Rarely Used Structures and Lesser-Studied Languages: Insights from the Margins (Routledge Studies in Linguistics)

By: Emily Manetta

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Synopsis: This book investigates signature but marginal syntactic configurations influential in the development of generative theory, spotlighting lesser-studied languages of the Indic family toward illustrating the value of their study and subsequent implications for linguistic theory more broadly. After first defining what constitutes a marginal construction, the book then undertakes microcomparative approach in the rigorous exploration of fundamental properties of human language, including displacement, ellipsis, unbounded dependencies, and the role of clausal peripheries, in such languages in Kashmiri and Romani. In so doing, Manetta interrogates and ultimately affirms the relevance of marked and marginal strings which have proven to be crucial to generative syntax while simultaneously advocating the role of lesser-studied languages to the study of such properties. This book is key reading for graduate students and researchers in linguistics and syntax more specifically, as well as those interested in the study of Indic languages.