Universal Grammar In The Reconstruction Of Ancient Languages
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Universal Grammar in the Reconstruction of Ancient Languages
Philologists aiming to reconstruct the grammar of ancient languages face the problem that the available data always underdetermine grammar, and in the case of gaps, possible mistakes, and idiosyncracies there are no native speakers to consult. The authors of this volume overcome this difficulty by adopting the methodology that a child uses in the course of language acquisition: they interpret the data they have access to in terms of Universal Grammar (more precisely, in terms of a hypothetical model of UG). Their studies, discussing syntactic and morphosyntactic questions of Older Egyptian, Coptic, Sumerian, Akkadian, Biblical Hebrew, Classical Greek, Latin, and Classical Sanskrit, demonstrate that descriptive problems which have proved unsolvable for the traditional, inductive approach can be reduced to the interaction of regular operations and constraints of UG. The proposed analyses also bear on linguistic theory. They provide crucial new data and new generalizations concerning such basic questions of generative syntax as discourse-motivated movement operations, the correlation of movement and agreement, a shift from lexical case marking to structural case marking, the licensing of structural case in infinitival constructions, the structure of coordinate phrases, possessive constructions with an external possessor, and the role of event structure in syntax. In addition to confirming or refuting certain specific hypotheses, they also provide empirical evidence of the perhaps most basic tenet of generative theory, according to which UG is part of the genetic endowment of the human species - i.e., human languages do not "develop" parallel with the development of human civilization. Some of the languages examined in this volume were spoken as much as 5000 years old, still their grammars do not differ in any relevant respect from the grammars of languages spoken today.
The Copy Theory of Movement
Author: Norbert Corver
language: en
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Release Date: 2007-06-27
This volume brings together papers which address issues regarding the copy theory of movement. According to this theory, a trace is a copy of the moved element that is deleted in the phonological component but is available for interpretation at L(ogical) F(orm). Thus far, the bulk of the research on the copy theory has mainly focused on interpretation issues at LF. The consequences of the copy theory for syntactic computation per se and for the syntax–phonology mapping, in particular, have received much less attention in the literature, despite its crucial relevance for the whole architecture of the model. As a contribution to fill this gap, this volume congregates recent work that deals with empirical and conceptual consequences of the copy theory of movement for the inner working of syntactic computations within the Minimalist Program, with special emphasis on the syntax–phonology mapping.
Afroasiatic Studies in Memory of Robert Hetzron
Author: Charles G. Häberl
language: en
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Release Date: 2009-05-27
Robert Hetzron first organized the North American Conference on Afroasiatic Linguistics (NACAL) at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1973 and passed away only six months after it had completed a quarter century of annual meetings. He would undoubtedly have been pleased to know that NACAL is still going strong, and that ten years after his passing it attracted no fewer than thirty-six scholars from the United States, Canada, and eight other countries, who presented on topics near and dear to his heart such as phonology, morphology, syntax, language contact, classification, subgrouping, and the history of scholarship, in languages such as Amharic, Arabic, Aramaic, Egyptian, Hebrew, Omotic, and others, as well as the groups to which they pertain. Since he established it, NACAL has served a unique role among the meetings of learned societies in North America. Only a handful of organizations worldwide hold annual meetings dedicated to Afroasiatic linguistics, and NACAL is one of a very small number of venues where linguists from all sub-disciplines and schools of thought meet to share their research. NACAL is also an academic nexus, a unique node at which graduate students at the beginning of their careers rub shoulders with the native speakers of the languages which they study and with the titans of their fields, men and women of an almost legendary stature such as Hetzron himself. This volume contains sixteen contributions from these scholars, on a broad cross-section of topics within the field of Afroasiatic linguistics.