Linguists have standardly assumed that grammar is about identifying all and only the 'good' sentences of a language, which implies that there must be other, 'bad' sentences - but in practice most linguists know that it is hard to pin those down. The standard assumption is no more than an assumption. A century ago, grammarians did not think about their subject that way, and our book shows that the older idea was right: linguists can and should dispense with the concept 'starred sentence'. We draw on corpus data in order to support a different model of grammar, in which individuals refine positive grammatical habits to greater or lesser extents in diverse and unpredictable directions, but nothing is ever ruled out. Languages are not merely alternative methods of verbalizing universal logical forms. We use empirical evidence to shed light on the routes by which school-age children gradually expand their battery of grammatical resources, which turn out to be sometimes counter-intuitive. Our rejection of the 'starred sentence' concept has attracted considerable discussion, and we summarize the reactions and respond to our critics. The contrasting models of grammar described in this book entail contrasting pictures of human nature; our closing chapter shows that grammatical theory is not value-neutral but has an ethical dimension.

At the outset, the goal of generative grammar was the explication of an intuitive concept grammaticality (Chomsky 1957:13). But psychological goals have become primary, referred to as “linguistic competence”, “language faculty”, or, more recently, “I-language”. Kac argues for the validity of the earlier goal of grammaticality and for a specific view of the relationship between the abstract, nonpsychological study of grammar and the investigation of the language faculty. The method of the book involves a formalization of traditional grammar, with emphasis on etiological analysis, that is, providing a “diagnosis” for any ungrammatical string of the type of ungrammaticality involved. Part I justifies this view and makes the logical foundations of etiological analysis explicit. Part II applies the theory to a diverse body of typically generativist data, among which are aspects of the English complement system and some problematic phenomena in coordinate structures. The volume includes pedagogical exercises and especially intriguing is a large analysis problem, originally constructed by Gerlad Sanders using data from Nama Hottentot, which exposes the reader to a syntax of extraordinary beauty.

He then assesses the status of judgments as reliable indicators of a speaker's grammar.

Newmeyer persuasively defends the controversial theory of transformational generative grammar. Grammatical Theory is for every linguist, philosopher, or psychologist who is skeptical of generative grammar and wants to learn more about it. Newmeyer's formidable scholarship raises the level of debate on transformational generative grammar. He stresses the central importance of an autonomous formal grammar, discusses the limitations of "discourse-based" approaches to syntax, cites support for generativist theory in recent research, and clarifies misunderstood concepts associated with generative grammar.

No detailed description available for "Syntactic Structures".

Grammar and Context: considers how grammatical choices influence and are influenced by the context in which communication takes place examines the interaction of a wide variety of contexts - including socio-cultural, situational and global influences includes a range of different types of grammar - functional, pedagogic, descriptive and prescriptive explores grammatical features in a lively variety of communicative contexts, such as advertising, dinner-table talk, email and political speeches gathers together influential readings from key names in the discipline, including: David Crystal, M.A.K. Halliday, Joanna Thornborrow, Ken Hyland and Stephen Levey. The accompanying website to this book can be found at http: //www.routledge.com/textbooks/0415310814/

The Psycholinguistics of Bilingualism presents a comprehensive introduction to the foundations of bilingualism, covering language processing, language acquisition, cognition and the bilingual brain. This thorough introduction to the psycholinguistics of bilingualism is accessible to non-specialists with little previous exposure to the field Introduces students to the methodological approaches currently employed in the field, including observation, experimentation, verbal and computational modelling, and brain imaging Examines spoken and written language processing, simultaneous and successive language acquisition, bilingual memory and cognitive effects, and neurolinguistic and neuro-computational models of the bilingual brain Written in an accessible style by two of the field’s leading researchers, together with contributions from internationally-renowned scholars Featuring chapter-by-chapter research questions, this is an essential resource for those seeking insights into the bilingual mind and our current knowledge of the cognitive basis of bilingualism