Grammatical theory

Viac o knihe

This book presents formal grammar theories relevant to contemporary linguistic theorizing, including Phrase Structure Grammar, Transformational Grammar, Government & Binding, Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar, Categorial Grammar, Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar, Construction Grammar, and Tree Adjoining Grammar. Key assumptions are clarified, illustrating how each theory addresses arguments and adjuncts, active/passive alternation, local reorderings, verb placement, and long-distance constituent fronting, with German as the primary example. The second part evaluates these theories in terms of their predictions about language acquisition and psycholinguistic plausibility. It critically examines the nativism hypothesis, which posits that humans have innate language-specific knowledge, while discussing alternative language acquisition models. Additionally, it explores contentious topics in current theory, such as the appropriateness of flat versus binary branching structures, the treatment of constructions at the phrasal or lexical level, and the role of abstract, non-visible entities in syntactic analyses. The book demonstrates that analyses across different frameworks are often translatable. It concludes by discussing how shared properties among all languages or specific language classes can be understood.