Reflections on Syntax: Lectures in General Linguistics, Syntax, and Child Language Acquisition

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to generative grammar, tracing its origins from child language acquisition to psycholinguistics and the Minimalist Program. It assesses the complex constructs students of syntax need to work up and explores spin-off proposals that treat syntactic movement as the quintessential human processing, giving rise to human language.

Format: Hardback
Length: 278 pages
Publication date: 30 July 2021
Publisher: Peter Lang Publishing Inc

The lectures in this book are incredibly Chomskyan in spirit, recursive-syntactic in nature, and firmly rooted in a framework that posits language as an innate, pre-determined biological system—a system that, by definition, is multi-complex, human-specific, and akin to a philosophy highly reminiscent of Descartes' renowned proverbial adage that heralds the need for a 'ghost-in-the-machine.' The book begins with a gradual exploration of the various complex constructs that syntax students must master. This journey leads us to the iconic 'Four-Sentences,' each bearing a unique post-mark representing a decade of Chomskyan analysis. From the fields of child language acquisition in the 1960s to psycholinguistics in the 1970s, we trace the origins of generative grammar to its present-day incarnation within the Minimalist Program. Along the way, we encounter various spin-off proposals that emerge from envisioned analyses that treat syntactic movement as the quintessential human processing, giving rise to human language. These spin-offs include concepts such as 'Proto-language' and a novel treatment of the so-called 'morpho-syntactic 'Dual Mechanism Model.'

The lectures in this book are incredibly Chomskyan in spirit, recursive-syntactic in nature, and firmly rooted in a framework that posits language as an innate, pre-determined biological system—a system that, by definition, is multi-complex, human-specific, and akin to a philosophy highly reminiscent of Descartes' renowned proverbial adage that heralds the need for a 'ghost-in-the-machine.' The book begins with a gradual exploration of the various complex constructs that syntax students must master. This journey leads us to the iconic 'Four-Sentences,' each bearing a unique post-mark representing a decade of Chomskyan analysis. From the fields of child language acquisition in the 1960s to psycholinguistics in the 1970s, we trace the origins of generative grammar to its present-day incarnation within the Minimalist Program. Along the way, we encounter various spin-off proposals that emerge from envisioned analyses that treat syntactic movement as the quintessential human processing, giving rise to human language. These spin-offs include concepts such as 'Proto-language' and a novel treatment of the so-called 'morpho-syntactic 'Dual Mechanism Model.'

Weight: 612g
Dimension: 237 x 159 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781433184321
Edition number: New ed