The Minimalist Program, 20th Anniversary Edition

The Minimalist Program, 20th Anniversary Edition PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262527340
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
A classic work that situates linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, formulating and developing the minimalist program. In his foundational book, The Minimalist Program, published in 1995, Noam Chomsky offered a significant contribution to the generative tradition in linguistics. This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues this classic work with a new preface by the author. In four essays, Chomsky attempts to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, with the essays formulating and progressively developing the minimalist approach to linguistic theory. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources. In the preface to this edition, Chomsky emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work “is a program, not a theory.” With this book, Chomsky built on pursuits from the earliest days of generative grammar to formulate a new research program that had far-reaching implications for the field.

The Minimalist Program, 20th Anniversary Edition

The Minimalist Program, 20th Anniversary Edition PDF Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262527340
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 409

Get Book

Book Description
A classic work that situates linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, formulating and developing the minimalist program. In his foundational book, The Minimalist Program, published in 1995, Noam Chomsky offered a significant contribution to the generative tradition in linguistics. This twentieth-anniversary edition reissues this classic work with a new preface by the author. In four essays, Chomsky attempts to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences, with the essays formulating and progressively developing the minimalist approach to linguistic theory. Building on the theory of principles and parameters and, in particular, on principles of economy of derivation and representation, the minimalist framework takes Universal Grammar as providing a unique computational system, with derivations driven by morphological properties, to which the syntactic variation of languages is also restricted. Within this theoretical framework, linguistic expressions are generated by optimally efficient derivations that must satisfy the conditions that hold on interface levels, the only levels of linguistic representation. The interface levels provide instructions to two types of performance systems, articulatory-perceptual and conceptual-intentional. All syntactic conditions, then, express properties of these interface levels, reflecting the interpretive requirements of language and keeping to very restricted conceptual resources. In the preface to this edition, Chomsky emphasizes that the minimalist approach developed in the book and in subsequent work “is a program, not a theory.” With this book, Chomsky built on pursuits from the earliest days of generative grammar to formulate a new research program that had far-reaching implications for the field.

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge PDF Author: Samuel D. Epstein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000442187
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
This collection explicates one of the core ideas underpinning Minimalist theory – explanation via simplification – and its role in shaping some of the latest developments within this framework, specifically the simplest Merge hypothesis and the reduction of syntactic phenomena to third factor considerations. Bringing together recent papers on the topic by Epstein, Kitahara, and Seely, with one by Epstein, Seely and Obata, and one by Kitahara, the book begins with an introduction which situates the papers in a cohesive overview of some of the latest research on Minimalism, as facilitated by current theoretical developments. The volume integrates a historical overview of evolutions in Merge, starting with Chomsky’s (pre-Merge) Aspects model up to current theoretical models, including a primer of Chomsky’s most recent theory of Merge based on the concept of Workspace. The Minimalist notions of "perfection" and "simplification" are also outlined, providing clearly explicated coverage of key technical concepts within the framework as applied to grammatical phenomena. Taken as a whole, the collection both introduces and advances Minimalist theory for students and scholars in linguistics and related sub-disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, as well as offering new directions for future research for researchers in these fields.

Why Only Us

Why Only Us PDF Author: Robert C. Berwick
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262533499
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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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.

Minimalist Parsing

Minimalist Parsing PDF Author: Robert C. Berwick
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192514296
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This book is the first dedicated to linguistic parsing - the processing of natural language according to the rules of a formal grammar - in the Minimalist Program. While Minimalism has been at the forefront of generative grammar for several decades, it often remains inaccessible to computer scientists and others in adjacent fields. This volume makes connections with standard computational architectures, provides efficient implementations of some fundamental minimalist accounts of syntax, explores implementations of recent theoretical proposals, and explores correlations between posited structures and measures of neural activity during human language comprehension. These studies will appeal to graduate students and researchers in formal syntax, computational linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computer science.

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence

Introduction to Artificial Intelligence PDF Author: Philip C. Jackson
Publisher: Courier Dover Publications
ISBN: 0486843076
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 545

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Book Description
Can computers think? Updated edition, ideal for lay readers and students of computer science, offers well-illustrated, easy-to-read discussions of problem-solving methods and representations, game playing, neural networks, more. 2019 edition.

The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky

The Cambridge Companion to Chomsky PDF Author: James McGilvray
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 110716589X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
This second edition discusses advances in Chomsky's science of language, his view of the human mind and its study, and his socioeconomic-political contributions.

Investigations of Explanatory Strategies in Linguistics

Investigations of Explanatory Strategies in Linguistics PDF Author: Lukáš Zámečník
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110712806
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
Linguistic theories often suffer from the dilemma that their explanatory power is based on extra-linguistic assumptions. The book delineates the essence of linguistic theory and linguistic explanation and, in doing so, proposes a solution to the dilemma. Simultaneously, the book is one of the first attempts to profile the philosophy of linguistics as a distinct sub-discipline of the contemporary philosophy of science.

Language and Memory: Understanding Their Interactions, Interdependencies, and Shared Mechanisms

Language and Memory: Understanding Their Interactions, Interdependencies, and Shared Mechanisms PDF Author: Melissa Duff
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889661210
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 263

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Book Description
Language and memory have historically been studied apart, as unique cognitive abilities, and with distinct research traditions and methods. Over the past several decades, however, a growing body of evidence suggests that language and memory are heavily intertwined and may even rely on shared cognitive and neural mechanisms. Cutting across theoretical and methodological approaches, these findings offer novel insights into the interactions and interdependencies of language and memory. These advances also have considerable theoretical and clinical implications for the neurobiology of language and memory, their development, representation, and maintenance across the lifespan, the intervention and rehabilitation of disorders of language and memory, and the evolution of these two quintessential human abilities.

The Comparative Psychology of Intelligence: Macphail Revisited

The Comparative Psychology of Intelligence: Macphail Revisited PDF Author: Michael Colombo
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889665976
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description


The Biology of Language Under a Minimalist Lens: Promises, Achievements, and Limits

The Biology of Language Under a Minimalist Lens: Promises, Achievements, and Limits PDF Author: Antonio Benítez-Burraco
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
ISBN: 2889666514
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description