Download or read book Current Issues in Linguistic Theory written by Noam Chomsky and published by Walter de Gruyter. This book was released on 2011-05-02 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper,(1) I will restrict the term ""linguistic theory"" to systems of hypotheses concerning the general features of human language put forth in an attempt to account for a certain range of linguistic phenomena. I will not be concerned with systems of terminology or methods of investigation (analytic procedures). The central fact to which any significant linguistic theory must address itself is this: a mature speaker can produce a new sentence of his language on the appropriate occasion, and other speakers can understand it immediately, though it is equally new to them. Most of our li.
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important breakthroughs in the development of the principles and parameters framework and including a famous letter (unpublished until recently) from Vergnaud to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik commenting on the first draft of their 1977 paper “Filters and Controls.”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 Linguistic Theory and Grammatical Description written by Flip G. Droste and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1991-12-13 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents nine of today's grammatical theories with a view to comparing their starting points and their methods. The particular features and properties of each theory are discussed in this book, as well as the major conceptual differences and methodological obstacles each has overcome and has yet to overcome. The parallel structure of the papers makes for easy comparison and cross-reference. This systematic and thorough introduction to the recent history of the discipline provides a state-of-the-art report on current leading tendencies as well as a wealth of directions for future research.
Download or read book Current Issues in Linguistic Theory written by Noam Chomsky and published by . This book was released on 1964 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Historical and Comparative Linguistics written by Raimo Anttila and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1989-01-01 with total page 491 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In any course of historical and comparative linguistics there will be students of different language backgrounds, different levels of linguistic training, and different theoretical orientation. This textbook attempts to mitigate the problems raised by this heterogeneity in a number of ways. Since it is impossible to treat the language or language family of special interest to every student, the focus of this book is on English in particular and Indo-European languages in general, with Finnish and its closely related languages for contrast. The tenets of different schools of linguistics, and the controversies among them, are treated eclectically and objectively; the examination of language itself plays the leading role in our efforts to ascertain the comparative value of competing theories. This revised edition (1989) of a standard work for comparative linguists offers an added introduction dealing mainly with a semiotic basis of change, a final chapter on aspects of explanation, particularly in historical and human disciplines, and added sections on comparative syntax and on the semiotic status of the comparative method.
Download or read book Topics in Cognitive Linguistics written by Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1988-01-01 with total page 722 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents new developments in cognitive grammar and explores its descriptive and explanatory potential with respect to a wide range of language phenomena. These include the formation and use of locationals, causative constructions, adjectival and nominal expressions of oriented space, morphological layering, tense and aspect, and extended uses of verbal predicates. There is also a section on the affinities between cognitive grammar an early linguistic theories, both ancient and modern.
Download or read book Current Issues in Linguistic Theory written by Roger W. Cole and published by . This book was released on with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Current Issues in Linguistic Theory written by Roger William Cole and published by Bloomington : Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1977 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Language History written by Andrew L. Sihler and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classroom-tested volume aspires to be a brief but technically and factually accurate exposition of linguistic description and history. Whether studied as prime subject or as background information, it should help students understand the assumptions and reasoning that underlie the contents of their handbooks and etymological dictionaries.This book should be a useful guide for anyone unfamiliar with (historical) linguistics who is studying the history of a language, and also for those who are enrolled in courses devoted to reading texts in old languages.
Download or read book Towards a Critical Sociolinguistics written by Rajendra Singh and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1996 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of twelve essays, some of which have been written specifically for this volume by well-known European and North-American sociolinguists, reflects an increasing recognition within the field that sociological and theoretical innocence can no longer be underwritten by it, and offers a multi-pronged and multi-methodological way to move towards a critical, reflexive, and theoretically responsible socio-linguistics. It explores, with courage and sensitivity, some very important areas in the enormous space between Bloomfieldian 'idiolect' and Chomskyan 'UG' in order to situate the human linguistic enterprise, and offers valuable insights into human linguisticality and sociality. These explorations expose the limits of correlationism, determinism, and positivistic reificationism, and offer new ways of doing sociolinguistics.Intended for both practicing and future sociolinguists, it is an ideal text-book for the times, particularly for graduate and advanced undergraduate students.
Download or read book Explorations in Linguistic Relativity written by Martin Pütz and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-04-15 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About a century after the year Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) was born, his theory complex is still the object of keen interest to linguists. Rencently, scholars have argued that it was not his theory complex itself, but an over-simplified, reduced section taken out of context that has become known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that has met with so much resistance among linguists over the last few decades. Not only did Whorf present his views much more subtly than most people would believe, but he also dealt with a great number of other issues in his work. Taking Whorf’s own notion of linguistic relativity as a starting point, this volume explores the relation between language, mind and experience through its historical development, Whorf’s own writing, its misinterpretations, various theoretical and methodological issues and a closer look at a few specific issues in his work.
Download or read book Linguistic Theory and the Romance Languages written by John Charles Smith and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1995-01-01 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains revised versions of papers given at a conference at the Manoir de Brion, in Normandy. They deal with phonology, morphology, syntax, and semantics, and cover a wide range of Romance languages, including many lesser-known varieties. The contributors to the volume are committed to the view that Romance Linguistics is not narrowly philological, but is rather General Linguistics practised with reference to particular data. The point has been made many times, but is worth reiterating, that Latin and the Romance languages offer an unrivalled wealth of synchronic and historical documentation, and provide both a stimulus and a test-bed for ideas about language structure, language change, and language variation. Many of the papers in this volume can be interpreted simultaneously as using the analytical tools of linguistic theory to illuminate the structure of individual Romance languages or of the family as a whole, and as using Romance data to throw light on general problems in linguistic theory, or on the structure of languages beyond Romance. Specific areas covered include: prosodic domains; quantification; agreement; the prepositional accusative; clitic pronouns; voice and aspect.
Download or read book Linguistic Variables written by Hans-Heinrich Lieb and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1993-01-01 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book for the first time reconstructs in a single theoretical framework the more important approaches to linguistic variation found in areas as different as historical linguistics, dialectology, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, stylistics, contrastive linguistics, language typology, so-called evaluation grammar, and current Chomskyan generative grammar (generally with an emphasis on syntax). The book concentrates on language-internal variation but also analyses typological research and considers the question of how linguistic descriptions may account for variation both within and between languages. The book's first and primary aim is adequate conceptualization in the area of linguistic variation. Its second aim is a practical one: to contribute, from a theoretical point of view, to the vast descriptive effort that is demanded in linguistics in documenting endangered languages. Its third aim is, simply, orientation. Using a non-Labovian notion of linguistic variable, the author distinguishes a holistic and a component approach to linguistic variation. A precise version of the former is developed by formulating a theory of language varieties based on the concept of variety structure of a language; it is then shown how the proposals made by major representatives of the component approach can be integrated into this framework. The theory is extended to interlanguage variation and applied, in particular, to typology. It is further extended to establish the properties of linguistic descriptions that account for variation in a unified way.
Download or read book A Theory of Syntax for Systemic Functional Linguistics written by Robin P. Fawcett and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2000-01-01 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes and evaluates alternative approaches within Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) to representing the structure of language at the level of form. It assumes no prior knowledge of SFL, and can therefore be read as an introduction to current issues within the theory. It will interest any linguist who takes a functional approach to understanding language.Part 1 summarizes the major developments in the forty years of SFL's history, including alternative approaches within Halliday's own writings and the emergence of the "Cardiff Grammar" as an alternative to the "Sydney Grammar." It questions the theoretical status of the 'multiple structure' representations in Halliday's influential "Introduction to Functional Grammar" (1994), demonstrating that Halliday's model additionally needs an integrating syntax such as that described in Part 2.Part 2 specifies and discusses the set of 'categories' and 'relationships' that are needed in a theory of syntax for a modern, computer-implementable systemic functional grammar. The theoretical concepts are exemplified at every point, usually from English but occasionally from other languages.The book is both a critique of Halliday's current theory of syntax and the presentation of an alternative version of SFL that is equally systemic and equally functional.
Download or read book Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories written by Zygmunt Frajzyngier and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 2005-02-28 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the refinement of general methodology, to new insights of synchronic and diachronic universals, to studies of specific phenomena, this collection demonstrates the crucial role that language data play in the evolution of useful, accurate linguistic theories. Issues addressed include the determination of meaning in typological studies; a refined understanding of diachronic processes by including intentional, social, statistical, and level-determined phenomena; the reconsideration of categories such as sentence, evidential or adposition, and structures such as compounds or polysynthesis; the tension between formal simplicity and functional clarity; the inclusion of unusual systems in theoretical debates; and fresh approaches to Chinese classifiers, possession in Oceanic languages, and English aspect. This is a careful selection of papers presented at the International Symposium on Linguistic Diversity and Language Theories in Boulder, Colorado. The purpose of the Symposium was to confront fundamental issues in language structure and change with the rich variation of forms and functions observed across languages.
Download or read book Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2018 written by Sergio Baauw and published by John Benjamins Publishing Company. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains a peer reviewed selection of invited contributions, papers and posters that were presented at the 2018 venue of Going Romance (XXXII) in Utrecht (a four day program that included two thematic workshops). The papers all discuss data and formalized analyses of one or more Romance languages or dialects, in either synchronic or diachronic perspective, and pay particular attention to the variation and the actual variability that is at stake, not only in syntax and morpho-syntax but also in semantics and phonology. Beyond the discussion of differences between languages and/or dialects from a formalist perspective, the volume also contains a number of papers linking the theme of variation to sociolinguistic issues such as natural bilingualism and micro-contact.
Download or read book Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theories written by Thom Huebner and published by John Benjamins Publishing. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term crosscurrent is defined as a current flowing counter to another. This volume represents crosscurrents in second language acquisition and linguistic theory in several respects. First, although the main currents running between linguistics and second language acquisition have traditionally flowed from theory to application, equally important contributions can be made in the other direction as well. Second, although there is a strong tendency in the field of linguistics to see theorists working within formal models of syntax, SLA research can contribute to linguistic theory more broadly defined to include various functional as well as formal models of syntax, theories of phonology, variationist theories of sociolinguists, etc. These assumptions formed the basis for a conference held at Stanford University during the Linguistic Institute there in the summer of 1987. The conference was organized to update the relation between second language acquisition and linguistic theory. This book contains a selection of (mostly revised and updated) papers of this conference and two newly written papers.
