17.799, Review: Syntax: den Dikken & Torotora (2005)

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Subject: 17.799, Review: Syntax: den Dikken & Torotora (2005)

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1)
Date: 13-Mar-2006
From: Phoevos Panagiotidis < panagiotidis at cycollege.ac.cy >
Subject: The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Wed, 15 Mar 2006 22:51:35
From: Phoevos Panagiotidis < panagiotidis at cycollege.ac.cy >
Subject: The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories 
 

EDITORS: den Dikken, Marcel; Tortora, Christina
TITLE: The Function of Function Words and Functional Categories 
SERIES: Linguistik Aktuell / Linguistics Today
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2005
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/16/16-2885.html 

Phoevos Panagiotidis, Department of Humanities, Cyprus College

DESCRIPTION:

This book is a collection of eight original contributions (plus an 
introduction by the editors) targeting graduate students of linguistics 
as well as professional theoretical linguists. The nine chapters are as 
follows (contributors in parentheses): The function of function words 
and functional categories (M. den Dikken & C. Tortora), Verb second 
as a function of Merge (J.-W. Zwart), Nonnative acquisition of verb 
second: on the empirical underpinnings of universal L2 claims (U. 
Bohnacker), Clause union and clause position (J. Bayer, T. Schmid & 
M. Bader), Explaining Expl (M. Richards & T. Biberauer), Reflexives in 
contexts of reduced valency: German vs. Dutch (M. Lekakou), Simple 
Tense (G. Vanden Wyngaerd), Possessor licensing, definiteness and 
case in Scandinavian (M. Julien), Pronouns are determiners after all 
(D. Roehrs).

The Introduction (Dikken & Tortora) opens the volume providing 
summaries and brief discussion of the chapters.

Zwart's ''Verb second as a function of Merge'' proposes a new 
account for Verb Second (or 'V2'), i.e. the syntactic configuration in 
which the finite verb occupies the second position in Germanic 
languages. Zwart takes Merge to be an asymmetric operation that 
creates sisterhood dependencies, dependencies that may be marked 
by way of a linker element. Abandoning analyses proposing that V2 is 
the result of the verb moving to adjoin to a particular functional head 
(the Complementiser in most of them; the Complementiser or Tense in 
others), he argues that V2 is the ''side effect of a fronting operation'' 
(p. 13) with the verb acting as the linker marking the left edge of the 
constituent with which the fronted element merges. In order to 
demonstrate that V2 does not involve some (quasi-)criterial attraction 
of V to Comp (or T), he discusses a number of little-studied 
problematic facts surrounding the configuration, including a number of 
V2 asymmetries, non-standard V2 phenomena (such as quotative 
inversion), as well as V2 deviations, i.e. cases of V1 and V3.

Bohnacker in ''Nonnative acquisition of verb second: on the empirical 
underpinnings of universal L2 claims'' looks into Verb Second as well, 
although from the point of view of Second Language (L2) Acquisition. 
She sets out to disprove the hypothesis that the developmental path 
to acquiring a V2 language is the same for all L2 learners ''irrespective 
of their first language'' (p. 41). In doing so, she studies L1 Swedish 
learners of L2 German in order to determine whether V2 transfer will 
occur from Swedish to German - both languages solidly displaying the 
V2 property. Like Zwart, she then discusses Swedish V2 deviations 
typically resulting to V3, most of which are ungrammatical in German. 
After a review of the relevant literature and presentation of her own 
results, Bohnacker interprets the violation of German V2 by Swedish 
L1 learners as an interference from L2 English, due to ''the absence of 
nontarget V3 utterances in the learners who do not know English'' (p. 
66).

In ''Clause union and clausal position'', Bayer, Schmid & Bader study 
an aspect of German complementation from both a cross-linguistic 
and parsing point of view. They begin from the observation that 
the ''intraposition'' construction in (1) is structurally ambiguous 
between a monoclausal structure, i.e. one employing clause union, 
and a biclausal one, the latter equivalent to (2):
<pre>
(1) 
daß  Max mir das Lexicon zu kaufen empfohlen   hat
that Max me  the lexicon to buy    recommended has
(2) 
daß  Max mir empfohlen   hat das Lexicon zu kaufen
that Max me  recommended has the lexicon to buy
</pre>
They use a corpus study, questionnaires and a reading time 
experiment to establish that, although the grammar of German allows 
both the clause union and the biclausal analysis for (1), the 
monoclausal structure is the one strongly preferred for it, due to 
parsing considerations and in the face of (2) as a more readily 
processable biclausal alternative. Moving on to Bangla, another OV 
language with similar constructions, they observe an analogous state 
of affairs. A syntactic analysis is offered in section 3 of the chapter.

Richards & Biberauer look at a paradoxical state of affairs, ''an 
unexpected asymmetry'' (p. 117), in Chomsky's latest work on phase 
theory, namely that expletives are predicted to be merged in the 
specifiers of C and T but not v (his three core functional categories). 
In their chapter titled ''Explaining Expl'', they first challenge the 
received account of expletives such as 'there' in 'there is a crocodile in 
the pool' as directly merged in the specifier of the Tense Phrase and 
go on to adopt the less popular alternative that expletives move from 
the specifier of vP, just like ordinary subjects. They provide synchronic 
and diachronic empirical support towards this from a number of 
Germanic languages while they relate the particular hypothesis to a 
theory whereby the source of features satisfying EPP as well as the 
size of the constituent they pied-pipe varies parametrically. The result 
has the theoretically attractive characteristic of allowing the merger of 
expletives only at the edges of (strong) phases: vP and CP.

''Reflexives in contexts of reduced valency: German vs. Dutch'' is a 
study in micro-variation regarding the reflexive element 'sich' 
(German) / 'zich' (Dutch). In it, M. Lekakou claims that the difference 
between the two elements is that, while 'sich' can function as an 
argument or as a non-argument valency reducer, 'zich' can only be a 
proper argument. She correlates this difference to the richness of the 
pronominal paradigms in the two languages, with the key lying with the 
availability of a designated non-inherently reflexive element in Dutch, 
namely 'zichzelf'. She consequently offers the beginnings of the 
related typology, albeit staying within West Germanic varieties. With a 
combination of discussing empirical evidence and arguing against 
previous analysis that take 'zich' not to always be an argument, she 
also links this difference between German and Dutch to the status of 
middles in the two languages.

Vanden Wyngaerd offers in ''Simple tense'' a novel analysis of simple 
tenses with emphasis on the English Simple Present. Departing from 
the observation that Simple Present is compatible with only a number 
of types of non-stative events, he offers the hypothesis that all these 
events are unified under their having ''Very Short Duration'' (p. 194). 
Consequently, Simple Present denotes an event whose interval ('E') is 
a subset of the reference ('R') interval, which in turn is co-extensive 
with the speech time one ('S'). Vanden Wyngaerd proceeds to 
correlate that to aspectual considerations, as, clearly, this is not the 
way simple tenses work in other languages; he then extends his 
account to states and generics, arguing that they too are perceived as 
involving successive intervals of Very Short Duration.

''Possessor licensing, definiteness and case in Scandinavian'' by M. 
Julien offers an overview of possessors in the Scandinavian DP. The 
chapter unifies the behaviour of possessors in Scandinavian varieties 
by appealing to the interplay between the categories of n, Possessor 
and Determiner, with the category n hosting a possessive feature 
interpreted as definite. She unifies the behaviour of possessors with 
the phenomenon of double definiteness in Scandinavian and, using 
this framework of hypotheses, she investigates feature checking within 
the Scandinavian DP. More specifically, Julien turns to the disjunction 
between phi-completeness and Case assignment, as Scandinavian 
pronominal possessors agree with the logical possessor for the former 
but with the possessee for the latter (Case).

Finally, D. Roehrs in ''Pronouns are determiners after all'' focuses on a 
matter that has received relatively little attention in the bibliography on 
pronouns: whether the equivalent of configurations like ''us linguists'' 
are best analysed as a determiner pronoun complemented by a noun 
or as an instance of apposition. Most of the investigations into the 
matter have sided with the one or the other point of view without a 
detailed look into the facts. Roehrs explores the behaviour and 
agreement patterns of pronouns co-occurring with nouns in German 
and goes on to argue for the first line of reasoning, what he calls 
the ''General DP-Hypothesis'' (p. 252), and against apposition.

EVALUATION:

I enjoyed reading this exciting book as thoroughly as very few 
collective volumes in recent years. To start with the basics, the solid 
and firm hand of the two editors shows through the impeccable editing 
throughout the book: from the selection of the papers included to the 
impressive absence of formatting discrepancies and typos (I have 
spotted only 'finladizes' on p. 174), unlike the customary situation with 
joint volumes. Turning to the selection of the work included in the 
volume, all eight chapters are of journal quality - generally perceived 
as higher than 'ordinary volume quality' - and bear the hallmark of 
having undergone scrupulous and meticulous editing, which makes 
them readable, clear and coherent - to say the least. On top of this, 
the topics included, the treatment thereof and the analyses put 
forward by the individual authors are also of the highest quality; this is 
the main reason I can open this review's evaluation section writing in 
terms of 'The function of function words and functional categories' 
being an ''exciting book''. Having said that, I feel I need to criticise one 
editing decision before moving, and this has to do with the title.

I am afraid that the book's title, 'The function of function words and 
functional categories', is hardly representative of its content as it 
stands. More precisely, the perspective adopted by all authors except 
Julien (who investigates the workings of nominal functional categories 
in the Scandinavian DP) is hardly with functional categories and their 
function in view. On the contrary, the majority of contributors 
investigate aspects of Germanic syntax with an emphasis on 
configurations and syntactic operations: Zwart looks at V2 as a 
function of Merge, refuting the central role of any particular functional 
category in it; Bohnacker investigates the L2 acquisition path of V2 
oblivious to the possible role of any particular functional category; 
Bayer, Schmid & Bader investigate mono- versus bi-clausal 
intraposition in German and Bangla from a syntactic and a parsing 
point of view; Richards & Biberauer look into the derivation of 
expletive subjects in relation to phase theory; Lekakou zooms into the 
reflexive SIG in its West Germanic incarnations; Vanden Wyngaerd is 
concerned with the interpretation of simple tenses hardly mentioning 
the category Tense; Roehrs looks into the phrase structure of single 
pronouns. Therefore, I believe that a different equally attractive title 
for the book would be more suitable, given the Germanic and 
comparative focus of each one of the volume's contributions. On to 
the chapters, now.

Zwart's analysis of V2 is interesting for at least two reasons. First of 
all, it draws upon a wealth of previously overlooked evidence, mainly 
from Dutch. It emerges that the reason such evidence has not been 
closely studied until now is that it presents problems for analyses of 
V2 where the verb targets a particular category: C in the 'symmetric 
V2' analyses and C or T in the asymmetric ones. 

This brings us to the second reason Zwart's contribution is of 
considerable interest: his account does not involve the verb targeting 
a particular category accompanied by material that must obligatorily 
dislocate to its host's specifier. Before continuing, let me point out that 
this coordinated migration of both the verb (via head movement) and 
whatever can sit in the specifier to its left is one of the problematic 
points in analysing V2 as a Complementiser (and / or Tense) related 
operation, as it more or less presupposes all finite Complementisers 
(to stay with symmetric V2 accounts) hosting some A'-related strong 
feature. Zwart resolves the problem and broadens the empirical base 
of the study of V2 (also capturing V2 asymmetries, non-standard V2 
and V2 deviations) by claiming that Merge of x to y is an asymmetric 
operation and that it establishes a dependency that may be marked 
on the left edge of the y constituent by a linker element. In V2, the 
fronted constituent, x, merged to the left of the one it has moved out 
of, y, has this new Merge dependency marked by the verb acting as a 
linker at the left edge of y. By this hypothesis, Zwart does not have to 
make special reference to 'V2-dedicated' functional heads and their 
potentially odd properties and does not have to attribute non-standard 
V2 to hyperactive complementisers. However, his theory of Merge is 
vast in scope and while it can explain away V2, it is certainly 
necessary to be told what other grammatical phenomena it can 
account for and what other elements must be (re)classified as 
sisterhood-marking linkers, given the omnipresence of Merge in the 
building of syntactic configurations.

Bohnacker's chapter opens ambitiously, as a contribution to refuting 
the influential idea that L2 acquisition (of V2) follows a universal 
developmental path irrespective of the properties of L1, i.e. whether it 
is also a V2 language or not. Interestingly she discusses in some 
detail a number of V2 exceptions in Swedish that are absent in 
German. Hence, on a purely data level, this chapter, along with 
Zwart's one preceding it, makes a good place to look for a description 
of deviations from V2. The review of the existing literature on the 
acquisition of German (V2) word order is detailed and sets the scene 
for the study to be reported in an enlightening fashion, although the 
tone in places feels somehow contrived (''certain linguistic circles'' on 
p. 51) and even slightly unseemly (''acknowledged - though sometimes 
grudgingly and in footnotes'' on p. 53). Crucially, the insight that L2 
English (a non-V2 language) might influence, or even hinder, the 
subsequent acquisition of ''L3'' German (as is the order people learn 
languages these days) is both very interesting, to say the least, and 
understudied. Understandably then, the author hardly supplies any 
bibliography regarding L2 influence on ''L3'', although work like 
Lozano (2002), contributions to Zobl & Goodluck (2003) and a 
number of papers by Ingrid Leung - to name but a small selection - 
concerns itself exclusively with this issue. 

Turning to Bohnacker's carefully planned study itself, it indeed seems 
to suggest that Swedish L1 learners of German have no serious 
problems with German V2, unlike those previously exposed to English. 
However the sample of just 3 Swedish L1 speakers who only speak 
German, i.e. not English, is perhaps too small to draw any far-
reaching conclusions. Admittedly, finding Swedish native speakers 
never exposed to English is virtually impossible (pp. 60-1) and the 
situation is remedied by the straightforward nature of the research's 
desideratum (that is, word order) and the satisfactory number of 
utterances recorded. Still, I am intrigued by the mismatch between the 
study's scope, as constrained by the general scarcity of evidence and 
the small size of the corpus, and the conclusions it is called upon to 
refute. In other words, the empirical study reported is important but not 
of a scale adequate to provide far-reaching insights into the 
acquisition of V2. Finally, the hindering role of English is presented as 
a mystery and no suggestions are offered thereon, although it 
becomes understood that this is due to the ongoing nature of the 
research.

''Clause union and clausal position'' by Bayer, Schmid & Bader brings 
together research on a variety of plains (usage, parsing, grammar) 
and a number of methods in order to explore the nature of intraposed 
German clauses. They show that the parser's abhorrence of 
intraposed biclausal structures - although grammar sanctions them - is 
underscored not just by processing, early closure type, considerations 
but also by the grammar-internal workings of agreement for a Status 
feature and the role of null Complementisers. As I already said above, 
this thesis is supported by a wealth of evidence from a variety of 
sources. In this way, native speaker intuitions and statistical evidence 
is cross-referenced and strengthened by experimental evidence. At 
the same time, the comparison with Bangla puts the whole inquiry in 
perspective, giving us the beginnings of an exciting account on how 
the (universal) parser treats OV languages, with potentially far-
reaching implications for a variety of topics, including (but not 
restricted to) language change and the limits of language variation. 

My interpretation of Bayer, Schmid & Bader's results would be, for 
instance, that intraposed biclausal structures - i.e. with the two verbs 
adjacent - would be cross-linguistically dispreferred and, if extant, 
diachronically short-lived. More generally, and commenting on the 
methodology followed in the chapter: the coupling of a strong syntax-
theoretic analysis of a grammatical phenomenon with a parallel 
investigation of its behaviour in parsing, acquisition, language change 
or language pathology is a research strategy we need to see more 
samples of; not only because it puts phenomena outside narrow 
syntax into perspective and illuminates them in often unexpected 
ways, but also because it can work the other way round, providing 
indirect but invaluable evidence for (or against) a particular syntactic 
account.

''Explaining Expl'' is among the most carefully argued for analyses on 
expletive subjects, a hot topic in theoretical syntax for at least the last 
15 years due to its apparent simplicity, its sometimes inscrutable 
complexity and its serious theoretical consequences once the (cross-
linguistic) details are considered. Richards & Biberauer essentially 
provide a footnote to Chomsky's latest work on phases removing an 
asymmetry from it, by showing that expletive subjects originate in 
SpecvP and raise from there. In this way they resolve a number of 
paradoxes involving Agree relations between the expletive, Tense and 
the associate inherent in merging expletives directly with T (and its 
complement). The resulting welcome symmetry, i.e. that expletives are 
merged only at the only edges of phases, is corroborated by data in a 
number of Germanic languages. 

The analysis is embedded within a complete parametric account on 
how the EPP can be satisfied across languages, which in turn 
provides a very promising framework for further investigation into the 
matter. Having said that, I have an observation to make on the 
framework itself. Recall that Richards & Biberauer argue that EPP 
satisfaction can vary across two parametric choices: the source of 
features satisfying T - the richly inflected V (as in Alexiadou & 
Anagnostopoulou 1998) vs. the SpecvP - and the size of the 
constituent they pied-pipe (the whole vP or smaller). Based on this, 
they are in a position to make the most probably correct prediction, 
supported by diachronic data across Germanic, that loss of inflection 
on V will force T to look for an EPP satisfier in SpecvP, therefore also 
expletives themselves. They are however careful to notice (on p. 136) 
that this is a one-way entailment and that expletives may exist in 
grammars where the source of EPP features is the richly inflected verb 
itself, as witnessed by both German and Icelandic. Setting aside the 
serious questions of how null subjects come about in non-richly 
inflected Chinese and Japanese, already an issue with Alexiadou & 
Anagnostopoulou (1998), this leaves us with two serious questions: 
first, why this co-existence of expletives and EPP satisfaction by the 
inflected V should hold in German and Icelandic; second, how this 
framework can capture the observed incompatibility of expletives with 
null subjects.

Lekakou's meticulous treatment of the contrast between German 'sich' 
and Dutch 'zich' is based on Reinhart & Reuland's (1993) theory of 
reflexivity and links paradigmatic complexity to the kind of functions a 
pronominal can undertake. So, Afrikaans and Frisian possess no SIG 
element, hence personal pronouns will be restricted to argument 
positions. The availability of only a simplex SIG reflexive, like 
German 'sich', will add an element available for all reflexive uses, both 
in transitive environments and as a valency reducer. An even richer 
paradigm, possessing a simplex SIG reflexive as well as a complex 
one, like Dutch 'zich' and 'zichzelf', will entail specialisation of each as 
an inherent-argumental and a noninherent reflexive respectively - 
while both will be fully argumental and non valency-reducers. In this 
state of affairs, 'zelf' adds the possibility to choose from a set of 
possible referents, hence involves focus. On the other hand, 'zich' will 
always denote a singleton set (pp. 177-8), therefore it will be used 
only when there are no alternatives possible (either because of the 
verb's lexical specification or because of pragmatic considerations), as 
in the contrast in (3) involving an inherently reflexive predicate (from 
p. 176):
<pre>
(3) 
Zij gedraagt zich / *Karel
She behaves  REFL / Karel
'She behaves herself.'
</pre>
Although the whole analysis makes a lot of sense, I am left wondering 
on two matters of some importance. First, it is not entirely clear 
whether the -SELF element, claimed to be a kind of focus element 
that ''opens'' the set of possible referents, can be argued to be such in 
languages beyond the West Germanic sample of German and Dutch. 
At this point, a comparison with -SELF as instantiated in English would 
be certainly informative, especially if accompanied by a more concrete 
theoretical description of its purported focus function. Second, and 
given the importance the richness of reflexive paradigms plays in her 
account, I would expect the author to stress more the 
''interchangeability'' of Dutch 'zichzelf' with transitive arguments - in 
contrast to the behaviour of 'zich', illustrated in (3) above; even more 
crucially, there is nothing at all in the paper on 'hemzelf / haarzelf' and 
their position and role in the noninherent column of the Dutch 
pronominal paradigm (p. 163) - especially in relation / contrast 
with 'zichzelf'. This is, I think, a serious lacuna in the account, as is 
presented in the chapter.

I found the analysis in Vanden Wyngaerd's chapter on simple 
(present) tense attractive in its simplicity and explanatory power. It 
makes a number of straightforward predictions stemming from the 
claim that the denotation of simple tenses is an interval having Very 
Short Duration, co-extensive with reference time (hence, speech time, 
in the case of Simple Present). One of the most attractive predictions 
is in the context of the usage of historical Simple Present in stories, as 
opposed to using Present Continuous (p. 198):

(4) Magda refuses to let the police in. She closes the door in their face.
(5) Magda refuses to let the police in. She is closing the door in their 
face.

The ''sense of immediacy'' (ibid.) (4) conveys can be captured as a 
result of using the simple tense, hence presenting the closing event as 
having Very Short Duration, unlike what happens in (5), where the 
closing event has ''a certain extension'' (ibid.). Similarly, Simple 
Present is more appropriate for, say, presenting football matches in 
their quick play-by-play succession than for rowing events (p. 194). In 
section 4, Vanden Wyngaerd extends his account to cover states and 
in section 5 to generic sentences - which are conceived as consisting 
of successive intervals which last for a Very Short Duration. Given the 
strongly counter-intuitive feel of this proposal, although this is by no 
means an issue by itself, maybe it would have been necessary to 
present it in more detail and to argue for it in more depth. As a closing 
remark to this stimulating chapter, and given that the analysis in it 
capitalises on the role of time intervals, let me just point out that I am 
not sure it needs be framed in Reichenbachian terms - see, for 
instance, von Stechow's (1995) criticism thereof - and it could perhaps 
be the case that recasting it along the lines of work by Hans Kamp 
and Barbara Partee would be a more productive path to take.

''Possessor licensing, definiteness and case in Scandinavian'' by 
Julien scrutinises the workings of light n in Scandinavian and this 
category's role in double definiteness, especially in relation to its 
occurrence with possessors. The analysis unifies all the different 
possessive constructions as instances of the interplay among DP's 
functional categories and the ways this is conditioned by, among other 
factors, Agree and defective intervention effects. Its clarity of 
exposition and wide scope (over a number of varieties and a number 
of related constructions) as well as its explanatory strengths place this 
contribution among the most informative ones on the matter. At the 
same time, it also looks into empirical matters such as the irrelevance 
of focus to the fronting of possessors in Scandinavian and quasi-
possessive (or 'pseudopossessive', on p. 241-2) constructions. My 
only comment regards extensions of the research presented here, 
extensions certainly beyond the scope of both the chapter itself and 
the volume as a whole: first, one would now like to see how Julien's 
core assumptions about the interplay of agreement with Case 
assignment would work in other languages beyond Scandinavian 
where (pronominal) possessors agree with the possessed noun, such 
as Romance (briefly mentioned in the context of a caveat on 
possessors making their DPs definite on p. 243) or Classical Greek. 
Second, it would be exciting to explore the relation of possession with 
definiteness in languages with izafet (such as Turkish), which are a bit 
like Armenian, also briefly touched upon on p. 225-6.

Research on the internal make-up of pronouns has flourished since 
the wider acceptance of the DP hypothesis in the eighties. A 
consensus on the functional shell of pronouns as D-elements of 
various sizes (a thesis represented by Cardinaletti & Starke 1999 and 
Déchaine & Wiltschko 2002) with an NP complement containing at 
least a semantically (and phonologically) empty noun seems to have 
been emerging. However, the long-standing debate on whether this 
NP complement is indeed a complement of the pronominal D itself or 
an appositive element, although contributed by several pieces of 
evidence presented from each side, had remained without any 
systematic treatment. Roehrs, using evidence from German, where 
the combination options are richer than, say, in English, and 
concentrating on the agreement properties of 'pronoun+nominal' 
constructions makes a very strong case against the apposition 
analysis and for the one I presented as the result of emerging 
consensus at the beginning of this paragraph. More importantly 
perhaps, this contribution fills in a specific gap in the literature, namely 
the one regarding what kind of arguments can be appealed to when 
making a case for or against a pronoun standing in complementation 
relation with a D element - this being a matter of some importance, as 
it goes beyond the confines of research into the internal structure of 
pronouns. Although the chapter could certainly benefit from clearer 
exposition in parts and stronger emphasis on both cross-linguistic 
aspects of the problem and the basic findings of the research it 
reports, it firmly sets the scene on what can be the criteria for deciding 
on complementation versus ellipsis. In this respect, as well as in 
establishing that complementation is the way to go in at least the case 
of Germanic pronouns lies the value and interest of this contribution.

REFERENCES

Alexiadou, Artemis & Elena Anagnostopoulou 1998. Parametrizing 
Agr: word order, V-movement and EPP-checking. Natural Language 
and Linguistic Theory 16: 491-539.

Cardinaletti, Anna & Starke, Michal. 1999. The typology of structural 
deficiency: a case study of the three classes of pronouns. In H. van 
Riemsdijk (ed.) Clitics in the languages of Europe. Berlin: Mouton De 
Gruyter. 273-290.

Déchaine, Rose-Marie & Wiltschko, Martina. 2002. Decomposing 
pronouns. Linguistic Inquiry 33: 409-442.

Lozano-Pozo, Cristóbal. 2002. Focus, Pronouns and Word Order in 
the Acquisition of L2 and L3 Spanish. Ph.D. thesis, University of Essex.

Reinhart, Tanya & Reuland, Eric. 1993. Reflexivity. Linguistic Inquiry 
24: 657-720.

Stechow, Arnim von. 1995. On the Proper Treatment of Tense. 
Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory V. Ithaca NY: CLC 
Publications, Cornell University, 362-386.

Zobl, Helmut & Helen Goodluck (eds.) 2003. Proceedings of the 6th 
Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference 
(GASLA 2002): L2 Links. Somerville MA: Cascadilla Press. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Phoevos Panagiotidis is Chair of Humanities and Assistant Professor 
of Linguistics in Cyprus College, Cyprus. He is the author of the 
monograph titled "Pronouns, Clitics and Empty Nouns" (2002: 
Benjamins). He has also published articles in international journals 
(Lingua, NLLT, Linguistic Inquiry) and in jointly authored volumes on 
pronouns, the properties of Determiner Phrases as well as the status 
of arguments in null subject languages. Besides the above, his 
research interests include the nature of grammatical categories, 
language acquisition and breakdown, as well as the structure of 
English, Greek and the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund.





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