Selected Topics in the Syntax of Madurese

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

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Despite 6.8 million speakers of the language (Davies 2010), Madurese remains severely understudied, and very little theoretical work exists on the language. This volume includes chapters on selected topics in Madurese syntax that are either completely unexplored, or there are significant gaps in their existing discussion. The topics covered are: (a) verb-movement in Madurese; (b) yes/no questions and polar particles; (c) argument-extraction and sluicing; (d) Binding Theory and Madurese reflexives; and (e) DP-internal movement in Madurese. These chapters bring in novel data, contributing to the empirical coverage of Madurese.They provide theoretical analyses that aim to explain the empirical patterns, thus situating the Madurese data within the Generative discourse. Each chapter also provides comparative discussion of similar phenomena in related languages like Javanese & Balinese. The volume complements existing work of Davies (2010) on Madurese grammar, and is an essential read for anyone interested in Madurese syntax.