Reviewed by Roberta D’Alessandro, University of Cambridge

This volume is a selection of papers from the Georgetown University round table on languages and linguistics that took place March 26–29, 2004. The chapters are grouped into three main parts: ‘Causal architecture’, ‘Negation’, and ‘Tense and aspect’. Following the introduction, in ‘Three benchmarks for distributional approaches to natural language syntax’, Colin Philips argues that computational models of language will only be successful if integrated with the knowledge provided by linguistic theory.

Part 1, ‘Clausal architecture’ focuses on the left periphery, following Rizzi’s (1997) seminal work. Liliane Haegeman’s ‘Argument fronting in English, Romance CLLD, and the left periphery’ provides a detailed analysis of topicalization in English. Haegeman argues that the notion of speaker is crucial for English topicalization, which targets a high projection and is restricted to those sentences with a full complementizer phrase (CP), as opposed to topicalization in Romance languages or Greek. In ‘A detailed map of the left periphery of Medieval Romance’ Paola Benincà analyzes the clause structure of several Old Romance varieties and proposes the existence of an abstract Medieval Romance, which involves more movement to the CP than the modern varieties. James McCloskey’s ‘Questions and questioning in a local English’ offers a detailed analysis of subject/auxiliary inversion in Standard and Irish English. Next, Lisa deMena Travis, ‘VP-, D˚-movement languages’, compares verb and determiner phrase movement in Malagasy, Malay, Breton, Irish, and Zapotec.

Part 2, ‘Negation’, includes three chapters on the syntax and semantics of negation. In ‘Parasitism, secondary triggering, and depth of embedding’, Marcel den Dikken provides and analysis of polarity items (PIs) based on observations of the Dutch PI heel ‘whole’. ‘Light negation and polarity’ by Bernhard Schwarz and Rajesh Bhatt, offers an interesting overview of rescuing positive PIs under negation. Finally, Henriëtte de Swart’s ‘Marking and interpretation of negation: A bidirectional optimality theory approach’ analyzes negative indefinites.

Part 3, ‘Tense and aspect’, opens with Alice ter Meulen’s ‘Cohesion in temporal context: Aspectual adverbs as dynamic indexicals’, which discusses the role of aspectual elements in dynamic semantics. Specifically, she addresses the contrast between the present and the past in asserting presupposed information. In ‘Tense, adverbials, and quantification’, Toshiyuki Ogihara, adopting Bäuerle and von Stechow’s (1980) approach, studies the interaction of tense and quantified temporal prepositional phrases. Ogihara argues that, although adverbials play a direct role in determining anteriority, tense plays only an indirect role.

This book offers cutting edge research on syntax and semantics and is extremely well-conceived and well-edited, a pleasure to read.

References

Bäuerle, Rainer, and Arnim von Stechow. 1980. Finite and non-finite temporal constructions in German. Time, tense, and quantifiers, ed. by Christian Rohrer, 375–421. Tübingen: Niemeyer.

Rizzi, Luigi. 1997. The fine structure of the left periphery. Elements of grammar: A handbook of generative syntax, ed. by Liliane Haegeman, 281–337. Dordrecht: Kluwer.