The Primacy of Grammar


Book Description

A proposal that the biolinguistic approach to human languages may have identified, beyond the study of language, a specific structure of the human mind.




The Primacy of Grammar


Book Description

A proposal that the biolinguistic approach to human languages may have identified, beyond the study of language, a specific structure of the human mind. The contemporary discipline of biolinguistics is beginning to have the feel of scientific inquiry. Biolinguistics—especially the work of Noam Chomsky—suggests that the design of language may be “perfect”: language is an optimal solution to conditions of sound and meaning. What is the scope of this inquiry? Which aspect of nature does this science investigate? What is its relation to the rest of science? What notions of language and mind are under investigation? This book is a study of such foundational questions. Exploring Chomsky's claims, Nirmalangshu Mukherji argues that the significance of biolinguistic inquiry extends beyond the domain of language. Biolinguistics is primarily concerned with grammars that represent just the computational aspects of the mind/brain. This restriction to grammars, Mukherji argues, opens the possibility that the computational system of human language may be involved in each cognitive system that requires similar computational resources. Deploying analytical argumentation and empirical evidence, Mukherji suggests that a computational system of language consisting of very specific principles and operations is likely to be involved in each articulatory symbol system—such as music—that manifests unboundedness. In that sense, the biolinguistics approach may have identified, after thousands of years of inquiry, a specific structure of the human mind.




Chomsky on the Primacy of Syntax


Book Description




The Architecture of Language


Book Description

In this book, Noam Chomsky reflects on the history of 'generative enterprise' - his approach to the study of languages that revolutionized our understanding of human languages and other cognitive systems.




Grammar Acquisition and Processing Instruction


Book Description

The research we present in this book establishes a unique line of research within the Processing Instruction model by assessing the transfer-of-training effects of this approach to grammar instruction on how learners make form-meaning connections. In this book we present the results of three experimental studies investigating secondary and cumulative effects in French, Italian and English.




Grammars of Creation


Book Description

DIV“A fresh, revelatory, golden eagle’s eye-view of western literature.” —Financial Times/divDIV Early in Grammars of Creation, George Steiner references Plato’s maxim that in “all things natural and human, the origin is the most excellent.” Creation, he argues, is linguistically fundamental in theology, philosophy, art, music, literature—central, in fact, to our very humanity. Since the Holocaust, however, art has shown a tendency to linger on endings—on sundown instead of sunrise. Asserting that every use of the future tense of the verb “to be” is a negation of mortality, Steiner draws on everything from world wars and the Nazis to religion and the word of God to demonstrate how our grammar reveals our perceptions, reflections, and experiences. His study shows the twentieth century to be largely a failed one, but also offers a glimpse of hope for Western civilization, a new light peeking just over the horizon./div




200 Years of Grammar


Book Description

Since 1800, students have spent millions of hours learning English grammar. Students and teachers have toiled at parsing and analysis, dreading the English exam at the end of the year, as debate over the real value of learning grammar has raged. Nowhere have these arguments been as passionate as in the English-speaking colonies of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. In 200 Years of Grammar, author Dr. Laurence Walker narrates a detailed history of the origins and evolution of grammar education and its relationship to English usage in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. Walker presents a discussion of grammars educational signi?cance and provides a framework for how the context of the politics surrounding grammar teaching a?ects students and teachers. O?ering many applicable examples, 200 Years of Grammar gives insight into the issues with which English teachers around the world have grappled for years. It provides teachers, students, and those interested in the English language with an engaging history of grammar education from the introduction of state curriculum through to the twenty-?rst century.




Investigations of the Syntax–Semantics–Pragmatics Interface


Book Description

Investigations of the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface presents on-going research in Role and Reference Grammar in a number of critical areas of linguistic theory: verb semantics and argument structure, the nature of syntactic categories and syntactic representation, prosody and syntax, information structure and syntax, and the syntax and semantics of complex sentences. In each of these areas there are important results which not only advance the development of the theory, but also contribute to the broader theoretical discussion. In particular, there are analyses of grammatical phenomena such as transitivity in Kabardian, the verb-less numeral quantifier construction in Japanese, and an unusual kind of complex sentence in Wari’ (Chapakuran, Brazil) which not only illustrate the descriptive and explanatory power of the theory, but also present interesting challenges to other approaches. In addition, there are papers looking at the implications and applications of Role and Reference Grammar for neurolinguistic research, parsing and automated text analysis.




A Grammar of Igala


Book Description

The book establishes 28 phonemic consonants and 7 vowels, as well as lexical and grammatical tones in Igala. It shows the canonical syllable types as V and CV with no complexity, and relates resyllabification to the retiming of segments as tone bearing units and the duration of their mora. The work discusses nine word classes, as well as ideophones and clitics in Igala. There are splitting verbs of various structures and fully-fledged pronouns with morphologically toneless clitic counterparts that are toned in their syntactic context, among other elements of the Igala morphology. The work establishes clitics as generally bearing the grammatical tones of various categories as a result of their morphological tonelessness and their availability for post-lexical tone assignment. It also accounts for the generally complex interaction of clitics and tones in the organisation of the morphosyntax and the tone-syntax interface. Igala has both verbal and nominal extensional affixes with various semantic features. Some interesting discussions in the Igala syntax include the structural and functional types of serial verb constructions, the detransitivizing process of verb movement in object demoting structures, coreferentiality in relativised constituents and the future/non-future temporal distinction. Complementary binominals are conjoined with a specified binominal morpheme, and their rigidly irreversible structures have implications in the Igala semantics. The binominals demonstrate a grammatically specified pattern defined over a conceptual space, showing the network among conceptual categories, such as kinship, marital, social, hunter-hunted, more-less and cause-effect relationships as reflected in the Igala grammar.




Arabic Grammatical Tradition


Book Description

The concept of taE lil occupies a central position in the Arabic intellectual tradition. In grammar it covers a host of areas of immense theoretical interest, including description, methodology, epistemology and explanation. This book sets out to deal with the concept by investigating the major works of those grammarians who have contributed most in theoretical terms to its development and elaboration in the Arabic Grammatical Tradition. It seeks to do so by considering the relation between grammar, on the one hand, and jurisprudence and theology, on the other. In dealing with the above issues an appeal is made, both directly and indirectly, to some of the relevant ideas in the philosophy of science as they apply to this tradition. The approach adopted is cross-disciplinary in orientation to reflect the centrality of taclil in the Arabic intellectual tradition, and reference is therefore made to the employment of this concept in jurisprudence and, to a lesser extent, theology. This is the first major study in any European language or in Arabic to be published on the topic. It will be of interest to Arabic grammarians, students of Arabic and general linguistics and to specialists in Islamic jurisprudence and philosophy.