Written by one of America's most prominent linguists, the essays in Generative Linguistics provide a challenging reappraisal of the 'Chomskian Revolution' - the implications of which are still being debated some three decades on. Here together for the first time are all of Frederick J. Newmeyer's writings on the origins and development of generative grammar. Spanning a period of fifteen years the essays address the nature of the 'Chomskian Revolution', the deep structure debates of the 1970s, and the attempts to apply generative theory to second language acquisition.
Syntax – the study of sentence structure – has been at the centre of generative linguistics from its inception and has developed rapidly and in various directions. The Cambridge Handbook of Generative Syntax provides a historical context for what is happening in the field of generative syntax today, a survey of the various generative approaches to syntactic structure available in the literature and an overview of the state of the art in the principal modules of the theory and the interfaces with semantics, phonology, information structure and sentence processing, as well as linguistic variation and language acquisition. This indispensable resource for advanced students, professional linguists (generative and non-generative alike) and scholars in related fields of inquiry presents a comprehensive survey of the field of generative syntactic research in all its variety, written by leading experts and providing a proper sense of the range of syntactic theories calling themselves generative.
This book represents a substantial contribution to the field of linguistics in drawing together the author's most significant work on the theory of generative grammar.
Although the past decades have seen a great diversity of approaches to the history of generative linguistics, there has been no systematic analysis of the state of the art. The aim of the book is to fill this gap. Part I provides an unbiased, balanced and impartial overview of numerous approaches to the history of generative linguistics. In addition, it evaluates the approaches thus discussed against a set of evaluation criteria. Part II demonstrates in a case study the workability of a model of plausible argumentation that goes beyond the limits of current historiographical approaches. Due to the comprehensive analysis of the state of the art, the book may be useful for graduate and undergraduate students. However, since it is also intended to enrich the historiography of linguistics in a novel way, the book may also attract the attention of both linguists interested in the history of science, and historians of science interested in linguistics.
The formal sciences, particularly mathematics, have had a profound influence on the development of linguistics. This insightful overview looks at techniques that were introduced in the fields of mathematics, logic and philosophy during the twentieth century, and explores their effect on the work of various linguists. In particular, it discusses the 'foundations crisis' that destabilised mathematics at the start of the twentieth century, the numerous related movements which sought to respond to this crisis, and how they influenced the development of syntactic theory in the 1950s. The book concludes by discussing the resulting major consequences for syntactic theory, and provides a detailed reassessment of Chomsky's early work at the advent of Generative Grammar. Informative and revealing, this book will be invaluable to all those working in formal linguistics, in particular those interested in its history and development.
Historical linguistic theory and practice consist of a large number of chronological "layers" that have been accepted in the course of time and have acquired a permanence of their own. These range from neogrammarian conceptualizations of sound change, analogy, and borrowing, to prosodic, lexical, morphological, and syntactic change, and to present-day views on rule change and the effects of language contact. To get a full grasp of the principles of historical linguistics it is therefore necessary to understand the nature of each of these "layers". This book is a major revision and reorganization of the earlier editions and adds entirely new chapters on morphological change and lexical change, as well as a detailed discussion of linguistic palaeontology and ideological responses to the findings of historical linguistics to this landmark publication.
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.
Chomsky's atavistic revolution (with a little help from his enemies) / John E. Joseph -- The equivocation of form and notation in generative grammar / Christopher Beedham -- Chomsky's paradigm : what it includes and what it excludes / Joanna Radwanska-Williams -- "Scientific revolutions" and other kinds of regime change / Stephen O. Murray -- Noam and Zellig / Bruce Nevin -- Chomsky 1951a and Chomsky 1951b / Peter T. Daniels -- Grammar and language in syntactic structures : transformational progress and structuralist "reflux" / Pierre Swiggers -- Chomsky's other revolution / R. Allen Harris -- Chomsky between revolutions / Malcolm D. Hyman -- What do we talk about, when we talk about "universal grammar" and how have we talked about it? / Margaret Thomas -- Migrating propositions and the evolution of generative grammar / Marcus Tomalin -- Universalism and human difference in Chomskyan linguistics : the first "superhominid" and the language faculty / Christopher Hutton -- The evolution of meaning and grammar : Chomskyan theory and the evidence from grammaticalization / T. Craig Christy -- Chomsky in search of a pedigree / Camiel Hamans & Pieter A.M. Seuren -- The "linguistics wars" : a tentative assessment by an outsider witness / Giorgio Graffi -- British empiricism and transformational grammar : a current debate / Jacqueline Léon -- Historiography's contribution to theoretical linguistics / Julie Tetel Andresen.
Each of the contributions in this volume expresses in some way the hope that it is possible to achieve an integrity of linguistics, understood as a science of man, in its psychological, sociological, pragmatic and cultural context. The first section focuses on the history of language study, the second section on the integrative description of facets of language, and the last section on the need for the study of language in context.
