Dependency and Directionality

The direction in which the structure of sentences and filler-gap dependencies are built is a topic of fundamental importance to linguistic theory and its applications. This book develops an integrated understanding of structure building movement and locality embedded in a syntactic theory that argues for a ''top down'' approach presenting an explicit counterweight to the bottom-up derivations pervading the Chomskian mainstream. It combines a compact and comprehensive historical perspective on structure building the cycle and movement with detailed discussions of island effects the typology of long-distance filler-gap dependencies and the special problems posed by the subject in clausal syntax. Providing introductions to the main issues reviewing extant arguments for bottom-up and top-down approaches and presenting several case studies in its development of a new theory this book should be of interest to all students and scholars of language interested in syntactic structures and the dependencies inside them.