Exploring Nanosyntax

Exploring Nanosyntax provides the first in-depth introduction to the framework of nanosyntax, which originated in the early 2000s as a formal theory of language within Principles and Parameters framework. Deploying a radical implementation of the cartographic "one feature - one head" maxim, the framework provides a fine-grained decomposition of morphosyntactic structure, laying bare the building blocks of the universal functional sequence.

This volume makes three contributions: First, it presents the framework's constitutive tools and principles, and explains how nanosyntax relates to cartography and to Distributed Morphology. Second, it illustrates how nanosyntactic tools and principles can be applied to a range of empirical domains of natural language. In doing so, the volume provides a range of detailed crosslinguistic investigations which uncover novel empirical data and which contribute to a better understanding of the functional sequence. Third, specific problems are raised and discussed and new theoretical strands internal to the nanosyntactic framework are explored. Bringing together original contributions by senior and junior researchers in the field, Exploring Nanosyntax offers the first all-encompassing view of this promising framework, making its methodology and exciting results accessible to a wide audience.

Lena Baunaz is a postdoctoral assistant at the University of Zurich. She holds a PhD from the University of Geneva, which she published as The Grammar of French Quantification (Springer, 2011). Her recent research interests include the nano-syntax of the subjunctive mood, complementizers, and ontological categories. She has published in Probus, Studia Linguistica and others.

Liliane Haegeman was professor of English Linguistics at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) from 1984-1999. Between 2000 and 2009 she was full professor of English linguistics at the University of Lille III. Since 2009 she has held a research position at Ghent University. She has worked extensively on the syntax of English and Flemish.

Karen De Clercq is a postdoctoral researcher funded by the FWO and working at Ghent University. She wrote her PhD on the nanosyntax of negative markers under the supervision of Prof. Liliane Haegeman. She is currently working on the fine-grained morpho-syntax of Quantity-words (many/much; few/little), adjectives, degree comparison, and negation.

Eric Lander is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Gothenburg, currently working on negation in the history of Scandinavian. His research interests include Germanic philology, the NP/DP parameter, demonstratives, complementizers, and ontological categories. He has earned degrees from Harvard, Leuven, and Ghent.