Offering a compelling perspective on the structure of the human language, this book addresses the proper balance between syntax and semantics, between structure and derivation, and between rule systems and lexicon. It argues that the balance struck by mainstream generative grammar is wrong. This book is a major step forward for linguistics. Its systematic, accessible style of analysis heralds a renaissance in syntax, not just for specialists but for everyone. Two master syntacticians show how far current syntactic theory has lost touch with reality - and how to reconnect. A brilliant book,...

This book combines ideas about the architecture of grammar and language acquisition, processing, and change to explain why languages show regular patterns when there is so much irregularity in their use and so much complexity when there is such regularity in linguistic phenomena. Peter Culicover argues that the structure of language can be understood and explained in terms of two kinds of complexity: firstly that of the correspondence between form and meaning; secondly in the real-time processes involved in the construction of meanings in linguistic expressions.
Mainstream generative...