Aspects of the Theory of Clitics
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Description
This is the first book to cover the grammar of clitics from all points of view, including their phonology and syntax and relation to morphology. In the process, it deals with the relation of second position clitics to verb-second phenomena in Germanic and other languages, the grammar of contracted auxiliary verbs in English, noun incorporation constructions, and several other much discussed topics in grammar. Stephen Anderson includes analyses of a number of particular languages, and some of these--such as Kwakw'ala (nullKwakiutlnull) and Surmiran Rumantsch--are based on his own field research. The study of clitics has broad implications for a general understanding of sentence structure in natural language. Stephen Anderson's clearly-written, wide-ranging, and original account will be of wide interest to scholars and advanced students of phonology, morphology, and syntax.Features
- Covers the grammar of clitics in terms of their phonology, morphology, and syntax, as opposed to purely syntactic or phonological accounts
- First comprehensive survey of clitic phenomena for 20 years
- Provides analyses of such standard problems as English contracted auxiliaries clitic doubling, clitic climbing, and the relation of clitics to agreement
- Original data from Kwakw'ala ("Kwakiutl") and Surmiran Rumantsch, as well as discussion of a wide range of languages
- Suitable for use as a text for upper division undergraduate and beginning graduate courses in morphology and syntax
Reviews
"This book comes as a breath of fresh air. It is very clearly written, and is comprehensive in every way: it deals with a broad range of language types; it gives very clear comparisons with alternative theories; and it addresses all the important syntactic and phonological implications of the theory. It is a great feat to be able to pull all of these issues together and explain them in a way that is actually enjoyable to read."--Margaret Speas, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
About the Author(s)
Stephen R. Anderson is Professor of Linguistics, Psychology and Cognitive Science at Yale University. He has previously taught at Harvard University, UCLA, Stanford, and The Johns Hopkins University. Among his other books are A-Morphous Morphology
(1992), The Language Organ
, co-authored by David Lightfoot (2002), and Doctor Dolittle's Delusion: Animals and the Uniqueness of Human Language
(2004). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has held a Guggenheim Fellowship.
