The Equilibrium of Human Syntax

The Equilibrium of Human Syntax PDF Author: Andrea Moro
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113618385X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description
This book assembles a collection of papers in two different domains: formal syntax and neurolinguistics. Here Moro provides evidence that the two fields are becoming more and more interconnected and that the new fascinating empirical questions and results in the latter field cannot be obtained without the theoretical base provided by the former. The book is organized in two parts: Part 1 focuses on theoretical and empirical issues in a comparative perspective (including the nature of syntactic movement, the theory of locality and a far reaching and influential theory of copular sentences). Part 2 provides the original sources of some innovative and pioneering experiments based on neuroimaging techniques (focusing on the biological nature of recursion and the interpretation of negative sentences). Moro concludes with an assessment of the impact of these perspectives on the theory of the evolution of language. The leading and pervasive idea unifying all the arguments developed here is the role of symmetry (breaking) in syntax and in the relationship between language and the human brain.

The Equilibrium of Human Syntax

The Equilibrium of Human Syntax PDF Author: Andrea Moro
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113618385X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 488

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book assembles a collection of papers in two different domains: formal syntax and neurolinguistics. Here Moro provides evidence that the two fields are becoming more and more interconnected and that the new fascinating empirical questions and results in the latter field cannot be obtained without the theoretical base provided by the former. The book is organized in two parts: Part 1 focuses on theoretical and empirical issues in a comparative perspective (including the nature of syntactic movement, the theory of locality and a far reaching and influential theory of copular sentences). Part 2 provides the original sources of some innovative and pioneering experiments based on neuroimaging techniques (focusing on the biological nature of recursion and the interpretation of negative sentences). Moro concludes with an assessment of the impact of these perspectives on the theory of the evolution of language. The leading and pervasive idea unifying all the arguments developed here is the role of symmetry (breaking) in syntax and in the relationship between language and the human brain.

The Boundaries of Babel, second edition

The Boundaries of Babel, second edition PDF Author: Andrea Moro
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262029855
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.

Triggers

Triggers PDF Author: Anne Breitbarth
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 311019743X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 503

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Book Description
The concept of 'trigger' is a core concept of Chomsky's Minimalist Program. The idea that certain types of movement are triggered by some property of the target position is at least as old as the notion that the movement of noun phrases to the subject position is triggered by their need to receive nominative case. In more recent versions of syntactic theory, triggering mechanisms are thought to regulate all of movement. Furthermore, a quite narrow range of triggering mechanisms is permitted. As is to be expected, such a restrictive approach meets a variety of difficulties. Specifically, the question is whether all triggering elements required to cover displacement of all kinds in natural language can be independently motivated. Further, how can a trigger theory, which crucially relies on the idea that all movement is obligatory, deal with apparently optional movement processes? Are features an adequate means to express the triggering function in all cases? More radically, are all movement phenomena really the result of the checking of trigger features? And what about apparent triggering factors that are 'external' to syntax such as prosody - can they be captured in a rigid trigger theory? In other words, could certain aspects of triggered movement be due to interface conditions? Such is the range of questions addressed by the fourteen contributions to this book. They cover a considerable range of languages (including Afrikaans, Breton, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Gungbe, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kiswahili, Romanian). These papers present materials, both empirical and theoretical, that will not fail to have considerable impact on the further development of the concept of trigger in syntactic theory.

Current Studies in Italian Syntax

Current Studies in Italian Syntax PDF Author: Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 0585473943
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 338

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Book Description
Includes sixteen contributions which are representative of the research carried out in Italy on Italian and, more generally, Romance syntax. The essays in this work are collected to pay homage to Professor Lorenzo Renzi, a scholar who has since the 1960s promoted and shaped the study of Italian syntax in Italy.

Endocentric Structuring of Projection-free Syntax

Endocentric Structuring of Projection-free Syntax PDF Author: Hiroki Narita
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027269629
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
Endocentric Structuring of Projection-free Syntax puts forward a novel theory of syntax that rigidly adheres to the principle of Minimal Computation, in which a number of traditional but extraneous stipulations such as referential indices and representational labels/projections are eliminated. It specifically articulates the overarching hypothesis that every syntactic object is composed by recursive, phase-by-phase embedding of the endocentric structure {H, α}, where H is a head lexical item and α is another syntactic object (order irrelevant). The proposed mechanism achieves both theory-internal simplicity and broad empirical coverage at the same time, advancing a radically reduced conception of endocentricty/headedness while deriving a number of empirically grounded constraints on human language.

Syntactic architecture and its consequences II

Syntactic architecture and its consequences II PDF Author: András Bárány
Publisher: Language Science Press
ISBN: 3961102880
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 540

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Book Description
This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters address research questions in comparative morphosyntax, including the modelling of syntactic categories, relative clauses, and demonstrative systems. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and give the reader a sense of the lively nature of current discussion of topics in morphosyntax and morphosyntactic variation.

Merge in the Mind-Brain

Merge in the Mind-Brain PDF Author: Naoki Fukui
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1315442795
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- Original Publication Details -- Introduction -- Part I Merge in the Mind -- 1 Merge and Bare Phrase Structure -- 2 Merge and (A)symmetry -- 3 Generalized Search and Cyclic Derivation by Phase: A Preliminary Study -- 4 Merge, Labeling, and Projection -- 5 A Note on Weak vs. Strong Generation in Human Language -- 6 0-Search and 0-Merge -- Part II Merge in the Brain -- 7 The Cortical Dynamics in Building Syntactic Structures of Sentences: An MEG Study in a Minimal-Pair Paradigm -- 8 Syntactic Computation in the Human Brain: The Degree of Merger as a Key Factor -- 9 Computational Principles of Syntax in the Regions Specialized for Language: Integrating Theoretical Linguistics and Functional Neuroimaging -- Bibliography -- Author Index -- Subject Index

The Routledge Handbook of Syntax

The Routledge Handbook of Syntax PDF Author: Andrew Carnie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317751035
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 937

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Book Description
The study of syntax over the last half century has seen a remarkable expansion of the boundaries of human knowledge about the structure of natural language. The Routledge Handbook of Syntax presents a comprehensive survey of the major theoretical and empirical advances in the dynamically evolving field of syntax from a variety of perspectives, both within the dominant generative paradigm and between syntacticians working within generative grammar and those working in functionalist and related approaches. The handbook covers key issues within the field that include: • core areas of syntactic empirical investigation, • contemporary approaches to syntactic theory, • interfaces of syntax with other components of the human language system, • experimental and computational approaches to syntax. Bringing together renowned linguistic scientists and cutting-edge scholars from across the discipline and providing a balanced yet comprehensive overview of the field, the Routledge Handbook of Syntax is essential reading for researchers and postgraduate students working in syntactic theory.

The Lexical/Functional Divide in Aphasic Production – Poorly Studied Aphasic Syndromes and Theoretical Morpho-Syntax

The Lexical/Functional Divide in Aphasic Production – Poorly Studied Aphasic Syndromes and Theoretical Morpho-Syntax PDF Author: Ludovico Franco
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443861650
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
This monograph is structured as a collection of clinical case studies all addressing the relationship between lexicon and morphosyntax. It shows that various less-studied aphasic syndromes – including Logopenic Primary Progressive Aphasia, Mixed Trascortical Aphasia, and Crossed Aphasia – and not only ‘classic’ Broca’s Aphasia can enhance findings worthy of consideration in contemporary theoretical debates on the status of traditional categories, and particularly on the lexical/functional divide in grammar. The rationale of this study is precisely to build a bridge between experimental evidence from clinical linguistics and theoretical arguments from morpho-syntactic analysis. Furthermore, this book addresses the recent resurgence of interest within neuropsychology in single case studies, which can be crucial in order to corroborate (or falsify) theoretical advancements in linguistics.

English Linguistics

English Linguistics PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : English language
Languages : en
Pages : 762

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Book Description