Contrast and Representations in Syntax

Syntactic contrasts, the systems of grammatical oppositions that exist within individual languages, are typically formally encoded in terms of features. The nature of syntactic contrast is tied to a fundamental question in generative syntactic theory: What is universal in syntax (and in language more generally), and what is variable? This volume explores the dual role of features, on the one hand defining a set of paradigmatic contrasts, and other the other hand acting as the building blocks of syntactic structures and the drivers of syntactic operations. In both roles, features are increasingly seen as the locus of parametric variation. The identification of parameters with features has opened up new possibilities for exploring connections between the morphological system of a language and its syntax, and suggests a new role for featural contrast in syntactic theory. The papers collected here represent a diversity of topics, perspectives, and concerns, but are united by an interest in morphosyntactic representations, and in the formal encoding of syntactic contrasts.