syntactic carpentry an emergentist approach to syntax

[...]... understanding of how such factors might contribute to an explanation of the many puzzles associated with the nature and use of language The primary objective of this book is to advance the emergentist thesis by applying it to a difficult and important set of problems that arise in the syntax of natural language The particular idea that I explore is that the defining properties of many important syntactic phenomena... significant opposition to this sort of approach has begun to organize itself around the idea that the key properties of language are shaped by more basic nonlinguistic forces ranging from attention, memory, and physiology to pragmatics, perception, and processing pressures At this time, there is no definitive list of possible explanatory factors, and there is no more than a preliminary understanding... colleagues, and members of audiences to whom I have presented parts of this work I am especially grateful to Brian MacWhinney, who took the time to read and comment on several drafts My sincere thanks also go to Kevin Gregg, Mark Campana, and Woody Mott, each of whom commented extensively on earlier drafts of the mauscritpt I also owe a debt of gratitude to John Batali, Karl Diller, Fred Eckman, Jung-Hee... Schafer, Stan Starosta, the students in two of my syntax seminars, and several anonymous referees for their questions and suggestions My daughter Cathleen Marie helped in the preparation of the index, for which I am also very grateful Special thanks are also due to Cathleen Petree, Sondra Guideman, and the editorial team at Lawrence Erlbaum Associates for their wonderful support and assistance during... exposition of the emergentist idea for syntax, the key chapters are one, three (sections 1 to 3), four, six (sections 1 to 3), eight (sections 1 & 2), and nine through eleven Throughout these chapters, my goal will be to measure the prospects of the emergentist approach against the phenomena themselves, and not (directly) against the UG-based approach A systematic comparison of the two approaches is an entirely... supports knowledge of facts and events in general (e.g., Ullman 2001:718) The computational system provides a set of operations for combining lexical items, permitting speakers of a language to construct and understand an unlimited number of sentences, including some that are extraordinarily complex It corresponds roughly to what we normally think of as syntax, and is arguably an instance of the sort of procedural... for languages such as English to have prepositions rather than postpositions, since this allows the head of the PP to occur adjacent to the verb that selects it (13) V [P NP] (e.g., go to Paris) (cf V [NP P]) By the same reasoning, it makes sense for a verb-final language such as Korean to have postpositions rather than prepositions 12 (14) CHAPTER 1 [NP P] V (e.g., Korean Paris-ey ka, lit 'Paris -to. .. need for grammar, can yield new insights into the workings of nature's mysteries, even if it does not definitively solve them I recognize that not all readers will wish to delve into the details of syntactic analysis to the same degree For those seeking a more general synopsis of the emergentist program for syntax, there are two possibilities One is to focus on the following chapters and sections Chapter... intriguing and exciting aspect of grammar-based research on language lies in its commitment to the existence of Universal Grammar (UG), an inborn facultyspecific grammatical system consisting of the categories and principles common in one form or another to all human languages The best known versions of this idea have been formulated within the Principles and Parameters framework—first Government and Binding... of speech and comprehension is left to a theory of 'carpentry' that includes a different set of mechanisms and principles (parsing strategies, for instance) My view is different Put simply, when it comes to sentences, there are no architects; there are only carpenters They design as they build, limited only by the materials available to them and by the need to complete their work as quickly and efficiently . explanatory factors, and there is no more than a preliminary understanding of how such factors might contribute to an explanation of the many puzzles associated with the nature and. attest to the accuracy and integrity of this document Date: 2005.06.14 11:18:23 +08'00' Syntactic Carpentry An Emergentist Approach to Syntax This page intentionally left blank Syntactic. William D. (William Delaney), 1952- Syntactic carpentry : an emergentist approach to syntax / William O'Grady p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8058-4959-9