Universal Grammar (UG) is a theory of both the fundamental principles for all possible languages and the language faculty in the "initial state" of the human organism. These two volumes approach the study of UG by joint, tightly linked studies of both linguistic theory and human competence for language acquisition. In particular, the volumes collect comparable studies across a number of different languages, carefully analyzed by a wide range of international scholars. The issues surrounding cross-linguistic variation in "Heads, Projections, and Learnability" (Volume 1) and in "Binding, Dependencies, and Learnability" (Volume 2) are arguably the most fundamental in UG. How can principles of grammar be learned by general learning theory? What is biologically programmed in the human species in order to guarantee their learnability? What is the true linguistic representation for these areas of language knowledge? What universals exist across languages? The two volumes summarize the most critical current proposals in each area, and offer both theoretical and empirical evidence bearing on them. Research on first language acquisition and formal learnability theory is placed at the center of debates relative to linguistic theory in each area. The convergence of research across several different disciplines -- linguistics, developmental psychology, and computer science -- represented in these volumes provides a paradigm example of cognitive science.

Work on the movement of phrase categories, mostly Noun Phrases, has been a central element of syntactic theorizing almost since the earliest work on generative grammar. Work on the movement of lexical elements, heads, has been much less central until recent years. Verb movement is now, however, the center of current research in syntax. Parallel to the theoretical interest has been the attention focused on the description of verb-second languages and on the movement operations that place the verb in its "second" position. This volume represents the latest work from many of the leading researchers in an important field, and draws on analyses from a wide range of languages. It will have a significant impact on its field.

TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS is a series of books that open new perspectives in our understanding of language. The series publishes state-of-the-art work on core areas of linguistics across theoretical frameworks as well as studies that provide new insights by building bridges to neighbouring fields such as neuroscience and cognitive science. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS considers itself a forum for cutting-edge research based on solid empirical data on language in its various manifestations, including sign languages. It regards linguistic variation in its synchronic and diachronic dimensions as well as in its social contexts as important sources of insight for a better understanding of the design of linguistic systems and the ecology and evolution of language. TRENDS IN LINGUISTICS publishes monographs and outstanding dissertations as well as edited volumes, which provide the opportunity to address controversial topics from different empirical and theoretical viewpoints. High quality standards are ensured through anonymous reviewing.

This book develops a unified account of expressions involving the notions of "part" and "whole " in which principles of the individuation of part structures play a central role. Moltmann presents a range of new empirical generalizations with data from English and a variety of other languages involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as as a whole, together, and alone, nominal and adverbial quanitfiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as completely and partly. She develops a new theory of part structures which differs from traditional mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions.

First published in 1999. This study developed from a dissertation in 1993, when the author undertook what she thought would be a simple Optimality Theory analysis of Shona vowel harmony. Having initially treated Shona height harmony as a case of featural alignment, akin to Kirchner's 1993 analysis of Turkish she realized that alignment constraints alone could not account for one central aspect of the Shona case: the priority of initial syllable features in determining the outcome of harmony. This volume of research outlines the authirs discoveries.

First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Interfaces: Deriving and Interpreting Omitted Structures is a collection of never-before-published papers that explore the nature of the interfaces of syntax with semantics, phonology, and discourse. The papers investigate the various ways in which elliptical structures are related to these interfaces. As such, they not only make a valuable contribution to generative linguistic research but, more generally, help to deepen our understanding of the relation between form and meaning in natural language. In the book's introductory chapter, the editors address general issues related to current work on ellipsis and the syntax/semantics, syntax/phonology and syntax/discourse interfaces. The rest of the book is organized into three parts. The first examines PF-deletion accounts of elliptical structures; the second investigates these structures from the perspective of the syntax/semantic interface; and the third explores these from a perspective that concentrates on the relation between semantics and focus and discourse structure. Together the papers collected in this volume offer a convincing demonstration of the value of collaborative research on the 'interfaces'.

Studies in Lexical Phonology