Essays in Syntactic Theory

Essays in Syntactic Theory PDF Author: Samuel David Epstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134651813
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
This book makes a vital contribution to substantive and methodological debates in linguistic theory, and should therefore be of interest to any serious scholar of the discipline.

Essays in Syntactic Theory

Essays in Syntactic Theory PDF Author: Samuel David Epstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134651813
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book makes a vital contribution to substantive and methodological debates in linguistic theory, and should therefore be of interest to any serious scholar of the discipline.

Essays in Syntactic Theory

Essays in Syntactic Theory PDF Author: Samuel Epstein
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The essays in this important collection explore wide-ranging aspects of the syntax and semantics of human languages. Key topics covered include movement phenomena and the syntax of logical form, methods in generative linguistics and the role of rules vs. principles in syntactic theory. This volume makes a vital contribution to substantive and methodological debates in linguistic theory.

Beyond Principles and Parameters

Beyond Principles and Parameters PDF Author: Kyle Johnson
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401148228
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Kyle Johnson University of Massachusetts at Amherst Ian Roberts University of Stuttgart An important chapter in the history of syntactic theory opened as the 70's reached their close. The revolution that Chomsky had brought to linguistics had to this point engendered theories which remained within the grip of the philologists' construction-based vision. Their image of language as a catalogue of independent constructions served as the backdrop against which much of transformational grammar's detailed exploration evolved. In a sense, the highly successful pursuit of th phonology and morphology in the 19 century as compared to the absence of similar results in syntax (beyond observations such as Wackemagel's Law, etc. ) attests to this: just noting that, for example, French relative clauses allow subject-postposing but not preposition-stranding while English relatives do not allow the former but do allow the latter does not take us far beyond a simple record of the facts. Prior to this point, th syntactic theory had not progressed beyond the 19 century situation. But as the 80's approached, this image began to give way to a different one: grammar as a puzzle of interlocking "modules," each made up of syntactic principles which cross-cut the philologist's constructions. More and more, "constructions" decomposed into the epiphenomenal interplay of encapsulated mini-theories: X Theory, Binding Theory, Bounding Theory, Case Theory, Theta Theory, and so on. Syntactic analyses became reoriented toward the twin goals of identifying the content of these modules and deconstructing into them the descriptive results of early transformational grammar.

Beyond Principles and Parameters

Beyond Principles and Parameters PDF Author: Kyle Johnson
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 9780792354987
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Kyle Johnson University of Massachusetts at Amherst Ian Roberts University of Stuttgart An important chapter in the history of syntactic theory opened as the 70's reached their close. The revolution that Chomsky had brought to linguistics had to this point engendered theories which remained within the grip of the philologists' construction-based vision. Their image of language as a catalogue of independent constructions served as the backdrop against which much of transformational grammar's detailed exploration evolved. In a sense, the highly successful pursuit of th phonology and morphology in the 19 century as compared to the absence of similar results in syntax (beyond observations such as Wackemagel's Law, etc. ) attests to this: just noting that, for example, French relative clauses allow subject-postposing but not preposition-stranding while English relatives do not allow the former but do allow the latter does not take us far beyond a simple record of the facts. Prior to this point, th syntactic theory had not progressed beyond the 19 century situation. But as the 80's approached, this image began to give way to a different one: grammar as a puzzle of interlocking "modules," each made up of syntactic principles which cross-cut the philologist's constructions. More and more, "constructions" decomposed into the epiphenomenal interplay of encapsulated mini-theories: X Theory, Binding Theory, Bounding Theory, Case Theory, Theta Theory, and so on. Syntactic analyses became reoriented toward the twin goals of identifying the content of these modules and deconstructing into them the descriptive results of early transformational grammar.

Skeptical Linguistic Essays

Skeptical Linguistic Essays PDF Author: Paul M. Postal
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780195343663
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 442

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Book Description
This volume consists of an introduction and two groups of essays by Paul M. Postal, each with a connecting theme. The first, positive group of papers, contains five previously unpublished studies of English syntax. These include a long study of so-called "locative inversion," two investigations related to raising to non-subject status, an argument for the existence of a hitherto ignored nominal grammatical category and a study of vulgar negative polarity items. Each investigation of specific English details is argued to have significant theoretical consequences. The second, negative group of papers, contains seven essays each of which seeks to show that aspects of contemporary linguistic activity are in part contaminated by elements of what is called "junk linguistics." Postal uses the term to denote work which advances proposals, puts forward claims and asserts deep results which, he argues, can only be accepted by ignoring serious standards of inquiry and scholarship. Postal claims that much of this work is nonetheless currently considered not only serious but prestigious reveals the problem to exist at the core of the field, not its periphery. These chapters include documentation of "junk linguistic" aspects in National Science Foundation refereeing, work on the foundations of linguistics, and even in widespread terminological usages. The final chapter briefly lists personal suggestions for dealing with this problem.

Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition

Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition PDF Author: Michaela Müller
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
ISBN: 3640521498
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 53

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Book Description
Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Cologne (English Seminar), course: Hauptseminar Syntactic theory and first language acquisition, language: English, abstract: Heather's (26 months old) speech shows that she has already entered the later multi-word stage. She makes use of the three primary functional category systems (the D-system, the I-system and the C-system), which are projections of the corresponding functional categories (D, I and C).The core assumption of the X-bar model is that any word category X can function as the head of a phrase and can be projected into the corresponding phrasal category XP by addition of up to three different kinds of modifiers which are full phrasal constituents: complement, adjunct and specifier. Therefore, phrases in English have the schematic structure below: [x'' specifier [x' adjunct [x' [x head] complement/s]]] Functional category systems, in contrast to lexical category systems, lack semantic content, but have grammatical meaning. Furthermore, functional elements permit only one complement. All of these functional category systems consist of a head, a complement and a nonthematic specifier position and so have a symmetrical structure. The following essay will describe these systems of English and the use of nonthematic specifier positions in adult grammar.

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
Contains a collection of essays which explore the ways in which greater incorporation of nonsyntactic explanations into linguistic research may deepen the understanding of problematic linguistic phenomena and, at the same time, strengthen syntactic research. It also addresses the status of syntactic constraints.

Essays on Restrictiveness and Learnability

Essays on Restrictiveness and Learnability PDF Author: H. Lasnik
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401568596
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 279

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Book Description
The articles collected in this book are concerned with the issues of restrictiveness and learnability within generative grammar, specifically, within Chomsky's 'Extended Standard Theory'. These issues have been central to syntactic research for decades and they are even more central now as results on syntactic theory, on learnability, and on acquisition begin to converge. I hope that this book can provide researchers in all of these areas with some insight into the evolution of ideas about these issues. The articles appear in their original form, with the following exceptions: A few typographical and other minor errors have been corrected; bibliog raphic references have been updated and a unified bibliography provided. I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge my vast intellec tual debt to Noam Chomsky. My research would not have been possible without his work, his advice, and his guidance. Next, I offer deep thanks to Chomsky and my other co-authors represented here: Bob Fiengo, Joe Kupin, Bob Freidin, and Mamoru Saito. I am grateful, indeed, for the opportunity to collaborate with such outstanding linguists, and, more immediately, for their permission to reprint their co-authored articles. I also offer general thanks to the holders of the copyrights of the reprinted material. Specific acknowledgements appear on a separate page.

Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory

Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory PDF Author: Robert Freidin
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262562332
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 425

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Book Description
Essays by leading theoretical linguists—including Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Richard Kayne, Howard Lasnik, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Henk van Riemsdijk, and Edwin Williams—reflect on Jean-Roger Vergnaud's influence in the field and discuss current theoretical issues Jean-Roger Vergnaud's work on the foundational issues in linguistics has proved influential over the past three decades. At MIT in 1974, Vergnaud (now holder of the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in Humanities at the University of Southern California) made a proposal in his Ph.D. thesis that has since become, in somewhat modified form, the standard analysis for the derivation of relative clauses. Vergnaud later integrated the proposal within a broader theory of movement and abstract case. These topics have remained central to theoretical linguistics. In this volume, essays by leading theoretical linguists attest to the importance of Jean-Roger Vergnaud's contributions to linguistics. The essays first discuss issues in syntax, documenting important breakthroughs in the development of the principles and parameters framework and including a famous letter (unpublished until recently) from Vergnaud to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik commenting on the first draft of their 1977 paper “Filters and Controls.” Vergnaud's writings on phonology (which, the editors write, “take a definite syntactic turn”) have also been influential, and the volume concludes with two contributions to that field. The essays, rewarding from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, not only offer insight into Vergnaud's impact on the field but also describe current work on the issues he introduced into the scholarly debate. Contributors Joseph Aoun, Elabbas Benmamoun, Cedric Boeckx, Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Robert Freidin, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Richard S. Kayne, Samuel Jay Keyser, Howard Lasnik, Yen-hui Audrey Li, M. Rita Manzini, Karine Megerdoomian, David Michaels, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, Leonardo M. Savoia, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, Edwin Williams

Essays Toward Realistic Syntax

Essays Toward Realistic Syntax PDF Author: Michael K. Brame
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Linguistics was riven by dissension for years, and this book offers a collection of six papers by one of the better-known combatants, M. K. Brame. Two of them previously published, and one which intersects considerably with Brame's earlier criticism of transformational-generative grammar. There are essays that explore the implications of doing generative grammar without transformations; that expose the error of EQUI (short for Equivalent Noun Phrase Deletion) and the radical consequences of abandoning it. If you are interested in the battles that dominated linguistics in the latter half of the 20th century, the introduction alone is useful for charting the decline and fall of transformational grammar.