In this paper,(1) I will restrict the term ""linguistic theory"" to systems of hypotheses concerning the general features of human language put forth in an attempt to account for a certain range of linguistic phenomena. I will not be concerned with systems of terminology or methods of investigation (analytic procedures). The central fact to which any significant linguistic theory must address itself is this: a mature speaker can produce a new sentence of his language on the appropriate occasion, and other speakers can understand it immediately, though it is equally new to them. Most of our li.

Essays by leading theoretical linguists—including Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Richard Kayne, Howard Lasnik, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Henk van Riemsdijk, and Edwin Williams—reflect on Jean-Roger Vergnaud's influence in the field and discuss current theoretical issues Jean-Roger Vergnaud's work on the foundational issues in linguistics has proved influential over the past three decades. At MIT in 1974, Vergnaud (now holder of the Andrew W. Mellon Professorship in Humanities at the University of Southern California) made a proposal in his Ph.D. thesis that has since become, in somewhat modified form, the standard analysis for the derivation of relative clauses. Vergnaud later integrated the proposal within a broader theory of movement and abstract case. These topics have remained central to theoretical linguistics. In this volume, essays by leading theoretical linguists attest to the importance of Jean-Roger Vergnaud's contributions to linguistics. The essays first discuss issues in syntax, documenting important breakthroughs in the development of the principles and parameters framework and including a famous letter (unpublished until recently) from Vergnaud to Noam Chomsky and Howard Lasnik commenting on the first draft of their 1977 paper “Filters and Controls.” Vergnaud's writings on phonology (which, the editors write, “take a definite syntactic turn”) have also been influential, and the volume concludes with two contributions to that field. The essays, rewarding from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, not only offer insight into Vergnaud's impact on the field but also describe current work on the issues he introduced into the scholarly debate. Contributors Joseph Aoun, Elabbas Benmamoun, Cedric Boeckx, Noam Chomsky, B. Elan Dresher, Robert Freidin, Morris Halle, Norbert Hornstein, Richard S. Kayne, Samuel Jay Keyser, Howard Lasnik, Yen-hui Audrey Li, M. Rita Manzini, Karine Megerdoomian, David Michaels, Henk van Riemsdijk, Alain Rouveret, Leonardo M. Savoia, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, Edwin Williams

The present volume consists of nine articles dealing with the role of the constituent 'phonological word' (or 'prosodic word') in various typologically diverse languages. These languages and their respective families subsume Indo-European (Dutch, German, English, European Portuguese), Bantu (SiSwati, KiNande), Algonquian (Cree), Siouan (Dakota), and Salishan (Lushootseed). One contribution examines the phonological word in a sign language. The theoretical issues dealt with in the book include: evidence for the phonological word (e.g. rules, phonotactics, syllabification, stress patterns), the connection between morphosyntactic and prosodic structure (e.g. alignment phenomena in Optimality Theory), and the relationship between the phonological word and other prosodic constituents (e.g. the prosodic representation of clitics).The volume will be of interest to all linguists and advanced students of linguistics working on Prosodic Phonology, phonology–morphology and phonology–syntax interface and Optimality Theory.

This volume presents nine of today's grammatical theories with a view to comparing their starting points and their methods. The particular features and properties of each theory are discussed in this book, as well as the major conceptual differences and methodological obstacles each has overcome and has yet to overcome. The parallel structure of the papers makes for easy comparison and cross-reference. This systematic and thorough introduction to the recent history of the discipline provides a state-of-the-art report on current leading tendencies as well as a wealth of directions for future research.

This volume presents new developments in cognitive grammar and explores its descriptive and explanatory potential with respect to a wide range of language phenomena. These include the formation and use of locationals, causative constructions, adjectival and nominal expressions of oriented space, morphological layering, tense and aspect, and extended uses of verbal predicates. There is also a section on the affinities between cognitive grammar an early linguistic theories, both ancient and modern.

In any course of historical and comparative linguistics there will be students of different language backgrounds, different levels of linguistic training, and different theoretical orientation. This textbook attempts to mitigate the problems raised by this heterogeneity in a number of ways. Since it is impossible to treat the language or language family of special interest to every student, the focus of this book is on English in particular and Indo-European languages in general, with Finnish and its closely related languages for contrast. The tenets of different schools of linguistics, and the controversies among them, are treated eclectically and objectively; the examination of language itself plays the leading role in our efforts to ascertain the comparative value of competing theories. This revised edition (1989) of a standard work for comparative linguists offers an added introduction dealing mainly with a semiotic basis of change, a final chapter on aspects of explanation, particularly in historical and human disciplines, and added sections on comparative syntax and on the semiotic status of the comparative method.