Exploring Interfaces

Models of theoretical linguistics now emphasize the meeting points, or interfaces, between different aspects of our language capacity. Syntactic operations include structure-building, checking long-distance relationships between units, and connecting alternative word orders. This volume presents a collection of original studies that explore the mapping between these operations and other language-related areas such as word meanings, discourse contexts, the construction of meaning for larger units, and the alternative expressions of word order. It differs from previous traditional research on interfaces by bringing together studies and analyses from a range of languages, using monolingual varieties that include second language phenomena. Case studies of different types of interfaces, as well as studies based on lesser known sets of linguistic data, provide important examples that propose a new view of the connections between syntactic processes and other areas of grammar.

Mónica Cabrera is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Loyola Marymount University. She is author of The L2 Acquisition of English and Spanish Causative Structures: A Bidirectional Study (2008) and Overgeneralized Lexical Causatives in Adult English and Spanish L2 Acquisition (2015), as well as several articles in international collections and journals. José Camacho is a Professor of Spanish Linguistics at Rutgers University. He is author of three books including Null Subjects (Cambridge, 2013) and Introducción a la sintaxis del Español (Cambridge, 2018) and over forty articles in international collections and journals.