Books by Cedric Boeckx

Most syntacticians, no matter their theoretical persuasion, agree that features (types or categories) are the most important units of analysis. Within Chomskyan generative grammar, the importance of features has grown steadily and within minimalism, it can be said that everything depends on features. They are obstacles in any interdisciplinary investigation concerning the nature of language and it is hard to imagine a syntactic description that does not explore them. For the first time, this book turns grammar upside down and proposes a new model of syntax that is better suited for interdisciplinary interactions, and shows how syntax can proceed free of lexical influence. The empirical domain examined is vast, and all the fundamental units and properties of syntax (categories, parameters, Last Resort, labelling, and hierarchies) are rethought. Opening up new avenues of investigation, this book will be invaluable to researchers and students in syntactic theory, and linguistics more broadly.

The phenomenon of the syntactic 'island' - a clause or structure from which a word cannot be moved - is central to research and study in syntactic theory. This book provides a comprehensive overview of syntactic islands. What are they? How do they arise? Why do they exist? Cedric Boeckx discusses the pros and cons of all the major generative accounts of island effects, and focuses the discussion on whether islands are narrowly syntactic effects, are due to interface factors or are 'merely' performance effects. Thanks to the diversity of island effects, readers are given a unique opportunity to familiarize themselves with all the major research styles and types of analysis in theoretical linguistics and have the chance to reflect on the theoretical implications of concrete natural language examples, allowing them to develop their own synthesis.