The Syntax of Roots and the Roots of Syntax

Artemis Alexiadou, Professor and Chair, Institute of English Linguistics, University of Stuttgart,

Hagit Borer, Professor and Chair of Linguistics, Queen Mary, University of London,
Florian Schafer, Researcher, Department of Linguistics, University of Stuttgart

Artemis Alexiadou is Professor of Theoretical and English Linguistics at the Universitat Stuttgart. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics in 1994 from the University of Potsdam. Her research interests lie in theoretical and comparative syntax, morphology, and most importantly in the interface between syntax, morphology, the lexicon, and interpretation. Her work has been published in several journals, edited volumes, and conference proceedings.


Hagit Borer is Professor and Chair of Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London. She received her Ph.D. in Linguistics at MIT, and has held professorial positions at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include syntax, morphosyntax, the syntax-semantics interface, and the acquisition of syntax by children.


Florian Schafer is researcher at the the collaborative research centre (Sonderforschungsbereich) SFB 732 'Incremental Specification in Context' at the University of Stuttgart. He studied General and Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Potsdam and finished his dissertation on the (anti-) causative alternation in 2007 at the University of Stuttgart. His main research interests are in the theories of syntax, morphology, and lexical semantics and the interaction of these modules of grammar.

1. Introduction, Artemis Alexiadou, Hagit Borer, and Florian Schafer
2. From syntax to roots: A syntactic approach to root interpretation, Victor Acedo-Matellan and Jaume Mateu
3. The roots of nominality, the nominality of roots, Paolo Acquaviva
4. Roots in transitivity alternations: Afto/auto-reflexives, Artemis Alexiadou
5. Domains within words and their meanings: A case study, Elena Anagnostopoulou and Yota Samioti
6. The category of roots, Hagit Borer
7. On a low and high diminutive: Evidence from Italian and Hebrew, Marijke De Belder, Noam Faust, and Nicola Lampitelli
8. The interaction of adjectival passive and Voice, Edit Doron
9. Roots and phases, Angel J. Gallego
10. The ontology of roots and verbs, Lisa Levinson
11. Derivational affixes as roots, no exponence: Phasal spellout meets English stress shift, Jean Lowenstamm
12. Building scalar changes, Malka Rappaport Hovav
13. When roots license and when they respect semantico-syntactic structure in verbs, Antje Rossdeutscher