Download or read book Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis written by Noam Chomsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this contribution to the Elements series is to closely examine Merge, its form, its function, and its central role in current linguistic theory. It explores what it does (and does not do), why it has the form it has, and its development over time. The basic idea behind Merge is quite simple. However, Merge interacts, in intricate ways, with other components including the language's interfaces, laws of nature, and certain language-specific conditions. Because of this, and because of its fundamental place in the human faculty of language, this Element's focus on Merge provides insights into the goals and development of generative grammar more generally, and its prospects for the future.
Download or read book Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis written by Noam Chomsky and published by . This book was released on 2023-11-29 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this contribution to the Elements series is to closely examine Merge, its form, its function, and its central role in current linguistic theory. It explores what it does (and does not do), why it has the form it has, and its development over time. The basic idea behind Merge is quite simple. However, Merge interacts, in intricate ways, with other components including the language's interfaces, laws of nature, and certain language-specific conditions. Because of this, and because of its fundamental place in the human faculty of language, this Element's focus on Merge provides insights into the goals and development of generative grammar more generally, and its prospects for the future.
Download or read book Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory written by Robert Freidin and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-05-09 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book A Companion to Chomsky written by Nicholas Allott and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-04-30 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A COMPANION TO CHOMSKY Widely considered to be one of the most important public intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized modern linguistics. His thought has had a profound impact upon the philosophy of language, mind, and science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which his work helped to establish. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to his substantial body of work and the range of its influence, an international assembly of prominent linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists reflect upon the interdisciplinary reach of Chomsky's intellectual contributions. Balancing theoretical rigor with accessibility to the non-specialist, the Companion is organized into eight sections—including the historical development of Chomsky's theories and the current state of the art, comparison with rival usage-based approaches, and the relation of his generative approach to work on linguistic processing, acquisition, semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. Later chapters address Chomsky's rationalist critique of behaviorism and related empiricist approaches to psychology, as well as his insistence upon a "Galilean" methodology in cognitive science. Following a brief discussion of the relation of his work in linguistics to his work on political issues, the book concludes with an essay written by Chomsky himself, reflecting on the history and character of his work in his own words. A significant contribution to the study of Chomsky's thought, A Companion to Chomsky is an indispensable resource for philosophers, linguists, psychologists, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers with interest in Noam Chomsky's intellectual legacy as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Explorations in Maximizing Syntactic Minimization written by Samuel D. Epstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a series of papers written by Epstein, Kitahara and Seely, each of which explores fundamental linguistic questions and analytical mechanisms proposed in recent minimalist work, specifically concerning recent analyses by Noam Chomsky. The collection includes eight papers by the collaborators (one with Miki Obata), plus three additional papers, each individually authored by Epstein, Kitahara and Seely, that cover a range of related topics including: the minimalist commitment to explanation via simplification; the Strong Minimalist Thesis; strict adherence to simplest Merge, Merge (X, Y) = {X, Y}, subject to 3rd factor constraints; and state-of-the-art concepts and consequences of Chomsky’s most recent proposals. For instance, the volume clarifies and explores: the properties of Merge, feature inheritance and Agree; the nature of phases, cyclicity and countercyclicity; the properties of Transfer; the interpretation of features and their values and the role formal features play in the form and function of syntactic operations; and the specific properties of derivations, partially ordered rule application, and the nature of interface representations. At the cutting edge of scholarship in generative syntax, this volume will be an essential resource for syntax researchers seeking to better understand the minimalist program.
Download or read book Coordination and the Strong Minimalist Thesis written by Stefanie Bode and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-03-27 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book unpacks coordination in the context of the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT), offering a new proposal for addressing this longstanding puzzle within research on Generative Grammar. The volume’s foundations are rooted in the SMT, which builds on the idea that laws of nature, such as simplicity, symmetry, and computational efficiency, shape the laws of language to their simplest form, as units of computation combined with a recursive structure-building device. The book explores the two main ways in which Generative Grammar research has been undertaken to deal with the issue of coordination within SMT as examined in such linguistic expressions as conjuncts, which combine in an unstructured way, but which run counter to a strictly minimalist approach. Bode proposes an alternative account of coordination based on simplest set-formation without resorting to additional mechanisms, rooting it more squarely within SMT theory and encouraging further discussion on new directions for SMT-related research. This volume will be of interest to scholars in syntax and linguistic theory, particularly those interested in minimalist theory.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Minimalism written by Cedric Boeckx and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2011-03-03 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook provides a complete assessment of the current achievements and challenges of the Minimalist Program. Leading researchers explore the origins of the program, the course of its research, and its connections with other disciplines, such as developmental biology, cognitive science, computational science, and philosophy of mind.
Download or read book The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax written by Marcel den Dikken and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 1412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.
Download or read book Symmetry in Syntax written by Barbara Citko and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-28 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While much has been written on asymmetric aspects of sentence structure, symmetric aspects have been largely ignored, or claimed to be non-existent. Does symmetry in syntax exist, and if it does, how do we account for it? In this book, Barbara Citko sets out to tackle these questions and offers a unified approach to a number of phenomena that have so far been studied only in isolation. Focusing on three core minimalist mechanisms: merge, move and labeling, she advances a new theory of these mechanisms, by showing that under certain well-defined circumstances merge can create symmetric structures, move can target either of two potentially moveable objects, and labels can be constructed symmetrically from the features of two objects. This book is aimed at researchers and graduate students interested in minimalist syntax, the structure of questions, relative clauses, coordination, double object constructions and copular sentences.
Download or read book The Science of Language written by Noam Chomsky and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noam Chomsky is one of the most influential thinkers of our time, yet his views are often misunderstood. In this previously unpublished series of interviews, Chomsky discusses his iconoclastic and important ideas concerning language, human nature and politics. In dialogue with James McGilvray, Professor of Philosophy at McGill University, Chomsky takes up a wide variety of topics – the nature of language, the philosophies of language and mind, morality and universality, science and common sense, and the evolution of language. McGilvray's extensive commentary helps make this incisive set of interviews accessible to a variety of readers. The volume is essential reading for those involved in the study of language and mind, as well as anyone with an interest in Chomsky's ideas.
Download or read book Explorations in Maximizing Syntactic Minimization written by Samuel D. Epstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-17 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a series of papers written by Epstein, Kitahara and Seely, each of which explores fundamental linguistic questions and analytical mechanisms proposed in recent minimalist work, specifically concerning recent analyses by Noam Chomsky. The collection includes eight papers by the collaborators (one with Miki Obata), plus three additional papers, each individually authored by Epstein, Kitahara and Seely, that cover a range of related topics including: the minimalist commitment to explanation via simplification; the Strong Minimalist Thesis; strict adherence to simplest Merge, Merge (X, Y) = {X, Y}, subject to 3rd factor constraints; and state-of-the-art concepts and consequences of Chomsky’s most recent proposals. For instance, the volume clarifies and explores: the properties of Merge, feature inheritance and Agree; the nature of phases, cyclicity and countercyclicity; the properties of Transfer; the interpretation of features and their values and the role formal features play in the form and function of syntactic operations; and the specific properties of derivations, partially ordered rule application, and the nature of interface representations. At the cutting edge of scholarship in generative syntax, this volume will be an essential resource for syntax researchers seeking to better understand the minimalist program.
Download or read book Syntax with oscillators and energy levels written by Sam Tilsen and published by Language Science Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a new approach to studying the syntax of human language, one which emphasizes how we think about time. Tilsen argues that many current theories are unsatisfactory because those theories conceptualize syntactic patterns with spatially arranged structures of objects. These object-structures are atemporal and do not lend well to reasoning about time. The book develops an alternative conceptual model in which oscillatory systems of various types interact with each other through coupling forces, and in which the relative energies of those systems are organized in particular ways. Tilsen emphasizes that the two primary mechanisms of the approach – oscillators and energy levels – require alternative ways of thinking about time. Furthermore, his theory leads to a new way of thinking about grammaticality and the recursive nature of language. The theory is applied to a variety of syntactic phenomena: word order, phrase structure, morphosyntax, constituency, case systems, ellipsis, anaphora, and islands. The book also presents a general program for the study of language in which the construction of linguistic theories is itself an object of theoretical analysis.
Download or read book Labels and Roots written by Leah Bauke and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-09-25 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides in-depth exploration of the issues of labeling and roots, with a balance of empirical and conceptual/theoretical analyses. The papers explore key questions that must ultimately be addressed in the development of generative theories: how do theories of labels and roots relate to syntax-internal computation, to semantics, to morphology, and to phonology?
Download or read book Merging Features written by José M. Brucart and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-29 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book leading scholars examine the intricate ways in which Merge and formal features, two factors in the Minimalist Program, interact to generate well-formed derivations in natural language. The authors combine grammatical theory with the analysis of data drawn from a wide range of languages.
Download or read book Three paradoxes of personhood written by Joseph Margolis and published by Mimesis. This book was released on 2017-09-14T00:00:00+02:00 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The starting point of Joseph Margolis’ last philosophical effort is represented by the problem of the human “gap” in animal continuity: “There appear to be no comparable variants of animal evolution [...] effected by anything like the culturally enabled creation”. While we share with other animals more or less refined forms of societal life, acquiring a natural language remains a distinctively human character: although it is grounded in the completely natural favourable changes in the human vocal apparatus and brain, the merely causal emergence of language in humans reacts back into human primates by transforming them into persons or selves. The artifactuality of persons appears to be at the same time a natural and emergent phenomenon, constituting the other side of the process of language acquisition both by early hominids and by human infants. In this perspective the largely informal, mongrel and approximate functionality of ordinary language is interpreted as a good tool for the cultural animal to cope with the world, while the collective dimension of human forms of life appears as the shared context of external and internal constitution of the human selves.
Download or read book Mind Matters in SLA written by Clare Wright and published by Multilingual Matters. This book was released on 2018-09-21 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines key issues in theories of what language is and what happens in the mind during second language acquisition (SLA), inspiring readers to think in new and exciting ways about language learning and teaching. Chapters, written by both established and rising star scholars, provide cutting-edge insights and new empirical findings on major topics of formal and cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics and second language development, and offer a coherent, wide-ranging, reader-friendly examination of learner-internal factors in SLA. The first section of the book focuses on issues that are pertinent to our understanding of language acquisition, particularly in relation to syntax. The second section comprises empirical chapters on syntax, the lexicon, phonetics/phonology and language production in English and other languages. These chapters refer to theories and frameworks from within SLA to enable the reader to grasp the key questions and issues that are currently relevant. The final section focuses on research relating to how second language (L2) learners make transitions from one stage of development to the next; it covers state-of-the-art psycholinguistic research concerning how L2 acquisition occurs in real time, and includes discussion of models of L2 development both in and out of the classroom.
Download or read book The Evolution of Language written by Thomas C. Scott-Phillips and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012 with total page 599 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Evolang conferences are the leading international conferences for new findings in the study of the origins and evolution of language. They attract a multidisciplinary audience. The proceedings are an important resource for researchers in the field.
