[PDF] Subjects And Universal Grammar eBook

Author : Yehuda N. Falk
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 43,53 MB
Release : 2006-08-10
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 1139458566

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The 'subject' of a sentence is a concept that presents great challenges to linguists. Most languages have something which looks like a subject, but subjects differ across languages in their nature and properties, making them an interesting phenomenon for those seeking linguistic universals. This pioneering volume addresses 'subject' nature from a simultaneously formal and typological perspective. Dividing the subject into two distinct grammatical functions, it shows how the nature of these functions explains their respective properties, and argues that the split in properties shown in 'ergative' languages (whereby the subject of intransitive verbs is marked as an object) results from the functions being assigned to different elements of the clause. Drawing on data from a typologically wide variety of languages, including English, Hebrew, Tagalog, Inuit and Acehnese, it explains why, even in the case of very different languages, certain core properties can be found.

Author : Usha Lakshmanan
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 175 pages
File Size : 33,25 MB
Release : 1994-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9027224757

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This book examines child second language acquisition within the Principles and Parameters theory of Universal Grammar (UG). Specifically, the book focuses on null-subjects in the developing grammars of children acquiring English as a second language. The book provides evidence from the longitudinal speech data of four child second language (L2) learners in order to test the predictions of a recent theory of null-subjects, namely, the Morphological Uniformity Principle (MUP). Lakshmanan argues that the child L2 acquisition data offer little or no evidence in support of the MUP s predictions regarding a developmental relation between verb inflections and null-subjects. The evidence from these child L2 data indicates that regardless of the status of null subjects in their first language, child L2 learners of English hypothesize correctly from the very beginning that English requires subjects of tensed clauses to be obligatorily overt. The failure on the part of these learners to obey this knowledge in certain structural contexts is the result of perceptual factors that are unrelated to parameter setting. The book demonstrates the value of child second language acquisition data in evaluating specific proposals within linguistic theory for a Universal principle.

Author : Yehuda N. Falk
Publisher :
Page : 237 pages
File Size : 42,44 MB
Release : 2006
Category : Focus (Linguistics)
ISBN : 9780511241796

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The 'subject' of a sentence presents great challenges to linguists. This volume takes a new approach to subjects, examining them from both a formal and typological perspective. Drawing on data from a wide range of languages, it explains why, even across very different languages, certain core properties can be found.

Author : Guglielmo Cinque
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 50,39 MB
Release : 1995
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 0521475139

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This volume of essays offers a wide-ranging comparative analysis of Italian syntax.

Author : Katalin É Kiss
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 538 pages
File Size : 15,66 MB
Release : 2005
Category : Foreign Language Study
ISBN : 9783110185508

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The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

Author : Anjum P. Saleemi
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 178 pages
File Size : 27,92 MB
Release : 1992-03-26
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780521400756

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Anjum P. Saleemi argues that the acquisition of language as a cognitive system can properly be understood by pairing the formal approach to learning, often known as learnability theory, with Chomsky's theory of Universal Grammar and its claim that human language is innately constrained, with some predefined space for variation. Focusing on specific areas of syntax, such as binding theory and the null subject parameter, Dr Saleemi unites learnability theory's methodology with Chomsky's principles-and-parameters model, and construes acquisition as a function of linguistic principles with largely domain-specific learning procedures, mediated by environmental input. The aim of this study is to show that a self-contained linguistic theory cannot by itself be psychologically plausible, but depends on a compatible theory of learning which embraces developmental as well as formal issues.

Author : Stephen Crain
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 362 pages
File Size : 31,46 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780262531801

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This introductory guide to language acquisition research is presented within the framework of Universal Grammar, a theory of the human faculty for language. The authors focus on two experimental techniques for assessing children's linguistic competence: the Elicited Production task, a production task, and the Truth Value Judgment task, a comprehension task. Their methodologies are designed to overcome the numerous obstacles to empirical investigation of children's language competence. They produce research results that are more reproducible and less likely to be dismissed as an artifact of improper experimental procedure. In the first section of the book, the authors examine the fundamental assumptions that guide research in this area; they present both a theory of linguistic competence and a model of language processing. In the following two sections, they discuss in detail their two experimental techniques.

Author : Iliyana Krapova
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 349 pages
File Size : 21,61 MB
Release : 2018-11-19
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 3110375931

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This book investigates morpho-syntactic convergences that characterize the languages of the Balkan Sprachbund: Balkan Slavic, Greek, Romanian, Albanian, Balkan Romani. Apart from new data, the volume features contributions within different theoretical frameworks (contact linguistics, functional linguistics, typology, areal linguistics, and generative grammar).

Author : Wolfram Hinzen
Publisher : Oxford University Press (UK)
Page : 401 pages
File Size : 21,94 MB
Release : 2013-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 0199654832

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This interdisciplinary book considers the relationship between language and thought from a philosophical perspective, drawing both on the philosophical study of language and the purely formal study of grammar, and arguing that the two should align. The claim is that grammar provides homo sapiens with the ability to think in certain grammatical ways and that this in turn explains the vast cognitive powers of human beings. Evidence is considered from biology, theevolution of language, language disorders, and linguistic phenomena.