Syntactic Variation

An edited 2010 volume devoted to research into sentence structure within Romance languages, focusing on the dialects of Italy.

An edited volume, first published in 2010, devoted to research into sentence structure within Romance languages, focusing on the dialects of Italy. Coherent and wide-ranging, this is a vital resource for those working in syntactic theory, historical linguistics, and Romance languages.This book was first published in 2010. The study of Romance languages can tell us a great deal about sentence structure and its variation in general. Focusing on the dialects of Italy - including the islands of Sardinia and Sicily - the authors explore three thematic areas: the nominal domain, the verbal domain and the left periphery of the clause. The book gives fresh attention to the dialects, arguing that they offer an unprecedented degree of variation (not found, for example, in Germanic languages). Analysing a host of data, the authors show how the dialects can be used as a test-bed for investigating and challenging received ideas about language structure and change. Coherent and wide-ranging, this is a vital resource for those working in syntactic theory, historical linguistics and Romance languages.