Smuggling in Syntax

One of the fundamental properties of human language is movement, where a constituent moves from one position in a sentence to another position. Syntactic theory has long been concerned with properties of movement, including locality restrictions. Smuggling in Syntax investigates how different movement operations interact with one another, focusing on the special case of smuggling. First introduced by volume editor Chris Collins in 2005, the term 'smuggling' refers to a specific type of movement interaction. The contributions in this volume each describe different areas where smuggling derivations play a role, including passives, causatives, adverb placement, the dative alternation, the placement of measure phrases, wh-in-situ, and word order in ergative languages. The volume also addresses issues like the freezing constraint on movement and the acquisition of smuggling derivations by children. In this work, Adriana Belletti and Chris Collins bring together leading syntacticians to present a range of contributions on different aspects of smuggling. Tackling fundamental theoretical questions with empirical consequences, this volume explores one of the least understood types of movement and points the way toward new research.

Adriana Belletti is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Siena. Her main research has focused on generative comparative morpho-syntax with special emphasis on Italian/Romance and on different modes of language acquisition within a grammar-based approach. Her publications include the co-authored volume The Acquisition of Italian (2015) and with OUP the edited volume Structures and Beyond (2004). Chris Collins is Professor of Linguistics at New York University. He is a syntactician with an interest in African languages, including Ewe and the Khosian languages. His research focuses on anaphora, argument structure, negation, and ellipsis. He has written and edited multiple books, including most recently The Linker in the Khoisan Languages (OUP 2019).