This book reflects on key questions of enduring interest on the nature of syntax, bringing together Grant Goodall's previous publications to explore how syntactic representations are structured and the affordances of experimental techniques in studying them.

Grant Goodall is Professor of Linguistics and Director of the Linguistics Language Program and the Experimental Syntax Lab at the University of California, San Diego, USA.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Five themes in the study of syntax

Part 1: Three-dimensional syntax

1 Coordination

2 Case, clitics, and lexical NP's in Romance causatives

3 Wanna-contraction as restructuring

Part 2: Syntax and argument structure

4 Evidence for an asymmetry in argument structure

5 X'-internal word order in Mandarin Chinese and universal grammar

6 On case and the passive morpheme

7 ¿-alignment and the by-phrase

8 Accusative case in passives

9 Passives and arbitrary plural subjects in Spanish

Part 3: The syntax of subjects and wh-dependencies

10 On the status of SPEC of IP

11 The EPP in Spanish

12 Inversion in wh-questions in child Romance and child English

13 Experimenting with wh-movement in Spanish

14 Syntactic satiation and the inversion effect in English and Spanish wh-questions

Part 4: Constraints on wh-dependencies

15 Age-related effects on constraints on wh-movement

16 Is magnitude estimation worth the trouble?

17 The D-linking effect on extraction from islands and non-islands

18 Referentiality and resumption in wh-dependencies

19 D-linking, non-finiteness, and cross-linguistic variation in island phenomena