Paths Towards Universal Grammar

Paths Towards Universal Grammar PDF Author: Richard S. Kayne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Generative grammar
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description

Paths Towards Universal Grammar

Paths Towards Universal Grammar PDF Author: Richard S. Kayne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Generative grammar
Languages : en
Pages : 520

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Book Description


Paths Towards Universal Grammar

Paths Towards Universal Grammar PDF Author: Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780608080369
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 507

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Language

Language PDF Author: Daniel L. Everett
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307907023
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 356

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Book Description
A bold and provocative study that presents language not as an innate component of the brain—as most linguists do—but as an essential tool unique to each culture worldwide. For years, the prevailing opinion among academics has been that language is embedded in our genes, existing as an innate and instinctual part of us. But linguist Daniel Everett argues that, like other tools, language was invented by humans and can be reinvented or lost. He shows how the evolution of different language forms—that is, different grammar—reflects how language is influenced by human societies and experiences, and how it expresses their great variety. For example, the Amazonian Pirahã put words together in ways that violate our long-held under-standing of how language works, and Pirahã grammar expresses complex ideas very differently than English grammar does. Drawing on the Wari’ language of Brazil, Everett explains that speakers of all languages, in constructing their stories, omit things that all members of the culture understand. In addition, Everett discusses how some cultures can get by without words for numbers or counting, without verbs for “to say” or “to give,” illustrating how the very nature of what’s important in a language is culturally determined. Combining anthropology, primatology, computer science, philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and his own pioneering—and adventurous—research with the Amazonian Pirahã, and using insights from many different languages and cultures, Everett gives us an unprecedented elucidation of this society-defined nature of language. In doing so, he also gives us a new understanding of how we think and who we are.

Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar

Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar PDF Author: Aafke Hulk Professor of French Linguistics University of Amsterdam
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195349547
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
The Romance Languages document remarkable variations in subject word order in different constructions, and have various restrictions in their occurrence. No consensus has emerged on what the paramaters are for such variations. This volume does not attempt to create a consensus, but tries to represent and bring into dialogue the different sides of the debate.

Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar

Subject Inversion in Romance and the Theory of Universal Grammar PDF Author: Aafke Hulk
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195142691
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The Romance Languages document remarkable variations in subject word order in different constructions, and have various restrictions in their occurrence. No consensus has emerged on what the paramaters are for such variations. This volume does not attempt to create a consensus, but tries to represent and bring into dialogue the different sides of the debate.

Universal Grammar in Second-Language Acquisition

Universal Grammar in Second-Language Acquisition PDF Author: Margaret Thomas
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134388535
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
From the ancient Mediterranean world to the present day, our conceptions of what is universal in language have interacted with our experiences of language learning. This book tells two stories: the story of how scholars in the west have conceived of the fact that human languages share important properties despite their obvious differences, and the story of how westerners have understood the nature of second or foreign language learning. In narrating these two stories, the author argues that modern second language acquisition theory needs to reassess what counts as its own past. The book addresses Greek contributions to the prehistory of universal grammar, Roman bilingualism, the emergence of the first foreign language grammars in the early Middle Ages, and the Medieval speculative grammarians efforts to define the essentials of human language. The author shows how after the renaissance expanded people's awareness of language differences, scholars returned to the questions of universals in the context of second language learning, including in the 1660 Port-Royal grammar which Chomsky notoriously celebrated in Cartesian Linguistics. The book then looks at how Post-Saussurean European linguistics and American structuralism up to modern generative grammar have each differently conceived of universals and language learning. Universal Grammar in Second Language Acquisition is a remarkable contribution to the history of linguistics and will be essential reading for students and scholars of linguistics, specialists in second language acquisition and language teacher-educators.

Italian Syntax and Universal Grammar

Italian Syntax and Universal Grammar PDF Author: Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521475139
Category : Foreign Language Study
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
This volume of essays offers a wide-ranging comparative analysis of Italian syntax.

Checking Theory and Grammatical Functions in Universal Grammar

Checking Theory and Grammatical Functions in Universal Grammar PDF Author: Hiroyuki Ura
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195353404
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Ura demonstrates that his theory of multiple feature-checking, an extension of Chomsky's Agr-less checking theory, gives a natural explanation for a wide range of data drawn from a variety of languages in a very consistent way with a limited set of parameters.

Issues in the Theory of Universal Grammar

Issues in the Theory of Universal Grammar PDF Author: René Dirven
Publisher: Gunter Narr Verlag
ISBN: 9783878085652
Category : Grammar, Comparative and general
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description


Dravidian Syntax and Universal Grammar

Dravidian Syntax and Universal Grammar PDF Author: K.A. Jayaseelan
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190630248
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
This volume comprises twenty eight papers selected from the widely known work of K.A. Jayaseelan and R. Amritavalli on Dravidian. Collectively, these papers cover the entire area of Dravidian syntax: they range from broad questions such as sentence structure and word order to more particular questions such as the morphological basis of anaphora, the genesis of lexical categories, the morpho-syntax of quantifiers, and the syntax and semantics of questions. Important universalist claims are embedded in these essays; for this reason, this volume will be of interest also to a student of the general theory of syntax. No future discussion of Dravidian (or South Asian) languages is possible without taking into account the insightful analyses set forth in these pages.