Polynesian Syntax and its Interfaces

Lauren Clemens is Assistant Professor at the University at Albany, State University of New York, in the Department of Anthropology's Program in Linguistics and Cognitive Science. Her work focuses on formal syntax, prosody, and the interface between them, and draws primarily on data from the Polynesian and Mayan language families. Her research has been published in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry, Language, Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, and Syntax.Diane Massam is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Toronto. Her main research interests are in argument structure, case, predication, word order, and nominal structure, with a focus on the Niue language and on register in English. She is the author of Niuean: Predicates and Arguments in an Isolating Language (OUP, 2020), editor of Count and Mass Across Languages (OUP, 2012), and co-editor, with Jessica Coon and Lisa deMena Travis, of The Oxford Handbook of Ergativity (OUP, 2017).

• Foreword List of abbreviations The contributors 1: Lauren Clemens and Diane Massam: Polynesian languages and their contributions to theoretical linguistics 2: Vera Hohaus: Gradability and modality: A case study from Samoan 3: James N. Collins: Mapping meaning to argument structure: The case of Samoan case 4: Maria Polinsky and Eric Potsdam: Deriving VOS from VSO in Tongan 5: Lauren Clemens and Rebecca Tollan: Syntactic ergativity as absolutive movement in Tongic Polynesian 6: Jens Hopperdietzel: Causative morphology as Voice-driven allomorphy: The case of Samoan fa'a causatives 7: Sandra Chung: Reaffirming M=aori negatives as verbs 8: David J. Medeiros: Hawaiian ai at the syntax-phonology interface 9: Yuko Otsuka: Apparent raising in Tongan and its implications for multiple case valuation 10: Elizabeth Pearce: Preverbal subjects and preverbal particles: Components of the left periphery in M=aori 11: Julianne Doner: Predicate-EPP in Niuean, Tongan, and beyond 12: Diane Massam: The lingering DP in Niuean