Primitive Elements of Grammatical Theory

Primitive Elements of Grammatical Theory PDF Author: Katherine McKinney-Bock
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134511027
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
This book is a compilation of manuscripts and publications from 2001-2010 by Jean-Roger Vergnaud, in collaboration with colleagues and students. This work is guided by the scientific belief that broader mathematical principles should guide linguistic inquiry, as they guide classical biology and physics. From this, Vergnaud’s hypotheses take the representation of the computational component of language to a more abstract level: one that derives constituent structure. He treats linguistic features as primitives, and argues that a 2 x n matrix allows for multiple discrete dimensions to represent symmetries in linguistic features and to derive the fabric of syntax (and perhaps of phonology as well). Three primary research questions guide the core of these papers. (A) Methodologically, how can broadly defined mathematical/cognitive principles guide linguistic investigation? (B) To what extent do general mathematical principles apply across linguistic domains? What principles guide computation at different levels of linguistic structure (phonology, metrical structure, syntax)? (C) How is the computational domain defined? In these manuscripts, Vergnaud’s goal is not to radically depart from the Minimalist Program within generative grammar, but rather to take the underlying goal of the generative program and bring it to an even more general scientific level. The themes of symmetry and periodicity in this book reflect his goal of scientific progress in linguistics, and he has opened the doors to new exploration of old empirical problems in linguistics that may, someday, have deeper biological and physical explanations through the theory presented in this publication.

Primitive Elements of Grammatical Theory

Primitive Elements of Grammatical Theory PDF Author: Jean-Roger Vergnaud
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 9780415705394
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
This book is a compilation of writings, many previously unpublished, by Jean-Roger Vergnaud from 2001 to 2010, in collaboration with colleagues and students. This work is guided by the scientific belief that broader mathematical principles should guide linguistic inquiry, as they guide biology and physics.

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.

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".

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge PDF Author: Samuel D. Epstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000442217
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
This collection explicates one of the core ideas underpinning Minimalist theory – explanation via simplification – and its role in shaping some of the latest developments within this framework, specifically the simplest Merge hypothesis and the reduction of syntactic phenomena to third factor considerations. Bringing together recent papers on the topic by Epstein, Kitahara, and Seely, with one by Epstein, Seely and Obata, and one by Kitahara, the book begins with an introduction which situates the papers in a cohesive overview of some of the latest research on Minimalism, as facilitated by current theoretical developments. The volume integrates a historical overview of evolutions in Merge, starting with Chomsky’s (pre-Merge) Aspects model up to current theoretical models, including a primer of Chomsky’s most recent theory of Merge based on the concept of Workspace. The Minimalist notions of "perfection" and "simplification" are also outlined, providing clearly explicated coverage of key technical concepts within the framework as applied to grammatical phenomena. Taken as a whole, the collection both introduces and advances Minimalist theory for students and scholars in linguistics and related sub-disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, as well as offering new directions for future research for researchers in these fields.

Exploring Interfaces

Exploring Interfaces PDF Author: Mónica Cabrera
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108488277
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 319

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Book Description
An innovative exploration of the interface between grammar, meaning and form.

Grammatical Theory and Metascience

Grammatical Theory and Metascience PDF Author: Esa Itkonen
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027281394
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
In this book, the author analyses the nature of the science of grammar. After presenting some methodological and historical background, he sets forth a theory of language and of grammar, showing that the science of grammar is not an empirical, but a normative science, comparable to logic and philosophy, characterized by the use of the method of explication.

Radical Construction Grammar

Radical Construction Grammar PDF Author: William Croft
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198299559
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 445

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Book Description
This book is based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. Croft proposes intimate links between syntactic and semantic structures, and argues that the basic elements of any language are not syntactic but rather syntactic-semantic "Gestalts". He puts forward a new approach to syntactic representation and a new model of how language and languages work.

The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations

The Mental Representation of Grammatical Relations PDF Author: Joan Bresnan
Publisher: MIT Press (MA)
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 944

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Book Description
The editor of this volume, who is also author or coauthor of five of the contributions, has provided an introduction that not only affords an overview of the separate articles but also interrelates the basic issues in linguistics, psycholinguistics and cognitive studies that are addressed in this volume. The twelve articles are grouped into three sections, as follows: "I. Lexical Representation: " The Passive in Lexical Theory (J. Bresnan); On the Lexical Representation of Romance Reflexive Clitics (J. Grimshaw); and Polyadicity (J. Bresnan)."II. Syntactic Representation: " Lexical-Functional Grammar: A Formal Theory for Grammatical Representation (R. Kaplan and J. Bresnan); Control and Complementation (J. Bresnan); Case Agreement in Russian (C. Neidle); The Representation of Case in Icelandic (A. Andrews); Grammatical Relations and Clause Structure in Malayalam (K. P. Monahan); and Sluicing: A Lexical Interpretation Procedure (L. Levin)."III. Cognitive Processing of Grammatical Representations: " A Theory of the Acquisition of Lexical Interpretive Grammars (S. Pinker); Toward a Theory of Lexico-Syntactic Interactions in Sentence Perception (M. Ford, J. Bresnan, and R. Kaplan); and Sentence Planning Units: Implications for the Speaker's Representation of Meaningful Relations Underlying Sentences (M. Ford).

Identity Relations in Grammar

Identity Relations in Grammar PDF Author: Kuniya Nasukawa
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 161451898X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 330

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Book Description
Few concepts are as ubiquitous in the physical world of humans as that of identity. Laws of nature crucially involve relations of identity and non-identity, the act of identifying is central to most cognitive processes, and the structure of human language is determined in many different ways by considerations of identity and its opposite. The purpose of this book is to bring together research from a broad scale of domains of grammar that have a bearing on the role that identity plays in the structure of grammatical representations and principles. Beyond a great many analytical puzzles, the creation and avoidance of identity in grammar raise a lot of fundamental and hard questions. These include: Why is identity sometimes tolerated or even necessary, while in other contexts it must be avoided? What are the properties of complex elements that contribute to configurations of identity (XX)? What structural notions of closeness or distance determine whether an offending XX-relation exists or, inversely, whether two more or less distant elements satisfy some requirement of identity? Is it possible to generalize over the specific principles that govern (non-)identity in the various components of grammar, or are such comparisons merely metaphorical? Indeed, can we define the notion of identity in a formal way that will allow us to decide which of the manifold phenomena that we can think of are genuine instances of some identity (avoidance) effect? If identity avoidance is a manifestation in grammar of some much more encompassing principle, some law of nature, then how is it possible that what does and what does not count as identical in the grammars of different languages seems to be subject to considerable variation?