Micro-syntactic variation in North American English / edited by Raffaella Zanuttini and Laurence R. Horn.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Zanuttini, Raffaella, editor.

Horn, Laurence R., editor.

Oxford Scholarship Online.

J. Fithian Tatem Memorial Fund.

Series:

Oxford studies in comparative syntax

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Variation.

English language.

English language--Syntax.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (365 pages .)

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2014]

System Details:

text file

Summary:

By comparing linguistic varieties that are quite similar overall, linguists can often determine where and how grammatical systems differ, and how they change over time. The goal of this work is to provide a systematic look at minimal differences in the syntax of varieties of English spoken in North America. This book makes available a range of data on unfamiliar constructions drawn from several regional and social dialects, data whose distribution and grammatical properties shed light on the varieties under examination and on the properties of English syntax more generally. The contributions collected in this volume fall under a number of overlapping topics: variation in the expression of negation and modality (the so don't I construction in eastern New England, negative auxiliary inversion in declaratives in African American and southern white English, multiple modals in southern speech, the "needs washed" construction in the Pittsburgh area), pronouns and reflexives (transitive expletives in Appalachia, personal dative constructions in the Southern/Mountain states, long-distance reflexives in the Minnesota Iron Range), and the relation between linguistic variation and language change (the rise of "drama so" among younger speakers, the difficulty in establishing which phenomena cluster together and should be explained by a single point of parametric variation).

Contents:

1 North American English: Exploring the Syntactic Frontier / Raffaella Zanuttini Zanuttini, Raffaella 1

2 SO [TOTALLY] Speaker-oriented: An Analysis of "Drama SO" / Patricia Irwin Irwin, Patricia 29

3 Affirmative Semantics with Negative Morphosyntax: Negative Exclamatives and the New England So AUXn't NP/DP Construction / Jim Wood Wood, Jim 71

4 Force, Focus, and Negation in African American English / Lisa Green Green, Lisa 115

5 Transitive Expletives in Appalachian English / Raffaella Zanuttini Zanuttini, Raffaella, Judy B. Bernstein Bernstein, Judy B. 143

6 The Syntax and Semantics of Personal Datives in Appalachian English / Corinne Hutchinson Hutchinson, Corinne, Grant Armstrong Armstrong, Grant 178

7 Iron Range English Reflexive Pronouns / Sara S. Loss Loss, Sara S. 225

8 This Syntax Needs Studied / Elspeth Edelstein Edelstein, Elspeth 242

9 We might should be thinking this way: Theory and Practice in the Study of Syntactic Variation / J. Daniel Hasty Hasty, J. Daniel 269

10 Addressing the Problem of Intra-speaker Variation for Parametric Theory / Christina Tortora Tortora, Christina 294

11 Afterword: Microvariation in Syntax and Beyond / Laurence R. Horn Horn, Laurence R. 324.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the J. Fithian Tatem Memorial Fund.

ISBN:

9780199367245

0199367248

OCLC:

890508143

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.