Grammatical Theory and Romance Languages

Grammatical Theory and Romance Languages
Author: Karen T. Zagona
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 337
Release: 1996
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027236372

This volume presents recent theoretical research on Romance languages, selected from papers presented at the 25th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages. It includes studies of individual Romance languages as well as comparative studies — both within the Romance family and with non-Romance languages (Basque, Bulgarian, Germanic and Quechua). Papers in phonetics and phonology treat stress, syllable structure, s-weakening, and the declination effect. Morphological topics include class-marker suppression and gender agreement and suppletion. Topics in syntactic theory include clitics, participial and adjectival agreement, the syntax of tense, mood, negation, adjectival predication, Tough-constructions, quantification and null objects.

Primitive Elements of Grammatical Theory

Primitive Elements of Grammatical Theory
Author: Katherine McKinney-Bock
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2013-10-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1134510950

This book is a compilation of manuscripts and publications from 2001-2010 by Jean-Roger Vergnaud, in collaboration with colleagues and students. This work is guided by the scientific belief that broader mathematical principles should guide linguistic inquiry, as they guide classical biology and physics. From this, Vergnaud’s hypotheses take the representation of the computational component of language to a more abstract level: one that derives constituent structure. He treats linguistic features as primitives, and argues that a 2 x n matrix allows for multiple discrete dimensions to represent symmetries in linguistic features and to derive the fabric of syntax (and perhaps of phonology as well). Three primary research questions guide the core of these papers. (A) Methodologically, how can broadly defined mathematical/cognitive principles guide linguistic investigation? (B) To what extent do general mathematical principles apply across linguistic domains? What principles guide computation at different levels of linguistic structure (phonology, metrical structure, syntax)? (C) How is the computational domain defined? In these manuscripts, Vergnaud’s goal is not to radically depart from the Minimalist Program within generative grammar, but rather to take the underlying goal of the generative program and bring it to an even more general scientific level. The themes of symmetry and periodicity in this book reflect his goal of scientific progress in linguistics, and he has opened the doors to new exploration of old empirical problems in linguistics that may, someday, have deeper biological and physical explanations through the theory presented in this publication.

Working Papers in Grammatical Theory and Discourse Structure

Working Papers in Grammatical Theory and Discourse Structure
Author: Maysayo Ilda
Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications
Total Pages: 256
Release: 1987-07-30
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9780937073254

This volume of working papers emerged from a workshop on Morphology/Syntax/Discourse Interactions held in the summer of 1985 at the Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University. The central objective of the workshop was to discover how the overall linguistics architecture must be structured to explain the kinds of interactions between morphological, syntactic, and discourse phenomena that are empirically found to occur. The papers included in the volume are refined and augmented versions of the material originally presented in the workshop and deal with different aspects of interactions between syntax and other subsystems of the grammar.

Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory

Grammatical Change and Linguistic Theory
Author: Þórhallur Eyþórsson
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 456
Release: 2008
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027233776

This book contains 15 revised papers originally presented at a symposium at Rosendal, Norway, under the aegis of The Centre for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. The overall theme of the volume is 'internal factors in grammatical change.' The papers focus on fundamental questions in theoretically-based historical linguistics from a broad perspective. Several of the papers relate to grammaticalization in different ways, but are generally critical of 'Grammaticalization Theory'. Further papers focus on the causes of syntactic change, pinpointing both extra-syntactic (exogenous) causes and – more controversially – internally driven (endogenous) causes. The volume is rounded up by contributions on morphological change 'by itself.' A wide range of languages is covered, including Tsova-Tush (Nakh-Dagestan), Zoque, and Athapaskan languages, in addition to Indo-European languages, both the more familiar ones and some less well-studied varieties.

Grammatical Theory

Grammatical Theory
Author: Frederick J. Newmeyer
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1983-09-15
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 9780226577197

Newmeyer persuasively defends the controversial theory of transformational generative grammar. Grammatical Theory is for every linguist, philosopher, or psychologist who is skeptical of generative grammar and wants to learn more about it. Newmeyer's formidable scholarship raises the level of debate on transformational generative grammar. He stresses the central importance of an autonomous formal grammar, discusses the limitations of "discourse-based" approaches to syntax, cites support for generativist theory in recent research, and clarifies misunderstood concepts associated with generative grammar.