions about the formal complexity of natural language, about specific issues of clausal embedding, and about syntactic complexity in terms of grammar-external interfaces in the domain of language acquisition.

Particles have for the longest time been ignored by linguistic research. School-type grammars ignored them since they did not fit into pre-conceived notions of categories, and since they did not seem to enter into grammatical relations commonly discussed in the genre. Only in the last century did some publications discuss particles – and even then only from the perspective of their discourse and pragmatic functions, i.e. their dependance on certain previous contexts, and concluded that the function of particles for the grammar of sentences and their interpretation remains obscure. The current volume presents 11 new articles that take a fresh look at particles: As it turns out, particles inform many aspects of syntax and semantics, too – both diachronically and synchronically: Particles are shown to have fascinating syntactic properties with respect to projection, locality, movement and scope. Their interpretative contributions can be studied with the rigorous methods of formal semantics. Cross-linguistic and diachronic investigations shed new light on the genesis and development of these intriguing – and under-estimated – kinds of lexical elements.

Bavarian syntax is widely known for its productive „Doubly-Filled COMP“ (DFC) property and for the rare phenomenon of inflecting complementizers. It is less widely known that DFC also extends to declaratives. Topicalization out of a preposed CP can leave a gap, with various consequences. DFC is in addition not available as unconditionally as previously thought. Short wh-words seem to blur the traditional division between heads (C) and phrases (wh-XP). As for the inner clausal syntax, Bavarian shows hierarchically organized discourse particles among which the clitic version ‘n of the particle denn plays a distinct role. Various tests as well as empirical investigations suggests that ‘n has lost its semantic residues and has turned into a wh-agreement marker. The studies presented in this book are relevant for anyone interested in German morpho-syntax and in syntactic theory, linguistic micro-variation, comparative Germanic and historical linguistics. It touches on various questions concerning the licensing of empty categories, the clausal architecture, word order and the consequences of grammaticalization for the synchronic appearance of the language. As such, the book is relevant for students and researchers of syntactic theory, variation, German(ic) syntax, German(ic) dialectology, comparative linguistics and the development of language.

Directionality and Logical Form provides a detailed treatment of the syntax of focusing particles, such as only and even in a cross-linguistic perspective. The derivation of logical forms is shown to be under the control, not only of the ECP and subjacency, but also of directionality of government and the particular word-order parameter that holds in a given language: head-final languages systematically disallow certain derivations or readings that are available in head-initial languages. The reason is that heads that deviate in their selection properties from canonical head-finality project a directionality barrier. Various strategies are explored by which this barrier can be circumvented. Although the theory is developed mainly on the basis of the head position in German, it can be directly used to explain constraints on the scope of Wh-in-situ in Bengali and closely related languages. Audience: Syntacticians and semanticists interested in parametric variation, as well as linguists working on Germanic and/or Indo-Aryan languages.