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[Review of] Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan, Parametric Variation : Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. vi+368.
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Sifaki, Evi (2012) [Review of] Theresa Biberauer, Anders Holmberg, Ian Roberts & Michelle Sheehan, Parametric Variation : Null Subjects in Minimalist Theory. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. vi+368. Journal of Linguistics, 48 (1). pp. 217-222. ISSN 0022-2267
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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022226711000405
Abstract
This volume is a collection of eight articles, part of the outcome of a five-year project funded by the British Arts and Humanities Research Council and entitled ‘Null subjects and the structure of parametric theory’. The introduction by Ian Roberts & Anders Holmberg is a thorough literature review of the pro-drop parameter, taking us as far back as Perlmutter (Reference Perlmutter1971), who was the first to link null subjects to the presence of person morphology on the verb. Roberts & Holmberg show that parameters as defined in generative grammar are powerful tools, which need to be constrained while maintaining their descriptive power. Contra Newmeyer (Reference Newmeyer and Pica2004), Roberts & Holmberg (and Theresa Biberauer and Michelle Sheehan too) promise to restore faith in the Government and Binding notion of parameters by refining these through the Minimalist framework.
In my view, this is a very thought-provoking volume with exceptional theoretical rigour. The authors not only propose typologies worth pursuing, but they also open up avenues for future research. For this review, I have decided to provide a summary of every article in this volume for the reasons that (i) the contributions are very different from each other and do not always entertain a coherent set of theoretical assumptions, and hence (ii) a detailed account of each chapter should provide signposting and navigation points for readers.
Item Type: | Book Review | ||||||
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Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Centre for Applied Linguistics | ||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Linguistics | ||||||
Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||
ISSN: | 0022-2267 | ||||||
Book Title: | Parametric variation: Null subjects in Minimalist theory | ||||||
Official Date: | March 2012 | ||||||
Dates: |
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Volume: | 48 | ||||||
Number: | 1 | ||||||
Page Range: | pp. 217-222 | ||||||
DOI: | 10.1017/S0022226711000405 | ||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
Copyright Holders: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||
Related URLs: |
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