Preface and acknowledgements

Summary

The purpose of this book is twofold: first, to present some of the basic and most interesting facts about the syntax of Icelandic in an accessible and organized fashion, and second, to introduce the reader to the research that has been done on Icelandic syntax. It is mainly intended for students and researchers in the field of linguistics, especially those who are interested in Scandinavian syntax. The book is thus a theoretically oriented descriptive work that refers the reader to a representative sample of the research done on Icelandic syntax over the past thirty years. Hence it should be a useful introduction for those who want to do such research on their own and familiarize themselves with the descriptive and theoretical issues that have figured in the linguistic discussion, possibly preventing them from re-inventing the wheel. Special emphasis is on those areas that have aroused interest among theoretical linguists and those doing research on comparative syntax. For that reason the book contains a fair amount of comparative material from the other Scandinavian languages, especially Faroese, the Scandinavian language closest to Icelandic, and far more references to linguistic literature than is common in handbooks and overviews.

As can be seen from the table of contents, the chapters typically fall into two parts. The first part gives a descriptive overview and the second contains a discussion of some theoretical and comparative issues.