Formal Approach To Spanish Syntax

This book is a compilation of articles on different aspects of Spanish grammar in the areas of current theoretical syntax and semantics. The issue brings together scholars working on some formal aspects of Spanish predicative complementation (e.g., dequeísmo), neuter demonstrative pronouns, the subject of Psych verbs, the nature of non-verbal predication, and the internal structure of the Determiner Phrase (DP), cf. gender variation, among other topics. Linguists and philologists with interests in Spanish and/or in other Romance languages are the main target audience. The book will appeal also to researchers and students specializing in generative grammar, semantics and in the syntax/semantics interface. It will also be of interest to historical linguists and dialectologists addressing theoretical/formal issues (cf. Afro-Bolivian Spanish). The research in this book points to a cohesiveness in Spanish linguistics that lies in the integration of up-to-date empirically-based linguistic research with current theoretical assumptions on the nature of syntax and semantics.

The first usage-based approach of its kind, this volume contains twelve studies on key issues in Spanish syntax: word order, arguments, grammatical-relation marking, inalienable possession, ser and estar , adjective placement, small clauses and causatives. The studies are approached within a broad functionalist perspective. The studies strengthen the view that components of grammar intricately interact and that a usage-based approach to analyzing them offers new and insightful perspectives on some stubborn problems.

Recent years have witnessed a (re)surfacing of interest on the interaction of morphology and syntax. For many grammatical phenomena, it is not easy to draw a dividing line between syntactic and morphological structure. This has led to the assumption that syntax is the module responsible not only for deriving syntactically complex phrases but also for deriving morphologically complex items, both in inflection and word formation. There are however also good reasons to think that syntax is not involved in all morphological processes and that there are consistent areas of morphology that are independent from syntactic processes. This book presents a collection of papers where phenomena from Romance languages and varieties are analysed under contrasting views on how morphology and syntax interact. All the contributions follow the aim to investigate what the analysed phenomena tell us about their structural make‐up and the grammatical processes involved.

This book analyzes the linguistic diversity of South America based on approaches deeply rooted in the tradition of formal grammar. The chapters brought together in this contributed volume consider native languages all kinds of languages used in the region, including sign languages, indigenous languages and the romance languages (Portuguese and Spanish) originally introduced by European colonizers which underwent processes of transformation giving rise to new, local grammars. One fourth of the language families of the world are located in South America, but the majority of languages in the region are still understudied and out of the radar of theoretical linguistics mostly because their grammars are not well-known by international researchers. This book aims to fill this gap by bringing together studies rooted in the formal grammar approach first developed by Noam Chomsky, which sees language not only as mere corpora attested in oral and written production, but also as expressions of systems of thought and language production which are essential parts of human cognition. The book is divided in three parts – sign languages, romance languages and indigenous languages –, and brings together studies of the following South American languages: Brazilian Sign Language (Libras - Língua Brasileira de Sinais) Argentinian Sign Language (LSA - Lengua de Señas Argentina) Peruvian Sign Language (LSP- Lengua de Señas Peruana) Brazilian Portuguese Chilean and Argentinian Spanish Quechua Paraguayan Guarani A’ingae Macro-Jê languages Formal Approaches to the Languages of South America will be an invaluable resource both for theoretical linguists and cognitive scientists by providing access to top quality research on understudied languages and enabling these languages to be incorporated into comparative studies that can contribute to advance the knowledge of general principles governing all human languages.

Inquires in Hispanic Linguistics: From Theory to Empirical Evidence showcases eighteen chapters from formal and empirical approaches related to Spanish syntax and semantics, phonetics and phonology, and language contact and variation. Drawing on data from a number of monolingual and contact Spanish varieties, this volume represents the most current themes and methods in the field of Hispanic linguistics. The book brings together both established and emerging scholars, and readers will appreciate the variety of theoretical approaches, ranging from generative to variationist perspectives. The book is geared towards researchers and students in Spanish and Romance linguistics. Given its scope and quality, this volume is also well-suited for graduate courses in Spanish morphosyntax, phonetics, sociolinguistics, and language contact and change.

Using different theoretical approaches and frameworks, this book addresses a broad range of themes in contrastive linguistics, including inflection, derivation and compounding, tense, wh-questions, post-verbal subjects, focus and clitics, among others. Comparing English, German, Greek, Romance, Slavic and South Pacific languages, the book highlights the significance of the contrastive perspective for language-specific description and general interface issues, casting light on contrasts between languages at the levels of morphology and syntax. In this respect, it makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of language typology and language universals.

The contributions making up this volume in honor of Eloise Jelinek are written from a formalist perspective that deals with stereotypically functionalist questions about language. Jelinek's pioneering work in formalist syntax has shown that autonomous syntax need not exist in a vacuum. Her work has highlighted the importance of incorporating the effects of discourse and information structure on the syntactic representation. This book aims to invoke Jelinek's work either in substance or spirit. The focus is on Jelinek's influential Pronominal Argument Hypothesis as an "non-configurational" language; the influence of discourse-related interface phenomena on syntactic structure; the syntactic analysis of the grammaticalization; interactions between morphology, phonology and phonetics; and foundational issues about the link between formal grammar and function of language, as well as the methodological issues underlying the different approaches to linguistics.