Download or read book Essays in Syntactic Theory written by Samuel David Epstein and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-17 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Essays in Syntactic Theory written by Samuel Epstein and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Beyond Principles and Parameters written by Kyle Johnson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Beyond Principles and Parameters written by Kyle Johnson and published by Springer. This book was released on 1998-12-31 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Skeptical Linguistic Essays written by Paul M. Postal and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-01-15 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

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 Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition written by Michaela Müller and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2010-02-03 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Essays on Restrictiveness and Learnability written by H. Lasnik and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book The Limits of Syntax written by Peter Culicover and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-13 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Essays Toward Realistic Syntax written by Michael K. Brame and published by . This book was released on 1979 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Syntactic Structures written by Noam Chomsky and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

Download or read book Essays on Anaphora written by H. Lasnik and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The articles collected in this book are concerned with the treatment of anaphora within generative grammar, specifically, within Chomsky's 'Ex tended Standard Theory' (EST). Since the inception of this theory, and virtually since the inception of generative grammar, anaphora has been a central topic of investigation. In current research, it has, perhaps, become even more central, as a major focus of study in such areas as syntax, semantics, discourse analysis, and language acquisition. Beginning in the early 1970's, and continuing to the present, Chomsky has developed a comprehensive syntactic theory of anaphora. The articles here are all related to stages in the development of that theory, and can best be understood in relation to that development. For that reason, Chapter 1 presents a historical survey of Chomsky's EST proposals on anaphora, along with brief indications of how the present articles fit into that history. Some of the articles here (e.g. Chapters 4, 8, and 9) proposed extensions of Chomsky's basic ideas to a wider range of phenomena.

Download or read book Merge in the Mind Brain written by Naoki Fukui and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-04-21 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of nine papers brings together Naoki Fukui’s pioneering body of work on Merge, the basic operation of human language syntax, from the two distinct but related perspectives of theoretical syntax and neurosciences. Part I presents an overview of the development of the theory of Merge and its current formulations in linguistic theory, highlighting the author’s previously published papers in theoretical syntax, while Part II focuses on experimental research on Merge in the brain science of language, demonstrating how new techniques and the results they produce can inform the study of syntactic structures in the brain in the future. By combining insights from theoretical linguistics and neurosciences, this book presents an innovative unified account of the study of Merge and paves new directions for future research for graduate students and scholars in theoretical linguistics, neuroscience, syntax, and cognitive science.

Download or read book Natural Language and Universal Grammar Volume 1 written by John Lyons and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1991-09-12 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays by one of the most influential scholars in modern linguistics, including previously unpublished pieces.

Download or read book The Syntax of Specifiers and Heads written by Hilda J Koopman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Specifiers and Heads covers such topics as: * interpretation and distribution of pronouns * ECP effects * specifiers and phrase structure * the role and functioning of head movement * the architecture of grammar Each chapter draws syntactic arguments from phenomena in a broad range of languages and brings these to bear on the structure of syntactic theory and the understanding of crosslinguistic variation. Among the languages studied are the African languages, Welsh and Irish, Norwegian, French, English and Dutch.

Download or read book Syntactic Theory written by Ivan A. Sag and published by Center for the Study of Language and Information Publica Tion. This book was released on 2003 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marking a return to generative grammar in its original sense, this book focuses on the development of precisely formulated grammars whose empirical predictions can be directly tested. Problem solving is also emphasised.

Download or read book An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory written by Dominique Sportiche and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-09-30 with total page 483 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An Introduction to Syntactic Analysis and Theory offers beginning students a comprehensive overview of and introduction to our current understanding of the rules and principles that govern the syntax of natural languages. Includes numerous pedagogical features such as 'practice' boxes and sidebars, designed to facilitate understanding of both the 'hows' and the 'whys' of sentence structure Guides readers through syntactic and morphological structures in a progressive manner Takes the mystery out of one of the most crucial aspects of the workings of language – the principles and processes behind the structure of sentences Ideal for students with minimal knowledge of current syntactic research, it progresses in theoretical difficulty from basic ideas and theories to more complex and advanced, up to date concepts in syntactic theory