Economy considerations have always played an important role in the generative theoryof grammar. Indeed, the very development of the theory has been characterized by naturalconsiderations of simplicity
Current estimates are that around 3,000 of the 6,000 languages now spoken may become extinct during the next century. Some 4,000 of these existing languages have never been described, or described only inadequately. This book is a guide for linguistic fieldworkers who wish to write a description of the morphology and syntax of one of these many under-documented languages. It uses examples from many languages both well known and virtually unknown; it offers readers one possible outline for a grammatical description, with many questions designed to help them address the key topics. The appendices offer guidance on text and elicited data, and on sample reference grammars which readers might wish to consult.
This study provides an illuminating and ground-breaking account of the complex interaction of intonational phenomena, semantics and pragmatics. Based on examples from German and English, and centred o
A new textbook written for students with no background in syntax, which introduces them to key concepts of Chomsky's Minimalist program (e.g. merger and movement, checking, economy and greed, split VP
Examines how modal notions such as permission and obligation interact with negation in a variety of languages, focusing on how ambiguities of scope are resolved. Demonstrates that languages overwhelmi
This volume presents the author's view of the scope of linguistic description, insofar as the field of linguistics touches on questions of the meanings of sentences. Fillmore takes the subject matter
This book provides a concise yet thorough introduction to methods that linguists can use to study patterns of sentence acceptability in speech. Experimental Syntax shows how to design, execute and ana
Over the past twenty-five years, Ray Jackendoff has investigated many complex issuesin syntax, semantics, and the relation of language to other cognitive domains. He steps back in thisnew book to surv
Any theory of grammar must contain a lexicon, an interface with the mechanisms ofproduction and perception (PF), and an interface with the interpretational system of semantics (LF).A traditional way t
This collection of papers is the result of the first Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language conference (CSDL) held at the University of California, San Diego. The conference brought together re
Pluralities begins with a concise introduction to recent theories of the semantics of plurals. The author argues, contrary to many of those theories, that plural discourse involves entities corres
The essays collected in this volume, most previously unpublished, address a number of closely interconnected issues raised by the comparative syntax of functional heads within the Principles-and-Para
During the last thirty years, most linguists and philosophers have assumed that meaning can be represented symbolically and that the mental processing of language involves the manipulation of symbols.
