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Author: Yehuda N. Falk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458566
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
The 'subject' of a sentence is a concept that presents great challenges to linguists. Most languages have something which looks like a subject, but subjects differ across languages in their nature and properties, making them an interesting phenomenon for those seeking linguistic universals. This pioneering volume addresses 'subject' nature from a simultaneously formal and typological perspective. Dividing the subject into two distinct grammatical functions, it shows how the nature of these functions explains their respective properties, and argues that the split in properties shown in 'ergative' languages (whereby the subject of intransitive verbs is marked as an object) results from the functions being assigned to different elements of the clause. Drawing on data from a typologically wide variety of languages, including English, Hebrew, Tagalog, Inuit and Acehnese, it explains why, even in the case of very different languages, certain core properties can be found.
Author: Yehuda N. Falk
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139458566
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 222
Get Book
Book Description
The 'subject' of a sentence is a concept that presents great challenges to linguists. Most languages have something which looks like a subject, but subjects differ across languages in their nature and properties, making them an interesting phenomenon for those seeking linguistic universals. This pioneering volume addresses 'subject' nature from a simultaneously formal and typological perspective. Dividing the subject into two distinct grammatical functions, it shows how the nature of these functions explains their respective properties, and argues that the split in properties shown in 'ergative' languages (whereby the subject of intransitive verbs is marked as an object) results from the functions being assigned to different elements of the clause. Drawing on data from a typologically wide variety of languages, including English, Hebrew, Tagalog, Inuit and Acehnese, it explains why, even in the case of very different languages, certain core properties can be found.
Author: Usha Lakshmanan
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027224757
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 175
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Book Description
This book examines child second language acquisition within the Principles and Parameters theory of Universal Grammar (UG). Specifically, the book focuses on null-subjects in the developing grammars of children acquiring English as a second language. The book provides evidence from the longitudinal speech data of four child second language (L2) learners in order to test the predictions of a recent theory of null-subjects, namely, the Morphological Uniformity Principle (MUP). Lakshmanan argues that the child L2 acquisition data offer little or no evidence in support of the MUP s predictions regarding a developmental relation between verb inflections and null-subjects. The evidence from these child L2 data indicates that regardless of the status of null subjects in their first language, child L2 learners of English hypothesize correctly from the very beginning that English requires subjects of tensed clauses to be obligatorily overt. The failure on the part of these learners to obey this knowledge in certain structural contexts is the result of perceptual factors that are unrelated to parameter setting. The book demonstrates the value of child second language acquisition data in evaluating specific proposals within linguistic theory for a Universal principle.
Author: Yehuda N. Falk
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511241796
Category : Focus (Linguistics)
Languages : en
Pages : 237
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Book Description
The 'subject' of a sentence presents great challenges to linguists. This volume takes a new approach to subjects, examining them from both a formal and typological perspective. Drawing on data from a wide range of languages, it explains why, even across very different languages, certain core properties can be found.
Author: Anjum P. Saleemi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521400756
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 178
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Book Description
Anjum P. Saleemi argues that the acquisition of language as a cognitive system can properly be understood by pairing the formal approach to learning, often known as learnability theory, with Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar and its claim that human language is innately constrained, with some predefined space for variation. Focusing on specific areas of syntax, such as binding theory and the null subject parameter, Dr Saleemi unites learnability theory's methodology with Chomsky's principles-and-parameters model, and construes acquisition as a function of linguistic principles with largely domain-specific learning procedures, mediated by environmental input. The aim of this study is to show that a self-contained linguistic theory cannot by itself be psychologically plausible, but depends on a compatible theory of learning which embraces developmental as well as formal issues.
Author: Wolfram Hinzen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199654832
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
This book considers the relationship between language and thought from a philosophical perspective, drawing both on the philosophical study of language and the purely formal study of grammar, and arguing that the two should align. Evidence is considered from biology, the evolution of language, language disorders, and linguistic phenomena.
Author: Yafei Li
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9781108794626
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Within linguistics, the formal and functional approaches each offer insight into what language might be and how it operates, but so far, there have been hardly any systematic attempts to integrate them into a single theory. This book explores the relationship between universal grammar - the theory that we have an innate mechanism for generating sentences - and iconicity - the resemblance between form and meaning in language. It offers a new theory of their interactions, 'UG-iconicity interface' (UG-I), which shows that not only do universal grammar and iconicity coexist, but in fact collaborate in intricate and predictable ways. The theory explains various recalcitrant cross-linguistic facts surrounding the serial verb constructions, coordination, semantically and categorically obscure 'linkers', the multiple grammatical aspects of the external argument, and non-canonical arguments. This groundbreaking work is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students in linguistics, as well as scholars in psychology and cognitive science.
Author: Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521475139
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 342
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Book Description
This volume of essays offers a wide-ranging comparative analysis of Italian syntax.
Author: Stephen Crain
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262531801
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
This introductory guide to language acquisition research is presented within the framework of Universal Grammar, a theory of the human faculty for language. The authors focus on two experimental techniques for assessing children's linguistic competence: the Elicited Production task, a production task, and the Truth Value Judgment task, a comprehension task. Their methodologies are designed to overcome the numerous obstacles to empirical investigation of children's language competence. They produce research results that are more reproducible and less likely to be dismissed as an artifact of improper experimental procedure. In the first section of the book, the authors examine the fundamental assumptions that guide research in this area; they present both a theory of linguistic competence and a model of language processing. In the following two sections, they discuss in detail their two experimental techniques.
Author: Edward L. Keenan
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134743351
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 483
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Book Description
This collection of 15 articles reflects Edward Keenan’s long-standing research interests in the comparative syntax of the languages of the world. It includes two seminal ‘foundation’ articles, Noun Phrase Accessibility and Universal Grammar (with Bernard Comrie) and Towards a Universal Definition of ‘Subject of’. Most of the other articles have appeared in a variety of relatively inaccessible places, and so this book brings together for the first time a large body of work supporting the research directions taken in the foundation articles. In addition, one article of a psycholinguistic sort was specially prepared for this volume.
Author: Lydia White
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521796477
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Table of contents
