RT Book, Whole
T1 Reconstructing Syntax
A2 Barðdal, Jóhanna
A2 Gildea, Spike
A2 Luján Martínez, Eugenio Ramón
AB ABSTRACT: During several decades, syntactic reconstruction has been more or less regarded as a bootless and an unsuccessful venture, not least due to the heavy criticism in the 1970s from scholars like Watkins, Jeffers, Lightfoot, etc. This fallacious view culminated in Lightfoot’s (2002: 625) conclusion: “[i]f somebody thinks that they can reconstruct grammars more successfully and in more widespread fashion, let them tell us their methods and show us their results. Then we’ll eat the pudding”. This volume provides methods for the identification of i) cognates in syntax, and ii) the directionality of syntactic change, showcasing the results in the introduction and eight articles. These examples are offered as both tastier and also more nourishing than the pudding Lightfoot had in mind when discarding the viability of reconstructing syntax.
PB Brill
SN 978-90-04-39199-4 (hardback)
SN 978-90-04-39200-7 (e-book)
SN 2211-4904
YR 2020
FD 2020-06
LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/94111
UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/94111
LA eng
NO Open Access of this volume was funded via a generous research grant to Jóhanna Barðdal (PI) by the European Research Council (EVALISA, grant nr. 313461).
NO European Research Council
DS Docta Complutense
RD 7 abr 2025