A Theory of Syntax: Minimal Operations And Universal Grammar

Hornstein, Norbert

ISBN 10: 0521728819 / ISBN 13: 9780521728812

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2008

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: A Theory of Syntax: Minimal Operations And Universal Grammar
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521728819
• ISBN 13: 9780521728812
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Human language seems to have arisen roughly within the last 50-100,000 years. In evolutionary terms, this is the mere blink of an eye. If this is correct, then much of what we consider distinctive to language must in fact involve operations available in pre-linguistic cognitive domains. In this book Norbert Hornstein, one of the most influential linguists working on syntax, discusses a topical set of issues in syntactic theory, including a number of original proposals at the cutting edge of research in this area. He provides a theory of the basic grammatical operations and suggests that there is only one that is distinctive to language. If this theory is correct then this narrows the evolutionary gap between verbal and non-verbal primates, thus facilitating the rapid evolutionary emergence of our linguistic capacity.

About the Author

NORBERT HORNSTEIN is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has written several books on minimalist syntax including Understanding Minimalism (with J. Nunes and K. Grohmann, Cambridge, 2005) and Move!: A Minimalist Theory of Construal (2000).