Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars write by John A. Hawkins. This book was released on 2004-11-04. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. John Hawkins demonstrates a clear link between how languages are used and the conventions of their grammars. He sets out a theory in which performance shapes grammars and accounts for the variation patterns found in the world's languages.
Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars
Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars write by John A. Hawkins. This book was released on 2004-11-05. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book addresses a question fundamental to any discussion of grammatical theory and grammatical variation: to what extent can principles of grammar be explained through language use? John A. Hawkins argues that there is a profound correspondence between performance data and the fixed conventions of grammars. Preferences and patterns found in the one, he shows, are reflected in constraints and variation patterns in the other. The theoretical consequences of the proposed 'performance-grammar correspondence hypothesis' are far-reaching — for current grammatical formalisms, for the innateness hypothesis, and for psycholinguistic models of performance and learning. Drawing on empirical generalizations and insights from language typology, generative grammar, psycholinguistics, and historical linguistics, Professor Hawkins demonstrates that the assumption that grammars are immune to performance is false. He presents detailed empirical case studies and arguments for an alternative theory in which performance has shaped the conventions of grammars and thus the variation patterns found in the world's languages. The innateness of language, he argues, resides primarily in the mechanisms human beings have for processing and learning it. This important book will interest researchers in linguistics (including typology and universals, syntax, grammatical theory, historical linguistics, functional linguistics, and corpus linguistics), psycholinguistics (including parsing, production, and acquisition), computational linguistics (including language-evolution modelling and electronic corpus development); and cognitive science (including the modeling of the performance-competence relationship, pragmatics, and relevance theory).
Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable
Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable write by Geoffrey Sampson. This book was released on 2009-02-26. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book presents a challenge to the widely-held assumption that human languages are both similar and constant in their degree of complexity. For a hundred years or more the universal equality of languages has been a tenet of faith among most anthropologists and linguists. It has been frequently advanced as a corrective to the idea that some languages are at a later stage of evolution than others. It also appears to be an inevitable outcome of one of the central axioms of generative linguistic theory: that the mental architecture of language is fixed and is thus identical in all languages and that whereas genes evolve languages do not. Language Complexity as an Evolving Variable reopens the debate. Geoffrey Sampson's introductory chapter re-examines and clarifies the notion and theoretical importance of complexity in language, linguistics, cognitive science, and evolution. Eighteen distinguished scholars from all over the world then look at evidence gleaned from their own research in order to reconsider whether languages do or do not exhibit the same degrees and kinds of complexity. They examine data from a wide range of times and places. They consider the links between linguistic structure and social complexity and relate their findings to the causes and processes of language change. Their arguments are frequently controversial and provocative; their conclusions add up to an important challenge to conventional ideas about the nature of language. The authors write readably and accessibly with no recourse to unnecessary jargon. This fascinating book will appeal to all those interested in the interrelations between human nature, culture, and language.
Cross-Linguistic Variation and Efficiency
Cross-Linguistic Variation and Efficiency - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Cross-Linguistic Variation and Efficiency write by John A. Hawkins. This book was released on 2014. Cross-Linguistic Variation and Efficiency available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book argues that major patterns of variation across languages are structured by general principles of efficiency in language use and communication, an approach that has far-reaching theoretical consequences for issues such as ease of processing, language universals, complexity, and competing and cooperating principles.
Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations
Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations write by Pirkko Suihkonen. This book was released on 2012. Argument Structure and Grammatical Relations available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This book is a collection of articles dealing with various aspects of grammatical relations and argument structure in the languages of Europe and North and Central Asia (LENCA). Topics covered with respect to individual languages are: split-intransitivity (Basque), causativization (Agul), transitives and causatives (Korean and Japanese), aspectual domain and quantification (Finnish and Udmurt), head-marking principles (Athabaskan languages), and pragmatics (Eastern Khanty and Xibe). Typology of argument-structure properties of 'give' (LENCA), typology of agreement systems, asymmetry in argument structure, typology of the Amdo Sprachbund, spatial realtors (Northeastern Turkic), core argument patterns (languages of Northern California), and typology of grammatical relations (LENCA) are the topics of articles based on cross-linguistic data. The broad empirical sweep and the fine-tuned theoretical analysis highlight the central role of argument structure and grammatical relations with respect to a plethora of linguistic phenomena.
