Linguistic Theory and South Asian Languages: Essays in honour of K. A. Jayaseelan.
 

Edited by:

The South Asian languages, mainly Indo-Aryan and Dravidian, have become a focus of interest in the formal study of language as a natural consequence of the research program of the Principle and Parameters approach and an enforced interest in exploring the parametrical space of human language. The contributors in this volume are Richard S. Kayne, Jacqueline Guéron, Cedric Boeckx, Eric Reuland, Probal Dasgupta, Alice Davison, K.G. Vijayakrishnan, etc.

The contributions to the present volume combine theoretical reasoning in syntax and phonology with a comparative research agenda in which South Asian languages figure prominently. The topics range from issues of clause structure, serial verb constructions, cleft and question formation, to the question of what the proper syntactic format of modification should be, issues of binding theory and raising, and complementation. The collection of articles concludes with two chapters on Dravidian and comparative phonology and a chapter on the shaping of phonological awareness by different writing systems. The authors and the editors devote this piece of work to Professor K.A. Jayaseelan, one of present-day India’s most influential linguists.