Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars - John A.Hawkins.pdf

(12907 KB) Pobierz
Untitled
448697885.001.png
John Hawkins has long been a trail-blazer in the attempt to reconcile the results
of formal and functional linguistics. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars
charts new territory in this domain. The book argues persuasively that a small
number of performance-based principles combine to account for many gram-
matical constraints proposed by formal linguists and also explain the origins
of numerous typological generalizations discovered by functionalists.
FrederickJ.Newmeyer, University of Washington.
The central claim in Hawkins’s new book is that grammar facilitates language
processing. This rather natural idea is by no means novel: attempts to explain
aspects of linguistic structure on the basis of processing considerations go back
at least to the 1950s. But such attempts have characteristically been little more
than “just so stories” – that is, post hoc accounts of isolated observations. What
has been lacking until now is anything that could be called a theory of how
constraints on the human processor shape grammatical structure.
Hawkins has filled this lacuna. Starting with three very general and intuitive
principles about efficient processing of language, he derives a rich array of
predictions about what kinds of grammatical structures should be preferred.
He then adduces a wealth of evidence to demonstrate that his predictions hold.
His data are of a variety of types, including grammatical patterns in particu-
lar languages, typological tendencies, usage statistics from corpora, historical
changes, and psycholinguistic findings. The phenomena he deals with are sim-
ilarly varied, including word order, case making, filler-gap dependencies, island
constraints, and anaphoric binding.
Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars is a landmark work, setting a new
standard in the study of the relationship between linguistic competence and
performance.
Tom Wasow, Stanford University.
Hawkins argues that grammars are profoundly affected by the way humans
process language. He develops a simple but elegant theory of performance
and grammar by drawing on concepts and data from generative grammar, lin-
guistic typology, experimental psycholinguistics and historical linguistics. In
so doing, he also makes a laudable attempt to bridge the schism between the
two research traditions in linguistics, the formal and the functional. Efficiency
and Complexity in Grammars is a major contribution with far-reaching con-
sequences and implications for many of the fundamental issues in linguistic
theory. This is a tremendous piece of scholarship that no linguist can afford to
neglect.
Jae Jung Song, University of Otago.
This page intentionally left blank
Efficiency and
Complexity in
Grammars
JOHN A. HAWKINS
1
448697885.002.png
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai
Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi
São Paulo Shanghai Taipei Tokyo Toronto
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
© John A. Hawkins
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
ISBN 0–19–925268–8 (hbk.)
ISBN 0–19–925269–6 (pbk.)
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India
Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by
Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin