34.151, Books: Structure: Lasnik, Uriagereka

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-34-151. Wed Jan 18 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.151, Books: Structure: Lasnik, Uriagereka

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Editor for this issue: Maria Lucero Guillen Puon <luceroguillen at linguistlist.org>
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Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2023 16:34:13
From: Judith Bullent [jbullent at mit.edu]
Subject: Structure: Lasnik, Uriagereka

 


Title: Structure 
Subtitle: Concepts, Consequences, Interactions 
Publication Year: 2022 
Publisher: MIT Press
	   http://mitpress.mit.edu/
	

Book URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262544542/structure/ 


Author: Howard Lasnik
Author: Juan Uriagereka

Paperback: ISBN:  9780262544542 Pages: 248 Price: ----  $45


Abstract:

Natural phenomena, including human language, are not just series of events but
are organized quasi-periodically; sentences have structure, and that structure
matters.

Howard Lasnik and Juan Uriagereka “were there” when generative grammar was
being developed into the Minimalist Program. In this presentation of the
universal aspects of human language as a cognitive phenomenon, they rationally
reconstruct syntactic structure. In the process, they touch upon structure
dependency and its consequences for learnability, nuanced arguments (including
global ones) for structure presupposed in standard linguistic analyses, and a
formalism to capture long-range correlations. For practitioners, the authors
assess whether “all we need is Merge,” while for outsiders, they summarize
what needs to be covered when attempting to have structure “emerge.”

Reconstructing the essential history of what is at stake when arguing for
sentence scaffolding, the authors cover a range of larger issues, from the
traditional computational notion of structure (the strong generative capacity
of a system) and how far down into words it reaches to whether its variants,
as evident across the world's languages, can arise from non-generative
systems. While their perspective stems from Noam Chomsky's work, it does so
critically, separating rhetoric from results. They consider what they do to be
empirical, with the formalism being only a tool to guide their research (of
course, they want sharp tools that can be falsified and have predictive
power). Reaching out to skeptics, they invite potential collaborations that
could arise from mutual examination of one another's work, as they attempt to
establish a dialogue beyond generative grammar.
 



Linguistic Field(s): Syntax


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=167113




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