Rightward Movement in a Comparative Perspective: (200 Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today)

This book represents the state of the art on rightward movement in one thematically coherent volume. It documents the growing importance of the combination of empirical and theoretical work in linguistic analysis. Several contributions argue that rightward movement is a means of reducing phonological or structural complexity. The inclusion of corpus data and psycholinguistic results confirms the Right Roof Constraint as a characteristic property of extraposition and argues for a reduced role of subsentential bounding nodes. The contributions also show that the phenomenon cannot be looked at from one module of grammar alone, but calls for an interaction of syntax, semantics, phonology, and discourse. The discussion of different languages such as English, German, Dutch, Italian, Italian Sign Language, Modern Greek, Uyghur, and Khalkha enhances our understanding of the complexity of the phenomenon. Finally, the analytic options of different frameworks are explored. The volume is of interest to students and researchers of syntax, semantics, psycholinguistics, and corpus linguistics.

Table of Contents:
1. Introduction by the editors; 2. Part I. Empirical perspective; 3. Constraints on intra- and extraposition (by Bader, Markus); 4. Subclausal locality constraints on relative clause extraposition (by Strunk, Jan); 5. Constraints on relative clause extraposition in English: An experimental investigation (by Walker, Heike); 6. Part II. The Minimalist Perspective; 7. Rightward movement, EPP and specifiers: Evidence from Uyghur and Khalkha (by Ozturk, Balkiz); 8. Neglected cases of rightward movement: When wh-phrases and negative quantifiers go to the right (by Geraci, Carlo); 9. Rightward movement from a different perspective (by Chesi, Cristiano); 10. Cumulative rightward processes (by Kluck, Marlies); 11. Part III. Other Theoretical Perspectives; 12. A dynamic perspective on left-right asymmetries: CLLD and Clitic doubling in Greek (by Gregoromichelaki, Eleni); 13. On the locality of complement clause and relative clause extraposition (by Crysmann, Berthold); 14. Part IV. The Prosodic Perspective; 15. Extraposition of defocused and light PPs in English (by Gobbel, Edward); 16. Prosodic constraints on extraposition in German (by Hartmann, Katharina); 17. Index