The Complementizer Phase : Subjects and Operators

This book addresses the role complementisers (eg that in She said that she would) and their phrases play in the phase-based approach to the mental computation of language. Leading linguists and promising young scholars draw on analyses of a wide range of languages to consider how complementisers behave in subject extraction phenomena.

This book draws together nine original investigations by leading linguists and promising young scholars on the syntax of complementisers (eg that in She said that she would) and their phrases. The chapters are divided into two parts, each of which highlights aspects of the behaviour and function of complementisers. The first part looks at how and when subjects, or parts of subjects, can and cannot move outside their canonical position in a sentence. Each chapter examines and compares the relevance of a number of syntactic factors in languages such as English, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Brazilian Portuguese and Bavarian. In the second part, the focus turns to the nature and function of complementisers themselves, with discussions drawing on evidence from Italian, Italian dialects, Hebrew, and Dutch."This important compilation advances our knowledge of the intricate phenomena that take place on the edges of clauses. Every one of the contributions is thought-provoking and challenging, a property that would make the volume an ideal text for a graduate seminar in syntactic theory."Frederick J. NewmeyerProfessor Emeritus, University of Washington and Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University