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The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.
This volume collects novel contributions to comparative generative linguistics that “rethink” existing approaches to an extensive range of phenomena, domains, and architectural questions in linguistic theory. At the heart of the contributions is the tension between descriptive and explanatory adequacy which has long animated generative linguistics and which continues to grow thanks to the increasing amount and diversity of data available to us. The chapters develop novel insights into a number of core syntactic phenomena, such as the structure of and variation in diathesis, alignment types, case and agreement splits, and the syntax of null elements. Many of these contributions show the influence of research by Ian Roberts and collaborators and they provide varied perspectives on current research in synchronic and diachronic comparative syntax.
Dutch linguist Riemsdiyk is honored by scholars, presumably fellow linguists though they do not say so, with 71 papers. Among their topics are moving verbal complexes in Spanish, the notion of topic and the problem of quantification in Hungarian, enfoldment as economy, Quechua P-soup, a new perspective on event participants in psychological states and events, and circumstantial evidence for dative shift.
Element Theory (ET) covers a range of approaches that consider privativity a central tenet defining the internal structure of segments. This volume provides an overview and extension of this program, exploring new lines of research within phonology and at its interface (phonetics and syntax). The present collection reflects on issues concerning the definition of privative primes, their interactions, organization, and the operations that constrain phonological and syntactic representations. The contributions reassess theoretical questions, which have been implicitly taken for granted, regarding privativity and its corollaries. On the empirical side, it explores the possibilities ET offers to analyze specific languages and phonological phenomena.
This volume offers a selection of interface studies in generative linguistics, a valuable “one-stop shopping” opportunity for readers interested in the ways in which the various modules of linguistic analysis intersect and interact. The boundaries between the lexicon and morphophonology, between morphology and syntax, between morphosyntax and meaning, and between morphosyntax and phonology are all being crossed in this volume. Though its focus is on theoretical approaches, experimental studies are also included. The empirical focus of many of the contributions is on Hungarian, and several chapters respond to work published by István Kenesei, to whom the volume is dedicated.
The cartographic project considers evidence for a functional head in one language as evidence for it in universal grammar. In this volume, some of the most influential linguists who have participated in this long-lasting debate offer their recent work in short, self contained case studies.
This volume is an important contribution to the theoretical and empirical study of the interactions of grammatical components in Chinese and other languages. With contributions by Edward L. Keenan, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, and scholars in Chinese Linguistics, this volume investigates the common structural properties that may be considered as possible candidates for UG. It addresses syntactic and semantic issues such as anaphora universals over non-isomorphic languages, the role that the forces of attraction and repulsion play in the grammar of natural languages, computational and semantic aspects of resumption, the dichotomy between inner and outer reflexive adverbials, system rep...
This book offers new work by some major figures in the field of linguistics, addressing old debates from the perspective of current explanatory grammatical theory. These include paradigmatic relations among words, and agreeing adjectives and their grammatical source. Covering a broad range of empirical domains, the contributors of this volume examine the role of Economy in syntax and in syntactic interfaces with phonology and semantics, and their implications for processing. The evidence is taken from a great variety of languages, including Arabic dialects, Basque, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Latin, and Spanish. Two chapters on metrics complete honoring Carlos Piera’s longstanding scholarship in linguistic theory within Spain and abroad.
Over the last two decades, functional heads have been one of the privileged objects of research in generative linguistics. However, within this line of inquiry, two alternative approaches have developed: while the cartographic project considers crosslinguistic evidence as crucial for a complete mapping of functional heads in universal grammar, minimalist accounts tend to consider structural economy as literally involving a reduction in the number of available heads. In this volume, some of the most influential linguists who have participated in this long-lasting debate offer their recent work in short, self-contained case studies. The contributions cover all the main layers of recently studied syntactic structure, including such major areas of empirical research as grammaticalization and language change, standard and non-standard varieties, interface issues, and morphosyntax. Functional Heads attempts to map aspects of syntactic structure according to the cartographic approach, and in doing so demonstrates that the differences between cartography and minimalism are perhaps more superficial than substantial.
Spanning more than two decades of thinking about generative approaches to Universal Grammar, the two interviews with Noam Chomsky in this book permit a rare and illuminating insight into his views on numerous issues in linguistics and beyond. The first discussion dates from the early days of the so-called Government Binding Theory, the second one took place after a decade of Minimalism. Thereby the evolution and the dynamics in linguistic theorizing are dramatically revealed. Scholars of grammar, cognitive scientists, philosophers will profit by reading this book, but anyone with an ardent interest in this marvellous, eminently human achievement of evolution called language will want to read about it in the words of the undisputed grand master of linguistic research, Noam Chomsky.