The syntax of functional left peripheries: Clause typing in West Germanic and beyond

Julia Bacskai-Atkari

The syntax of functional left peripheries: Clause typing in West Germanic and beyond

Authors

Julia Bacskai-Atkari

Synopsis

This book provides a novel analysis for the syntax of the clausal left periphery, focusing on various finite clause types and especially on embedded clauses. It investigates how the appearance of multiple projections interacts with economy principles and with the need for marking syntactic information overtly. In particular, the proposed account shows that a flexible approach assuming only a minimal number of projections is altogether favourable to cartographic approaches. The main focus of the book is on West Germanic, in particular on English and German, yet other Germanic and non-Germanic languages are also discussed for comparative purposes.

Author Biography

Julia Bacskai-Atkari

Julia Bacskai-Atkari received her doctoral degree in general linguistics in 2014 at the University of Potsdam, where she also completed her habilitation in 2021. After various appointments in Potsdam and in Konstanz, she is currently an assistant professor for Language Contact: (English) Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam and a Privatdozentin at the University of Potsdam. She has carried out two research projects on the syntax of functional left peripheries and on asymmetries in relative clauses as principal investigator. Her research focuses on clause typing and the syntactic properties of the CP-domain in various finite subordinate clauses, including comparative constructions and relative clauses. Her work is dedicated to the study of West Germanic languages, especially to English and German, but her cross-linguistic investigations include many other languages.