This volume draws together fourteen previously published papers which explore the nature of mental grammar through a formal, generative approach. The book begins by outlining the development of formal grammar in the last fifty years, with a particular focus on the work of Noam Chomsky, and moves into an examination of a diverse set of phenomena in various languages that shed light on theory and model construction. Many of the papers focus on comparisons between English and Norwegian, highlighting the importance of comparative approaches to the study of language. With a comprehensive collection of papers that demonstrate the richness of formal approaches, this volume is key reading for students and scholars interested in the study of grammar.

This volume draws together fourteen previously published papers which explore the nature of mental grammar through a formal, generative approach. The book begins by outlining the development of formal grammar in the last fifty years, with a particular focus on the work of Noam Chomsky, and moves into an examination of a diverse set of phenomena in various languages that shed light on theory and model construction. Many of the papers focus on comparisons between English and Norwegian, highlighting the importance of comparative approaches to the study of language. With a comprehensive collection of papers that demonstrate the richness of formal approaches, this volume is key reading for students and scholars interested in the study of grammar.

While Verb-third (V3) patterns have long been studied in verb-second (V2) languages, a similar pattern in which an initial adverbial constituent is resumed by a clause-internal element has been much less studied. The latter is referred to as 'adverbial resumption' and it also has the character of being a V3 phenomenon. Therefore, the pattern is labelled 'adverbial V3 resumption' or 'adverbial V3.' The present volume is an up-to-date overview of the subject featuring case studies of individual languages that display certain patterns of V3. The authors discuss this pattern in relation to several different languages, addressing among other things issues of microvariation in contemporary varieties and diachronic variation. The book covers Medieval Romance, Old Italian, Old English, diachronic and synchronic varieties of German, varieties of Flemish and Dutch, Icelandic, varieties of Swedish, and Norwegian. Through analyses of adverbial resumptive V3 orders in Germanic and Romance, the contributors explore the nature of V2: while adverbial resumption only occurs in varieties that observe the V2 rule, in itself it leads to apparent violations of linear V2 order, namely to V3 orders. Adverbial Resumption in Verb Second Languages provides comparative analyses which touch upon the nature of sentence-external versus sentence-internal adjuncts, and the fine-grained architecture of the clausal functional hierarchy. These papers constitute a valuable contribution to the theoretically important topics of V2 and V3 that will be of interest to comparative linguists, Germanic linguistics, Romance linguists, and anyone working on formal grammar in general.

This book focuses on the relationship between syntax and meaning. Terje Lohndal's core claim is that it is possible to create a transparent mapping from syntax to logical form such that each syntactic Spell-Out domain directly corresponds to a conjunct at logical form. The argument focuses on two domains of grammar - phrase structure and argument structure - and brings together two independently established but seemingly unconnected hypotheses: that verbs do not require arguments, and that specifiers are not required by the grammar. Following the introduction, the second chapter looks in detail at the separation of the verb from its thematic arguments, and presents data from argument structure, reciprocals, and adjectival passives, while the third examines the claim that specifiers do not play a role as the target of various grammatical operations. Chapter 4 then brings these arguments together and proposes a syntax that maps transparently onto logical forms where all thematic arguments are severed from the verb. Moreover, the broader consequences of this approach are outlined in terms of Spell-Out, movement, linearization, thematic uniqueness, and agreement. The book closes with an examination of the relationship between grammatical and conceptual meaning, and a detailed discussion of the nature of compositionality.