Richard S.Kayne is Silver Professor of Linguistics, New York University

Preface
Acknowledgements
1. Some Preliminary Comparative Remarks on French and Italian Definite Articles
2. Several, Few and Many
3. A Note on the Syntax of Numerical Bases
4. On Parameters and on Principles of Pronunciation
5. A Short Note on where vs. place
6. Expletives, Datives, and the Tension between Morphology and Syntax
7. Some Silent First Person Plurals
8. A Note on Auxiliary Alternations and Silent Causation
9. Antisymmetry and the Lexicon
10. Why Isn't This a Complementizer?
11. Toward an Analysis of French Hyper-Complex Inversion (in collaboration with Jean-Yves Pollock)
Bibliography
Index

Comparisons and Contrasts collects eleven of Richard Kayne's recent articles in theoretical syntax, with an emphasis on comparative syntax, which uses syntactic differences among languages to probe the properties of the human language faculty. Kayne attaches particular importance to uncovering the primitives of syntax/semantics, demonstrating the existence of silent elements that are syntactically and semantically active, and showing their distribution and limitations. He attempts to derive the very existence of the noun-verb distinction-and to account for the sharp differences between nouns and verbs and for the lack of parallelism between them-from the antisymmetric character of syntax. The common theme is an exploration of how wide a range of questions the field of syntax can reasonably attempt to ask and then answer.
Comparisons and Contrasts will appeal to scholars and graduate students interested in syntax, semantics, and their effects on other areas of linguistics.