Description
Book SynopsisThis book addresses one of the most fundamental questions that can be asked about language: how can we explain language universals? There are currently many different views of this question. Some argue for the innateness of general linguistic principles within the human species.
Table of ContentsPart 1 Introduction: explaining language universals, John A.Hawkins. Part 2 Innateness and Learnability: the innateness hypothesis, Teun Hoekstra and Jan G.Kooij; language acquisitions - schemas replace universal grammar, Michael A.Arbib and Jane C.Hill; the "no negative evidence" problem - how do children avoid constructing an overly general grammar?, Melissa Bowerman. Max-Planck Institut fur Psycholinguistik, Nijmegen). Part 3 Semantic and Pragmatic Explanations: on semantics and the binding theory, Edward L.Keenan; concessive connecitves and concessive sentences - cross-linguistic regularities and pragmatic principles, Ekkehard Konig; a discourse approach to the cross-linguistic category "adjective", Sandra A.Thompson; coreference and conjunction reduction in grammar and discourse, Bernard Comrie. Part 4 Cognitive, Perceptual and processing explanations: language, perception and the world, Michael Lee; parameterizing the language processing system - left-vs. right-branching within and across languages, Lyn Frazier and Keith Rayner; psycholinguistic factors in morphological asymmetry, John A.Hawkins, and Anne Cutler. Part 5 the diachronic dimension: integrating diachronic and processing principles in explaining the suffixing preference, Christopher J.Hall; the diachronic dimension in explanation, Joan L.Bybee.
