Theoretical Syntax 19801990

This volume is intended to be used by practicing scholars as well as students. It represents all major and some of the minor trends that have evolved during the past decade. Book titles from all available sources have been included, as well as periodical articles from the major journals, whenever there was evidence of a theoretical approach. To ensure maximum accessibility of the entries listed, books and articles in language other than English and unpublished dissertations and working papers have been excluded. All entries are fully annotated and the volume is completed by indices of authors and subjects.

The fiftieth anniversary edition of a landmark work in generative grammar that continues to be influential, with a new preface by the author. Noam Chomsky's Aspects of the Theory of Syntax, published in 1965, was a landmark work in generative grammar that introduced certain technical innovations still drawn upon in contemporary work. The fiftieth anniversary edition of this influential book includes a new preface by the author that identifies proposals that seem to be of lasting significance, reviews changes and improvements in the formulation and implementation of basic ideas, and addresses some of the controversies that arose over the general framework. Beginning in the mid-fifties and emanating largely from MIT, linguists developed an approach to linguistic theory and to the study of the structure of particular languages that diverged in many respects from conventional modern linguistics. Although the new approach was connected to the traditional study of languages, it differed enough in its specific conclusions about the structure of language to warrant a name, “generative grammar.” Various deficiencies were discovered in the first attempts to formulate a theory of transformational generative grammar and in the descriptive analysis of particular languages that motivated these formulations. At the same time, it became apparent that these formulations can be extended and deepened. In this book, Chomsky reviews these developments and proposes a reformulation of the theory of transformational generative grammar that takes them into account. The emphasis in this study is syntax; semantic and phonological aspects of the language structure are discussed only insofar as they bear on syntactic theory.

Thoroughly revised and updated with some 500 new entries-including the addition of pertinent Internet sites-this is the only bibliographic guide to information sources for linguistics. Coverage spans from 1957, the publication date of Chomsky's seminal work, to the present, with emphasis on English-language resources. DeMiller's detailed citations describe and evaluate each work, often offering comparisons to similar titles. Its broad coverage and in-depth reviews make this work essential to the research and study of general or theoretical linguistics. The book is also indispensable in the related areas of anthropological linguistics, applied linguistics, mathematical and computation linguistics, psycholinguistics, semiotics, and sociolinguistics, which are all treated in separate chapters, as well as the study of language and languages from a linguistic perspective. A must for any library supporting the study of linguistics or its related fields, this is a valuable reference and research tool. It i

This title, first published in 1979, centres on control and binding in networks of anaphora. A wide variety of phenomena which are superficially global rather than local processes are examined, and the study deals directly with aspects of natural logic and finds its empirical motivation in concrete grammatical phenomena, thereby accounting for similarities and differences between natural languages and artificial formal logics. This title will be of interest to students of language and linguistics.

This book argues convincingly against the widespread opinion that very few syntactic studies were carried out before the 1950s. Relying on the detailed analysis of a large amount of original sources, it shows that syntactic matters were in fact carefully investigated throughout both the 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century. Moreover, it illustrates how the enormous development of syntactic research in the last fifty years has already condemned even several recent ideas and analyses to oblivion, and deeply influenced current research programs. The wealth of research undertaken over the last two centuries is presented here in a systematic way, taking as its starting point the relationship of syntax with psychology throughout this period. The critical ideas expressed in the text are based on a detailed illustration of the different syntactic models and analyses rather than on the polemics between the different schools.

By formalizing recent syntactic theories for natural languages Stabler shows how their complexity can be handled without guesswork or oversimplification. By formalizing recent syntactic theories for natural languages in the tradition of Chomsky's Barriers, Stabler shows how their complexity can be handled without guesswork or oversimplification. He introduces logical representations of these theories together with special deductive techniques for exploring their consequences that will provide linguists with a valuable tool for deriving and testing theoretical predictions and for experimenting with alternative formulations of grammatical principles. Stabler's novel approach allows results to be deduced with straightforward calculations and provides a systematic framework for tackling the problem of how speakers can infer the properties of an utterance from principles of the grammar. The special treatment of equality, induction principles, and inclusion of a general method for collecting structures from proofs means that sophisticated linguistic arguments can be carried out in detail, giving a rich perspective to issues in linguistic theory and parsing.

Accompanying CD-ROM contains ... "all the bibliographical items in this book ... along with self-installing software necessary to process the databases and tha annotations on a personal computer." -- p. [535].

This book argues that syntactic parameters are set in a principled fashion on the basis of overt functional morphology. The main focus of the book is on the different positions of the finite verb in the Germanic SVO languages. In addition, other syntactic phenomena (null subjects, transitive expletive constructions and object shift) and other language families (Romance, Semitic and Slavic) are discussed. A common explanation for all of the discussed phenomena is proposed: If and only if the features for “person” are distinctively marked by the agreement morphology, the agreement affixes are listed separately in the lexicon and project phrases of their own in syntax where they attract the verb to the head positions and allow the specifier positions to be filled by various phonologically (un)realized elements. Special attention is given to issues of historical development and child language acquisition.

Collected for the first time in a single volume, these essays and articles by Naoki Fukui form an outline of some of the most significant and formative contributions to syntactic theory. Focusing particularly on the typological differences between English/type language and Japanese/type languages, Fukui examines the abstract parameters that both link and divide them. Linguistic universals are considered in the light of cross-linguistic variation and typological (parametric) differences are investigated from the viewpoint of universal principles. The book's main focus is the nature and structure of invariant principles and parameters (variables) and how they interact to give principled accounts to a variety of seemingly unrelated differences between English and Japanese. The contrasts between these two types of language is an ideal testing ground, since the languages are superficially different in virtually every aspect of their linguistic structures from word order and wh-movement, to grammatical agreement and case-marking systems, among many others. These articles constitute a considerable contribution to the development of the principles-and-parameters model in its exploration and refinement of theoretical concepts and fundamental principles of linguistic theory, leading to some of the basic insights that lie behind the minimalist program.