A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge
Author: Samuel D. Epstein
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 136
Release: 2021-09-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1000442217

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.

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge

A Minimalist Theory of Simplest Merge
Author: Samuel David Epstein
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2021
Genre: Minimalist theory (Linguistics)
ISBN: 9781032078090

"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 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"--

A Companion to Chomsky

A Companion to Chomsky
Author: Nicholas Allott
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 644
Release: 2021-04-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1119598680

A COMPANION TO CHOMSKY Widely considered to be one of the most important public intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky has revolutionized modern linguistics. His thought has had a profound impact upon the philosophy of language, mind, and science, as well as the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science which his work helped to establish. Now, in this new Companion dedicated to his substantial body of work and the range of its influence, an international assembly of prominent linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists reflect upon the interdisciplinary reach of Chomsky's intellectual contributions. Balancing theoretical rigor with accessibility to the non-specialist, the Companion is organized into eight sections—including the historical development of Chomsky's theories and the current state of the art, comparison with rival usage-based approaches, and the relation of his generative approach to work on linguistic processing, acquisition, semantics, pragmatics, and philosophy of language. Later chapters address Chomsky's rationalist critique of behaviorism and related empiricist approaches to psychology, as well as his insistence upon a "Galilean" methodology in cognitive science. Following a brief discussion of the relation of his work in linguistics to his work on political issues, the book concludes with an essay written by Chomsky himself, reflecting on the history and character of his work in his own words. A significant contribution to the study of Chomsky's thought, A Companion to Chomsky is an indispensable resource for philosophers, linguists, psychologists, advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and general readers with interest in Noam Chomsky's intellectual legacy as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century.

The Minimalist Program

The Minimalist Program
Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 436
Release: 1995-09-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780262531283

The Minimalist Program consists of four recent essays that attempt to situate linguistic theory in the broader cognitive sciences. In these essays the minimalist approach to linguistic theory is formulated and progressively developed. 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. The Essays Principles and Parameters Theory Some Notes on Economy of Derivation and Representation A Minimalist Program for Linguistic Theory Categories and Transformations in a Minimalist Framework

The Merge Hypothesis

The Merge Hypothesis
Author: Norbert Hornstein
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2024-02-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1009415743

Outlines a theory which centers a principle that requires all grammatical dependencies to be Merge mediated.

Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis

Merge and the Strong Minimalist Thesis
Author: Noam Chomsky
Publisher:
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2023-11-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1009343270

The goal of this contribution to the Elements series is to closely examine Merge, its form, its function, and its central role in current linguistic theory. It explores what it does (and does not do), why it has the form it has, and its development over time. The basic idea behind Merge is quite simple. However, Merge interacts, in intricate ways, with other components including the language's interfaces, laws of nature, and certain language-specific conditions. Because of this, and because of its fundamental place in the human faculty of language, this Element's focus on Merge provides insights into the goals and development of generative grammar more generally, and its prospects for the future.

Coordination and the Strong Minimalist Thesis

Coordination and the Strong Minimalist Thesis
Author: Stefanie Bode
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 206
Release: 2024-03-27
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 100385527X

This book unpacks coordination in the context of the Strong Minimalist Thesis (SMT), offering a new proposal for addressing this longstanding puzzle within research on Generative Grammar. The volume’s foundations are rooted in the SMT, which builds on the idea that laws of nature, such as simplicity, symmetry, and computational efficiency, shape the laws of language to their simplest form, as units of computation combined with a recursive structure-building device. The book explores the two main ways in which Generative Grammar research has been undertaken to deal with the issue of coordination within SMT as examined in such linguistic expressions as conjuncts, which combine in an unstructured way, but which run counter to a strictly minimalist approach. Bode proposes an alternative account of coordination based on simplest set-formation without resorting to additional mechanisms, rooting it more squarely within SMT theory and encouraging further discussion on new directions for SMT-related research. This volume will be of interest to scholars in syntax and linguistic theory, particularly those interested in minimalist theory.

Merge

Merge
Author: Barbara Citko
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0262361256

An argument that Merge is binary but its binarity refers to syntactic positions rather than objects. In this book, Barbara Citko and Martina Gračanin-Yüksek examine the constraints on Merge--the basic structure-building operation in minimalist syntax--from a multidominant perspective. They maintain that Merge is binary, but argue that the binarity of Merge refers to syntactic positions Merge relates: what has typically been formulated as a constraint that prevents Merge from combining more than two syntactic objects is a constraint on Merge's relating more than two syntactic positions.

On the nominal nature of propositional arguments

On the nominal nature of propositional arguments
Author: Katrin Axel-Tober
Publisher: Helmut Buske Verlag
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2023-10-16
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3967692892

Die grammatische Kategorie eingebetteter Sätze zählt seit über 50 Jahren zu den zentralen Themen der theoretischen Syntax. Dabei dreht sich die Diskussion speziell um die Frage, ob manche oder vielleicht alle eingebetteten Sätze als Nominalphrasen zu behandeln sind, sei es, weil sie einen (stummen) nominalen Kopf haben (D oder N), oder sei es, weil der Satzeinleiter selbst als nominal zu betrachten ist. Die Beiträge des Sonderhefts nehmen diese Fragestellung erneut auf und explorieren sie unter verschiedenen, syntaktischen wie semantischen Aspekten im Lichte neuerer theoretischer Ansätze. Das Spektrum an Sprachen, die genauer untersucht oder argumentativ für die Zwecke der Analyse herangezogen werden, umfasst neben Deutsch – einschließlich dialektaler Varietäten wie Bairisch und Alemannisch – Englisch, Niederländisch (einschließlich der Brabanter Varietät), Alt- und Neugriechisch, Jula (Niger-Kongo), Schwedisch, Baskisch sowie eine Reihe anderer genetisch und typologisch unterschiedlicher Sprachen. Inhalt: – Katrin Axel-Tober, Lutz Gunkel, Jutta M. Hartmann & Anke Holler: Introduction Part I: Complementation as relativization – Carlos de Cuba: Relatively nouny? – Gisela Zifonun: Sind Komplementsätze nominal? Positionen der Grammatikschreibung Part II: Complement clauses and nominal structure – Richard Faure: (H)óti-clauses from DP to NPhood. The life of a Greek nouny clause – Kalle Müller: On noun-related complementizer clauses – Alassane Kiemtoré: A syntactic account of clausal complementation in Jula Part III: Semantic aspects – Vesela Simeonova: Definitely factive – Jürgen Pafel: (Argument) clauses and definite descriptions – Patrick Brandt: The real semantic value is propositional: German particle verbs and state change Part IV: Aspects based on dependent verb-second – Andreas Blümel & Nobu Goto: Reconsidering the syntax of correlates and propositional arguments – Frank Sode: On the conditional nature of V2-clauses in desire reports of German

Core Syntax

Core Syntax
Author: David Adger
Publisher: Oxford University
Total Pages: 424
Release: 2003
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780199243709

This fast-track introduction to syntax assumes no prior knowledge of linguistic theory. It is designed for specialist undergraduates and for those coming to linguistics for the first time as graduates.