The Fundamentally Simple Logic of Language: Learning a Second Language with the Tools of the Native Speaker

The Fundamentally Simple Logic of Language: Learning a Second Language with the Tools of the Native Speaker presents a data-driven approach to understanding how native speakers do not use subject and direct object to process language.

Native speakers know who does what in a sentence by applying intuitively two simple inferences that are argued to be part of universal grammar. The book explains and exemplifies these two inferences throughout. These two inferences explain the native speaker’s ease of acquisition and use, and answer difficult questions for linguistics (transitivity, case, semantic roles) in such a way that undergraduate students and second language learners can understand these concepts and apply them to their own language acquisition. While Spanish is used as the primary example, the theory can be applied to many other languages.

This book will appeal to teachers and learners of any second language, as well as linguists interested in second language acquisition, in second language teaching, and in argument structure.

Luis H. González is Professor of Spanish and Linguistics at Wake Forest University. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis. His main areas of research are semantic roles, case, reflexivization, clitic doubling, differential object marking, dichotomies in languages, Spanish linguistics, and second language learning. He is the co-author of one book and the author of three other books:

• Gramática para la composición. 2016. 3rd ed. Washington: Georgetown University Press. A Spanish advanced grammar and writing textbook, now in its third edition. Co-authored with M. Stanley Whitley.
• Cómo entender y cómo enseñar por y para. 2020. London: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/9780367688295
• Four Dichotomies in Spanish: Adjective Position, Adjectival Clauses, Ser/Estar, and Preterite/Imperfect. 2021. London: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/9780367517281

• The Fundamentally Simple Logic of Language: Learning a Second Language with the Tools of the Native Speaker. 2021. London: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/9780367347819