Discourse configurational languages
By: edited by Katalin É. Kiss.
Contributors: Kiss, Katalin É.
Series: Oxford studies in comparative sytax
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 393
Subjects: Grammar, Comparative and general -- Topic and comment.; Generative grammar.
Description: Comprising eleven studies on languages with designated structural topic and focus positions, this volume includes an introduction surveying the empirical and theoretical problems involved in the description of this language type. Focusing on languages outside the traditional Indo-European group, the essays look at Chadic, Somali, Basque, Catalan, Old Romance, Greek, Hungarian, Finnish, Korean, and Quechua. The papers provide interesting new empirical data, as well as a variety of means and alternatives of representing them structurally. At the same time, they address important theoretical questions in the framework of generative theory. This is the first study to apply methods of comparative syntax to the study of topic and focus.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.