Questions of syntax

"There are far more syntactically distinct languages than we might have thought. Yet there are far fewer than there might have been. We need to understand why, in both cases. One common and relevant theme that runs through these chapters, with varying degrees of explicitness, concerns how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer. At issue, among other things, are the relation between syntax and (certain aspects of) semantics, the relation between syntax and what appear to be lexical questions, the relation between syntax and morphology, the relation between syntax and certain aspects of phonology (insofar as silent elements and their properties play a substantial role) and the extent to which comparative syntax can provide new and decisive evidence bearing on these different kinds of questions. More and more questions need to be asked, if we are to achieve depth of explanation. Comparative syntax provides evidence bearing on questions which are not initially comparative in nature. It is extremely fruitful to search for correlations across syntactic differences as a means of establishing a new kind of window into the language faculty. Micro-comparative syntax is an especially powerful tool that allows us to probe questions concerning the most primitive units of syntactic variation, and whose growth in recent decades is to be compared with the development of the earliest microscopes, . Comparative syntax sheds light on what might at first appear to be lexical questions, as in the case of transitive verbal need, whose cross-linguistic distribution is less arbitrary that it appears to be, when viewed in the context of a silent counterpart of have"--

More languages than we might have thought: fewer languages than there might have been -- Comparative syntax -- Comparative syntax and English is to -- Having need and needing have / with Stephanie Harves -- The silence of heads -- A note on some even more unusual relative clauses -- The unicity of there and the definiteness effect -- Notes on French and English demonstratives / with Jean-Yves Pollock) -- Some thoughts on one and two and other numerals -- English one and ones as complex determiners -- Once and twice -- A note on grand and its silent entourage -- Why are there no directionality parameters? -- Toward a syntactic reinterpretation of Harris and Halle -- Locality and agreement in French hyper-complex inversion / with Jean-Yves Pollock) -- Clitic doubling and agreement in French hyper-complex inversion