Journal articles on the topic 'History of linguistics, syntax, Generative Grammar'

Structuralism sought to introduce various kinds of autonomy into the study of language, including the autonomy of that study itself. The basis for this was the insistence on categorial autonomy, whereby categories are identified language-internally (whether in a particular language or in language generally). In relation to phonology, categorial autonomy has generally been tempered by grounding: the categories correlate (at least prototypically) with substance, phonetic properties. This is manifested in the idea of ‘natural classes’ in generative phonology, for instance. Usually, however, and particularly since Bloomfield, no such grounding (in meaning) has been attributed to syntax. This attitude culminates in the principle of the autonomy of syntax which was put forward in transformational-generative grammar. Such an attitude can be contrasted not merely with most pre-structural linguistics but also, in its severity, with other developments in structuralism. In present-day terms, the groundedness of syntax assumes that only the behaviour of semantically typical members of a category determines its basic syntax, and this syntax reflects the semantic properties; groundedness filters out potential syntactic analyses that are incompatible with this.

Summary Structuralism sought to introduce various kinds of autonomy into the study of language, including the autonomy of that study itself. The basis for this was the insistence on categorial autonomy, whereby categories are identified language-internally (whether in a particular language or in language generally). In relation to phonology, categorial autonomy has generally been tempered by grounding: the categories correlate (at least prototypically) with substance, phonetic properties. This is manifested in the idea of ‘natural classes’ in generative phonology, for instance. Usually, however, and particularly since Bloomfield, no such grounding (in meaning) has been attributed to syntax. This attitude culminates in the principle of the autonomy of syntax which was put forward in transformational-generative grammar. Such an attitude can be contrasted not merely with most pre-structural linguistics but also, in its severity, with other developments in structuralism. In present-day terms, the groundedness of syntax assumes that only the behaviour of semantically typical members of a category determines its basic syntax, and this syntax reflects the semantic properties; groundedness filters out potential syntactic analyses that are incompatible with this.

Summary The past 30 years have seen marked shifts in the generative grammarians’ view of the nature of linguistic competence. The rule-oriented period of early Transformational Grammar, which was ushered in by the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957, gave way a decade later to the principle-oriented period of Generative Semantics. By the mid-1970s, the rule-oriented Lexicalist framework had replaced Generative Semantics. Since around 1981, the principle-oriented Principles & Parameters approach is the one to which a majority of generative syntacticians hold allegiance. Each shift in the generativists’ view of the nature of competence has been accompanied by a revised view of how concepts derived from generative syntax might be applied to second language teaching. Since 1957, three different strategies for applying the theory have been propounded: the ‘mechanical’, the ‘terminological’, and the ‘implicational’, each of which has been instantiated during each period in the development of generative syntax. The paper closes with some speculative remarks about the feasibility of applying generativist theory to second language teaching.

Like those birds born to chirp, humans are born to parse; children are predisposed to assign linguistic structures to the amorphous externalization of the thoughts that we encounter. This yields a view of variable properties quite different from one based on parameters defined at Universal Grammar (UG). Our approach to language acquisition makes two contributions to Minimalist thinking. First, in accordance with general Minimalist goals, we minimize the pre-wired components of internal languages, dispensing with three separate, central entities: parameters, an evaluation metric for rating the generative capacity of grammars, and any independent parsing mechanism. Instead, children use their internal grammar to parse the ambient external language they experience. UG is “open,” consistent with what children learn through parsing. Second, our understanding of language acquisition yields a new view of variable properties, properties that occur only in certain languages. Under this open UG vision, specific elements of I-languages arise in response to new parses. Both external and internal languages play crucial, interacting roles: unstructured, amorphous external language is parsed and a structured internal language system results. My Born to parse (Lightfoot 2020) explores case studies that show innovative parses of external language shaping the history of languages. I discuss 1) how children learn through parsing, 2) the role of parsing at the two interfaces between syntactic structure and the externalization system (sound or sign) and logical form, 3) language change, and 4) variable linguistic properties seen through the lens of an open UG. This, in turn, yields a view of variable properties akin to that of evolutionary biologists working on Darwin’s finches; see section 7.

Summary This paper deals with the notions and terminology that figure in the syntactic works of Bloomfield, Fries, Hockett, Gleason, and early Chomsky. Notwithstanding Bloomfield’s commitment to constituent structure and his profound influence on syntactic research in the United States, constituency had a surprisingly peripheral role in such works as Fries (1952) “Immediate constituents” (is the last of its syntactic chapters) and notions of dependency structure a much more central role. Many false generalizations by descriptivists (e.g., treatments of Therer-insertion as inversion) result from a failure to consider complex expressions as constituents of the various constructions. Notwithstanding descriptivists’ denunciations and generativists’ endorsements of traditional grammar, it is the descriptivists whose syntactic category notions came closer to those of traditional grammar. The unusual category scheme of Fries did not deviate all that much from traditional schemes, and its innovations were not applied consistently. 1960s generative syntax shared with Fries’s approach a conception of gender features and referential indices in English as borne by Ns rather than by NPs, and a failure to treat inter- and intra-saentential anaphora uniformly. Gleason (1965) is the most honorable exception to the dismal quality of this era’s literature on parts of speech.

This article is concerned with null referential subjects in Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1526), and addresses the problem of why the scope for such subjects has been reduced during the history of Swedish. Within diachronic syntax it has been a common assumption that syntactic change is caused by changes in morphology. However, this study shows that deflexion only to a limited extent can explain the loss of null referential subjects in Old Swedish, since the most striking change in their use seems to take place during Early Old Swedish (ca. 1225–1375) before the loss of person agreement: whereas referential subjects could be omitted from verb-second main clauses and subordinate clauses in Early Old Swedish, in Late Old Swedish corresponding subjectless clauses are uncommon. Within the framework of generative grammar it is argued that this is an effect of changes in movement strategies to the subject position, [Spec, IP]: whereas movement to the subject position is syntactically determined in Modern Swedish, in Early Old Swedish the corresponding move is pragmatically determined. The study is based on a corpus of approximately 193,400 words, collected from 12 Old Swedish texts.

“Randy Harris has done a remarkable service to the intellectual world.” This is one of many positive reviews of Prof. Harris's work. Randy Allen Harris’ [1] Linguistic Wars. The book appeared in 1993 and even then challenged the academic world and theoretical linguistics, more precisely one of its branches, Noam Chomsky's generative grammar of the second half of the last century, which is an attempt to explain the concept of “human language”. “Randy Harris’ Linguistic Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle for Deep Structure [2] has been given new life with its updated 2021 edition. [3] It not only greatly expands our knowledge of language, it challenges all those interested in academic battles over knowledge, offered to us by some of the greatest minds in linguistics - the most influential American linguist and cognitive researcher Noam Chomsky and his talented colleagues and PhD students with whom he later diverged and entered into acrimonious controversy - George Lakoff [4], James McCauley [5], Paul Postal [6] and John Robert Ross. [7] They attempted to undermine his thesis of “deep structure” and did not accept the magister dixit principle. [8] They called themselves the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” [9] In contrast to Chomsky and his theory, known as “standard” [10] or “universal grammar,” Lakoff and his colleagues put the emphasis on semantics and created a very influential current that caused a furor as generative semantics. They were convinced that the meaning of words should be considered abstractly, at the semantic level, rather than at the syntactic level. Their hypothesis was later called “generative semantics”, which also attracted many linguists from Europe. It gave rise to alternative cognitive linguistics, which links the understanding of language to the concepts of cognitive psychology. The language wars actually began in 1967 and raged through the 1970s. At the heart of the heated debate is the answer to the question of how to approach the relationship between syntax and semantics. It is remarkable how Randy Harris achieves his main goal of introducing the complex matter of trans¬formational grammar [11] to a general readership with incredible ease. The histories of several prominent linguists and the controversies in American theoretical linguistics are presented in a way that makes the book accessible not only to professionally burdened linguists and specialists in communication and rhetoric. It goes far beyond the academic corset of the scholarly community and turns this complex subject of the relationship between semantics and syntax into a fascinating account of the intellectual and academic debates, theories, and concepts that not only shook the scholarly community in the second half of the last century, but also had a profound impact on contemporary linguistics at the turn of the 21st century. This book details the development of some of the theories and their characteristics that have influenced contemporary theories of language. Randy Harris's book has one undoubted and very important quality. It is written in a very engaging style that allows even those with no particular background in linguistics to gain an insight into the most important linguistic theories with an accurate analysis of the influence and legacy of the charismatic Noam Chomsky, who was ultimately the victor in the so-called linguistic wars. His terms “deep structure” and “surface structure” [12] are part of the toolkit of the great scientific adventure in the study of human cognitive abilities. Chomsky is convinced that syntactic structures are not learned, but “mastered”. His main conclusion is that “grammar is autonomous and independent of meaning.” [13] Chomsky's monograph Syntactic Structures is one of the most significant studies of the 20th century. Years later, in 2015, a team of neuroscientists at New York University exclaimed, “Chomsky was right: We do have a “grammar” in our head.” [14] “Language is the strangest and most powerful thing that ever existed on this planet. All other, more mundane and less powerful things, like nuclear weapons, quantum computers, and antibiotics, would be literally unthinkable without language” [15], writes Randy Harris. In fact, his book is not just about the history of battles in the field of theoretical linguistics or how certain theories evolved. It is above all a clever and exciting account of the way we think. In places, Randy Harris demonstrates a subtle sense of humor about the “har¬monious” scientific community that makes the book very appealing. The implications of the bitter linguistic disputes over theories and their alternatives in the 1960s and 1970s continue to influence us today. They brought much new knowledge to the field, and Harris's book is proof of the evolution of the theories. The intellectual argument between scholars enjoying their theories changed approaches, rethought theories of syntax and semantics, became the occasion for new ideas, and the cause of theoretical fame for teacher and students. Randy Harris’s fascinating and highly erudite account of the language wars is a book not only about history but also about the future of history, about trends in the understanding of language and knowledge, and about revolu¬tionizing linguistic research. It goes far beyond an inventive and remarkably balanced scholarly chronicle, and makes an undeniable contribution to linguistic and communication studies. The book offers an original analysis of language and thought, of the beauty of deep structure, of generative semantics, of ethos and collapse, of the vicissitudes of linguistic warfare, and of the transition from the linguistics of the 20th century to that of the 21st. It is no coincidence that the ninth chapter of the new edition of the book is entitled Linguistics of the 21st Century. Harris aptly quotes Shakespeare and the dialogue in which Hamlet tells Polonius that a cloud resembles a camel, and then convinces him that it is a weasel and even a whale. [16] To Harris, language is too complex to reveal its secrets in one fell swoop to a linguist, “hawk” though he may be. [17] “I wouldn’t bet against Chomsky,” Harris writes with a certain firmness, and casually conjures the reader’s association with Chomsky’s theoretical cloud war, in which he, like Hamlet, is not just an angel surrounded by devils. The philosophy implicit in Hamlet’s fateful question of “to be or not to be” shines through in the dramatic history of linguistics and its wars described by Randy Harris. And this is one of the many reasons for one of the most accurate characterizations of his book that we can read in Science, the scholarly journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Back in 1994, it called the first edition “intellectual history crossed with Shakespearean history play.” [18] Its updated and expanded edition, nearly thirty years later, is a truly remarkable service to the intellectual world and yet another endorsement of Randy Harris’s linguistic Shakespeare¬anism. References and Notes [1] Prof. Randy Allen Harris teaches linguistics, rhetoric, and professional writing in the English department at the University of Waterloo, and researches a smattering of things mostly around the cognitive and computational aspects of rhetorical figures. [2] Harris, Randy Allen, The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure, 2nd ed. (New York, 2021; online ed., Oxford Academic, 18 Nov. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199740338.001.0001, 2022. [3] Harris, Randy Allen, The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure, 2nd edn (New York, 2021; online ed., Oxford Academic, 18 Nov. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199740338.001.0001, accessed 3 Aug. 2022. [4] Lakoff, G. (1968). Instrumental Adverbs and the Concept of Deep Structure. Foundations of Language, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 4–29. [5] McCawley, J. D. (1976). Notes from the Linguistic Underground. Print version: Notes from the Linguistic Underground. Leiden Boston: BRILL, 1976 9789004368538. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004368859. [6] Postal, P. M. (1972). The best theory. In S. Peters (Ed.), Goals of linguistic theory. Englewood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice-Hall. [7] Ross, J. R. (1972). Doubl-ing. In J. Kimball (Ed.), Syntax and semantics. (Vol. 1, pp. 157–186). New York: Seminar Press. [8] Това каза учителят (позоваване на безспорен авторитет). [This is what the teacher said (reference to unquestioned authority).] [9] Според Християнската есхатология тези четири конника на Апокалипсиса са предвестници на Страшния съд. [According to Christian eschatology, these four horsemen of the Apocalypse are harbingers of the Last Judgment.] [10] See. Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. London: Mouton. [11] Early versions of Chomsky's theory can be called transformative grammar, and this term is still used as a collective term to include his subsequent theories. The theory is also known as transformational-generative grammar. [12] Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. [13] Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. [14] Chomsky Was Right, NYU Researchers Find: We Do Have a “Grammar” in Our Head. 07.12.2015. NYU. https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2015/ december/chomsky-was-right-nyu-researchers-find-we-do-have-a-grammar-in-our-head.html. Retrieved on 16.08.2022. [15] Harris, R. A. (2021). The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure, 2nd ed. (New York, 2021; online ed., Oxford Academic, 18 Nov. 2021), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199740338.001.0001, accessed 3 Aug. 2022., 1. [16] Harris, R. A. (2021). The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure. (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford Academic, 363. [17] Harris, R. A. (2021). The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure. (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford Academic, 363. [18] Berreby, D. (1994). Linguistics Wars. The Sciences, Vol. 34, Issue 1, January-February 1994. Bibliography Berreby, D. (1994). Linguistics Wars. The Sciences, 34(1). Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton. Harris, R. A. (2021). The Linguistics Wars: Chomsky, Lakoff, and the Battle over Deep Structure (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford Academic. doi:https://doi.org/10. 1093/oso/9780199740338.001.0001. Lakoff, G. (1968). Instrumental Adverbs and the Concept of Deep Structure. Founda¬tions of Language, 4(1), 4–29. McCawley, J. D. (1976). Notes from the Linguistic Underground. New York: Academic Press. Postal, P. M. (1972). The best theory. In Goals of linguistic theory. New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs N.J. Prentice-Hall. Ross, J. R. (1972). Doubl-ing. Syntax and semantics, 1, 157–186. Shakespeare, W. (1998). (V. Petrov, transl.) Sofia: Zachary Stoyanov.

This special issue of Nordic Journal of Linguistics is dedicated to diachronic generative syntax in the North Germanic languages. With the introduction of generative grammar in the late 1950s the historical perspective became less prominent within linguistics. Instead, contemporary language, normally represented by the researcher’s own intuitions, became the unmarked empirical basis within the generative field, although there were some early pioneering studies in generative historical syntax (e.g. Traugott 1972). It was not until the introduction of the Principles and Parameters theory in the 1990s that diachronic syntax emerged as an important domain of inquiry for generative linguists. Since then, the study of syntactic change has added a temporal dimension to the overall enterprise to better understand the nature of variation in human language.

The present paper is intended as a reasonably elementary introduction to the nature of X-bar syntax, an important module in the structure of a modern transformational-generative grammar. The examples have been taken from English; however, since X-bar syntax is an integral part of the overall structure of Universal Grammar, the analyses presented here extend to any language.

Abstract This squib focuses on two main issues. Firstly, it examines the ways in which constructionist approaches to language can bring about an improved theoretical understanding of Double Modals (DMs) in dialects of English. DMs have proved to be a long-lasting, notorious puzzle in formal linguistics, and have not received any general solution today, with much analysis devoted to their constituent structure and their postulated layers of derivation, especially in generative models of language. Usage-based strands of Construction Grammar (CxG) appear to naturally overcome such problems, while conveying a more cognitively and socially realistic picture of such dialect variants. Secondly, and more importantly, we argue that such an improved, constructional understanding of DMs can also contribute to advances in the modeling of dialect syntax in CxG, both theoretically and methodologically. In particular, DMs constitute an interesting case of relatively rare and restricted syntactic constructions in the dialects they appear in, and they are likely to exhibit different rates of entrenchment and network schematicity cross-dialectally. Moreover, the empirical challenges surrounding the measurement of DM usage invite us to refine the methodological concept of triangulation, by sketching a two-step approach with a data-driven study of new types of corpora on the one hand, and a hypothesis-driven experimental account of acceptability in relevant geographical locations on the other.

Semantic Syntax (SeSyn), originally called Generative Semantics, is an offshoot of Chomskyan generative grammar (ChoGG), rejected by Chomsky and his school in the late 1960s. SeSyn is the theory of algorithmical grammars producing the well-formed sentences of a language L from the corresponding semantic input, the Semantic Analysis (SA), represented as a traditional tree structure diagram in a specific formal language of incremental predicate logic with quantifying and qualifying operators (including the truth functions), and with all lexical items filled in. A SeSyn-type grammar is thus by definition transformational, but not generative. The SA originates in cognition in a manner that is still largely mysterious, but its actual form can be distilled from the Surface Structure (SS) of the sentences of L following the principles set out in SeSyn. In this presentation we provide a more or less technical résumé of the SeSyn theory. A comparison is made with ChoGG-type grammars, which are rejected on account of their intrinsic unsuitability as a cognitive-realist grammar model. The ChoGG model follows the pattern of a 1930s neopositivist Carnap-type grammar for formal logical languages. Such grammars are random sentence generators, whereas, obviously, (nonpathological) humans are not. A ChoGG-type grammar is fundamentally irreconcilable with a mentalist-realist theory of grammar. The body of the paper consists in a demonstration of the production of an English and a French sentence, the latter containing a classic instance of the cyclic rule of Predicate Raising (PR), essential in the general theory of clausal complementation yet steadfastly repudiated in ChoGG for reasons that have never been clarified. The processes and categories defined in SeSyn are effortlessly recognised in languages all over the world, whether indigenous or languages of a dominant culture—taking into account language-specific values for the general theoretical parameters involved. This property makes SeSyn particularly relevant for linguistic typology, which now ranks as the most promising branch of linguistics but has so far conspicuously lacked an adequate theoretical basis.

Contemporary approaches to Generative syntax lead to the expectation that WH in situ would be subject to few distributional restrictions; but a series of complex constraints apply to in-situ WH in subject position in Standard Indonesian. We argue that this distribution does not follow from principles of formal grammar, but rather from a constraint on the relationship between syntax and information structure. We then turn to Colloquial Jakarta Indonesian, a variety similar to Standard Indonesian with regard to grammatical restrictions on WH in situ, but lacking the constraint on the relationship between syntax and information structure found in Standard Indonesian. We contend that the seeming differences between the grammars of Standard Indonesian and Jakarta Indonesian do not reflect differences in grammar in the narrow sense but rather in how the dialects relate to formal grammar and pragmatics.

The essence of Chomsky’s approach to language is the claim that there are linguistic universals in domain of syntax. He felt confident to show that syntax can be defined for any given language. For Chomsky, the nature of such mental representations is largely innate, so if a grammatical theory has explanatory adequacy it must be able to explain the various grammatical nuances of the languages of the world as relatively minor variations in the universal pattern of human language. In teaching English as L2, therefore knowing syntax and grammar of the language is important. Transformational Generative Grammar gives adequate elaboration in understanding them. Thus, the learners are expected to be able to avoid such ambiguity in interpreting the deep structure of a sentence since ambiguity will lead other people as the listeners or hearers of the speakers to misinterpret either consciously or unconsciously. Keywords: Surface Structure; Deep Structure; Constituent; Transformation

The goal of this study is to reintegrate the theory of generative grammar into the cognitive sciences. Generative grammar was right to focus on the child's acquisition of language as its central problem, leading to the hypothesis of an innate Universal Grammar. However, generative grammar was mistaken in assuming that the syntactic component is the sole course of combinatoriality, and that everything else is “interpretive.” The proper approach is a parallel architecture, in which phonology, syntax, and semantics are autonomous generative systems linked by interface components. The parallel architecture leads to an integration within linguistics, and to a far better integration with the rest of cognitive neuroscience. It fits naturally into the larger architecture of the mind/brain and permits a properly mentalistic theory of semantics. It results in a view of linguistic performance in which the rules of grammar are directly involved in processing. Finally, it leads to a natural account of the incremental evolution of the language capacity.

The subject of this research is the analysis of universal grammar ideas in the area of syntax and their reflection in the Russian educational materials of the early XIX century. The relevance is defined by the fact that writings of the authors of universal grammars contain ideas currently applied in description of fact of language within the framework of generative grammar. View on grammar of A. S. Nikolsky, F. F. Rozanov, L. H. Jacob, I. F. Timkovsky, I. Ornatovsky repeatedly have become the subject of analysis; however, in light on most recent achievements of the theory of linguistics, previous works require revision. Research methodology leans on the theories, which are founded on the principle of historicism in linguistics that allows establishing own patterns in transformation of the subject of research and clearly understands the internal logics of scientific development. With emergence of works of the world renowned American linguist Noam Chomsky, who claimed that his generative grammar is based on the key postulates of universal grammar, the authors of universal grammars have attracted attention once again. The scientific novelty lies in the more objective assessment of the contribution of A. S. Nikolsky, F. F. Rozanov, L. H. Jacob, I. F. Timkovsky, I. Ornatovsky to the development of grammar science, and syntax in particular.  

The second issue of Volume 42 (autumn 2019) of the Nordic Journal of Linguistics will be a special issue devoted to diachronic syntax within the framework of generative grammar. The issue will be edited by David Håkansson, Erik Magnusson Petzell and Elisabet Engdahl.

Abstract Linguistic iconicity has been studied since ancient times (e.g., Plato’s Cratylus, see Cooper & Hutchinson 1997). Within modern grammatical description, this notion was mostly developed by Jakobson and Benveniste; nowadays, iconicity in language is even being experimentally tested (e.g., Blasi et al. 2016; Diatka & Milička 2017). However, most studies on linguistic iconicity pertain to prosody, sound symbolism, or morphology; syntactic iconicity has been vastly underexplored. In this paper, we present two hypotheses concerning syntactic iconicity: (1) syntactic descriptions of natural language strings have an inherent structure which is isomorphic to that of representations in some other component of grammar or a non-grammatical system; or (2) linear order imposed on phrase structure is isomorphic to that in some other component of grammar or a non-grammatical system. We will argue in favour of the former, which constitutes a novel perspective on iconicity in grammar. We furthermore discuss the place that iconicity may have in the architecture of a generative system.

AbstractThis article explores intraindividual microvariation in dialect syntax. We argue that in many cases the speaker has internalized a different (sub)grammar for each dialectal variety, in line with the hypothesis of universal bilingualism and parallel grammars argued for by Roeper (1999 et seq.). We discuss the question of how we can distinguish parallel grammars from optionality within one grammar, suggesting that the identification of correlating contextual factors might be a promising criterion. However, we also explore a more subtle type of variation, namely cases where a standard variety influences a potentially more vulnerable non-standard variety in a way that makes it exceedingly difficult for the language user and even for a trained linguist to discern what is what. We discuss whether or not these properties should be analysed as properties of another subgrammar (the standard grammar) or as fully integrated (albeit acquired) properties of the non-standard dialect.

The aim of this paper is to show the current situation in contemporary Italian grammaticography, i.e., to analyse grammatical models (traditional, generative and dependency model) grammar reference books for different purposes are based on. By means of diachronic and synchronic analysis of grammar reference books, we have examined and showed to what extent traditional theories and terminology are retained, i.e., to what extent generative grammar and valency theory are present. The introductory part of the paper shows the development of Italian grammaticography from the first generative research conducted in Italy to this day. The first Italian generative grammar books were published in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Costabile 1967, Saltarelli 1970, Gamberini 1971, Parisi, Antinucci 1973), i.e., shortly after Noam Chomsky’s first monographs on generative grammar theory were published. However, although it can be said that Italian grammaticography kept up to date with the research carried out worldwide in the field of linguistics, the first comprehensive descriptive grammar book (Comprehensive Consultative Italian Grammar Book) was not published until 1988, when the most comprehensive traditional Italian grammar book by Luca Serianni was published as well, which is the reason why that year is considered to be a turning point in Italian linguistics. Following this turn of events, which is frequently described as revolutionary, grammar book production has flourished while authors have begun to turn to new linguistic theories more and more, i.e., mostly to the fruits of generative grammar and other theories formulated within its framework, although not for want of work dedicated to traditional grammar. Therefore, for the last two and a half decades, Italian grammaticography has abounded in traditional grammar books mainly for the purposes of school use and “new” (Andreose 2017), i.e., „modern” (Vanelli 2010) grammar books primarily for the purposes of pursuing linguistic issues professionally, as well as studying languages at the university level. The central part of the paper is dedicated to analysing individually some of the most renowned grammar books published during the first decades of the 21st century (Salvi, Vanelli 2004, Andorno 2003, Sabatini et al. 2011, Ferrari, Zampese 2016) with the aim of showing their new features in relation to tradition (the reference point of traditional linguistics was the Serianni's grammar book) regarding terminology, the norm, topics and the organisation of the very grammar books. The main conclusion of this research is that contemporary grammar books actually show the greatest departure from tradition concerning the norm and the examples sentence analyses are based on, since normative grammar books, whose goal is to establish certain grammar rules, are completely rejected and replaced by detailed descriptive grammar books aiming at describing fully all registers of the Italian language and all its possible linguistic constructions, regardless of their grammatical accuracy. A somewhat minor, but still quite significant, departure from tradition can be seen in the organisation of grammar books and topics they deal with, since syntax has surely taken precedence in analysis, but also that some traditional topics have been rejected, while some new topics have been included in grammatical analyses (e.g. phonetics and textual linguistics). The characteristic which, nonetheless, has undergone minimal changes in that “transition” from the traditional to the modern way of linguistic analysis is terminology that can be concluded to have been brought up to date and expanded rather that completely changed.

Serbo-Croat has a complex system of clitics which raise interesting problems for any theory of the interface between syntax and morphology. After summarising the data we review previous analyses (mostly within the generative tradition), all of which are unsatisfactory in various ways. We then explain how Word Grammar handles clitics: as words whose form is an affix rather than the usual ‘word-form’. Like other affixes, clitics need a word to accommodate them, but in the case of clitics this is a special kind of word called a ‘hostword’. We present a detailed analysis of Serbo-Croat clitics within this theory, introducing a new distinction between two cases: where the clitics are attached to the verb or auxiliary, and where they are attached to some dependent of the verb.

English has become one of the compulsory subjects for students in China. As a foreign language, especially one whose grammatical structure is, in some sense, diverse from learners’ mother tongue, it requires teachers to research proper methods to present syntactic patterns for students’ sake. When teachers turn to linguistics, there are two well-known theories about syntax from different points of perspective. They are transformational-generative grammar, proposed by Chomsky, and systemic functional grammar by Halliday. Concerned that most beginners may be challenged to be exposed to a totally new language that embraces foreign cultures; hence, learners are supposed to start with what is called the most fundamental syntax---the five basic English sentence patterns. As for teachers, it is necessary to analyze those sentence patterns and come up with practical teaching methods so that they can help learner study more efficiently. In this sense, this essay is far too meaningful. This dissertation aims to reveal the potential relations between the two theories in analyzing the five sentences as part of the efforts to seek more appropriate ways of discussing English syntactic features. Also, hopefully, it may bring some enlightenment to teachers. The method this paper applied is comparative analysis. After the research, the two theories have their place in explaining different types of sentences.

Summary Chomsky insists that he has always understood a generative grammar to be “nothing more than an explicit grammar”. Other commentators have understood that ‘generate’ means ‘specify an infinite set’ and that a ‘generative’ grammar is a grammar which specifies an infinite set of sentences. This understanding of the term ‘generative’ has had a long and interesting history within the confines of linguistic theory starting in the writings of Chomsky’s intellectual predecessors and continuing through the writings of Chomsky himself. In some cases, it even seems that ‘to generate’ is a near synonym for ‘to produce’ both in the writings of Chomsky and of other early transformationalists. In other instances, it is difficult to see how ‘explicit’, an adjective, can serve as a synonym for ‘generate’, a verb as this verb has been used throughout the history of transformational generative linguistics. Furthermore, it would appear that a rule like move-α has little or no meaning in a non-generative grammar, i.e., one that is merely ‘explicit’, one that does not rely on process type statements as its modus operandi. Nevertheless, in the recent history of transformationalism, Chomsky insists that ‘generative’ means nothing more than ‘explicit’ and nothing less. To him, the notion that ‘generative’ has something to do with specifying or characterizing a set of sentences is a notion that never was.

among the recent generative grammar approaches to explain morphology, the distributed morphology approach can be mentioned. In this approach there is no place as lexicon or morphology for formation of words and word formation is occurred after syntax processes. The present research is trying to introduce distributed morphology as a non-lexicalist approach and consider the phenomenon of affixation in Ardalani Kurdish language by this approach. The research results indicate that affixation and the process of forming plural nouns can be explained by distributed morphology approach.

This paper aims to discuss the two main approaches to language acquisition and present the main ideas behind the nativist and the usage-based account. The concomitant argument between the two sides has been present in linguistics ever since the proposal of innateness was provided by the paradigm of mainstream generative grammar (Chomsky 1965). In order to contribute to the ongoing discussion, we will attempt to outline the main challenges that the both theoretical strands are faced with and provide an overview of syntactic evidence provided by linguists whose work was devoted to understanding the mechanisms of language acquisition. Our goal is to analyze the insights provided by the phenomena such as syntactic bootstrapping, poverty of the stimulus, multiple argument realizations and non-canonical syntactic constructions and argue that integrating these findings into a usage-based framework (Tomasello 2000, 2003 - 2009) or various instances of Construction Grammar (Goldberg 1995 - 1996, Fillmore Kay - Fillmore 1999, van Trijp 2016, Steels 2011, inter alia) provides a more plausible and comprehensive explanation of the processes responsible for language acquisition.

Frederick J. Newmeyer, Generative linguistics: a historical perspective. London: Routledge, 1996. Pp. x+218.In this book (henceforth, GL), Newmeyer has collected 11 of his articles (including two co-authored ones), two of them previously unpublished, on the history of generative grammar, supplemented by reprints of two sections of Newmeyer 1986.

This paper is a critique of two foundational assumptions of generative work culminating in the Minimalist Program: the assumption that, as a matter of conceptual necessity, language has a ‘double-interface property’ and the related assumption that phonology has a realizational function with respect to syntax-semantics. The issues are broached through a critique of Holmberg's (2000) analysis of Stylistic Fronting in Icelandic. We show that, although empirically motivated, and although based on the double-interface assumption, this analysis is incompatible with that assumption and with the notion of (phonological) realization. Independently of Stylistic Fronting, we argue that the double-interface assumption is a problematic legacy of Saussure's conception of the linguistic sign and that, conceptually, it is neither explanatory nor necessary. The Representational Hypothesis (e.g. Burton-Roberts 2000) develops a Peircian conception of the relation between sound and meaning that breaks with the Saussurian tradition, though in a way consistent with minimalist goals. Other superficially similar approaches (Lexeme–Morpheme Base Morphology, Distributed Morphology, Jackendoff's Parallel Architecture) are discussed; it is argued that they, too, perpetuate aspects of Saussurian thought.

In the modular linguistic theory assumed by many generative linguists, phonology and syntax are interconnected but fundamentally independent components of grammar. The effects of syntax on phonology are mediated by prosodic structure, a representation of prosodic constituents calculated from syntactic structure but not isomorphic to it. Within this overall architecture, I investigate the placement of weak pronouns in the Austronesian language Chamorro. Certain Chamorro pronominals can be realized as prosodically deficient weak pronouns that typically occur right after the predicate. I showthat these pronouns are second-position clitics whose placement is determined not syntactically, but prosodically: they occur after the leftmost phonological phrase of their intonational phrase. My analysis of these clitics assumes that lexical insertion is late and can affect and be affected by prosodic phrase formation-assumptions consistent with the view that the mutual interaction of phonology and syntax is confined to the postsyntactic operations that translate syntactic structure into prosodic structure.

Summary Against the background of the controversial and polarized work of Frederick Newmeyer and Robin Tolmach Lakoff, this paper chronicles the early development of generative semantics, an internal movement within the transformational model of Chomsky’s Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. The first suggestions toward the movement, whose cornerstone was the obliteration of the syntax-semantics boundary, were by George Lakoff in 1963. But it was the work conducted under the informal banner of “Abstract Syntax” by Paul Postal that began the serious investigations leading to such an obliteration. Lakoff was an active participant in that research, as were Robin Tolmach Lakoff, John Robert (“Háj”) Ross and James D. McCawley. Through their combined efforts, particularly those of McCawley on semantic primitives and lexical insertion, generative semantics took shape in 1967: positing a universal base, importing notions from predicate calculus, decomposing lexical structure, and, most contentiously, rejecting the central element of the Aspects model, deep structure.

Generative grammar was a true revolution in the linguistics. However, to describe language behavior in its semantic essence and universal aspects, generative grammar needs to have a much richer semantic basis. In this paper, we took a novel morpho-syntactic approach to the inflectional phrase to account for the very diverse inflectional phrase qualities in different languages. Some languages show a very different surface verbal inflection, providing evidence of a different mental processing at the semantic level. In fact, the inflectional phrase is a great representative of the mental and semantic processing layers in mind. Therefore, in this study, we analyzed the inflectional phrase with a novel approach to take into account this rich verbal inflectional configuration in languages, and to describe why some languages behave in a different way in the spatial and temporal aspect. In this study, we analyzed and discussed the verbal inflectional structure of several languages, including German, Swahili, Persian, English, and Indonesian, and our result is the introduction of a semantic model which provides a much richer insight to the semantics/syntax interplay.

Summary The Stoic theory of loquia (lekta) contained a fairly explicit statement of formation rules. It is argued that one type of rule was called syntaxis (combination or phrase structure rule) by Chrysippus (e.g., “a subject in the nominative case and a complete predicate form a statement”). Two other types of rule were assignments of words to lexical categories (“Dion is a Noun Phrase”) and subsumption rules (“Every elementary statement is a statement”), often formulated in the form of subdivisions of concepts. A fourth type of rule seems to have been the class of transformations (enklisis, e.g., “A statement transformed by the preterite transformation is a statement”). Every syntactic rule was accompanied by a semantic interpretation according to a version of the compositionality principle familiar in modern times since Frege and elaborated by Montague and his followers. Though the concrete example of a syntax was a fairly elaborate version of some sort of Montague type or definite clause grammar, there was no effort to introduce a theory of grammar in the style of Chomsky. But the texts show awareness of the problem of the infinity of structure generated and of the concept of structural ambiguity. The Stoic system has been transformed into the formulation of the Word and Paradigm Grammar of the technical grammarians – “transformation” (enklisis) was the historical antecedent of paragôgê, declinatio, “inflection”, etc. Some formulations have survived into modern times, e.g., the notion of government, for which Stoic type formulations like “a deficient predicate can be combined with a subject in the accusative case to form a complete predicate” are a historical antecedent.

<p>The issue of Interfaces is central to linguistic studies. Modern linguistics, especially semantic studies, has given a special interest to this topic. However, up till very recently, the issue has been dealt with mainly from a syntactico-centric point of view. Throughout the development of linguistic theories, there has been a rooted idea in generative grammar that meaning is generated from syntactic structure. In fact, although we adopt the Conceptual Semantics framework, which considers meaning to be too rich and multidimensional to be encoded in purely syntactic mechanisms, we shall deal with the correspondence between syntax and semantics where these two components directly correlate with one another. In other words, we will deal with the topic from the angle where syntax bears <em>all</em> semantic relations.</p>

Brigitte Groneberg's book is a thoughtful and discursive essay on a number of problems in the grammar, understood in the broadest sense, of a Babylonian dialect. With one comprehensive dictionary complete and another, even more comprehensive, moving in that direction, with a basic general grammar of Akkadian and several survey-grammars of the various historical stages and geographical dialects in existence, it is entirely appropriate that we should have a close study of a chronologically limited and genre-bound corpus of texts which nevertheless broaches wider questions not dealt with by the more general grammars, and approaches them from a viewpoint which is not blind to contemporary developments in general linguistics and literary studies. If this book proposes new answers to questions about the character of the Akkadian language, and suggests new ways of looking at the analysis of forms, syntax and style, then it may be accounted a success, even if not all readers will agree with all the positions taken. In a way, Syntax, Morphologie und Stil … is a successor to Erica Reiner's A Linguistic Analysis of Akkadian, which also brought modern linguistic work – in this case the theory of generative grammar – to bear on its subject, with brilliant results, but concentrated more on a systematic survey of the entire grammar. Groneberg's book is more selective in its aim.

AbstractIn linguistics, explanation is based on whatever initial conditions are imposed on language, and so it necessarily functions within the range of options allowed by the laws of nature. Thus, since syntax is a computational system, it is subject to principles of efficient computation. Moreover, the Faculty of Language is located in human beings, so this means that it is constrained by the conceptual and perceptual systems of human beings. In this context, three topics are presented that have been repeatedly discussed over the last 50 years: inversion in interrogatives, long-distance dependencies, and recursion. For these cases, the computational approach favoured by Generative Grammar leads one to inscribe lists of unexplained elements in Universal Grammar. This is but a measure of our ignorance. On the other hand, a fully biolinguistic approach that takes into account the conceptual and perceptual basis of language opens a way to a true explanation.

This book is intended as an introduction both to the principles and parameters framework (Chomsky, 1981) and to the second language (L2) acquisition of syntactic representations. Hawkins's basic aim is to present evidence for the view that L2 learners progressively build subconscious mental grammars (i.e., a syntactic system) guided by Universal Grammar—an innate, language-specific system. However, this volume is not just an introductory textbook presenting and summarizing the work of other researchers in this particular field. Indeed, the book has another major aim: Within the context of the most current debates on the L2 acquisition of syntactic knowledge, Hawkins introduces his own theory of L2 development, which he terms Modulated Structure Building.

Abstract This essay analyses the most central concepts of Latin syntactical theory in the earliest pedagogical grammars written in Portugal during the 14th and 15th centuries, namely concord, government, and transitivity. The sources include two unpublished treatises preserved in manuscripts of Portuguese origin, one from the end of the 14th century and the other dated 1427, and the first grammar printed in Portugal (1497). They are representative of the teaching of Latin in Portugal at different levels of learning. All three treatises use the vernacular as a pedagogical aid, and Pastrana’s grammar also employs images to illustrate the main syntactical concepts. All treatises discuss government using the regular medieval terminology of regere “to govern” and regi “to be governed”. Like in Spanish, Italian and English grammars of Latin, the three concords belong to the basic syntactical doctrine. The major difference between these textbooks lies in their employment of the concept of transitivity. It is little more than mentioned in the two manuscripts, but highly relevant in the printed grammar.

Current theories place very mild constraints on possible diachronic changes, something at odds with the trivial observation that actual, “language change” represents a tiny fraction of the variation made a priori available by Universal Grammar. Much recent work in diachronic syntax has actually been guided by the aim of describing changes (e.g., parameter resetting), rather than by concerns of genuine explanation. Here I suggest a radically different viewpoint (the Inertial, Theory of diachronic syntax), namely, that syntactic change not provably due to interference should not occur at all as a primitive-that is, unless forced by changes in the phonology, the semantics, or the lexicon, perhaps ultimately by interface or grammar-external pressures, in line with the minimalist enterprise in synchronic linguistics. I concentrate on a single case, the etymology of Modern French chez, showing howthe proposed approach attains a high degree of explanatory adequacy.

The article is devoted to a comprehensive study of the stages of formation and development of corpus linguistics. The purpose of the article is to analyze various scientific approaches to the scientific significance of this linguistic discipline and identify a set of concepts and criteria that form the foundation of this field. Corpus linguistics is one of the most promising and rapidly developing areas of language research. Linguistics of the XIX century set as its goal the study of language as such, and linguistics of the XXI century sees the relevance of the research not in identifying absolute linguistic categories and meanings but in the practical application of linguistic knowledge. The relevance of the article is determined by the fact that the linguistic corpus contains a vast potential, which the scientific community has not fully comprehended since the text as the main object of corpus linguistics in various forms of its implementation is one of the central components systems of language and speech-thinking activity of a modern native speaker of any language. The content and volume of linguistic corpora of various kinds allow obtaining reliable information about the modern and real use of a particular term: the corpus becomes a tool for analyzing the functioning of this term both in the linguistic field of morphology, syntax, and vocabulary and in the theory and practice of translation, identifying the register of its formal or informal usage. The fundamental novelty of this studys results allows us to speak about the legitimacy of the creation of corpus dictionaries and corpus grammars of a new generation, developed and verified concerning a specific fixed corpus. Simultaneously, the author substantiates the proposition that the corpus nature of dictionaries and grammars increases their reliability and objectivity and avoids the subjectivity that is often characteristic of research-based solely on the intuition of a linguist. The corpus is a medium for obtaining new scientific data, the comprehension of which seems to be a priority for modern linguistic description and necessary in the scientific activity of a modern researcher. From our point of view, this article's relevance and novelty lie in the fact that the expediency of corpus research is an essential requirement of the time, associated with a new quality of linguistic reality and meeting the needs of modern society. The article examines the main stages of the formation of corpus linguistics as a scientific field, characterizes the scientific concepts and approaches inherent in each of these stages, provides an overview of the main conceptual provisions of corpus linguistics within the framework of domestic and foreign linguistics. The author analyzes in detail the polemics between representatives of various scientific directions and reveals the advantages of one or another approach, traces the similarities and differences between approaches to the study of corpora at various historical stages of their formation. The review's focus is the role and place of corpus studies of language in modern linguistics, comparison of the pro and contra arguments of the use of corpus technologies in linguistic description. Considerable attention is paid to the main criteria for the classification of corpora, a brief overview of the most famous corpora in history is offered, and the prospects for their use in various fields of modern language science are discussed.

AbstractThroughout its history, the hope has always been cherished that typology is holistic, and holism entails that there is systematic co-variation not only within levels or modules of grammar but also between them. Accordingly, numerous claims have been made that phonology does not vary across languages independently of morphology and syntax, and vice versa. The variables that are allegedly interrelated pertain to segment inventories, the shapes of syllables, morphemes, and words, phonological or morphonological rules, tones and accents, and rhythmic or prosodic patterns on the one hand and to analytic or (poly-)synthetic grammar, Separatist or cumulative morphological exponence, the complexity of grammatical units, and their linear order on the other. These claims are cataloguedin thispaper. To substantiate them and to accommodate those that are found valid in theories of the Interface between phonology, morphology, and syntax remain äs tasks for the future.

Linguistics as the scientific study of language has very crucial role in running language instruction. Changes in language teaching-learning method reflect the development of linguistic theories. This paper describes how the three broad views of linguistic theories, namely traditional grammar, generative grammar, and functional grammar work in relation to English language teaching and learning. Since both linguistics and language learning have the same subject to talk about, the knowledge of the language, then, is the core. Linguistic features analyzed are on the levels of Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, Semantics and Discourse as the basic components, supported by Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics. In relation to language teaching and learning, especially English, such knowledge on the English language gives learners the chance to apply in social communication and in any occasion. The use depends on the viewing of linguistic theories (English) in certain era, which reflects the need of learners in using English. It is assumed that the more linguistic competence someone has, the easier he/she can run his/her instructional activities. As the consequence, in the English language learning, the syllabus designer should notify the mentioned levels of linguistic components while constructing English instructional materials, methods, and evaluation based on the stage of learners to avoid misunderstanding in use. In this case, English instructors/teachers should also update their linguistic competence, especially on Psycholinguistic and Sociolinguistic points of view. Key words/phrases: linguistics, English, language instruction, linguistic competence

Summary Extrinsic rule ordering was a device used within the Standard Theory of Generative Grammar which determined the correct order for transformations to apply. During the 1970s some linguists, led by Andreas Koutsoudas, showed how this device could be eliminated. However, the great importance of their work has never been recognised. The paper offers a recent example of such a lack of acknowledgement. Furthermore, it is argued why an accurate account of the abandonment of extrinsic rule ordering matters: it represents the first systematic achievement in constraining the strong expressive power of transformations.

AbstractAlthough many Hebraists have departed from the traditional understanding of in Gen i 1 as an independent phrase with grammatical reference to "THE beginning," it is a view that continues to thrive, and is reflected by the majority of modern translations. Even advocates of the dependent phrase position (e.g., "when God began") struggle with a precise and compelling linguistic analysis. In this article I offer a linguistic argument that will both provide a simpler analysis of the grammar of Gen i 1 and make it clear that the traditional understanding of a reference to an 'absolute beginning' cannot be derived from the grammar of the verse. Instead, the syntax of the verse, based on well-attested features within biblical Hebrew grammar, dictates that there were potentially multiple periods or stages to God's creative work.

One of the most promising new developments of recent research into theoretical syntax within the model of Government and Binding (GB) as presented in Chomsky (1981) and (1982) has been the new importance given to the study of languages other than English. This has stimulated a great deal of work into a variety of languages (see, for example, Rizzi, 1982; Borer, 1983; Bouchard, 1984; Huang, 1984 and others). It has also been welcomed by linguists outside the TG tradition. Thus, Comrie, (1984:155) expresses his delight that ‘Chomsky (1981) makes clear that generative grammarians have come to realize that an adequate study of syntax within universal grammar requires the study of languages of different types. Chomsky's main concern has always been to formulate a theory that would achieve ‘explanatory adequacy’ by providing a restrictive set of principles which could characterize universally the notion ‘natural language’. However, detailed and in-depth analyses of various languages have revealed that in order to achieve ‘descriptive adequacy’ the theory has to allow for cross-linguistic differences, or ‘parametric variation’. The concept of parametric variation weakens some-what the restrictiveness of the universal grammar (UG) hypothesis and even more so its purported innateness, since the values for the parameters must be arrived at by the child through induction from empirical evidence. Nevertheless, explanatory adequacy may still be attained if the number of parameters is very small and each parameter has few values.

The paper discusses how Yordan Penčev, the pioneer of the Bulgarian generative syntax, bridged the ideas of Alexander Teodorov-Balan’s native formal school with those of Noam Chomsky’s – the representative of the American generative-transformational grammar. Penčev established such connections in his first publications ever (1953, 1958), thus strengthening the thread of the Bulgarian syntactic formalism, despite the obstructions of the totalitarian period. The text focuses on the core of Balan’s ideas, as commented by Penčev in his first two publications, such as distinction between lexical notion and syntactic meaning, case as a semantic category, classification of pronouns based on syntactic criteria, and positing a prepositional phrase as a full-fledged member of the constituent structure. Further on, the paper compares the ideas commented by Penčev in those early publications with the corresponding ones in the early Chomsky’s works (1957), whereby strong similarity is shown. Finally, the mentioned ideas are compared with the key words in the titles of Penčev’s subsequent publications until 1972. The comparison results show that the key issues of Balan, interpreted in Chomskyan light, turn out to have been programming for the early period of Yordan Penčev in general. By way of affirming selected Balan's formal ideas in the Bulgarian linguistics, Penčev opened the way for creative borrowing and development of the then dominant American generative ideas.