Publisher's Synopsis
This text presents an analysis of modern Irish syntax, in which the particulars of Irish syntax are shown to inform more general theoretical issues, revealing both the scope of universal grammar as well as the limits to syntactic variation. All of the major structures of Irish are considered in turn, and compared with similar structures found in other languages (especially those of the Germanic, Romance and Semitic language families). A central concern of the book is the concept of functional projection: appeal to the theoretical notions of functional head and of head movement is to allow for a highly restrictive account of Irish word order. In addition, the analysis of Irish consonant mutation developed here offers a unique diagnostic form of syntactic representations.;Though written primarily from a government-binding perspective, the work also integrates the more recent minimalist proposals of Chomsky with the linearity proposals of Kayne, and thus contributes quite directly to questions of current theoretical interest. It should be useful for researchers in theoretical syntax and comparative grammar, and those more specifically concerned with Celtic languages and linguistics.
