Syntax

Reference

Culicover, Peter W.

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Academic Press, Inc.

Academic Press

This authoritative new survey shows readers how specific methodological assumptions underlie the core analyses on which syntactic theory is based. The author, an internationally respected figure in the field, gives extensive treatment of Government and Binding (GB) theory, and summarizes the major proposals and results of Case theory, Theta theory, X' theory, Binding theory, the theory of A- and A' movement, locality conditions, and the theory of Logical Form (LF). He also provides an up-to-date introduction to a number of more recent proposals, including Chomsky's Minimalist Program, Larsonian Shells, and Kaynes's Antisymmetry theory. The most coherent and organized account of syntactic theory currently available, this volume is further enhanced by carefully selected and extensive sets of exercises, annotated suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, and a comprehensive glossary of technical terms.

Principles and Parameters: An Introduction to Syntactic Theory (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

Words, Language & Grammar

Oxford University Press

Principles and Parameters is a new textbook intended for the advanced undergraduate or postgraduate student of linguistics. In this readable and authoritative survey of the theory, incorporating much of Government and Binding (GB) theory, Peter Culicover summarizes the major proposals and results of Case theory, Theta theory, X'-theory, Binding theory, the theory of A- and A'- movement, locality conditions, and the theory of Logical Form (LF). He provides an up-to-date introduction to a number of more recent proposals, including Chomsky's Minimalist Program, Larsonian shells, and Kayne's Antisymmetry theory. A major concern and organizing principle of the book is to give the student an understanding of how specific methodological assumptions underlie the core analyses that have played a central role in the development of the theory. Each chapter is followed by an extensive set of exercises which lead the student from the point of applying the mechanics of the theory to developing and organizing new data, providing analyses, and exploring alternative hypotheses. There are also graded and annotated guides to further reading for each chapter, and, as a general aid to the student, a comprehensive glossary of terms. This book is intended for courses: Advanced Syntax; Government and Binding Theory; Principles and Parameters Theory Level: Final year undergraduate; postgraduate, supplementary for some second year undergraduate courses.

Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition (Foundations of Grammar)

How are native speakers of a language instinctively able to make precise linguistic judgements about marginal syntactic matters? What does this tell us about both the structure of language and our innate language ability as humans? These questions form the focus of Professor Culicover's in-depth study which will appeal to both graduate students and professionals within the fields of linguistic theory and cognitive science.

This book investigates the architecture of the language faculty by considering what the properties of language reveal about the mental abilities and processes involved in language acquisition. The language faculty, the author argues, must be able not only to accommodate what is general, exceptionless, and universal in language, but must also be capable of dealing with what is irregular, exceptional, and idiosyncratic. In Syntactic Nuts Peter Culicover shows that this is true not only of the lexicon, but for syntax. Marginal and exceptional cases, where there is no straightforward form-meaning correspondence, are dealt with by the language faculty easily and precisely as the general cases. In considering how and why this should be the author argues against the prevailing trend in generative grammar, which takes the learner as either incorporating maximally global generalisations as part of its innate capacity for language, or projecting global generalisations from a very limited input on the basis of innate mechanisms. He suggests that the learning mechanism does not generalize significantly beyond the evidence presented to it, and further that it seeks to form generalizations based on all and only the evidence presented to it. Syntactic Nuts makes a fundamental contribution to generative grammar and syntactic theory. It situates syntactic theory within cognitive science in a novel way. It contributes to an alternative, and yet in many ways traditional, perspective on the manner in which knowledge is represented and processed in the mind.

Dynamical Grammar: Minimalism, Acquisition, and Change

Dynamical Grammar explores the consequences for language acquisition, language evolution, and linguistic theory of taking the underlying architecture of the language faculty to be that of a complex adaptive dynamical system. It contains the first results of a new and complex model of language acquisition which the authors have developed to measure how far language input is reflected in language output and thereby get a better idea of just how far the human language faculty is hard-wired.

Test Preparation

Nowak, Andrzej

Professional

About the Author\nPeter W. Culicover, Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University\nPeter W. Culicover is currently Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the Ohio State University. He previously held positions at the University of California, Irvine and the University of Arizona, where he was Head of the Department of Linguistics. His awards include the Distinguished Fulbright Chair in Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Venice and the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. His research is concerned primarily with understanding and explaining the syntactic structure of human languages, and he has explored such topics as language learnability, computational modeling of language acquisition and language change, the grammar of focus, grammatical constructions, the grammar of contemporary English and the architecture of grammar. His many publications include the OUP volumes Simpler Syntax (with Ray Jackendoff, 2005), Natural Language Syntax (2009), Grammar and Complexity (2013), and Explaining Syntax (2013).\nThis volume explores how human languages become what they are, why they differ from one another in certain ways but not in others, and why they change in the ways that they do. Given that language is a universal creation of the human mind, the puzzle is why there are different languages at all: why do we not all speak the same language? Moreover, while there is considerable variation, in some ways grammars do show consistent patterns: why are languages similar in those respects, and why are those particular patterns preferred?\nPeter Culicover proposes that the solution to these puzzles is a constructional one. Grammars consist of constructions that carry out the function of expressing universal conceptual structure. While there are in principle many different ways of accomplishing this task, languages are under press to reduce constructional complexity. The result is that there is constructional change in the direction of less complexity, and grammatical patterns emerge that more efficiently reflect conceptual universals. The volume is divided into three parts: the first establishes the theoretical foundations; the second explores variation in argument structure, grammatical functions, and A-bar constructions, drawing on data from a variety of languages including English and Plains Cree; and the third examines constructional change, focusing primarily on Germanic. The study ends with observations and speculations on parameter theory, analogy, the origins of typological patterns, and Greenbergian 
'universals'.

Language Change, Variation, and Universals

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Books by Culicover, Peter W.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Culicover, Peter W.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Syntax

Syntax

Syntax

Principles and Parameters: An Introduction to Syntactic Theory (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

Principles and Parameters: An Introduction to Syntactic Theory (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition (Foundations of Grammar)

Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition (Foundations of Grammar)

Dynamical Grammar: Minimalism, Acquisition, and Change

Dynamical Grammar: Minimalism, Acquisition, and Change

Language Change, Variation, and Universals