1st Edition

Syntactic Carpentry An Emergentist Approach to Syntax

By William O'Grady Copyright 2005
246 Pages
by Routledge

248 Pages
by Routledge

Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergentist Approach to Syntax presents a groundbreaking approach to the study of sentence formation. Building on the emergentist thesis that the structure and use of language is shaped by more basic, non-linguistic forces—rather than by an innate Universal Grammar—William O'Grady shows how the defining properties of various core syntactic phenomena (phrase... Read more
Contents: Preface. Language Without Grammer. More on Structure Building. Pronoun Interpretation. Control. 'Raising' Structures. Agreement. Wh Questions. The Syntax of Contraction. Syntax and Processing. Language Acquisition. Concluding Remarks.

Biography

William O'Grady

"The subject matter of the book crosses many sub-disciplines of the language sciences, and so will appeal to a broad range of researchers. The book would make an excellent addition to graduate-level courses on syntax, language processing, and language acquisition."
Journal of Child Language

"O'Grady has produced an admirably clear and convincingly argued volume laying out the fundamentals of emergentist syntax thesis that the important properties of human language can be derived from general processing mechanisms. The author makes a compelling case that a number of traditional grammatical principles, including control and pronoun binding, which other syntactic approaches have postulated as part of Universal Grammar, are the result of the way in which sentences are constructed in real time."
Fred Eckman
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee