The syntactic periphery has become one of the most important areas of
research in syntactic theory in recent years, due to the emergence of
new research programmes initiated by Rizzi, Kayne and Chomsky. However
research has concentrated on the empirical nature of clausal
peripheries. The purpose of this volume is to explore the question of
whether the notion of periphery has any real theoretical bite. An
important consensus emerging from the volume is that the edges of
certain syntactic expressions appear to be the locus of the connection
between phrase structure, prosody, and information structure. This
volume contains 16 papers by researchers in this area.
The book:
- contains an extensive introduction setting out the research questions
addressed and setting the contributions in an overall theoretical
context,
- has a distinct comparative slant,
- brings together work from a range of theoretical perspectives, while
maintaining a unity of purpose,
- could serve as the basis for a graduate course on peripheral
positions,
- contains papers addressing:
= the question of the fine-grainedness of syntactic representations,
= the relevance of syntactic edges to locality and semantic
interpretation,
= the nature of the dependencies connecting peripheral elements to the
syntactic core. Audience: Academics and graduate students interested in
syntax and its interfaces with semantics and prosody, acquisition of
syntax, cross-linguistic comparison.