Syntactic Nuts: Hard Cases, Syntactic Theory, and Language Acquisition (Foundations of Grammar)($71.25Value)

Description

How are native speakers of a language instinctively able to make precise linguistic judgements about marginal syntactic matters? What does this tell us about both the structure of language and our innate language ability as humans? These questions form the focus of Professor Culicover's in-depth study which will appeal to both graduate students and professionals within the fields of linguistic theory and cognitive science. `Culicover addresses the fundamental question of the nature of syntactic universals and the related issue of how syntactic knowledge is acquired by children. His answer challenges many mainstream generative conceptions in taking to a new and higher level the debate over the relative balance between innateness and learning. The fact that his conclusions are supported by dozens of meticulously argued analyses of diverse syntactic phenomena gives his conclusions a credibility that has heretofore been missing in critiques of parametric approaches to universal grammar' Frederick Newmeyer, University of Washington`Culicover takes us on an invigorating tour through a vast range of 'idiosyncratic' data.' John R. Taylor, Cognitive Linguistics 10-3 (1999). Peter W. Culicover is currently the Chair of the Department of Linguistics and Director of the Center for Cognitive Science at the Ohio State University.