Andreas Dufter Knihy

Focus–background structure has taken center stage in much current theorizing about sentence prosody, syntax, and semantics. However, both the inventory of focus expressions found cross-linguistically and the interpretive consequences associated with each of these continue to be insufficiently described. This volume aims at providing new observations on the availability and the use of focus markings in Romance languages. In doing so, it documents the plurality of research on focus in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, and Romanian. Topics covered include constituent fronting and clefting, the position of subjects and focus particles, clitic doubling of objects, and information packaging in complex sentences. In addition, some contributions explore focus–background structure from acquisitional and diachronic angles, while others adopt a comparative perspective, studying differences between individual Romance and Germanic languages. Therefore, this volume is of interest to a broad audience within linguistics, including syntacticians, semanticists, and historical linguists.

The twelve contributions gathered in this volume explore the history of the French language expansion, putting emphasis on the changes brought about by diatopic variation and language contact. They also analyze the role of language policies and normative representations on the dissemination of French, both in Europe and worldwide.

This volume offers theoretically informed surveys of topics that have figured prominently in morphosyntactic and syntactic research into Romance languages and dialects. We define syntax as being the linguistic component that assembles linguistic units, such as roots or functional morphemes, into grammatical sentences, and morphosyntax as being an umbrella term for all morphological relations between these linguistic units, which either trigger morphological marking (e. g. explicit case morphemes) or are related to ordering issues (e. g. subjects precede finite verbs whenever there is number agreement between them). All 24 chapters adopt a comparative perspective on these two fields of research, highlighting cross-linguistic grammatical similarities and differences within the Romance language family. In addition, many chapters address issues related to variation observable within individual Romance languages, and grammatical change from Latin to Romance.

While sociolinguistics has traditionally focused on variation within individual languages, its significance for grammatical theory has only recently gained recognition. This volume aims to bridge the gap between empirical-variationist and formal-theoretical approaches in linguistics. It features case studies that integrate corpus-based and competence-based methods to describe variation, thus opening new avenues for analyzing variability at both the individual speaker level and among different dialects and generations. Contributions document diverse research into models of grammatical competence that address variationist data, discussing parameter-based (e.g., Minimalist), constraint-based (e.g., Optimality Theoretic), and usage-based (e.g., Construction Grammar) approaches. The volume appeals to a wide audience within linguistics, including syntacticians, morphologists, and sociolinguists. While most contributions focus on variation in English and German, it also includes studies on variation in French, Dutch, Icelandic, and Uralic languages. This collection not only highlights the plurality of current research but also emphasizes the importance of integrating different methodologies to enhance our understanding of linguistic variation.

Zwei Forschungstraditionen dominieren die phonologische Beschreibung von Rhythmus: zum einen die aus der Phonetik hervorgegangene Typologie silben- und akzentzählender Sprachen, zum anderen die Metrische Phonologie. Dabei bestimmt der erste Ansatz rhythmische Qualität temporal, der zweite akzentuell. Die vorliegende Monographie begründet, warum beide Explikationen als Grundlage einer universellen Rhythmusphonologie problematisch sind und entwickelt eine neue Typologie, die die prosodischen Dimensionen der Zeit und der akzentuellen Prominenz gleichermaßen berücksichtigt und ihre jeweiligen Kodierungsleistungen auf Wort- und Satzebene als typdefinierend versteht. Insgesamt ergeben sich vier Typen, die in ihrer phonologischen Charakteristik zunächst durch je zwei bis drei Sprachen veranschaulicht werden. So findet sich unter anderem eine Diskussion der rhythmischen Konturbildung im Deutschen, Französischen, Italienischen und Japanischen. Die anschließend vorgestellten Befunde aus Phonetik, Psycholinguistik und poetologischer Metrik konvergieren darin, daß sie eine allein zeit- oder akzentbasierte Rhythmusphonologie in Frage stellen, jedoch für eine Typologie möglicher prosodischer Kontraste sprechen.