Principles and Parameters of Syntactic Saturation

Download or read book Principles and Parameters of Syntactic Saturation written by Gert Webelhuth and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work represents the first full-scale attempt to provide a restrictive theory of parameters--the nature and limits of syntactic variation. Focusing on syntactic saturation, Webelhuth hypothesizes that in natural language these phenomena are subject to the "Saturation Condition." He explains the principles behind this condition and demonstrates how it imposes strong constraints on what counts as a possible parameter in natural language. Webelhuth goes on to test this theory against empirical evidence from seven modern Germanic languages: German, Dutch, English, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, and Icelandic.