E-raamat: Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement: A Comparative Study

In this work, Branigan offers a novel analysis of polysynthesis which is both empirically and theoretically very rich in consequences. The analysis also makes novel use of the concept of a 'macroparameter', thereby further enriching our knowledge of both comparative and diachronic syntax. * Ian Roberts, Professor of Linguistics, University of Cambridge * This is an impressive work that focuses on the puzzles that head-movement poses for the current syntactic theory. It proposes an extremely interesting new approach to head-movement that also accommodates multiple head-movement which has a number of important broader theoretical consequences and sets new grounds for investigating crosslinguistic variation in the relevant domain. It should be a starting point for any future investigations of head-movement as well as the case studies of particular languages and phenomena examined in this thought-provoking work. * %Zeljko Bokovi, Professor of Linguistics, University of Connecticut * Decades of investigation into the mappings between sentence structure to word structure in the languages of the world have taught us enough to see that this relation is surely law-governed. But what are those laws exactly? Alongside some singular successes in specific domains, we have also been left with numerous apparent mismatches and bracketing paradoxes-some of which have puzzled the field for years. At one stroke, Branigan has solved most of them with a proposal that has the property that all great ideas have: once you see it, you can't understand why no one figured this out earlier. At its heart is the idea that the multiple movement to a single stem morpheme exist, and mirrors multiple phrasal movement in the structures it produces. The idea is tested on some of the most difficult problems in Slavic and Algonquian syntax and shown to solve classic problems. A truly impressive and original piece of work. * David Pesetsky, MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy *