Susann Fischer

This book presents a new perspective on the interaction between word-order and grammaticalisation by investigating the changes that stylistic fronting and oblique subjects have undergone in Romance (Catalan, French, Spanish) as compared to Germanic (English, Icelandic). It discusses a great deal of historical comparative data showing that stylistic fronting and oblique subjects have (had) a semantic effect in the Germanic and in the Romance languages, and that they both appear in the same functional category. The loss of stylistic fronting and oblique subjects is seen as an effect of grammaticalisation, where grammaticalisation is taken to be a regular case of parameter change. In contrast to previous and recent approaches to grammaticalisation, however, the author shows that it is not the loss of morphology that triggers grammaticalisation with subsequent word-order changes, but that the word-order change sets off grammaticalisation in the functional categories, which is then followed by the loss of morphology.

Word-Order Change as a Source of Grammaticalisation

Roberta D'Alessandro

Gunnar Hrafn Hrafnbjargarson

This book brings together scholars who have been working on agreement restrictions within the generative framework. The articles range from syntactic to morphological approaches, investigating different domains of agreement restrictions, such as the Person Case Constraint, nominative objects, and Quirky Case Restrictions in a series of European and Non-European languages, providing new data and novel analyses for both, new and well-known facts. This book collects different and relevant studies in this field and gives a general overview of the different theoretical approaches concerned with the morphological, syntactic and semantic properties of agreement restriction phenomena.

Agreement Restrictions

Christoph Gabriel

Different components of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. It has been under debate what the actual range of interaction is and how we can most appropriately represent this in grammatical theory. The volume provides a general overview of various topics in the linguistics of Romance languages by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components and functions as a state-of-the-art report, but at the same time as a manual of Romance languages.

Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance

This series consists of collected volumes and monographs about specific issues dealing with interfaces among the subcomponents of linguistic structure: phonology-morphology, phonology-syntax, syntax-semantics, syntax-morphology, and syntax-lexicon. Recent linguistic research has recognized that the subcomponents of grammar interact in non-trivial ways. What is currently under debate is the actual range of such interactions and their most appropriate representation in grammar, and this is precisely the focus of this series. Specifically, it provides a general overview of various topics by examining them through the interaction of grammatical components. The books function as a state-of- the-art report of research.

A Diachronic Perspective on Its Syntax and Phonology

The Catalan Clitic System

Esther Rinke

Tanja Kupisch

This volume explores in detail the empirical and conceptual content of the definiteness effect in grammar. It brings together a variety of relevant observations from a typological, diachronic and a bilingual/second language acquisition perspective, and provides a general overview of different approaches concerned with the syntactic, morphological, semantic, and pragmatic properties of the Definiteness Effect in a series of European and non-European languages.

Susann Fischer

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