Sentence (1) represents the phenomenon of reported thought, (2) that of reported speech: (1) Sasha thought: "This is fine" or Sasha thought that this would be fine (2) Sasha said: "This is fine" or Sasha said that this would be fine While sentences as in (1) have often been discussed in the context of those in (2) the former have rarely received specific attention. This has meant that much of the semantic and structural complexity, cross-linguistic variation, as well as the precise relation between (1) and (2) and related phenomena have remained unstudied. Addressing this gap, this volume represents the first collection of studies specifically dedicated to reported thought. It introduces a wide variety of cross-linguistic examples of the phenomenon and brings together authors from linguistic typology, corpus and interactional linguistics, and formal and functional theories of syntax to shed light on how talking about thoughts can become grammar in the languages of the world. The book should be of interest to linguists, philosophers of language, linguistic anthropologists and communication specialists seeking to understand topics at the boundary of stylistics and morphosyntax, as well as the grammar of epistemicity.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book provides the first ever large-scale comparative treatment of there sentences (there copula NP), in over 100 Italo-Romance and Sardinian dialects spoken in Italy. It comprises detailed discussions of focus structure, predication and argument realization, definiteness effects, and the linking between semantics and syntax in there sentences, advancing novel proposals in each case. The authors test influential hypotheses on existential constructions against first-hand dialect evidence; they argue that existential and locative there sentences differ in focus structure and semantics, even though they display similar morphosyntactic features. The volume also provides the historical background of Romance there sentences, relying on the findings of the analysis of a substantial corpus of early Italo-Romance vernacular texts. Couched in the framework of Role and Reference Grammar, the discussion fully engages with the vast available literature on existentials and locatives, thus being of interest to linguists of any theoretical persuasion. Through the investigation of existentials and locatives, the volume addresses key issues in linguistic theory, while offering an invaluable source of data for research on the Romance languages and a model in fieldwork-based microvariational analysis.

This book brings together leading international scholars to consider whether in some languages there are phenomena which are unique to morphology, determined neither by phonology or syntax. Central to these phenomena is the notion of the 'morphome', conceived by Mark Aronoff in 1994 as a function, itself lacking form and meaning but which serves systematically to relate them. The classic examples of morphomes are determined neither phonologically or morphosyntactically, and appear to be an autonomous property of the synchronic organization of morphological paradigms. The nature of the morphome is a problematic and much debated issue at the centre of current research in morphology, partly because it is defined negatively as what remains after all attempts to assign putatively morphomic phenomena to phonological or morphosyntactic conditioning have been exhausted. However, morphomic phenomena generally originate in some kind of morphosyntactic or phonological conditioning which has been lost while their effects have endured. Quite often, vestiges of the original conditioning environment persist, and the boundary between the morphomic and extramorphological conditioning may become problematic. In a series of pioneering explorations of the diachrony of morphomes The Boundaries of Pure Morphology throws important new light on the nature of the morphome and the boundary - seen from both diachronic and synchronic perspectives - between what is and is not genuinely autonomous in morphology. Its findings will be of central interest to morphologists of all theoretical stripes as well as to all those concerned to understand the precise nature of linguistic diachrony.

In this volume Silvio Cruschina uses a comparative analysis to determine the syntax of the functional projections associated with discourse-related features, and to account for the marked word orders found in Romance-particularly in the fronting phenomena. Several language-specific analyses of discourse-related phenomena have been proposed in the literature, including studies on the notions of topic and focus in Romance, but the lack of a uniform definition of these notions, together with different assumptions in relation to the triggering features, has led to the perception that the Romance languages show many distinct and heterogeneous properties with respect to dislocation and fronting constructions. This volume is intended to complement the existing literature by integrating recent work on the topic and by emphasizing original and unifying reflections that combine and coordinate diverse elements. Cruschina's investigations clarify fundamental notions such as topic, focus, and contrast, drawing on new data from Sicilian, Sardinian, and other Romance varieties.

In this volume Silvio Cruschina uses a comparative analysis to determine the syntax of the functional projections associated with discourse-related features, and to account for the marked word orders found in Romance - particularly in the fronting phenomena. Several language-specific analyses of discourse-related phenomena have been proposed in the literature, including studies on the notions of topic and focus in Romance, but the lack of a uniform definition of these notions, together with different assumptions in relation to the triggering features, has led to the perception that the Romance languages show many distinct and heterogeneous properties with respect to dislocation and fronting constructions. This volume is intended to complement the existing literature by integrating recent work on the topic and by emphasizing original and unifying reflections that combine and coordinate diverse elements. Cruschina's investigations clarify fundamental notions such as topic, focus, and contrast, drawing on new data from Sicilian, Sardinian, and other Romance varieties.