Biolinguistic Investigations And The Formal Language Hierarchy

This volume collects some of Juan Uriagereka’s previously published pieces and presentations on biolinguistics in recent years in one comprehensive volume. The book’s introduction lays the foundation for the field of biolinguistics, which looks to integrate concepts from the natural sciences in the analysis of natural language, situating the discussion within the minimalist framework. The volume then highlights eight of the author’s key papers from the literature, some co-authored, representative of both the architectural and evolutionary considerations to be taken into account within biolinguistic research. The book culminates in a final chapter showcasing the body of work being done on biolinguistics within the research program at the University of Maryland and their implications for interdisciplinary research and future directions for the field. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars interested in the interface between language and the natural sciences, including linguistics, syntax, biology, archaeology, and anthropology.

This volume collects some of Juan Uriagereka’s previously published pieces and presentations on biolinguistics in recent years in one comprehensive volume. The book’s introduction lays the foundation for the field of biolinguistics, which looks to integrate concepts from the natural sciences in the analysis of natural language, situating the discussion within the minimalist framework. The volume then highlights eight of the author’s key papers from the literature, some co-authored, representative of both the architectural and evolutionary considerations to be taken into account within biolinguistic research. The book culminates in a final chapter showcasing the body of work being done on biolinguistics within the research program at the University of Maryland and their implications for interdisciplinary research and future directions for the field. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars interested in the interface between language and the natural sciences, including linguistics, syntax, biology, archaeology, and anthropology.

The papers assembled in this volume aim to contribute to our understanding of the human capacity for language: the generative procedure that relates sounds and meanings via syntax. Different hypotheses about the properties of this generative procedure are under discussion, and their connection with biology is open to important cross-disciplinary work. Advances have been made in human-animal studies to differentiate human language from animal communication. Contributions from neurosciences point to the exclusive properties of the human brain for language. Studies in genetically based language impairments also contribute to the understanding of the properties of the language organ. This volume brings together contributions on theoretical and experimental investigations on the Language Faculty. It will be of interest to scholars and students investigating the properties of the biological basis of language, in terms the modeling of the language faculty, as well as the properties of language variation, language acquisition and language impairments.

This collection explicates one of the core ideas underpinning Minimalist theory – explanation via simplification – and its role in shaping some of the latest developments within this framework, specifically the simplest Merge hypothesis and the reduction of syntactic phenomena to third factor considerations. Bringing together recent papers on the topic by Epstein, Kitahara, and Seely, with one by Epstein, Seely and Obata, and one by Kitahara, the book begins with an introduction which situates the papers in a cohesive overview of some of the latest research on Minimalism, as facilitated by current theoretical developments. The volume integrates a historical overview of evolutions in Merge, starting with Chomsky’s (pre-Merge) Aspects model up to current theoretical models, including a primer of Chomsky’s most recent theory of Merge based on the concept of Workspace. The Minimalist notions of "perfection" and "simplification" are also outlined, providing clearly explicated coverage of key technical concepts within the framework as applied to grammatical phenomena. Taken as a whole, the collection both introduces and advances Minimalist theory for students and scholars in linguistics and related sub-disciplines of psychology, philosophy, and cognitive science, as well as offering new directions for future research for researchers in these fields.

This book brings together for the first time a series of previously published papers featuring Ian Roberts’ pioneering work on diachronic and comparative syntax over the last thirty years in one comprehensive volume. Divided into two parts, the volume engages in recent key topics in empirical studies of syntactic theory, with the eight papers on diachronic syntax addressing major changes in the history of English as well as broader aspects of syntactic change, including the introduction to the formal approach to grammaticalisation, and the eight papers on comparative syntax exploring head-movement, the nature and distribution of clitics, and the nature of parametric variation and change. This comprehensive collection of the author’s body of research on diachronic and comparative syntax is an essential resource for scholars and researchers in theoretical, comparative, and historical linguistics.

Noam Chomsky, der laut New York Times bedeutendste Intellektuelle der Gegenwart, hat nicht nur die Wissenschaft von der Sprache und die Theorie des menschlichen Geistes revolutioniert; seine Annahmen über die Natur des Menschen haben ihn zu vehementen Plädoyers für Freiheit und Demokratie veranlasst und politische Analysen und Aktivitäten motiviert, die u.a. die Rolle des Staates und die Funktion der Demokratie betreffen. Die Beiträge dieses Buches befassen sich mit den wichtigsten Themen seines politischen Werkes: Die Natur des Menschen und die Entstehung gesellschaftlicher Institutionen Die Beziehung des Individuums zum Staat und der Kern von Chomskys anarchistischer Theorie des Staates Menschenrechte und der Begriff der Freiheit Macht und Widerstand Mit Beiträgen von Robert Barsky, Željko Bošković, Jean Bricmont, Günther Grewendorf, Georg Meggle, Milan Rai, Tom Roeper, Michael Schiffmann und Juan Uriagereka.

This book collects some of the most significant articles by Adriana Belletti published over the last ten years or so, offering readers a useful tool to see the mutual enrichment between linguistic theory and experimental studies on (modes of) language acquisition through her work. The volume explores domains of theoretical morphosyntax in the generative tradition and theoretically guided studies on language acquisition. An introduction specific to this volume contextualizes these contributions within ongoing developments in the field. Part I presents studies inspired by the illuminating interchange between linguistic theory and experimentation in the domain of language acquisition, leading to the formulation of explicit research questions tested experimentally and guiding in the proper interpretation of the results. Part II offers refined, detailed theoretical analyses of domains in which peripheral positions in the clause structures are crucially involved to express discourse contents, in sometimes not standard ways during development. Demonstrating how refined linguistic analyses play a crucial role in interpretating the peculiar shape of developmental data, this book will be of interest to scholars in syntax, language acquisition, and theoretical linguistics.

Biolinguistics is a highly interdisciplinary field that seeks the rapprochement between linguistics and biology. Linking theoretical linguistics, theoretical biology, genetics, neuroscience and cognitive psychology, this book offers a collection of chapters situating the enterprise conceptually, highlighting both the promises and challenges of the field, and chapters focusing on the challenges and prospects of taking interdisciplinarity seriously. It provides concrete illustrations of some of the cutting-edge research in biolinguistics and piques the interest of undergraduate students looking for a field to major in and inspires graduate students on possible research directions. It is also meant to show to specialists in adjacent fields how a particular strand of theoretical linguistics relates to their concerns, and in so doing, the book intends to foster collaboration across disciplines. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.