Comparative Syntax of the Balkan Languages (Oxford ... - Cryptm.org

2Is Balkan Comparative Syntax Possible?Brian D. Joseph1. PreliminariesThe question asked in the title to this paper might seem to have a self-evidentanswer, especially in the context of the other papers in this volume, all of whichdeal with some aspect of the syntax of two or more languages of the Balkans.However, it is not as irrelevant or trivial a question as it might at first seem, fordespite the successes of these studies and others to be cited below with regard totaking a comparative perspective on the various languages in the Balkans, thelogically prior question of whether it is in fact possible or even enlightening todo comparative Balkan syntax needs to be explored.As a starting point, consider the following succinct statement of the goal ofUniversal Grammar: the determination of the ways in which all languages arealike and the ways in which they differ. To that end, comparative syntax playsan important and even crucial role.To illustrate the power of such an approach, one need only look at what hasbeen accomplished regarding the pro-drop (or null subject) parameter, to chooseone area that has been heavily investigated." Taking a comparative perspectiveon pro-drop—the possibility some languages show of omitting overt expressionof unemphatic subject pronouns in tensed clauses—has suggested variouscorrelations between the possibility of such omitted (null) subjects and theoccurrence of other syntactic and morphosyntactic phenomena. For example, theoccurrence of overt subjects in expletive constructions such as those involvingweather verbs or extraposition has been shown (Lightfoot 1991) to correlatewith a language not allowing pro-drop, as in English or French, and the absenceof such subjects with a language allowing pro-drop, as in Spanish. Similarly,Jaeggli and Safir (1989b.29-30) define "morphological uniformity" in verbalparadigms in terms of the structure of verb forms—a "uniform" paradigm beingone in which forms are either all stem + affix or all bare stem, but not mixed,with some bare stem and some stem + affix—and suggest further that "null17