LINGUIST List 8.729

Thu May 15 1997

Books: Syntax

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <annlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. MITP Publicity, Syntax

The following is a book which readers of this list might find of
interest. For more information please visit
http://www-mitpress.mit.edu/mitp/recent-books/new-releases.html

Elementary Operations and Optimal Derivations
Hisatsugu Kitahara

In Elementary Operations and Optimal Derivations, Hisatsugu Kitahara
advances Noam Chomsky's Minimalist Program (1995) with a number of
innovative proposals. The analysis is primarily concerned with the
elementary operations of the computational system for human language
and with the principles of Universal Grammar that constrain
derivations generated by that system. Many conditions previously
assumed to be axiomatic are deduced from the interaction of more
fundamental principles of Universal Grammar.

Kitahara first unifies disparate syntactic operations by appeal to
more elementary operations. He then determines the set of optimal
derivations involving only legitimate steps and demonstrates how,
without stipulation, these derivations characterize a number of
linguistic expressions that have long occupied the center of syntactic
investigation.

This monograph also includes a clear explication of the distinct but
closely related analyses presented in Chomsky's work of the early
1990s. This exposition makes the book attractive to the general
linguistic reader as well as the professional syntactician.

Linguistic Inquiry Monograph 31
May 1997
160 pp.
ISBN 0-262-61129-5

MIT Press*55 Hayward Street*Cambridge, MA 02142*(617)625-8569