LINGUIST List 8.668

Tue May 6 1997

Books: Minimalism, Syntax

Editor for this issue: Susan Robinson <suelinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Tony Schiavo, New Books: Generative Grammar

SYNTAX

New Books from JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING


MINIMAL IDEAS. SYNTACTIC STUDIES IN THE MINIMALIST FRAMEWORK.
Werner Abraham, Samuel David Epstein, Hoskuldur Thrainsson & Jan-Wouter
Zwart (eds.)
1996 xii, 364 pp. Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 12
US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 230 4 Price: US$89.00
Paper: 1 55619 231 2 Price: US$29.95
Rest of world: Cloth: 90 272 2732 2 Price: Hfl. 160,--
Paper: 90 272 2733 0 Price: Hfl. 60,--
John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com
For further information via e-mail: servicebenjamins.com

The articles in this volume are inspired by the Minimalist Program
first outlined in Chomsky's MIT Fall term class lectures of 1991 and
in his seminal paper 'A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory'. The
articles seek to develop further some key idea in the Minimalist
Program, sometimes in ways deviating from the course taken by Chomsky.
The articles are preceded by a 50 page introduction into the
minimalist framework. The introduction pays special attention to the
question how the minimalist framework developed out of the Principles
and Parameters (Government and Binding) framework. The introduction
serves as a guide through the entire volume, presenting the issues to
be discussed in the articles in detail, and offering a thematic
overview over the volume as a whole.
Most of the articles in this volume are concerned with issues raised
in Chomsky's first two minimalist papers, namely 'A Minimalist Program
for Linguistic Theory' (1993, first distributed in 1992) and 'Bare
Phrase Structure' (1995a, first distributed 1994). In acknowledgment
of this, each article starts out with a quote from Chomsky (1993,
1995a). This quote also serves to highlight the particular grammatical
or theoretical issue that is primarily discussed in the relevant
article.
Several articles relate issues raised in Chomsky's first two
minimalist papers to the basic ideas in Kayne's book, The Antisymmetry
of Syntax (1994, distributed in part in manuscript form in 1993). In
many respects, therefore, these articles develop alternatives to ideas
proposed in chapter 4, 'Categories and Transformations,' of Chomsky's
most recent book, The Minimalist Program (1995b). Some of the articles
contain references to chapter 4, and some comments on similarities and
differences between ideas developed in these papers and in chapter 4
of Chomsky 1995b can also be found in the Introduction to this volume.


MICROPARAMETRIC SYNTAX AND DIALECT VARIATION
James Black & Virginia Motapanyane (eds.)
1996 xviii, 269 pp. Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 139
US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 594 X US$69.00
Rest of the world: Cloth: 90 272 3643 7 Hfl. 120,--
John Benjamins Publishing web site: http://www.benjamins.com
For further information via e-mail: servicebenjamins.com

Richard Kayne's introduction to this volume stresses that comparative
work on the syntax of very closely related languages and dialects is a
research tool promising to provide both a broad understanding of
parameters at their finest-grained and an approach to the question of
the minimal units of syntactic variation. The 11 articles in this
collection demonstrate the use of this tool in analyzing
microparametric variation, principally with reference to Chomsky's
Minimalist program, in a variety of languages. Topics include 'se/si'
constructions, hypothetical infinitives and adverbial quantifiers in
French and other Romance languages; 'that'-trace variation,
Scandinavian possessive constructions, reflexives and subject-verb
agreement in Icelandic & Faroese, and verb clusters in continental
West Germanic dialects; anaphoric agreement in Labrador Inuttut;
negative particle questions in Chinese; imperative inversion in
Belfast English; and the second person singular interrogative in the
traditional vernacular of Bolton.
Contributions by: Jean-Marc Authier & Lisa Reed; Philip Branigan; Lisa
Cheng, James Huang & Jane Tang; Alison Henry; Anders Holmberg & Gorel
Sandstrom; Alana Johns; France Martineau & Virginia Motapanyane;
Graham Shorrocks; Knut Tarald Taraldsen; Marie-Therese Vinet; and
Jan-Wouter Zwart.

- ------------------------------------------------------------
Anthony P. Schiavo Jr Tel: (215) 836-1200
Publicity/Marketing Fax: (215) 836-1204
John Benjamins North America e-mail: tonybenjamins.com
PO Box 27519 
Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 

Check out the John Benjamins web site at
http://www.benjamins.com