LINGUIST List 17.3150

Fri Oct 27 2006

Books: Semantics/Syntax/Typology: Bentley

Editor for this issue: Maria Moreno-Rollins <marialinguistlist.org>

Directory         1.    Julia Ulrich, Split Intransitivity in Italian: Bentley
Message 1: Split Intransitivity in Italian: Bentley
Date: 23-Oct-2006
From: Julia Ulrich <julia.ulrichdegruyter.com>
Subject: Split Intransitivity in Italian: Bentley


Title: Split Intransitivity in Italian Series Title: Empirical Approaches to Language Typology [EALT] 30 Published: 2006 Publisher: Mouton de Gruyter
                http://www.mouton-publishers.com

Book URL: http://www.degruyter.de/rs/bookSingle.cfm?id=IS-9783110179972-1&l=E

Author: Delia Bentley Hardback: ISBN: 3110179970 Pages: 455 Price: Europe EURO 108.00 Comment: for USA, Canada, Mexico US$ 145.80
Abstract:

Split intransitivity has received a great deal of attention in theoreticallinguistics since the formulation of the Unaccusative Hypothesis by DavidPerlmutter (1978). This book provides an in-depth investigation of splitintransitivity as it occurs in Italian. The principal proposal is that themanifestations of split intransitivity in Italian, whilst being variouslyconstrained by well-formedness conditions on the encoding of informationstructure, primarily derive from the tension between accusative (syntactic)and active (semantic) alignment. In contrast to approaches which considerthe selection of the perfective operator to be the primary diagnostic ofunaccusative or unergative syntax, this study identifies two morphosemanticdomains in intransitive constructions on the basis of the analysis of acluster of related phenomena (including agreement, argument suppression,ne-cliticization, past-participle behaviour, the morphosyntax ofexperiencer predicates and word order, as well as the selection of theperfective operator). Analysing the degree to which semantic, syntactic anddiscourse factors interact in determining each manifestation of splitintransitivity, this work captures successfully the mismatches in the scopeof the various diagnostics.

Drawing upon insights provided by Role and Reference Grammar, and relyingon corpus-based evidence and crossdialectal comparison, this study makesnew empirical and theoretical contributions to the debate on splitintransitivity. The book is accessible to linguists of all theoreticalpersuasions and will make stimulating reading for researchers and scholarsin Italian and Romance linguistics, typology and theoretical linguistics.

Linguistic Field(s): Semantics                             Syntax                             Typology
Subject Language(s): Italian (ita)
Written In: English (eng )

See this book announcement on our website: http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=21917


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