The Limits of Syntax

The Limits of Syntax PDF Author: Peter Culicover
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004373160
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
The Limits of Syntax is a collection of original, never before published essays. Each essay explores the ways in which greater incorporation of nonsyntactic explanations into linguistic research may deepen our understanding of problematic linguistic phenomena and, at the same time, strengthen syntactic research. To clarify the limits of syntactic explanation, these essayists investigate four areas. The first is a set of general issues related to the theory of grammar and the place of syntax in it. The second set develops an explanation of the power of semantics pragmatics within a syntactic theory. The third addresses the status of syntactic constraints, and the fourth seeks to explain the triggering of movement in the so-called Minimalist Program and its derivational approach to syntactic representations. It seeks to refine the theory of syntax and encourages more adequate characterization of linguistic phenomena. The original papers form a coherent presentation.

Syntax and Its Limits

Syntax and Its Limits PDF Author: Raffaella Folli
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199683239
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 479

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Book Description
In this book, leading linguists explore the empirical scope of syntactic theory, by concentrating on a set of phenomena for which both syntactic and nonsyntactic analyses appear plausible. The volume is organized into four thematic sections: architectures; syntax and information structure; syntax and the lexicon; and lexical items at the interfaces

Syntactic Structures

Syntactic Structures PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3112316002
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 120

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Book Description
No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

The Limits of Syntactic Variation

The Limits of Syntactic Variation PDF Author: Theresa Biberauer
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255156
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
Against the background of the past half century s typological and generative work on comparative syntax, this volume brings together 16 papers considering what we have learned and may still be able to learn about the nature and extent of syntactic variation. More specifically, it offers a multi-perspective critique of the Principles and Parameters approach to syntactic variation, evaluating the merits and shortcomings of the pre-Minimalist phase of this enterprise and considering and illustrating the possibilities opened up by recent empirical and theoretical advances. Contributions focus on four central topics: firstly, the question of the locus of variation, whether the attested variation may plausibly be understood in parametric terms and, if so, what form such parameters might take; secondly, the fate of one of the most prominent early parameters, the Null Subject Parameter; thirdly, the matter of parametric clusters more generally; and finally, acquisition issues.

Grammatical Theory

Grammatical Theory PDF Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226577197
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Newmeyer persuasively defends the controversial theory of transformational generative grammar. Grammatical Theory is for every linguist, philosopher, or psychologist who is skeptical of generative grammar and wants to learn more about it. Newmeyer's formidable scholarship raises the level of debate on transformational generative grammar. He stresses the central importance of an autonomous formal grammar, discusses the limitations of "discourse-based" approaches to syntax, cites support for generativist theory in recent research, and clarifies misunderstood concepts associated with generative grammar.

The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus

The Morphology and Syntax of Topic and Focus PDF Author: Liliana Sánchez
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027255520
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 261

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Book Description
This book presents an innovative analysis that relates informational structure, syntax and morphology in Quechua. It provides a minimalist account of the relationship between focus, topic, evidentiality and other left-peripheral features and sentence-internal constituents marked with suffixes that have been previously considered of a pragmatic nature. Intervention effects show that these relationships are also of a syntactic nature. The analysis is extended to morphological markers that appear on polarity sensitive items and wh-words. The book also provides a brief overview of the main characteristics of Quechua syntax as well as additional bibliographical information.

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax

Aspects of the Theory of Syntax PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 9780262260503
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Chomsky proposes a reformulation of the theory of transformational generative grammar that takes recent developments in the descriptive analysis of particular languages into account. Beginning in the mid-fifties and emanating largely form MIT, an approach was developed to linguistic theory and to the study of the structure of particular languages that diverges in many respects from modern linguistics. Although this approach is connected to the traditional study of languages, it differs enough in its specific conclusions about the structure and in its specific conclusions about the structure of language to warrant a name, "generative grammar." Various deficiencies have been discovered in the first attempts to formulate a theory of transformational generative grammar and in the descriptive analysis of particular languages that motivated these formulations. At the same time, it has become apparent that these formulations can be extended and deepened.The major purpose of this book is to review these developments and to propose a reformulation of the theory of transformational generative grammar that takes them into account. The emphasis in this study is syntax; semantic and phonological aspects of the language structure are discussed only insofar as they bear on syntactic theory.

Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences

Language, Syntax, and the Natural Sciences PDF Author: Ángel J. Gallego
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107152941
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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Book Description
An exploration of human language from the perspective of the natural sciences, this outstanding book brings together leading specialists to discuss the scientific connection of language to disciplines such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology.

The Boundaries of Babel, second edition

The Boundaries of Babel, second edition PDF Author: Andrea Moro
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262329689
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
The new edition of a pioneering book that examines research at the intersection of contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences. In The Boundaries of Babel, Andrea Moro describes an encounter between two cultures: contemporary theoretical linguistics and the cognitive neurosciences. As a leading theoretical linguist in the generative tradition and also a neuroscientist, Moro is uniquely equipped to tell this story. Moro examines what he calls the “hidden” revolution in contemporary science: the discovery that the number of possible grammars is not infinite and that their number is biologically limited. This will require us to rethink not just the fundamentals of linguistics and neurosciences but also our view of the human mind. Moro searches for neurobiological correlates of “the boundaries of Babel”—the constraints on the apparent chaotic variation in human languages—by using an original experimental design based on artificial languages exploiting neuroimaging techniques. This second edition includes a new chapter in which Moro extends the exploration of the boundaries of Babel in search of the source of order with which all human languages are endowed. Reflecting on the emerging methodology that obtains physiological data from awake brain surgery, Moro shifts from considering where the neurophysiological processes underlying linguistic competence take place—that is, where neurons are activated—to considering the neuronal code involved in these processes—that is, what neurons communicate to each other. This edition also features a substantive new foreword by Noam Chomsky synthesizing the major issues theoretical syntax will face in the near future.

The Grammar–Pragmatics Interface

The Grammar–Pragmatics Interface PDF Author: Nancy Hedberg
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027292434
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 362

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Book Description
This collection of papers celebrates the work of Jeanette K. Gundel, who has contributed to the field of the grammar-pragmatics interface through her publications on the syntactic realization of topic and comment and the cognitive status of referring expressions, as well as by inspiring colleagues to make contributions to the overall field of pragmatics. This volume collects together papers from colleagues and former students on pragmatics and syntax, pragmatics and reference, and pragmatics and social variables. The volume includes papers devoted to explicating the grammar-pragmatics interface, with the focus of the papers ranging from Gricean and post-Gricean pragmatics, construction grammar, and genre theory to formal semantics, as well as papers devoted to expanding on Gundel's own original approach to factors such as the cognitive status decisions underlying speakers' choice of referring expression and the topic and focus decisions underlying speakers' choice of syntactic construction.