Minority Languages, Microvariation, Minimalism and Meaning

This volume presents a selection of papers from the first international conference of the Irish Network in Formal Linguistics (INFL). INFL is well placed to attract expertise on both microvariation and the linguistics of the Celtic languages, and the volume reflects this expertise. Microvariation approaches the analysis of dialect variation with a focus on how it contributes to the understanding of linguistic theory. The synchronic and diachronic variation examined in this volume includes Irish English, dialects of Italian and dialects of Flemish. Under the linguistic study of Celtic languages, the papers included address important architectural questions in linguistic theory, as well as challenging some notions with a long history in traditional descriptions of the Celtic languages. The final section brings together papers on topics of current theoretical interest in the formal analysis of syntax, semantics and discourse, including phase theoretic approaches to a range of phenomena involving syntactic conditions on semantic interpretation. The final two papers adopt a formal perspective not to aspects of linguistic structure, but to language use in contexts demonstrating the import of formal micro-level sequential analysis of talk-in-interaction for macro-level questions of communication and social organisation.