Bavarian Syntax: Contributions to the theory of syntax(220 Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today)

Dialect syntax has proven to be an invaluable data source for theoretical syntax, and theoretical syntax has provided useful analytical tools for uncovering fascinating grammatical properties of dialects. In the 1980s, the assumption that there must be more than one structural position in the left periphery of the clause was confirmed (among others) by so-called "doubly filled COMPs" in Bavarian (e.g. the co-occurrence of a wh-phrase and a complementizer), and in the 1990s, Northern Italian dialects provided the main empirical evidence for Rizzi’s extended theory of the left clausal periphery (the so-called "Split-C-hypothesis"). Among German dialects, Bavarian played a prominent role from the beginning: in addition to doubly-filled COMPs we find phenomena such as complementizer agreement, partial pro-drop, pronominal clitics, extractions from finite clauses introduced by complementizers, negative concord, parasitic gaps, or double possessors, all of which are fascinating and highly relevant for theoretical syntax. The contributions in this volume investigate and analyze a wide range of topics from Bavarian syntax with the focus on implications for general theoretical questions. This volume is of interest for any linguist interested in syntactic theory and dialect syntax.

Table of Contents:
1. Aspects of Bavarian syntax (by Grewendorf, Gunther); 2. 1. COMP Phenomena; 3. Syntactic and phonological properties of wh-operators and wh-movement in Bavarian (by Bayer, Josef); 4. Complementizer agreement (in Bavarian): Feature inheritance or feature insertion? (by Fuss, Eric); 5. The rise and fall of double agreement: A comparison between Carinthian and Kansas Bukovina Bohemian (by Wratil, Melani); 6. 2. Extraction Phenomena; 7. Structures of 'emphatic topicalization' in Bavarian (by Lutz, Uli); 8. Gaps and parasitic gaps in Bavarian (by Grewendorf, Gunther); 9. Observations on relative clauses in Bavarian (by Kallulli, Dalina); 10. 3. Non-clausal Phenomena; 11. Really weird subjects. The syntax of family names in Bavarian. (by Weiss, Helmut); 12. Austro-Bavarian directionals: toward a bigger picture (by Gruber, Bettina); 13. IPP-Constructions in Alemannic and Bavarian in comparison (by Schallert, Oliver); 14. 4. The Topography of Southern German Dialects; 15. The Upper German differential: main Austrian-Bavarian vs. (High) Alemannic differences (by Abraham, Werner); 16. Index

Review :
The volume is altogether a significant contribution to generative research and at the same time a valuable linguistic source of the German variety of Bavarian. This is an excellent collection of papers that are of relevance not only for those interested in dialect syntax in general and in the features of Bavarian in particular, but also for all scholars tackling issues of parametric variation within generative grammar. To conclude, Bavarian Syntax paints a nearly complete picture of the syntactic phenomena which distinguish Bavarian from the rest of the German-speaking area and beyond. On the one hand, it includes papers on well-known phenomena, revisited in the light of recent judgments or corpus studies, analogies with Romance or other Germanic languages, or data from Bavarian enclaves in North America. On the other hand, there are studies on less researched non-clausal phenomena confirming syntactic universals which are not to be found in, e.g., Standard German. The crucial properties of the phenomena are consistently described in an exhaustive way so that readers who are not native speakers of Bavarian or German can easily access the phenomena in order to draw conclusions or make comparisons with respect to their own subject of research. As for the theoretical approaches, most of the authors use the means of generative syntax in order to analyze the underlying structures of their phenomenon. Thus, the subtitle of the volume Contributions to the theory of syntax would better be specified as ‘generative’, because ‘theoretical syntax’ should not be used synonymously with ‘generative syntax’. There are other ‘theoretical syntaxes’ as well which are not taken into consideration. Apart from that, each author implements recent theoretical developments of both generative syntax and elicitation of dialectal data. The volume is altogether a significant contribution to generative research and at the same time a valuable linguistic source of the German variety of Bavarian.