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Evolution and Revolution in Linguistic Theory

Author : Héctor Campos

Publisher : Georgetown University Press

Page : 440 pages

File Size : 31,32 MB

Release : 1996-01-01

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9781589018440

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Book Description

This volume presents essays by some of the leading figures in the vanguard of theoretical linguistics within the framework of universal grammmar. One of the first books to adopt the "minimalist" framework to syntactic analysis, it includes a central essay by Noam Chomsky on the minimalist program and covers a range of topics in syntax and morphology. Contributors: Luigi Burzio, Héctor Campos, Noam Chomsky, Joseph E. Emonds, Robert Freidin, James Harris, Ray Jackendoff, Paula Kempchinsky, Howard Lasnik, Claudia Parodi, Carlos Piera, A. Carlos Quicoli, Dominique Sportiche, Esther Torrego.



Chomskyan (r)evolutions

Author : Douglas A. Kibbee

Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing

Page : 501 pages

File Size : 31,78 MB

Release : 2010

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 9027211698

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Book Description

Chomsky's atavistic revolution (with a little help from his enemies) / John E. Joseph -- The equivocation of form and notation in generative grammar / Christopher Beedham -- Chomsky's paradigm : what it includes and what it excludes / Joanna Radwanska-Williams -- "Scientific revolutions" and other kinds of regime change / Stephen O. Murray -- Noam and Zellig / Bruce Nevin -- Chomsky 1951a and Chomsky 1951b / Peter T. Daniels -- Grammar and language in syntactic structures : transformational progress and structuralist "reflux" / Pierre Swiggers -- Chomsky's other revolution / R. Allen Harris -- Chomsky between revolutions / Malcolm D. Hyman -- What do we talk about, when we talk about "universal grammar" and how have we talked about it? / Margaret Thomas -- Migrating propositions and the evolution of generative grammar / Marcus Tomalin -- Universalism and human difference in Chomskyan linguistics : the first "superhominid" and the language faculty / Christopher Hutton -- The evolution of meaning and grammar : Chomskyan theory and the evidence from grammaticalization / T. Craig Christy -- Chomsky in search of a pedigree / Camiel Hamans & Pieter A.M. Seuren -- The "linguistics wars" : a tentative assessment by an outsider witness / Giorgio Graffi -- British empiricism and transformational grammar : a current debate / Jacqueline Léon -- Historiography's contribution to theoretical linguistics / Julie Tetel Andresen.



Why Only Us

Author : Robert C. Berwick

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 229 pages

File Size : 11,4 MB

Release : 2017-05-12

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0262533499

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Book Description

Berwick and Chomsky draw on recent developments in linguistic theory to offer an evolutionary account of language and humans' remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire it. “A loosely connected collection of four essays that will fascinate anyone interested in the extraordinary phenomenon of language.” —New York Review of Books We are born crying, but those cries signal the first stirring of language. Within a year or so, infants master the sound system of their language; a few years after that, they are engaging in conversations. This remarkable, species-specific ability to acquire any human language—“the language faculty”—raises important biological questions about language, including how it has evolved. This book by two distinguished scholars—a computer scientist and a linguist—addresses the enduring question of the evolution of language. Robert Berwick and Noam Chomsky explain that until recently the evolutionary question could not be properly posed, because we did not have a clear idea of how to define “language” and therefore what it was that had evolved. But since the Minimalist Program, developed by Chomsky and others, we know the key ingredients of language and can put together an account of the evolution of human language and what distinguishes us from all other animals. Berwick and Chomsky discuss the biolinguistic perspective on language, which views language as a particular object of the biological world; the computational efficiency of language as a system of thought and understanding; the tension between Darwin's idea of gradual change and our contemporary understanding about evolutionary change and language; and evidence from nonhuman animals, in particular vocal learning in songbirds.



Historical Syntax and Linguistic Theory

Author : Paola Crisma

Publisher : OUP Oxford

Page : 433 pages

File Size : 49,83 MB

Release : 2009-03-12

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0191567981

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Book Description

This book of new work by leading international scholars considers developments in the study of diachronic linguistics and linguistic theory, including those concerned with the very definition of language change in the biolinguistic framework, parametric change in a minimalist conception of grammar, the tension between the observed gradual nature of language change and the binary nature of parameters, and whether syntactic change can be triggered internally or requires the external stimuli produced by phonological or morphological change or through language contact. It then tests their value and applicability by examining syntactic change at different times and in a wide range of languages, including German, Chinese, Dutch, Sanskrit, Egyptian, Norwegian, old Italian, Portuguese, English, the Benue-Kwa languages of Niger-Congo, Catalan, Spanish, and old French. The book is divided into three parts devoted to (i) theoretical issues in historical syntax; (ii) external (such as contact and interference) and internal (grammatical) sources of morphosynactic change; and (iii) parameter setting and reanalysis.



Language and Thought

Author : Noam Chomsky

Publisher :

Page : 104 pages

File Size : 26,85 MB

Release : 1993

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN :

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Book Description

A fascinating analysis of human language and its influence on other disciplines by one of the nation's most respected linguists. Chomsky is also the author of What Uncle Sam Really Wants and The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many (15,000 copies sold).



Foundational Issues in Linguistic Theory

Author : Robert Freidin

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 425 pages

File Size : 30,53 MB

Release : 2008-05-09

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0262562332

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Book Description

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



Syntax, the brain, and linguistic theory: a critical reassessment

Author :

Publisher : Frontiers Media SA

Page : 151 pages

File Size : 36,33 MB

Release : 2024-07-23

Category : Science

ISBN : 2832551815

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Book Description

Syntax refers both to the structure of sentences and the underlying combinatorial capacity to generate this structure. For some time, neurolinguistic research on syntax was heavily influenced by theoretical linguistic approaches, which characterize in detail the nature of syntactic representations. A rough consensus has been that the primary region supporting syntax is Broca’s area, and that syntactic deficits in aphasia exist primarily due to damage or degeneration of this region, commonly occurring in Broca’s aphasia and nonfluent/agrammatic PPA. With respect to temporal dynamics of syntactic processing, neurophysiological research on syntax focused on specific event-related potentials such as the ELAN and P600, thought to index phrase structure building and syntactic reanalyses. However, the research landscape has changed substantially in the last several years with new methodologies and theoretical perspectives, and there is little consensus on the neurobiological foundations of syntax or the role of linguistic theory in guiding research. The goal of this Research Topic is to reassess our understanding of syntax and the brain in light of these developments. Specifically, it is designed to address the following set of major questions:



Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics

Author : Alex Barber

Publisher : Elsevier

Page : 859 pages

File Size : 35,76 MB

Release : 2010-04-06

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0080965016

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Book Description

The application of philosophy to language study, and language study to philosophy, has experienced demonstrable intellectual growth and diversification in recent decades. Concise Encyclopedia of Philosophy of Language and Linguistics comprehensively analyzes and evaluates many of the most interesting facets of this vibrant field. An edited collection of articles taken from the award-winning Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, Second Edition, this volume acts as a single-stop desk reference resource for the field, comprising contributions from the foremost scholars of philosophy of linguistics in their various interdisciplinary specializations. From Plato's Cratylus to Semantic and Epistemic Holism, this fascinating work authoritatively unpacks the diverse and multi-layered concepts of meaning, expression, identity, truth, and countless other themes and subjects straddling the linguistic-philosophical meridian, in 175 articles and over 900 pages. - Authoritative review of this dynamic field placed in an interdisciplinary context - Approximately 175 articles by leaders in the field - Compact and affordable single-volume format



The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language

Author : Delia Graff Fara

Publisher : Routledge

Page : 941 pages

File Size : 44,26 MB

Release : 2012

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0415993105

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Book Description

"The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Language provides a comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the field, charting its key ideas and movements, and addressing contemporary research and enduring questions in the philosophy of language. Unique to this Companion is clear coverage of research from the related disciplines of formal logic and linguistics, and discussion of the applications in metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and philosophy of mind"--Publisher.



Working Minimalism

Author : Samuel David Epstein

Publisher : MIT Press

Page : 380 pages

File Size : 15,86 MB

Release : 1999

Category : Art

ISBN : 9780262550321

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Book Description

Essays present explicit syntactic analyses that adhere to programmatic minimalist guidelines. The essays in this book present explicit syntactic analyses that adhere to programmatic minimalist guidelines. Thus they show how the guiding ideas of minimalism can shape the construction of a new, more explanatory theory of the syntactic component of the human language faculty. Contributors Zeljko Boskovic, Samuel David Epstein, Robert Freidin, Erich M. Groat, Norbert Hornstein, Hisatsugu Kitahara, Howard Lasnik, Roger Martin, Jairo Nunes, Norvin Richards, Juan Uriagereka, Amy Weinberg Current Studies in Linguistics No. 32