Syntax and Its Limits

In this book, leading linguists explore the empirical scope of syntactic theory, by concentrating on a set of phenomena for which both syntactic and nonsyntactic analyses initially appear plausible. Exploring the nature of such phenomena permits a deeper understanding of the nature of syntax and of neighbouring modules and their interaction. The book contributes to both traditional work in generative syntax and to the recent emphasis placed on questions related to the interfaces. The major topics covered include areas of current intensive research within the Minimalist Program and syntactic theory more generally, such as constraints on scope and binding relations, information-structural effects on syntactic structure, the structure of words and idioms, argument- and event-structural alternations, and the nature of the relations between syntactic, semantic, and phonological representations.

After the editors' introduction, the volume is organized into four thematic sections: architectures; syntax and information structure; syntax and the lexicon; and lexical items at the interfaces. The volume is of interest to syntactic theorists, as well as linguists and cognitive scientists working in neighbouring disciplines such as lexical and compositional semantics, pragmatics and discourse structure, and morphophonology, and anyone with an interest in the modular architecture of the language faculty.

Raffaella Folli,Christina Sevdali,Robert Truswell

Raffaella Folli is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Ulster. Her research interests are theoretical and comparative syntax and language processing, with special focus on the syntax-lexicon and the syntax-semantics interface. She has published her work in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry, Journal of Linguistics, Lingua, Trends in Cognitive Science among others, as well as in several edited volumes.


Christina Sevdali is a lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Ulster. She received her
BA from the University of Crete and her MPhil and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her main area of expertise is Ancient Greek syntax, but her research interests also include multilingual acquisition, and the syntax - morphology interface, particularly case. Her paper "Ancient Greek infinitives and Phases" will appear in Syntax and her collaboration with Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou on "Patterns of dative -nominative alternations" will appear in the Proceedings of NELS 41.


Robert Truswell is Assistant Professor of Syntax at the University of Ottawa. Prior to that, he was a PhD student at University College London, and a postdoc at Tufts University and the University of Edinburgh. He has published on various aspects of the syntax-semantics interface, including Events, Phrases, and Questions (OUP, 2011), and has other research interests in diachronic syntax and the evolution of language.