This volume is a collection of articles on clitic doubling, a phenomenon that has preoccupied generative linguists since the 1980s, when its theoretical importance was noted. Clitic doubling is prevalent in the Balkan languages. However, generative studies initially dealt with its properties in Romance languages, with the Balkan patterns coming increasingly into focus. Since the mid-nineties, these patterns presented a variety of challenges to the generalisations reached on the basis of Romance, while also raising new research questions. The volume deals among other things with the following aspects of the phenomenon: its extension within and outside the Balkan Sprachbund and the observed variation; its realizational possibilities and the constraints on the status of the doubled DP (direct or indirect object, pronominal or non-pronominal); its semantics (definite, specific, presupposed, neither) and pragmatics (topic or not, D-linked or not); its temporal and locational genesis; the relationship between the clitic and its associate.

The book deals with some syntactic and semantic aspects of the shared Balkan Sprachbund properties. In a comprehensive introductory chapter, Tomić offers an overview of the Balkan Sprachbund properties. Sobolev, displaying the areal distribution of 65 properties, argues for dialect cartography. Friedman, on the example of the evidentials, argues for typologically informed areal explanation of the Balkan properties. The other contributions analyze specific phenomena: polidefinite DPs in Greek and Aromanian (Campos and Stavrou), Balkan constructions in which datives combine with impersonal clitics or non-active morphology (Rivero), Balkan optatives (Ammann and Auwera), imperative force in the Balkan languages (Isac and Jakab), clitic placement in Greek imperatives (Bošković), focused constituents in Romanian and Bulgarian (Hill), synthetic and analytic tenses in Romanian (D'Hulst, Coene and Avram), "purpose-like" modification in a number of Balkan languages (Bužarovska), Balkan modal existential “wh”-constructions (Grosu), child and adult strategies in interpreting empty subjects in Serbian/Croatian (Stojanović and Marelj), conditional sentences in Judeo-Spanish (Montoliu and Auwera).

This collection of seven papers studies important aspects of the syntax of Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Rumanian from a comparative perspective based on current linguistic frameworks, including the Minimalist Program. Topics addressed include control, raising, and obviation, negation, noun phrase structure, clitic pronouns, and verb movement.

This book is concerned with a number of central issues in the theory of clitics, a topic that has become much debated in recent years. Mainly written within a recent generative framework, its contrastive approach discusses these issues against the background of a number of European languages, among which the Balkan Slavic languages figure prominently. The question as to whether clitics are to be located in the syntax or in the phonology or in both is addressed in articles by Boškovi?, Progovac and Franks, who also provides a thorough introductory essay to the volume. There are detailed studies on clitic behavior in Greek relative clauses (Alexiadou and Anagnostopolou), Bulgarian and English DPs (Dimitrova-Vulchanova), the various Romance languages (Franco), Slovene (Golden and Milojevi? Sheppard), Albanian and Greek (Kallulli) and Macedonian (Tomi?). Finally, the book contains a discourse-related description of clitic doubling in Balkan Slavic languages (Schick). The book should be of interest to any scholar, theoretical or descriptive, whose research touches upon the central phenomenon of cliticisation.

This book investigates morpho-syntactic convergences that characterize the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund: Balkan Slavic, Greek, Romanian, Albanian, Balkan Romani. Apart from new data, the volume features contributions within different theoretical frameworks (contact linguistics, functional linguistics, typology, areal linguistics, and generative grammar).

This book discusses the morpho-syntactic Balkan Sprachbund features in nine languages in which they are most numerous. It contains a wealth of Balkan linguistic material. The focus is on displaying similarities and differences in the representation of the most widely acknowledged Balkan Sprachbund morpho-syntactic features and their interaction with other features in the structure of the DP or the sentence of individual languages.

Many theories hold that language change, at least on a local level, is driven by a need for improvement. The present volume explores to what extent this assumption holds true, and whether there is a particular type of language change that we dub language change for the worse, i.e., change with a worsening effect that cannot be explained away as a side-effect of improvement in some other area of the linguistic system. The chapters of the volume, written by leading junior and senior scholars, combine expertise in diachronic and historical linguistics, typology, and formal modelling. They focus on different aspects of grammar (phonology, morphosyntax, semantics) in a variety of language families (Germanic, Romance, Austronesian, Bantu, Jê-Kaingang, Wu Chinese, Greek, Albanian, Altaic, Indo-Aryan, and languages of the Caucasus). The volume contributes to ongoing theoretical debates and discussions between linguists with different theoretical orientations.

The present volume is a selection of papers presented at the SinFoniJa 3 conference, held at the University of Novi Sad in October 2010. A wide range of linguistics-related topics were covered at this event, and the selection before you represents the variety and quality of research the editors wish to promote. It aims to uphold sound linguistic theorizing as the basis of natural language analysis and cutting-edge applied-linguistics concerns. Among the novel linguistic topics in the fields of syntax, phonology, semantics and natural language processing, the book includes (re)analyses of negative imperatives; constructions with multiple occurrences of the semantically interdependent indefinite expressions; future constructions; verbal categories; demonstrative reinforcers; word order and clitic doubling; control constituents; non-final information focus; clitic placement, named entity recognition; prosody prediction in speech synthesis; and covers data from various languages inlcuding English, Polish, Turkic, Bulgarian, Slovenian, Serbian and others. In addition, the research presented here shows why the assumptions regarding the interfaces of these domains, which we often take for granted, require solid empirical grounding.

This book contains fourteen articles that reflect current ideas on the phonology, morphology, and syntax of clitics. It covers the forms and functions of clitics in various typologically diverse languages and presents data from, e.g. European Portuguese, Macedonian, and Yoruba. It extensively deals with the prosodic structure of clitics, their morphological status, clitic placement, and clitic doubling. The form and behavior of clitics with respect to tonal phenomena and in verse are discussed in two articles (Akinlabi & Liberman, Reindl & Franks). Other articles address the prosodic representation of clitics in Irish (Green), the differences in the acquisition of clitics and strong pronouns in Catalan (Escobar & Gavarro), the similarities between clitics and affixes or words in Romance and Bantu languages (Cocchi, Crysmann, Monachesi, Ortman & Popescu), the semantics of clitics in the Greek DP and in Spanish doubling (Alexiadou & Stavrou, Uriagereka), and complex problems concerning verbal clitics in Romanian and Balkan languages (Legendre, Spencer, Tomic).

This book envisions the study of bare noun phrases as a field of research in its own right rather than an accessory matter in the wider domain of nominal determination. Combining insights from different theoretical backgrounds and extending the empirical coverage of bare noun phenomena, the ten contributions provide new perspectives on long-standing but still actively debated problems as well as investigations into previously ignored issues. The volume focuses on the wide range of bare noun phenomena in Romance languages, including Spanish, Catalan, Brazilian and European Portuguese, Italian and French; but also widens its inherently comparative perspective to languages such as Bulgarian and Modern Hebrew. The authors discuss the importance of cross-linguistic patterns in the modeling of the syntax and semantics of noun phrases and of common noun denotations, the role of information structure as well as that of discourse traditions and coordination.