Grammar, syntax and morphology Books

Book SynopsisThis book offers an empirical and theoretical exploration of the development of object clitic pronouns in the Romance languages, drawing on data from Latin, medieval vernaculars, modern Romance languages, and lesser-known dialects. Diego Pescarini examines phonological, morphological, and especially syntactic aspects of Romance object clitics, using the findings to reconstruct their evolution from Latin to Romance and to model clitic placement in modern Romance languages. On the theoretical side, the volume engages with previous accounts of clitics, particularly in generative theory. It challenges the received idea that cliticization resulted from a form of syntactic deficiency; instead, it proposes that clitics resulted from the feature endowment of discourse features, which initially caused freezing of certain pronominal forms and then - through reanalysis - their successive incorporation to verbal hosts. This approach leads to a revision of earlier analyses of well-known phenomena sTrade Review... is extremely valuable for future research. * Anna Chiara Bassan, LINGUIST List *The different chapters of the book hang well together. Their ordering provides the overall schema, but there are many cross-references between chapters resulting from systematic methodologies and critical themes. The whole framework accounts for the accurate visualization of the object clitic phenomenon in Romance languages ... The present work is accessible to university-level students and is extremely valuable for future research. It provides a detailed source of bibliographic materials while evoking the historiographical process a theory or hypothesis is based on. * Anna Chiara Bassan, LINGUIST List *Table of ContentsIntroduction Part I: Setting the Scene 1: Properties of Romance object clitics 2: Theoretical preliminaries 3: Historical overview Part II: Deficiency 4: Syntactic evidence against deficiency 5: Morphophonological evidence against deficiency Part III: The Emergence of Clitics 6: Clitics in embryo 7: The rise of ad-verbal clitics Part IV: Early Romance 8: 'V2' and clitic placement 9: Deriving enclisis in 'V1' clauses Part V: Towards Microvariation 10: Clitic climbing 11: Clitic combinations 12: Conclusions

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Book SynopsisThis volume brings together new work on prosody and prosodic interfaces from international experts in the field, with parts exploring word prosody and phrase prosody, lexical tone and intonation, and the syntax-prosody interface. The empirical data comes from a wide range of languages, including many that are largely undocumented or understudied.Trade ReviewThis is a valuable collection of individual chapters that together shed light on how word-level and sentence-level prosodic and grammatical phenomena interact and influence one another. Most deal with specific topics in a considerable typological and geographical variety of languages, yet the editors have succeeded in fashioning a coherent and empirically rich anthology of some of the best current work. * D. Robert Ladd, University of Edinburgh *This volume on prosody, edited and written by some of the best-known specialists in the field, is a unique source of information from both the theoretical and the data perspective. Students and researchers will find in-depth analyses of known and less-known languages and discussions of important theoretical issues. * Caroline Féry, Goethe University Frankfurt *Table of ContentsPreface List of figures and tables List of abbreviations The contributors Haruo Kubozono, Junko Ito, and Armin Mester: Introduction Part I: Word prosody and phrase prosody 1: Laura McPherson: Word tone is epiphenomenal: A case study from Poko 2: José Ignacio Hualde: Accent shift and the reconstruction of Old Common Basque accentuation 3: Draga Zec and Elizabeth Zsiga: Tone and stress as agents of cross-dialectal variation: The case of Serbian 4: Sara Myrberg: Two-peakedness in South Swedish and the Scandinavian tone accent typology 5: Larry M. Hyman: Prosodic asymmetries in nominal vs verbal phrases in Bantu 6: Carlos Gussenhoven: How metrical is the Autosegmental-Metrical model? Evidence from pitch accents in Nubi, Persian, and English Part II: Lexical tone and intonation 7: Ryan Bennett, Robert Henderson, and Megan Harvey: Tonal variability and marginal contrast: Lexical pitch in Uspanteko 8: Gabriela Caballero, Yuan Chai, and Marc Garellek: Stress, tone, and intonation in Choguita Rarámuri 9: Haruo Kubozono: Interactions between lexical and postlexical tones: Evidence from Japanese vocative prosody 10: Yosuke Igarashi: Prosodic phrasing, long-distance rise, and structural prominence marking in Japanese dialects without lexically constrastive tones 11: Yuan Chai, Titus Kubri Kajo Kunda, Alejandro Rodríguez, and Sharon Rose: Prosody of declaratives and questions in Rere (Koalib) Part III: The syntax-prosody interface 12: Seunghun J. Lee and Elisabeth Selkirk: Xitsonga tone: The syntax-phonology interface 13: Gorka Elordieta and Elisabeth Selkirk: Unaccentedness and the formation of prosodic structure in Lekeitio Basque 14: Shinichiro Ishihara: On the (lack of) correspondence between syntactic clauses and intonational phrases 15: Jennifer Bellik, Junko Ito, Nick Kalivoda, and Armin Mester: Matching and alignment References Index

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Book SynopsisThis volume explores the role that functional elements play in syntactic change and investigates the semantic and functional features that are the driving force behind those changes. It contains both case studies of individual languages such as German, Hungarian, and Romanian, and detailed investigations of cross-linguistic phenomena.Table of Contents1: Barbara Egedi and Veronika Hegedüs: The role of functional heads in syntactic change 2: Lieven Danckaert: Changing patterns of clausal complementation in Latin: A parametric approach to 'constructional' changes 3: Adina Dragomirescu and Virginia Hill: From split to remerged Fin in Romanian supine complements 4: Ana Maria Martins, Sandra Pereira, and Clara Pinto: The diachronic path of senão: From conditional subordination to exceptive coordination 5: Emanuela Sanfelici, Jacopo Garzonio, and Cecilia Poletto: On Italian relative complementizers and relative pronouns: Rethinking grammaticalization 6: Julia Bacskai-Atkari: Information structure, functional left peripheries, and the history of a Hungarian interrogative marker 7: Eric Haeberli and Tabea Ihsane: The recategorization of modals in English: Evidence from adverb placement 8: Ida Larsson and Ellen Brandner: Tense recursion, perfect doubling, and the grammaticalization of auxiliaries 9: Jóhannes Gísli Jónsson and Brynhildur Stefánsdóttir: P-incorporation in the history of Icelandic 10: Heimir F. Viðarsson: From Old to Modern Icelandic: Dative applicatives and NP/DP configurationality

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Book SynopsisThis book shows that every language has an adjective class and how such classes vary. Thirteen scholars report original research on languages from North, Central and South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The book throws new light on the nature and classification of adjectives and redefines the cross-linguistic parameters of their variation.Trade Review...makes a major contribution to the general study of parts of speech across languages... The editors of this book have provided a much-needed analytical framework for typologizing the key distinctions in how the adjective manifests itself as a part of speech. * Edward J Vajda, Western Washington University *Table of Contents1. Adjective Classes in Typological Perspective ; 2. Inflected and Uninflected Adjective in Japanese ; 3. The Two Adjective Classes in Manange ; 4. The Adjective Class in Tariana ; 5. Adjectives in Mam ; 6. Adjectives in Papantla Totonac ; 7. The Small Adjective Class in Jarawara ; 8. The Russian Adjective: A Pervasive yet Elusive Category ; 9. The Adjective Class in Korean ; 10. Is There an Adjective Class in Wolof? ; 11. Adjectives in North-East Ambae ; 12. Adjectives in Semelai ; 13. Adjectives in Qiang ; 14. Adjectives in Lao ; 15. Adjective Classes: What Can we Conclude? ; References ; Author Index ; Language and Language Family Index ; Subject Index

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Book SynopsisThis book is a cross-linguistic investigation of resumptive pronouns and related phenomena. Pronominal resumption is the realization of the base of a syntactic dependency as a bound pronoun. Resumption occurs in unbounded dependencies, such as relative clauses and questions, and in the variety of raising known as copy raising. Processing factors may also give rise to resumption, even in environments where it does not normally occur in a given language.Ash Asudeh proposes a new theory of resumption based on the use of a resource logic for semantic composition and the typologically robust observation that resumptive pronouns are ordinary pronouns in their morphological and lexical properties. The framework for semantic composition is Glue Semantics and the syntactic framework is Lexical-Functional Grammar. The author introduces these frameworks and the concept of resource logics accessibly and compares results and explanations with those offered by a number of contrasting theoretical fraTable of ContentsPART I BACKGROUND; PART II THEORY; PART III SYNTACTICALLY ACTIVE RESUMPTIVES; PART IV SYNTACTICALLY INACTIVE RESUMPTIVES; PART V OTHER KINDS OF RESUMPTION; PART VI APPENDICES

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Book SynopsisThis book contains updated and substantially revised versions of Angelika Kratzer''s classic papers on modals and conditionals, including ''What must and can must and can mean'', ''Partition and Revision'', ''The Notional Category of Modality'', ''Conditionals'', ''An Investigation of the Lumps of Thought'', and ''Facts: Particulars or Information Units?''. The book''s contents add up to some of the most important work on modals and conditionals in particular and on the semantics-syntax interface more generally. It will be of central interest to linguists and philosophers of language of all theoretical persuasions.Trade ReviewThe book's contents add up to some of the most important work on modals and conditionals. It will be of central interest to linguists and philosophers of language of all theoretical persuasions. * MathSciNet *An indispensible resource. * François Recanati, Institut Jean Nicod *This book is a treasure of the puzzles, illustrations, and parables that have shaped the modern view of the language of modals and conditionals. It defines the standard against which all theorizing on the subject is to be measured. A classic. * Barry Schein, University of Southern California *This work collects and dramatically expands upon Angelika Kratzer's now classic papers. There is scarcely an area of philosophy that remains or will remain untouched by their influence. * Jason Stanley, Rutgers University *Table of Contents1. What Must and Can Must and Can Mean ; 2. The Notional Category of Modality ; 3. Partition and Revision: The Semantics of Counterfactuals ; 4. Conditionals ; 5. An Investigation of the Lumps of Thought ; 6. Facts: Particulars or Information Units? ; References ; Index

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Book SynopsisThis 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, including students in computational science, artificial intelligence, and psychology.Trade ReviewAdger truly manages to achieve a good balance between a formal theoretical model and its empirical coverage. Each chapter includes excellent problem sets and a list of further readings... The author takes a lot of time to illustrate each derivation step by step, thus helping students to see the workings of a formal syntactic system. Another very positive characteristic is the approach to crosslinguistic variation, which is given consistently in terms of features.... I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who wants a text that presents minimalist syntax in a clear way and with data from a vast array of languages." * Artemis Alexiadou, Language *This book is intended as an introduction to three things. Firstly, the fact that syntax should be carried out using a consistent set of theoretical assumptions. Secondly, as the title says, 'core' areas of syntax are covered. Finally, the methodology of theory formation is emphasised as well. Overall I would say that the book has accomplished these aims admirably. I have found this to be an excellent introduction to Minimalist Syntax, and to syntactic theorising in general. All the ideas are presented clearly. Something I found particularly good was the way examples are worked through in detail, with each instance of feature checking specified. Also, the exercises were well presented, with some particularly difficult areas such as binding dealt with clearly ... This is a high quality textbook, which I would certainly recommend. * Linguist List *Table of Contents1. Core Concepts ; 2. Morphosyntactic Features ; 3. Constituency and Theta Roles ; 4. Representing Phrase Structure ; 5. Functional Categories I: TP ; 6. Subjects and Objects ; 7. Functional Categories II: the DP ; 8. Functional Categories III: CP ; 9. Wh Movement ; 10. Locality

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Book SynopsisPatrick Farrell explains how grammatical relations are characterized in modern theories of grammar. He describes the historical development and conceptual precedents of competing theories and, ranging across a wide variety of languages, considers what their merits and limitations are in different contexts. He examines their conceptions of relations such as subject, object, indirect object, agent, patient, and actor, and their accounts of such syntactic phenomena as ergativity, split intransitivity, voice alternations, and case marking. Professor Farrell compares mainstream generative-transformational approaches with both formalist and functionalist alternative approaches, revealing points of convergence and divergence. He identifies and discusses problems and issues of continuing concern and considers how these might be resolved. This is an ideal introduction for graduate students and will be a valuable reference for theoretical linguists of all persuasions.Oxford Surveys in Syntax andTrade Review...the book achieves [its] goal in an accessible and effocient fashion. * Donna B. Gerdts Linguistics *...an ideal introduction for graduate students and will be a valuable reference for theoretical linguists of all persuasions. * Folia Linguistica *Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. Grammatical Relations Across Languages ; 3. Relational Grammar ; 4. Role and Reference Grammar ; 5. Transformational Grammar ; References ; Index

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Book SynopsisHow does human language work? How do we put ideas into words that others can understand? Can linguistics shed light on the way the brain operates? Foundations of Language puts linguistics back at the centre of the search to understand human consciousness. Ray Jackendoff begins by surveying the developments in linguistics over the years since Noam Chomsky''s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. He goes on to propose a radical re-conception of how the brain processes language. This opens up vivid new perspectives on every major aspect of language and communication, including grammar, vocabulary, learning, the origins of human language, and how language relates to the real world. Foundations of Language makes important connections with other disciplines which have been isolated from linguistics for many years. It sets a new agenda for close cooperation between the study of language, mind, the brain, behaviour, and evolution.Trade ReviewThe book is ... a fascinating introduction to the world of linguistics. ... I found the book extremely interesting, captivating and important. If you are not sure about certain basic facts in the research of natural language, read this book. It will provide you with quite an objective view of the development of the research of language on all aspects. * Linguist List *A masterpiece * Nature *I believe this book has the potential to reorient linguistics more decisively than any book since Syntactic Structures shook the discipline almost half a century ago. * Robbins Burling, Language in Society *An excellent overview of the complexities of language * New Scientist *Table of ContentsPART I: PSYCHOLOGICAL AND BIOLOGICAL FOUNDATIONS ; 1. The Complexity of Linguistic Structure ; 2. Language as a Mental Phenomenon ; 3. Combinatoriality ; 4. Universal Grammar ; PART II: ARCHITECTURAL FOUNDATIONS ; 5. The Parallel Architecture ; 6. Lexical Storage Versus Online Construction ; 7. Implications for Processing ; 8. An Evolutionary Perspective on the Architecture ; PART III: SEMANTIC AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS ; 9. Semantics as a Mentalistic Enterprise ; 10. Reference and Truth ; 11. Lexical Semantics ; 12. Phrasal Semantics ; 13. Concluding Remarks

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Book SynopsisIn this book, the first full-scale work of its kind in English, Harm Pinkster applies contemporary linguistic theories and the findings of traditional grammar to the study of Latin syntax. He takes a non-technical and principally descriptive approach, based on literary and non-literary texts dating from c.250 BC to c.450 AD. The book contains a wealth of examples to illustrate the grammatical phenomena under discussion, many of them from the works of Plautus and Cicero, alongside extensive references to other sources of examples such as the Oxford Latin Dictionary and the Thesaurus Linguae Latinae. This first volume focuses on the simple clause. It begins with an introduction to the sources used and to the approaches and conventions adopted, followed by a description of the basic grammatical concepts. Further chapters offer a thorough account of the features of the Latin simple clause, including verb frames, active vs passive mood, sentence type, negation, and the noun phrase, among maTrade ReviewThis book will become the point of reference for the next century of Latin scholarship For those who think that we already knew enough about Latin grammar, think again. This work is the culmination of decades of research on Latin, enriched by the discovery and publication of new texts and a centurys advances in linguistics. * James Clackson, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *P.'s new syntax is detailed, informative and accessible ... P.'s book is an invaluable tool for anyone interested in Latin linguistics. * Wolfgang de Melo, Journal of Roman Studies *Any serious student of Latin will want to become acquainted with this book. One looks forward to the second volume. * Andrew R. Dyck, Classical World *The Oxford Latin Syntax is an essential new reference for researchers in Latin linguistics, classicists, and university students. Non-specialists are introduced to ideas in theoretical linguistics and to the relevant terminology [and] technical concepts such as autocausative, counterfactual, and negator climbing can be easily understood by those outside the field thanks to the numerous examples with translations and notes. * Chiara Fedriani, Incontri Linguistici *Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. Basic grammatical concepts ; 3. Latin word classes and inflectional categories ; 4. Verb frames ; 5. Active/passive, reflexivity, and intransitivization ; 6. Sentence type and illocutionary force ; 7. The semantic values of the Latin tenses and moods ; 8. Negation ; 9. Syntactic functions of arguments and the categories of constituents that may fulfil them ; 10. Satellites ; 11. The noun phrase ; 12. Cases and prepositions ; 13. Agreement ; References ; Index

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Book SynopsisIn Basic Linguistic Theory R. M. W. Dixon provides a new and fundamental characterization of the nature of human languages and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis. In three clearly written and accessible volumes, he describes how best to go about doing linguistics, the most satisfactory and profitable ways to work, and the pitfalls to avoid. In the first volume he addresses the methodology for recording, analysing, and comparing languages. He argues that grammatical structures and rules should be worked out inductively on the basis of evidence, explaining in detail the steps by which an attested grammar and lexicon can build up from observed utterances. He shows how the grammars and words of one language may be compared to others of the same or different families, explains the methods involved in cross-linguistic parametric analyses, and describes how to interpret the results. Volume 2 and volume 3 (to be published in 2011) offer in-depth tours of underlying principTrade ReviewThere can be little doubt that Basic Linguistic Theory is a valuable addition to the linguistic literature, both as a broadly conceived typological study and as an inspiring guide to grammar writers ... BLT covers the principal parts of grammar and probably more extensively so than any other single book of its kind. * Steffen Haurholm-Larsen, Studies in Language *There is no doubt that [the] book under review will be highly useful for a very broad circle of linguists. * S.S. Sai, Voprosy iazykoznaniia (translated in English from Russian) *These are two wonderful books, a treasure trove of ideas and information, a reference work for many decades to come, and a must-have for any field linguist worth his or her salt. It is written in a clear and lucid style.... Dixon's ability to put forward complex ideas in understandable prose is outstanding, and the occasional anecdotal reference to his own field work situations further livens up the prose....I found these books extremely informative, exceedingly useful, and profoundly inspiring. It has given me a renewed motivation to further study the languages I'm involved with. These are books I can recommend to every graduate student in linguistics, to every linguistic field worker - those just starting out as well as those who have finished five grammars. * René van den Berg, Studies in Language *Table of Contents1. Basics ; 2. Principles to Follow ; 3. Grammar Overview ; 4. Analysis, Argumentation, and Explanation ; 5. Terminology ; 6. Doing Typology ; 7. Phonology ; 8. Lexicon ; 9. Field Linguistics

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Book SynopsisBasic Linguistic Theory provides a fundamental characterization of the nature of human languages and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis. In crystal-clear prose, R. M. W. Dixon describes how to go about doing linguistics. He show how grammatical structures and rules may be worked out on the basis of inductive generalisations, and explains the steps by which an attested grammar and lexicon can built up from observed utterances. He describes how the grammars and vocabulary of one language may be compared to others of the same or different families, explains the methods involved in cross-linguistic parametric analyses, and shows how to interpret the results. Volume 3 introduces and examines key grammatical topics, each from a cross-linguistic perspective. The subjects include number systems, negation, reflexives and reciprocals, passives, causatives, comparative constructions, and questions. The final chapter discusses the relation between linguistic explanation and thTrade ReviewThere can be little doubt that Basic Linguistic Theory is a valuable addition to the linguistic literature, both as a broadly conceived typological study and as an inspiring guide to grammar writers ... BLT covers the principal parts of grammar and probably more extensively so than any other single book of its kind. * Steffen Haurholm-Larsen, Studies in Language *These books are monumental and destined to become classics, equatable to the two volumes entitled Language by Sapir (1921) and Bloomfield (1933), and to Givón's Syntax, volumes 1 (1984) and 2 (1990) but in each case surpassing them in scope, detail, rigor, and coherence. Dixon presents a complete, fully articulated, and cohesive explication of grammar, with extensive elaboration on every major grammatical structure found in the world's languages, as well as many minor ones.... This is a masterwork ... a lasting reference for grammar writers, typologists, grammatical theorists, and all those fascinated by the complexities of linguistic systems and grammatical analysis. * Carol Genetti,Language *Table of Contents19. Non-spatial Setting ; 20. Number Systems ; 21. Negation ; 22. Reflexive and Reciprocal Constructions ; 23. Pivots, Passives,and Antipassives ; 24. Causatives ; 25. Applicatives ; 26. Comparative Constructions ; 27. Questions ; 28. Language and the World: explanations now and needed ; Appendix

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Book SynopsisThis book shows how complex words and word-like phrasal lexical units can be analysed as constructions, as pairings of forms and meanings. It contributes to current work on the architecture of the grammar, the morphology-syntax interface, the shape and characteristics of the lexicon, and the analysis of grammaticalization phenomena. It is an important work for morphological theory in particular and for linguistic theory in general.Geert Booij applies the insights of construction grammar to morphological theory and the formation of words and lexical phrases. Construction grammar refers to the class of linguistic theories that focus on the pairing of form and meaning at different levels of abstraction. Such work (by William Croft and Adele Goldberg, for example) has tended to focus on syntax or (as in the case of Ray Jackendoff) on the syntax-semantics interface. Geert Booij offers a characteristically lucid integration of his own and others'' work and considers what it reveals about theTrade ReviewThis book provides an extremely readable and fascinating exploration of how insights from construction grammar help solve a wide range of puzzling issues in theoretical morphology. The new and surprisingly simple theoretical perspective offered by Geert Booij on how morphological structure can be accounted for makes this a landmark study that will be of interest not only to morphologists and syntacticians, but also to corpus linguists, psycholinguists, and other scholars working in related areas of cognitive science. * R Harald Baayen, University of Alberta *Geert Booij's Construction Morphology is a revealing synthesis of insights from Construction Grammar, grammaticalization theory, Simpler Syntax, and psycholinguistics.... This is a major contribution not only to morphology but to an overarching theory of the architecture of language. * Ray Jackendoff, Tufts University *At long last, the theory of Construction Grammar is accessible to morphologists, thanks to Geert Booij. This concise, thorough introduction to Construction Morphology is a tour de force covering the essential elements and arguments for the theory, as well as presenting a wide range of new data. Phenomena which could be shoehorned only crudely into past theoretical models of morphology receive insightful analyses. This book should be an essential part of any graduate course in morphology and belongs on the bookshelf of every morphologist. * Sharon Inkelas, University of California at Berkeley *Booij's Construction Morphology should be required reading for any linguist who wants to understand how words work. This brilliant book is broadly informed, rich with deep insights, and chock-full of great examples. * Adele Goldberg, Princeton University *Geert Booij's Construction Morphology is a revealing synthesis of insights from Construction Grammar, grammaticalization theory, Simpler Syntax, and psycholinguistics. Booij captures the delicate interplay of morphosyntax and phrasal syntax, as well as the intricate patterns of productivity and semiproductivity in morphological and phrasal phonology, syntax, and semantics. Behind it all is the hierarchical lexicon, which stores not just words but patterns at all levels of generality. This is a major contribution not only to morphology but to an overarching theory of the architecture of language. * Ray Jackendoff, Tufts University *Table of Contents1. Morphology and Construction Grammar ; 2. The Lexicon as a Network of Relations ; 3. Schemas and Subschemas in the Lexicon ; 4. Quasi-noun Incorporation ; 5. Separable Complex Verbs ; 6. Progressive Constructions ; 7. Phrasal Names ; 8. Numerals as Lexical Constructions ; 9. Construction-Dependent Morphology ; 10. Stem Allomorphy and Morphological Relatedness ; 11. Taking Stock ; References ; Index

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Book SynopsisThis book makes an original contribution to the understanding of perception verbs and the treatment of argument structure, and offers new insights on lexical causation, evidentiality, and processes of cognition. Perception verbs - such as look, see, taste, hear, feel, sound, and listen - present unresolved problems for theories of lexical semantics. This book examines the relations between their semantics and syntactic behaviour, the different kinds of polysemy they exhibit, and the role of evidentiality in verbs like seem and sound. In unravelling their complexity Nikolas Gisborne looks closely at their meanings, modality, semantic relatedness, and irregularity. He frames his exposition in Word Grammar, and draws extensively on work in cognitive linguistics and construction grammar. After an opening chapter explaining the nature of the issues, Dr Gisborne presents a concise introduction to Word Grammar. He then considers the implications of his approach for a general theory of event sTrade ReviewThe fact that Gisborne commits himself to English does not undermine the book's usefulness to other languages. It will be a valuable reference work for linguists interested in areas of lexical semantics including causation, argument-linking, and polysemy. It is clearly written and well argued... This book is rich in argumentation and presents interesting data that provides more comprehensive understanding of English perception verbs. * SIL Electronic Book Reviews *Table of Contents1. Introduction ; 2. Word Grammar ; 3. Causation and Relations Between Events: An Introduction to Word Grammar Semantics ; 4. Network Structure and the Polysemy of SEE ; 5. Perception Verbs and the Semantics of Content ; 6. Non-finite Complementation ; 7. SOUND-class Verbs ; 8. Conclusion ; References

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Book SynopsisA spirited account of the life and times of one of the seminal figures in history of English grammar which dispels the myth of Lowth as the icon of prescriptivism, and establishes him as a key figure in the history of English grammar. It will appeal to everyone interested in the history of English the long-running debate on linguistic correctness.Trade ReviewTieken's great virtue is paying attention to what Lowth actually wrote, both for publication and for private circulation. rather than depending on the caricatures. She has discovered a writer on language who was uncommonly sensitive to different degrees of formality ... The Bishop's Grammar is not the last word on Lowth but, if we're lucky, it will reduce the amount of foolishness attributed to "the eighteenth-century grammarians" by those who haven't bothered to read them. * Jack Lynch, Times Literary Supplement *This is a key book for any scholar working on grammatical norms of the English language, and/or the codification and standardisation of English. Tieken-Boon van Ostade provides an alternative account to the standard depiction of Robert Lowth as an initiator of prespective grammar... it would be of great interest to a range of scholars, from those working on the nuances of eighteenth century grammar, to those looking at modern usage, and more broadly at the codification and standardisation of languages. Tieken-Boon van Ostade presents her argument well throughout the text, and it is clear that she is a stalwart defender of Lowth's name. * Laura Paterson The Linguist *Tieken-Boon van Ostade has presented a book which is remarkable in many ways ... Apart from enriching the study of grammaticography with this methodological innovation, the author also makes a significant, well-founded contribution to debate about prescriptivism. * Simon Pickl, Language and History *Table of Contents1. Prejudice and Misconceptions ; 2. Life and Career ; 3. The Grammar: Origin and Publication History ; 4. The Grammar: Contents and Approach ; 5. Reconstructing Lowth's Social Network ; 6. Communicative Competence and the Language of the Letters ; 7. Lowth's Own Usage and the Grammar's Norm of Correctness ; 8. The Grammar and the Rise of prescriptivism ; 9. Conclusion ; References ; Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on the expertise of over 20 leading scholars and their empirically rich data, this book presents current thoughts on, and practical answers to, the question: What are the diagnostic signs, techniques and procedures that can be used to analyse natural language syntax?Table of ContentsPART I: HEAD MOVEMENT; PART II: PHRASAL MOVEMENT; PART III: AGREEMENT; PART IV: ANAPHORA; PART V: ELLIPSIS

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Book SynopsisPossession and Ownership brings together linguists and anthropologists in a series of cross-linguistic explorations of expressions used to denote possession and ownership, concepts central to most if not all the varied cultures and ideologies of humankind. Possessive noun phrases can be broadly divided into three categories - ownership of property, whole-part relations (such as body and plant parts), and blood and affinal kinship relations. As Professor Aikhenvald shows in her extensive opening essay, the same possessive noun or pronoun phrase is used in English and in many other Indo-European languages to express possession of all three kinds - as in Ann and her husband Henry live in the castle Henry''s father built with his own hands - but that this is by no means the case in all languages. In some, for example, the grammar expresses the inalienability of consanguineal kinship and sometimes also of sacred or treasured objects. Furthermore the degree to which possession and ownership Trade ReviewThis volume, the result of cooperation among eminent linguists and anthropologists, is a significant intellectual achievement. * Lars Johanson, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Project Muse *Table of Contents1. Possession and Ownership: a cross-linguistic perspective ; 2. Ownership, part-whole and Other Possessive-associated Relations in Nelemwa ; 3. Possession in Moskona, an East Bird's Head Language ; 4. Possession and Ownership in Manambu, a Ndu Language from the Sepik Area, Papua New Guinea ; 5. Possession in Martuthunira ; 6. Possession in Nanti ; 7. Possession and Association in Galo Language and Culture ; 8. Possessive Constructions in Chinese ; 9. Possession in Hone ; 10. Possession in Lipke ; 11. Possession in Wandala ; 12. Spirits of the Forest, the Wind, and New Wealth: defining some of the possibilities, and limits, of Kamula possession ; 13. Being and Belonging: exchange, value, and land ownership in the Western highlands of Papua New Guinea ; 14. Possession and Also Ownership - vignettes

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Book SynopsisThis book investigates the relation between language and logic. Gennaro Chierchia looks at the way syntactic and inferential processes interact in determining polarity sensitive and free choice phenomena. He analyses these as a form of grammaticized scalar implicature and seeks to identify the common core of the polarity system by examining many of its manifestations as well as the choices that determine its diversity. To do so he reassesses the relations between syntax, semantics, and pragmatics and in the process makes startling insights into the relation of syntax to logic. Rudolf Carnap''s classic, The Logical Syntax of Language, defines syntax as a lexicon and a set of formation rules and logic as a set of inference rules. Modern generative linguistics maintains a similar modular approach: a combinatorial apparatus is said to generate structures over which semantic and pragmatic relations, such as presupposition and implicature, are defined. This book argues by contrast that many Table of ContentsIntroduction ; 1. The Spontaneous Logicality of Language ; 2. Scalar Implicatures at the Interface Between Pragmatics and Syntax ; 3. Even Negative Polarity Items and Only Negative Polarity Items ; 4. Presuppositionality, Strength, and Concord in Polarity Systems ; 5. Existential Free Choice ; 6. Universal Free Choice ; 7. Intervention ; 8. Where We Stand ; References

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Book SynopsisTailored to students, this abridged version of Cognitive Grammar positions Langacker's authoritative work as an accessible, attractive cornerstone of cognitive linguistics as the field continues to evolve.Trade ReviewAn attractive and successful introduction to the fundamentals of Cognitive Grammar. * Linguist List *Table of ContentsPart I MEANING AND SYMBOLIZATION ; 1. Orientation ; 2. Conceptual Semantics ; 3. Construal ; Part II A SYMBOLIC ACCOUNT OF GRAMMAR ; 4. Grammatical Classes ; 5. Major Subclasses ; 6. Constructions: General Characterization ; 7. Constructions: Descriptive Factors ; 8. Rules and Restrictions

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Book SynopsisThis book introduces a new linguistic reconstruction of the phonology, morphology, and lexicon of Old Chinese, the first Sino-Tibetan language to be reduced to writing. Old Chinese is the language of the earliest Chinese classical texts (1st millennium BCE) and the ancestor of later varieties of Chinese, including all modern Chinese dialects. William Baxter and Laurent Sagart''s new reconstruction of Old Chinese moves beyond earlier reconstructions by taking into account important new evidence that has recently become available: better documentation of Chinese dialects that preserve archaic features, such as the Min and Waxiang dialects; better documentation of languages with very early loanwords from Chinese, such as the Hmong-Mien, Tai-Kadai and Vietnamese languages; and a flood of Chinese manuscripts from the first millennium BCE, excavated or discovered in the last several decades. Baxter and Sagart also incorporate recent advances in our understanding of the derivational processesTrade ReviewOverall, it is true to the thoughtful research and scholarly imagination its authors have invested, over a period of four decades, in working out their deeply felt vision of Proto-Chinese morphology. * David Prager Branner, Independent researcher, Études chinoises *Table of Contents1 Introduction ; 1.1 What is Old Chinese? ; 1.2 Methodology ; 1.3 Plan of the book ; 2 The evidence for Old Chinese ; 2.1 Middle Chinese ; 2.2 Old Chinese rhyme evidence ; 2.3 Evidence from the Chinese script ; 2.4 Modern Chinese dialects ; 2.5 Early Chinese loanwords in other languages ; 2.6 Traditional Chinese texts explicitly discussing language ; 2.7 Tibeto-Burman ; 3 An overview of the reconstruction ; 3.1 Onsets: main hypotheses ; 3.2 Rhymes ; 3.3 Root structure, word structure, and affixation ; 3.4 The nature of the pre-Qin script ; 4 Onsets ; 4.1 The evolution of Old Chinese initial consonants: major processes ; 4.2 Applying the comparative method within Chinese ; 4.3 Singleton onsets ; 4.4 Tightly attached onsets ; 4.5 Onsets with loosely attached preinitials ; 4.6 Onsets with complex preinitials ; 5 Old Chinese rhymes ; 5.1 Overview: vowels, codas, postcodas ; 5.2 The six-vowel system ; 5.3 Rhyme development: main processes ; 5.4 Rhymes with back codas (*-O, *-k, and *-?) ; 5.5 Rhymes with acute codas (*-j, *-t, *-n, and *-r) ; 5.6 Rhymes with the codas *-w and *-wk ; 5.7 Rhymes with labial codas (*-p and *-m) ; 6 Conclusion ; 6.1 What kind of language was Old Chinese? ; 6.2 Dialect differences in Old Chinese ; 6.3 Known issues ; 6.4 General directions for future researc ; 6.5 Old Chinese in broad comparative context ; Appendix of reconstructed forms ; References

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Book SynopsisAnita K Barry, Professor Emerita, University of Michigan, FlintTable of ContentsPREFACE xiii Chapter 1 WHY STUDY ENGLISH GRAMMAR? 1 Native Speakers and Grammar Study 1 Standard English 2 Judgments About English 4 The Legacy of the Eighteenth Century 7 Reflections 8 Chapter 2 HOW DO WE STUDY ENGLISH GRAMMAR? 10 Why Do People Disagree About Grammar? 10 Who Is the Authority? 10 What Role Do Traditional Dictionaries Play? 10 Online Grammar Sources 12 Why Is There No One Standard? 13 Why Do Languages Change? 14 What Are the Common Elements of English? 16 Constituent Structure 16 Rules and Regularities 19 Reflections 20 Chapter 3 NOUNS AND NOUN PHRASES 21 What Are Nouns? 21 What Are Some Common Subcategories of Nouns? 23 What Makes Up a Noun Phrase? 26 Determiners 27 Predeterminers and Postdeterminers 29 What Are the Functions of Noun Phrases? 30 Subject 30 Direct Object 32 Indirect Object 33 Object of a Preposition 35 Complement 35 Verbal Nouns and Noun Phrases 36 Compounds 38 Reflections 40 Practice Exercises 42 Chapter 4 VERBS AND VERB PHRASES 46 What Are Verbs? 46 What About the Exceptions? 50 What Are Some Common Subcategories of Verbs? 53 What Is Verb Tense? 57 What Makes Up a Verb Phrase? 63 What Are Nonfinite Verb Phrases? 66 Compounds 66 What Is SubjectVerb Agreement? 67 Reflections 72 Practice Exercises 76 Chapter 5 PRONOUNS 80 What Are Pronouns? 80 Personal Pronouns 81 Reflexive Pronouns 88 Reciprocal Pronouns 91 Demonstrative Pronouns 91 Relative Pronouns 92 Interrogative Pronouns 94 Universal and Indefinite Pronouns 95 Reflections 97 Practice Exercises 99 Chapter 6 ADJECTIVES AND ADVERBS 1 03What Are Adjectives? 103 How Do Adjectives Modify Nouns? 106 What Are Adjective Phrases? 108 What Are Adverbs? 109 Is All Well and Good? 112 What Are Adverb Phrases? 115 Reflections 116 Practice Exercises 117 Chapter 7 PREPOSITIONS AND PARTICLES 120 What Are Prepositions? 120 What Are Prepositional Phrases? 121 What Are Particles? 125 Reflections 127 Practice Exercises 128 Chapter 8 NEGATION 131 What Is Negation in Grammar? 131 Verb Negation 131 Negation of Indefinites 133 Noun Negation 135 Adjective and Adverb Negation 136 Negation of Compounds 137 Reflections 139 Practice Exercises 140 Chapter 9 VOICE 144 What Is Grammatical Voice? 144 How Is the Passive Voice Formed? 146 How Are Grammatical Relations Determined in the Passive Voice? 147 Why Do We Need the Passive Voice? 149 What Is a Truncated Passive? 150 Reflections 152 Practice Exercises 153 Chapter 10 DISCOURSE FUNCTION 156 What Is Discourse Function? 156 Declaratives 157 Interrogatives 158 YesNo Questions 158 Wh Questions 160 Tag Questions 164 Minor Question Types 167 Imperatives 169 Exclamatives 170 Crossover Functions of Clause Types 171 Reflections 174 Practice Exercises 175 Chapter 11 COMBINING CLAUSES INTO SENTENCES: COORDINATION 179 How Is a Sentence Different from a Clause? 179 Sentence Building Through Coordination 179 Clause Coordination and Ellipsis 183 Reflections 185 Practice Exercises 186 Chapter 12 COMBINING CLAUSES INTO SENTENCES: SUBORDINATION 189 Sentence Building Through Subordination 189 Adverbial Clauses 191 Noun Clauses 194 Relative Clauses 199 Restrictive and Nonrestrictive Relative Clauses 202 Reduced Relative Clauses 204 Naming Sentence Types 206 Reflections 208 Practice Exercises 210 Chapter 13 WHY STUDY ENGLISH GRAMMAR? (ONCE MORE!) 215 Teaching Grammar 215 Final Reflections 217 ANSWERS TO PRACTICE EXERCISES 219 GLOSSARY 233 INDEX 241 A01_

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Book SynopsisThis text illustrates how seemingly abstract stances on the nature of meaning can have significant and far-reaching linguistic consequences, leading to the detection of new facts and influencing the understanding of the syntax/semantics/pragmatics interface.Table of ContentsPreface 1: The Two Souls of Discourse Representation Theory 2: Dynamic Binding 3: Extensions: Reconstruction, Topicalization, and Crossover 4: Presuppositions and Definites Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisThis text illustrates how seemingly abstract stances on the nature of meaning can have significant and far-reaching linguistic consequences, leading to the detection of new facts and influencing the understanding of the syntax/semantics/pragmatics interface.

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Book SynopsisThis textbook is intended to give students a quick start in using theory to address syntactic questions. At each stage, Cowper introduces a theoretical apparatus that is no more complex than is required to deal with the phenomenon under consideration.Table of Contents1 The Theory in Context 2 Categories and Phrase Structure 3 Thematic Relations and Theta Roles 4 Predicting Phrase Structure 5 NP-Movement 6 Government and Case 7 WH-Movement 8 Move Alpha and the Theory of Movement 9 The Empty Category Principle 10 Interpretation of Nominals 11 Clauses and Categories 12 A Unified Approach to Locality Constraints References Index

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Book SynopsisDrawing on work in linguistics, language acquisition and computer science, this book proposes that grammatical constructions play a central role in the relation between the form and meaning of simple sentences. It argues that the constructions carry meaning independently of the words in a sentence.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1: Introduction 2: The Interaction between Verbs and Constructions 3: Relations among Constructions 4: On Linking 5: Partial Productivity 6: The English Ditransitive Construction 7: The English Caused-Motion Construction 8: The English Resultative Construction 9: The Way Construction 10: Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisFirst published privately in 1885 and reissued in 1959, this grammar text employs the inductive method of Hebrew instruction developed by William Rainey Harper and practiced by him at the University of Chicago. This inductive method in the teaching of grammar is educationally sound, and in employing it in this text some eighty years ago, the author was certainly far ahead of his time.William Chomsky, Jewish BooklandA treatment of much that is essential in Hebrew grammar. . . .useful tools to the divinity student and instructor in biblical Hebrew.David Weinstein, Jewish Education

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Book SynopsisFor the past decade, the dominant transformational theory of syntax has produced the most interesting insights into syntactic properties. Over the same period another theory, systemic grammar, has been developed very quietly as an alternative to the transformational model. In this work Richard A. Hudson outlines daughter-dependency theory, which is derived from systemic grammar, and offers empirical reasons for preferring it to any version of transformational grammar. The goal of daughter-dependency theory is the same as that of Chomskyan transformational grammarto generate syntactic structures for all (and only) syntactically well-formed sentences that would relate to both the phonological and the semantic structures of the sentences. However, unlike transformational grammars, those based on daughter-dependency theory generate a single syntactic structure for each sentence. This structure incorporates all the kinds of information that are spread, in a transformational grammar, over to

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Book SynopsisThis work deals with the insolvency both of companies and of individuals. Its publication coincides with the coming into force of the radical amendments to insolvency law contained within the Enterprise Bill 2002. The book should be suitable for those studying insolvency at undergraduate or postgraduate level, and for those studying for professional examinations and practising in the area.

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Book SynopsisThis study grew out of a series of lectures Jespersen gave at Columbia University in 1909-10, called An Introduction to English Grammar. It is the connected presentation of Jespersen's views of the general principles of grammar based on years of studying various languages through both direct observation of living speech and written and printed documents. [The Philosophy of Grammar and Analytic Syntax] set forth the most extensive and original theory of universal grammar prior to the work of Chomsky and other generative grammarians of the last thirty years.--Arne Juul and Hans F. Nielsen, in Otto Jespersen: Facets of His Life and Work Besides being one of the most perceptive observers and original thinkers that the field of linguistics has ever known, Jespersen was also one of its most entertaining writers, and reading The Philosophy of Grammar is fun. Read it, enjoy it.--James D. McCawley, from the Introduction Otto Jespersen (1860-1943), an authority on the growth and structure of language, was the Chair of the English Department at the University of Copenhagen. Among his many works are A Modern English Grammar and Analytic Syntax, the latter published by the University of Chicago Press.

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Book SynopsisA complete course in the syntactic structure of English. The edition offers coverage of areas such as appositive constructions, parasitic gaps and expanded coverage of cleft sentences and free relatives. It progresses from overview to major constructions and grammar with end-of-chapter exercises.Table of ContentsPreface to Second Edition Preface to First Edition Abbreviations and Special Symbols 1. Introduction 2. Overview of the Scheme of Syntactical Analysis Adopted Below 3. Some Tests for Deep and Surface Constituent Structure 4. Some Subject-Changing Transformations 5.Complements 6. Rule Interaction 7. Syntactic Categories 8. Auxiliary Verbs 9. Coordination 10. Surface Combinatoric Rules 11. Anaphora 12. The Structure of Noun Phrases 13. Relative Clauses 14. Interrogative Clauses 15. Principles Restricting and Extending the Application of Transformations 16. Other Types of Nondeclarative Sentences 17. Negation 18. Scope of Quantifiers and Negations 19. Adverbs 20. Comparative Constructions 21. Discourse Syntax 22. Patches and Syntactic Mimicry Selected Wrong Answers to Exercises References Index

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Book SynopsisNewmeyer 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.

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Book SynopsisPrinciples of Grammar and Learning is concerned with the nature of linguistic competence and with the cognitive structures underlying its acquisition and use. During the past several decades many linguists and psychologists have come to the conclusion that genetically determined categories and principles specific to language are needed to account for the form and acquisition of grammatical systems. William O'Grady argues here for quite a different conclusion, proposing that adequate grammars can be constructed from a conceptual base not specific to language. To support this thesis, O'Grady develops a well-articulated, single level, categorial-type grammar that he uses to analyze syntactic categories, extraction, anaphora, extraposition, and quantifier placement in English and other languages. He shows that such grammars can be constructed via general learning strategies from notions such as dependency, adjacency, precedence, and continuity, and that the available acquisition data point

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Book SynopsisA broad critical survey of the research literature on child language development, providing coverage of both theoretical and empirical issues. Covering a wide range of perspectives, this text constructs a picture of how children acquire the syntax of English.Table of ContentsAcknowledgments 1: The Study of Language Acquisition 2: One-Word Utterances 3: Early Multiword Utterances 4: Word Order and Case 5: Subject Drop 6: Embedded Clauses 7: Wh Questions 8: Inversion 9: Relative Clauses and Clefts 10: Passives 11: Constraints on Coreference 12: The Learnability Problem 13: UG-Based Theories of the Acquisition Device 14: Alternatives to UG 15: Theories of Development 16: Concluding Remarks Notes Glossary References Index

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Book SynopsisA broad critical survey of the research literature on child language development, providing coverage of both theoretical and empirical issues. Covering a wide range of perspectives, this text constructs a picture of how children acquire the syntax of English.

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Book SynopsisIn this long-awaited bookthe first in a three-volume workDavid M. Perlmutter has co-authored and edited ten essays that introduce relational grammar, a novel conception of sentence structure that offers far-reaching conclusions for universal grammar. The basic ideas of relational grammar can be simply stated. First, grammatical relations such as 'subject of,' 'direct object of,' and 'indirect object of,' are needed to characterize the class of grammatical constructions in the clausal syntax of natural languages, to formulate universals of grammar, and to construct adequate and insightful grammars of individual languages. Second, the range of linguistic variation in word order and case patterns makes it impossible to define grammatical relations in terms of phrase structure configurations or case. Rather, grammatical relations must be taken as primitive notions of linguistic theory. The papers collected here take up the first of these ideas. They lay out the basic theoretical constructs of relational grammar and discuss three areas of grammaradvancement construction, raising, and clause union. In his introduction, Perlmutter discusses each of the papersmost of which are published here for the first timeand places them in thecontext of the whole of linguistic study.

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Book SynopsisIn this long-awaited bookthe first in a three-volume workDavid M. Perlmutter has co-authored and edited ten essays that introduce relational grammar, a novel conception of sentence structure that offers far-reaching conclusions for universal grammar. The basic ideas of relational grammar can be simply stated. First, grammatical relations such as 'subject of,' 'direct object of,' and 'indirect object of,' are needed to characterize the class of grammatical constructions in the clausal syntax of natural languages, to formulate universals of grammar, and to construct adequate and insightful grammars of individual languages. Second, the range of linguistic variation in word order and case patterns makes it impossible to define grammatical relations in terms of phrase structure configurations or case. Rather, grammatical relations must be taken as primitive notions of linguistic theory. The papers collected here take up the first of these ideas. They lay out the basic theoretical constructs

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Book SynopsisThis book presents the most complete exposition of the theory of head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG), introduced in the authors' Information-Based Syntax and Semantics. HPSG provides an integration of key ideas from the various disciplines of cognitive science, drawing on results from diverse approaches to syntactic theory, situation semantics, data type theory, and knowledge representation. The result is a conception of grammar as a set of declarative and order-independent constraints, a conception well suited to modelling human language processing. This self-contained volume demonstrates the applicability of the HPSG approach to a wide range of empirical problems, including a number which have occupied center-stage within syntactic theory for well over twenty years: the control of understood subjects, long-distance dependencies conventionally treated in terms of wh-movement, and syntactic constraints on the relationship between various kinds of pronouns and their antecedents.Table of ContentsPreface 1 Introduction 2 Agreement 3 Complement Structures 4 Unbound Dependency Constructions 5 Relative Clauses 6 Binding Theory 7 Complement Control 8 Aspects of Interpretation

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Book SynopsisIn this important work of linguistic analysis, Paul M. Postal addresses a paradigm anomaly in French that has hitherto resisted explanation. A general restriction limiting the form of direct objects in complex infinitival constructions with main verbs like faire fails to hold with certain subordinate verbs, especially connaitre. Marshaling extensive evidence, Postal argues that this apparent irregularity is a symptom of a deeper regularity. Rather than being an ordinary transitive complement, the subordinate clause in these cases is actually an Inversion structure, one in which the logical subject demotes to indirect object. However, since this demotion induces no word order change or other direct morphological consequences, the inversion is masked, and revealed only by several types of apparent anomalies. This analysis has significant consequences for contemporary syntactic theories. First, the arguments support the view that a sentence's superficial structure cannot be identified wit

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Book SynopsisThis collection of nine original syntactic studies carried out within the framework for syntactic theory and description known as Relational Grammar provides a state-of-the-art survey of this and allied fields. In relational theory, grammatical relations such as subject, direct object, and predicate are taken to be theoretical primitives which permit the definition of formal objects called Arcs, the fundamental building blocks of syntactic structures. Edited by Paul M. Postal and Brian D. Joseph, this volume is the third in a series highlighting work in Relational Grammar. It extends the foundational studies of the first two volumes to refine and modify the insights, analyses, and theoretical devices developed in earlier connections, while at the same time providing support for some of the earlier constructs and claims. Of the nine papers, four treat various aspects of advancements to and demotions from indirect object; three deal with raising and clause union constructions, in which i

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Book SynopsisHow does a parser, a device that imposes an analysis on a string of symbols so that they can be interpreted, work? More specifically, how does the parser in the human cognitive mechanism operate? Using a wide range of empirical data concerning human natural language processing, Bradley Pritchett demonstrates that parsing performance depends on grammatical competence, not, as many have thought, on perception, computation, or semantics. Pritchett critiques the major performance-based parsing models to argue that the principles of grammar drive the parser; the parser, furthermore, is the apparatus that tries to enforce the conditions of the grammar at every point in the processing of a sentence. In comparing garden path phenomena, those instances when the parser fails on the first reading of a sentence and must reanalyze it, with occasions when the parser successfully functions the first time around, Pritchett makes a convincing case for a grammar-derived parsing theory.

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Book SynopsisHow does a parser, a device that imposes an analysis on a string of symbols so that they can be interpreted, work? More specifically, how does the parser in the human cognitive mechanism operate? Using a wide range of empirical data concerning human natural language processing, Bradley Pritchett demonstrates that parsing performance depends on grammatical competence, not, as many have thought, on perception, computation, or semantics. Pritchett critiques the major performance-based parsing models to argue that the principles of grammar drive the parser; the parser, furthermore, is the apparatus that tries to enforce the conditions of the grammar at every point in the processing of a sentence. In comparing garden path phenomena, those instances when the parser fails on the first reading of a sentence and must reanalyze it, with occasions when the parser successfully functions the first time around, Pritchett makes a convincing case for a grammar-derived parsing theory.

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Book Synopsis[Ruwet] raises fundamental questions about the place of grammar in the study of language and provides several studies which suggest the possibility that some core data are outside the realm of grammatical explanation. A very remarkable book, in which the breadth of Ruwet's reflection is both challenging and deeply rewarding.Denis Bouchard, University of Quebec, Montreal

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