Language Acquisition And Syntactic Theory

Author : A.E. Pierce
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9401125740
Total Pages : 178 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory written by A.E. Pierce and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of language acquisition is a young but increasingly active field. Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory presents one of the first detailed studies of comparative syntax acquisition. It is informed by the view that linguists and acquisitionists are essentially working on the same problem, that of explaining grammar learnability. The author takes cross-linguistic data from child language as evidence for recent proposals in syntactic theory. Developments in the structure of children's sentences during the first few years of life are traced to changes in the setting of specific grammatical parameters. Some surprising differences between the early child grammars of French and English are uncovered, differences that can only be explained on the basis of subtle distinctions in inflectional structure. This motivates the author's claim that functional or nonthematic categories are represented in the grammars of very young children. The book also explores the relationship between acquisition and diachronic change in French and English. It is argued that findings in acquisition, when viewed from a parameter setting perspective, provide answers to important questions arising in the study of language change. The book promises to be of interest to all those involved in the formal, psychological or historical study of linguistic knowledge.

Author : A.E. Pierce
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 9789401051354
Total Pages : 0 pages
Book Rating : 4.56/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory written by A.E. Pierce and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-10-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The theory of language acquisition is a young but increasingly active field. Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory presents one of the first detailed studies of comparative syntax acquisition. It is informed by the view that linguists and acquisitionists are essentially working on the same problem, that of explaining grammar learnability. The author takes cross-linguistic data from child language as evidence for recent proposals in syntactic theory. Developments in the structure of children's sentences during the first few years of life are traced to changes in the setting of specific grammatical parameters. Some surprising differences between the early child grammars of French and English are uncovered, differences that can only be explained on the basis of subtle distinctions in inflectional structure. This motivates the author's claim that functional or nonthematic categories are represented in the grammars of very young children. The book also explores the relationship between acquisition and diachronic change in French and English. It is argued that findings in acquisition, when viewed from a parameter setting perspective, provide answers to important questions arising in the study of language change. The book promises to be of interest to all those involved in the formal, psychological or historical study of linguistic knowledge.

Author : (Vol.1)Barbara Lust
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 1317728831
Total Pages : 404 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition written by (Vol.1)Barbara Lust and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 2018-10-24 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Universal Grammar (UG) is a theory of both the fundamental principles for all possible languages and the language faculty in the "initial state" of the human organism. These two volumes approach the study of UG by joint, tightly linked studies of both linguistic theory and human competence for language acquisition. In particular, the volumes collect comparable studies across a number of different languages, carefully analyzed by a wide range of international scholars. The issues surrounding cross-linguistic variation in "Heads, Projections, and Learnability" (Volume 1) and in "Binding, Dependencies, and Learnability" (Volume 2) are arguably the most fundamental in UG. How can principles of grammar be learned by general learning theory? What is biologically programmed in the human species in order to guarantee their learnability? What is the true linguistic representation for these areas of language knowledge? What universals exist across languages? The two volumes summarize the most critical current proposals in each area, and offer both theoretical and empirical evidence bearing on them. Research on first language acquisition and formal learnability theory is placed at the center of debates relative to linguistic theory in each area. The convergence of research across several different disciplines -- linguistics, developmental psychology, and computer science -- represented in these volumes provides a paradigm example of cognitive science.

Author : Barbara Lust
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780805813517
Total Pages : 394 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition: Heads, projections, and learnability written by Barbara Lust and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Peter W. Culicover
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 9780198700234
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Nuts written by Peter W. Culicover and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 1999 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Author : Michaela Müller
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
ISBN 13 : 3640521498
Total Pages : 53 pages
Book Rating : 4.94/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition written by Michaela Müller and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2010-02-03 with total page 53 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2002 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,3 (A), University of Cologne (English Seminar), course: Hauptseminar Syntactic theory and first language acquisition, language: English, abstract: Heather's (26 months old) speech shows that she has already entered the later multi-word stage. She makes use of the three primary functional category systems (the D-system, the I-system and the C-system), which are projections of the corresponding functional categories (D, I and C).The core assumption of the X-bar model is that any word category X can function as the head of a phrase and can be projected into the corresponding phrasal category XP by addition of up to three different kinds of modifiers which are full phrasal constituents: complement, adjunct and specifier. Therefore, phrases in English have the schematic structure below: [x'' specifier [x' adjunct [x' [x head] complement/s]]] Functional category systems, in contrast to lexical category systems, lack semantic content, but have grammatical meaning. Furthermore, functional elements permit only one complement. All of these functional category systems consist of a head, a complement and a nonthematic specifier position and so have a symmetrical structure. The following essay will describe these systems of English and the use of nonthematic specifier positions in adult grammar.

Author : Barbara Lust
Publisher : Psychology Press
ISBN 13 : 9780805813500
Total Pages : 580 pages
Book Rating : 4.00/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Theory and First Language Acquisition: Binding, dependencies, and learnability written by Barbara Lust and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Philip Herdina
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 112 pages
Book Rating : 4.92/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Acquisition and Syntactic Theory written by Philip Herdina and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Noam Chomsky
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3112316002
Total Pages : 120 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Syntactic Structures written by Noam Chomsky and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-05-18 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

Author : Nina Hyams
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 9400946384
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Language Acquisition and the Theory of Parameters written by Nina Hyams and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is perhaps the most stunning available demonstration of the explanatory power of the parametric approach to linguistic theory. It is akin, not to a deductive proof, but to the discovery of a footprint in a far-off place which leaves an archeologist elated. The book is full of intricate reasoning, but the stunning aspect is that the reasoning moves between not only complex syntax and diverse languages, but it makes predictions about what two-year-old children will assume about the jumble of linguistic input that confronts them. Those predictions, Hyams shows, are supported by a discriminating analysis of acquisition data in English and Italian. Let us examine the linguistic context for a moment before we discuss her theory. The ultimate issue in linguistic theory is the explanation of how a child can acquire any human language. To capture this fact we must posit an innate mechanism which meets two opposite constraints: it must be broad enough to account for the diversity of human language, and narrow enough so that the child does not make irrelevant hypotheses about his own language, particularly ones from which there is no recovery. That is, a child must not posit a grammar which permits all of the sentences of a language as well as other sentences which are not in the language. In a word, the child must not create a language in which one cannot make adult discriminations between grammatical and ungrammatical.