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Description:
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Syntactic Carpentry: An Emergentist Approach to Syntax presents a
ground-breaking 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 structure, co-reference, control, agreement,
contraction, and extraction) follow from the operation of a linear,
efficiency-driven processor. This in turn leads to a compelling new view of
sentence formation that subsumes syntactic theory into the theory of
sentence processing, eliminating grammar in the traditional sense from the
study of the language faculty.
With this volume O'Grady advances a growing body of literature on
emergentist approaches to language, and situates this work in a broader
picture that also includes attention to key issues in the study of language
acquisition, psycholinguistics, and agrammaticism. This book constitutes
essential reading for anyone interested in syntax and its place in the
larger enterprise of cognitive science.
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