This book presents a pioneering new theory of grammar, which explains a wide variety of sentence types across languages.

Supported by data from linguistic fieldwork conducted in the Faroe Islands and Iceland, this book presents a pioneering approach to syntactic analysis, 'Optimal Linking Grammar' (OLG), which brings together two existing models, Linking Theory and Optimality Theory (OT). OT, which assumes spoken language to be based on the highest-ranking outcome from a number of competing underlying constraints, has been central mainly to phonology; however its application to syntax has also gained ground in recent years. OLG not only provides a robust account of case-marking phenomena in Faroese and Icelandic; it also explains a wide range of sentence types, including passives, ditransitives, object shift, and word order variation. The book demonstrates how OLG can resolve numerous issues in competing theories of formal syntax, and how it might be successfully applied to other languages in future research. It is essential reading for researchers and students in syntax, morphology, sociolinguistics, and European languages.

The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon.

Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) is a nontransformational theory of linguistic structure, first developed in the 1970s by Joan Bresnan and Ronald M. Kaplan, which assumes that language is best described and modeled by parallel structures representing different facets of linguistic organization and information, related by means of functional correspondences. This volume has five parts. Part I, Overview and Introduction, provides an introduction to core syntactic concepts and representations. Part II, Grammatical Phenomena, reviews LFG work on a range of grammatical phenomena or constructions. Part III, Grammatical modules and interfaces, provides an overview of LFG work on semantics, argument structure, prosody, information structure, and morphology. Part IV, Linguistic disciplines, reviews LFG work in the disciplines of historical linguistics, learnability, psycholinguistics, and second language learning. Part V, Formal and computational issues and applications, provides an overview of computational and formal properties of the theory, implementations, and computational work on parsing, translation, grammar induction, and treebanks. Part VI, Language families and regions, reviews LFG work on languages spoken in particular geographical areas or in particular language families. The final section, Comparing LFG with other linguistic theories, discusses LFG work in relation to other theoretical approaches.

Second Language Acquisition : introduces the key areas in the field, including: multilingualism, the role of teaching, the mental processing of multiple languages, and patterns of growth and decline explores the key theories and debates and elucidates areas of controversy gathers together influential readings from key names in the discipline, including: Vivian Cook, William E. Dunn and James P. Lantolf, S.P. Corder, and Nina Spada and Patsy Lightbown. Written by experienced teachers and researchers in the field, Second Language Acquisition is an essential resource for students and researchers of applied linguistics.

This book investigates the morphosyntactic, semantic, and pragmatic properties of language, and the interactions between them, from the perspective of Optimality Theory. It integrates optimization processes into the formal and functional study of grammar, interpreting optimization as the result of conflicting, violable ranked constraints. Unlike previous work on the topic, this book also takes into account the question of directionality of grammar. A model of grammar in which optimization processes interact bidirectionally allows both language generation-the process of selecting the optimal form of a given meaning-and language interpretation-the process of optimal interpretation of a given form-to be taken into account. Chapters in this volume explore the consequences of both symmetric (unidirectional) and asymmetric (bidirectional) versions of Optimality Theory, investigating the syntax-semantics interface, first language acquisition, and sequential bilingual grammars. The volume presents cutting edge research in Optimality-Theoretic syntax and semantics, as well as demonstrating how optimization processes as modelled in this formalism serve as a viable approach for linguists and scholars in related fields.

These books are ideal for homeschooling and for tutoring.