The Syntactic Recoverability of Null Arguments
Description
In The Syntactic Recoverability of Null Arguments Roberge studies the syntactic properties of subject and object clitic pronouns in several Romance languages and dialects from the perspective of the Principles-and-Parameters framework in generative grammar. He is able to make important claims through a comparative study of various rarely discussed French dialects, Spanish dialects, and Italian, and concludes that French should be analysed as a null subject language like many others in the Romance family. Roberge's parameters are so carefully detailed as to allow tests to be drawn up for both first and second language learners. As such, The Syntactic Recoverability of Null Arguments will be of interest not only to syntacticians and dialectologists but also to researchers in the field of language acquisition.
Reviews
"makes an original contribution to the field of theoretical and Romance syntax ... The discussion is lucid and clear. ... Roberge understands well the theory and its aims ... This work is extremely current and contributes in important ways to the study of Romance languages." Maria-Luisa Rivero, Department of Linguistics, University of Ottawa. "cet ouvrage restera un ouvrage de référence important pendant de très nombreuses années. La précision et le sérieux de l'analyse en font un petit chef-d'ouvre." Marie Thérèse Vinet, Département des Lettres et communications, Université de Sherbrooke. "His analysis of pro-drop is ... admirable in that it proposes a precise and restricted set of parameters to account for language variation ... both a pleasurable and informative read." Lisa deMena Travis, Department of Linguistics, McGill University.