Directionality and Logical Form

On the Scope of Focusing Particles and Wh-in-situ

von Josef Bayer

328 Seiten, Hardcover

Kurzbeschreibung des Verlags

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.

• Reihe: Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory
• ISBN: 9780792337522
• Sprache: Englisch
• Erscheinungsdatum: 30.11.1995
• Genre: Sprachwissenschaft, Literaturwissenschaft/Allgemeine und Vergleichende Sprachwissenschaft
• Verlag: Springer Netherland