The Syntax of Nonsententials

This volume brings the data that many in formal linguistics have dismissed as peripheral straight into the core of syntactic theory. By bringing together experts from syntax, semantics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, language acquisition, aphasia, and pidgin and creole studies, the volume makes a multidisciplinary case for the existence of nonsententials, which are analyzed in various chapters as root phrases and small clauses (Me; Me First!; Him worry?!; Class in session), and whose distinguishing property is the absence of Tense, and, with it, any syntactic phenomena that rely on Tense, including structural Nominative Case. Arguably, the lack of Tense specification is also responsible for the dearth of indicative interpretations among nonsententials, as well as for their heavy reliance on pragmatic context. So pervasive is nonsentential speech across all groups, including normal adult speech, that a case can be made that continuity of grammar lies in nonsentential, rather than sentential speech.

Barbara H. Partee, University of Massachusetts-Amherst:
According to Richard Montague, the task of syntax is to give a recursive definition of the set of well-formed expressions of every category of a given language; for compositional semantics that is a very natural perspective, since it is not only sentences that have meanings. But few linguists made much of this aspect of Montague’s approach. I was happy when I first encountered Ellen Barton’s work on non-sentential constituents around 1989. I had long believed that there are non-trivial speech acts involving non-elliptical non-sentential constituents, but the topic never got to the top of my agenda, so I am immensely grateful that such an excellent team of linguists has put together such a strong collection of papers invoking such a breadth of perspectives. I hope this book unleashes a flood of new work on this important topic.