LINGUIST List 11.2616

Sun Dec 3 2000

Books: Syntax

Editor for this issue: Naomi Ogasawara <naomilinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Syntax: Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment by A. Meinunger

John Benjamins Publishing announces this new work in Generative Syntax.

Syntactic Aspects of Topic and Comment.
Andr� MEINUNGER (Zentrum fuer Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Berlin)
Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 38
US & Canada: 1 55619 989 9 / USD 89.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 2759 4 / NLG 178.00 (Hardcover)

The book focuses on the syntactic behavior of argument noun phrases
depending on their discourse status. The main language of
consideration is German, but it is shown that the observations can be
carried over to other languages. The claim is that discourse-new
arguments remain inside the VP where they are base generated. The
hierarchy of argument projection is claimed to be fix within and
across languages. With the major attention to direct objects it is
then argued that discourse-old, here called topical noun phrases
undergo raising to agreement projections. This movement can be
realized differently: scrambling, object agreement, clitic-doubling,
differences in morphological case and stress pattern turn out to be
analyzable as one underlying phenomenon. It is furthermore shown that
many so-called subject:object asymmetries boil down to topic:non-topic
differences, for example with respect to extraction. Thus,
irrespectively of the argumental status discourse-new constituents do
not act as barriers whereas topical arguments create (weak) islands.



			John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Offices:	Philadelphia			Amsterdam:
Websites: 	http://www.benjamins.com	http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail:		servicebenjamins.com		customer.servicesbenjamins.nl
Phone:		+215 836-1200			+31 20 6762325
Fax: 		+215 836-1204			+31 20 6739773