LINGUIST List 9.1135

Tue Aug 11 1998

Books: Syntax

Editor for this issue: Martin Jacobsen <martylinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Jud Wolfskill, Syntax

The following is a book which readers of this list might find of
interest. For more information please visit
http://mitpress.mit.edu/promotions/books/ZUBPPS98

Prosody, Focus, and Word Order

Maria Luisa Zubizarreta


This monograph exemplifies a new trend in grammatical theory in which
researchers combine findings from more than one area of linguistics.
Specifically, the author looks at the relationship between phrasal
prominence and focus in Romance and Germanic languages to provide new
insights into how these properties are grammatically articulated.
Building upon previous results in the field, she argues that phrasal
prominence (nuclear stress) reflects syntactic ordering. There are two
varieties of syntactic ordering. The first is the standard asymmetric
c-command ordering. The second is the ordering derived from the
primitive relation of selection holding between a head and its
associated argument. Part of the difference between Germanic and
Romance languages stems from a difference in the way the two syntactic
orderings interact in the mapping onto phrasal prominence. The author
shows that the symmetry between syntactic ordering and phrasal
prominence so defined may be broken because of the independent
requirement that a focused constituent must contain the most prominent
element in the sentence. Two kinds of processes come into play to
repair the broken symmetry. One is a process of deaccenting. The
other is a process of movement, called "p-movement." The author shows
that a proper understanding of the properties of p-movement can be
attained within the framework of the Minimalist Program.

Maria Luisa Zubizarreta is Associate Professor at the University of
Southern California.


Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 33

August 1998
6 x 9, 232 pp., 4 illus.
paper
ISBN 0-262-74021-4
cloth
ISBN 0-262-24041-6


Jud Wolfskill 
Associate Publicist Phone: (617) 253-2079
MIT Press Fax: (617) 253-1709
Five Cambridge Center E-mail: wolfskilmit.edu 
Cambridge, MA 02142-1493 
http://mitpress.mit.edu 

 

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