Publisher Description

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 syntactic theory has focused largely on regularities within andacross languages, relegating to the periphery exceptional and idiosyncratic phenomena. But, the author argues, a languages irregular and unique features offer fundamental insights into the nature of language, how it changes, and how it is produced and understood. Peter Culicover's new book offers a pertinent and original contribution to key current debates in linguistic theory. It will interest scholars and advanced students of linguists of all theoretical persuasions.

Author Biography

Peter W. Culicover is Humanities Distinguished Professor in Linguistics and the founding Director of the Center for Cognitive Science at the Ohio State University. His publications include Formal Principles of Language Acquisition co-authored with Kenneth Wexler (MIT 1983), Principles and Parameters (OUP 1997), Syntactic Nuts (OUP 1999), Dynamical Syntax co-authored with Andrzej Nowak (OUP 2003), Simpler Syntaxco-authored with Ray Jackendoff (OUP 2005), and Natural Language Syntax (OUP 2009).

Table of Contents

Part I: Theoretical Background1: Varieties of Grammatical Complexity2: The Architecture of ConstructionsPart II: English Constructions3: English Relatives4: Constructions and the Notion 'Possible Human Language'Part III: Processing Complexity and Grammar5: Reflexes of Processing ComplexityPart IV: Acquisition, Change, and Variation6: Explaining Complexity: The learner in the network7: Constructional Complexity and Change8: Integrating Constructions, Complexity, and ChangeReferencesIndex

Long Description

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 syntactic theory has focused largely on regularities within and
across languages, relegating to the periphery exceptional and idiosyncratic phenomena. But, the author argues, a languages irregular and unique features offer fundamental insights into the nature of language, how it changes, and how it is produced and understood. Peter Culicover's new book offers a pertinent and original contribution to key current debates in linguistic theory. It will interest scholars and advanced students of linguists of all theoretical persuasions.

Feature

Major contribution to key current debates in linguistics
Combines insights from linguistics and cognitive science
Based on wide-ranging examinations of language in use
Written by one of the world's leading linguistic theorists

Details