English focus constructions and the theory of grammar By Michael S. Rochemont and Peter W. Culicover (review)

206LANGUAGE, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 1 (1992) in a grammaticality judgment task. Thus, one can compare performance on grammatical and ungrammatical pairs: if the treatment of the pairs is systematically different, then knowledge of the principle can be inferred. Grimshaw & Rosen's methodology neither reifies the percentage correct or incorrect nor requires a high level ofperformance in order to test knowledge of a grammatical principle. Overall, LTSLA is an important book in the area of second language acquisition , in that it places L2 studies squarely within the realm of current linguistic theory. By example more than by explicit suggestion, the book proposes a methodological approach and a theoretical framework for studying L2 acquisition . As the papers in this book demonstrate, the principles and parameters approach to L2 acquisition allows for systematic examination of the relation among universal grammar, the Ll, and general cognitive capacities in the acquisition of a second language. Coupled with rigorous attention to the details of experimental predictions and data analysis, this approach should advance both L2 research and linguistic theory in general. REFERENCES Chomsky, Noam. 1986. Knowledge of language. New York: Praeger. Grimshaw, Jane, and Sara Thomas Rosen. 1990. Knowledge and obedience: The developmental status of the Binding Theory. Linguistic Inquiry 21.187-222. Kayne, Richard. 1989. Null subjects and clitic climbing. The null subject parameter, ed. by Osvaldo Jaeggli and Kenneth J. Safir, 239-61. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Pollock, Jean-Yves. 1989. Verb movement, universal grammar, and the structure of IP. Linguistic Inquiry 20.365-424. Rizzi, Luigi. 1982. Issues in Italian syntax. Dordrecht: Foris. Department of Linguistics[Received 12 July 1991.] University of Kansas Lawrence, KS 66045 English focus constructions and the theory of grammar. By Michael S. Rochemont and Peter W. Culicover. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics 52.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. vii, 210. Cloth $49.50. Reviewed by Peter Coopmans, University of Utrecht This book is about a class of constructions in English that have been labelled 'stylistic', because their derivation has been assumed to point to the need for a special class of rules outside the domain of syntax proper (cf. Rochemont 1978). Among other things, stylistic rules are discourse-sensitive and contribute to the proper assignment of focus and presupposition. In this study R&C show that there is no empirical basis for postulating such a separate class of stylistic rules. They argue that these constructions can be analyzed in terms of general application of syntactic 'move a' in conjunction with well-known locality principles such as the Empty Category Principle (ECP) and the Subjacency condition . That is why these constructions are better termed 'focus' constructions, REVIEWS207 to dojustice to their outstanding feature—the ability to focus a specific phrase in the sentence structurally. The constructions discussed are Extraposition from NP (Ch. 2), Stylistic Inversion (Ch. 3), and NP Shift (Ch. 4.), the last comprising Heavy NP Shift and so-called 'presentational ?/zere-constructions'. In Ch. 1 R&C outline their theoretical assumptions, adopting many of the proposals of Chomsky 1986 and Lasnik & Saito 1992 concerning the proper definitions of 'barrier', 'ECP', and 'subjacency'.1 This chapter also contains a brief presentation of their theory of focus, built in part on their earlier work (Culicover & Rochemont 1983, Rochemont 1986). Properties of focus are discussed further in Ch. 5. Before I touch upon some aspects of their proposals and raise a few points, let me say here that R&C have done an excellent job in putting forward this study of stylistic constructions and showing how these can be integrated with current syntactic theory. Despite the fact that the argumentation is highly theory -internal, sometimes necessarily so, the subject matter remains accessible; the book is well written and includes very helpful indices ofnames and subjects. Extraposition from NP is exemplified by the relative-clause extraposition in 1 and the PP extraposition in 2. (1)A man came into the room that no one knew. (2)I met a man yesterday with blond hair. The main feature of R&Cs analysis is that such instances of extraposition do not involve movement. Rather, the extraposed element appears in its basegenerated position, and a Complement Principle is at work which imposes a locality restriction on the interpretive relation between the NP and the extraposed phrase...