Syntax of Information-Structural Agreement

£83.00

Syntax of Information-Structural Agreement

Grammar, syntax and morphology

Author: Johannes Mursell

Dinosaur mascot

Collection: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today

Language: English

Published by: John Benjamins Publishing Company

Published on: 22nd September 2021

Format: LCP-protected ePub

Size: 292 pages

ISBN: 9789027259738


In this research monograph, Johannes Mursell discusses the syntactic impact of information-structural features on agreement.

So far, the syntactic contribution of this type of feature has mostly been reduced to movement of topics or foci clause-initial position. Here, the author looks at a different phenomenon, syntactic agreement, and how this process can be dependent on information-structural properties.

Based partly on original fieldwork from a typologically diverse set of languages, including Tagalog, Swahili, and Lavukaleve, it is argued that for most areas for which information-structural features have been discussed, it is possible to find cases where these features influence phi-feature agreement.

The analysis is then extended to cases of Association with Focus, which does not involve phi-features but can still be accounted for with agreement of information-structural features.

The book achieves two main goals: first it provides a uniform analysis for different constructions in unrelated languages. Second, it also gives a new argument that information-structural features should be treated as genuine syntactic features.

Show moreShow less