Elementary Syntactic Structures: Prospects of a Feature-Free Syntax

ISBN-13: 9781316645376 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 220 str.

Cedric Boeckx

Opis

This book proposes a new model of syntax, in which all the fundamental units and properties of syntax are rethought.

Recenzje

'Cedric Boeckx presents a novel re-conceptualization of contemporary linguistic theory aimed at precipitating the Chomskyan vision of a reduction of linguistics to biology. His achievement is to simultaneously reduce the language-specific aspects of mankind's biological endowment for language to an evolutionarily plausible core while saving the data of current linguistics: providing a roadmap for reconstituting within a lexicon-free syntax the descriptive and explanatory results of linguistics over linguistic universals and language typologies. This impressive and compelling volume should foster informed dialog across the disciplines toward the goal of understanding how the human brain manages language.' Alec Marantz, New York University

Spis treści

Preface; Abbreviations and symbols; 1. Biolinguistic concerns; 2. Syntactic order for free: merge α; 3. Trusting in the external systems: descent with modification; 4. Elaborate grammatical structures: how (and where) to deal with variation; 5. Interdisciplinary prospects; Appendix 1. Déjà vu all over again?; Appendix 2. Switching metaphors: from clocks to sandpiles; Appendix 3. More on the loss of syntactic variation; Bibliography; Index.