Verb First

This collection of papers brings together the most recent crosslinguistic research on the syntax of verb-initial languages. Authors with a variety of theoretical perspectives pursue the questions of how verb-initial order is derived, and how these derivations play into the characteristic syntax of these languages. Major themes in the volume include the role of syntactic category in languages with verb-initial order; the different mechanisms of deriving V-initial order; and the universal correlates of the order. This book should be of interest to scholars who work on theoretical approaches to word order derivation, typologists, and those who work on the particular grammars of Celtic, Zapotec, Mixtec, Polynesian, Austronesian, Mayan, Salish, Aboriginal, and Nilotic languages.

Asya Pereltsvaig, Cornell University, on Linguist List 16.2503, 2005:
This books presents valuable insights into the syntax of a variety of verb-initial languages and as such is a great contribution to our understanding of syntax. Accounting for word order across languages is one of the main goals of syntactic theory, yet it is the word order problems that often present the toughest challenges for syntacticians. The research represented in this book goes a long way in elucidating the issues related to a particular subset of word orders, those where the verb comes first.
As such, this book not only provides an overview of the cutting-edge research on this subject, but also sets goals for future research.