The Romance Verb

Structural linguists have focused on the morphological patternings of the Romance verb system, both from the point of view of systematizing variation and of mapping meaning on the form. Transformationalists, however, have tended to focus on the English auxiliaries. This book fills a gap in previous accounts by investigating the syntax of Romance verb-form usage, concerning both the verb itself and a simple sentence and such phenomena as sequence of tense in complex sentences. Adopting both a synchronic and diachronic perspective, and combining the approaches of structuralists and transformationalists, the author argues that there are still valid ideas to be drawn from the pre-Chomskyan concern with paradigmatic structure.

This is a comprehensive comparative-historical survey of patterns of alternation in the Romance verb that persist through time but have long ceased to be conditioned by any phonological or functional determinant. The work explores the status of these patterns and their persistence, self-replication, and reinforcement over time.

This book is the first comprehensive comparative-historical survey of patterns of alternation in the Romance verb that persist through time but have long ceased to be conditioned by any phonological or functional determinant. It explores the status of these patterns and their persistence, self-replication, and reinforcement over time.

Dr. Gary Chapman has spent his life helping people communicate love more effectively and in turn build more satisfying and lasting relationships. His book The Five Love Languages is a regular on the New York Times Best Sellers list--even after being in print for fifteen years--and has made the term "love language" a part of everyday speech. Love Is a Verb takes his teaching to the next level. Rather than a typical marriage self-help book filled with lengthy explanations of principles and techniques, it is a compilation of true stories displaying love in action. These stories--written by everyday people--go straight to the hearts of readers, who often say that illustrations are the most effective parts of a book. Gary Chapman adds a "Love Lesson" to each story, showing readers how they can apply the same principles to their own relationships.

"This book provides a detailed account of verb movement across more than twenty standard and non-standard Romance varieties. Norma Schifano examines the position of the verb with respect to a wide selection of hierarchically-ordered adverbs, as laid out in Cinque's (1999) seminal work. She uses extensive empirical data to demonstrate that, contrary to traditional assumptions, it is possible to identify at least four distinct macro-typologies in the Romance languages: these macro-typologies stem from a compensatory mechanism between syntax and morphology in licensing the Tense, Aspect, and Mood interpretation of the verb. The volume adopts a hybrid cartographic/minimalist approach, in which cartography provides the empirical tools of investigation, and minimalist theory provides the technical motivations for the movement phenomena that are observed. It provides a valuable tool for the examination of fundamental morphosyntactic properties from a cross-Romance perspective, and constitutes a useful point of departure for further investigations into the nature and triggers of verb movement cross-linguistically."--Dust jacket flap.

The author questions the status quo in Romance linguistics. The Ergative/Unaccusative syntactic approach has been accepted as the orthodox analytical paradigm. He re-examines both the theoretical imperative and the empirical evidence for that approach, drawing on a large amount of new and surprising data from Italian, Spanish, French and Catalan.

This volume provides the first book-length study of the controversial topic of Verb Second and related properties in a range of Medieval Romance varieties. It presents an examination and analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data from Old French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, Spanish, and Sardinian, in order to assess whether these were indeed Verb Second languages. Sam Wolfe argues that V-to-C movement is a point of continuity across all the medieval varieties - unlike in the modern Romance languages - but that there are rich patterns of synchronic and diachronic variation in the medieval period that have not previously been observed and investigated. These include differences in the syntax-pragmatics mapping, the locus of verb movement, the behaviour of clitic pronouns, the syntax of subject positions, matrix/embedded asymmetries, and the null argument properties of the languages in question. The book outlines a detailed formal cartographic analysis of both the attested synchronic patterns and the diachronic evolution of Romance clausal structure. The findings have widespread implications for the understanding of both the key typological property of Verb Second and the development of Latin into the modern Romance languages.