21.4675, Books: Phonology/Syntax: Nevins

Sun Nov 21 04:17:49 UTC 2010

LINGUIST List: Vol-21-4675. Sat Nov 20 2010. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 21.4675, Books: Phonology/Syntax: Nevins

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1)
Date: 16-Nov-2010
From: David Weininger [dgw at mit.edu]
Subject: Locality in Vowel Harmony: Nevins

-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 2010 23:16:55
From: David Weininger [dgw at mit.edu]
Subject: Locality in Vowel Harmony: Nevins

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Title: Locality in Vowel Harmony 
Series Title: Linguistic Inquiry Monographs  

Publication Year: 2010 
Publisher: MIT Press
	   http://mitpress.mit.edu/

Book URL: http://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262513685 

Author: Andrew I. Nevins

Hardback: ISBN: 0262140977 9780262140973 Pages: 272 Price: U.S. $ 60
Paperback: ISBN: 0262513684 9780262513685 Pages: 272 Price: U.S. $ 30

Abstract:

Vowel harmony results from a set of restrictions that determine the possible 
and impossible sequences of vowels within a word. The study of syntax 
begins with the observation that the words of a sentence cannot go in just 
any order, and the study of phonology begins with the same observation for 
the consonants and vowels of a word. In this book, Andrew Nevins 
investigates long-distance relations between vowels in vowel harmony 
systems across a range of languages, with the aim of demonstrating that the 
locality conditions that regulate these relations can be attributed to the same 
principle that regulates long-distance syntactic dependencies. He argues that 
vowel harmony represents a manifestation of the Agree algorithm for feature-
valuation (formulated by Chomsky in 2000), as part of an overarching effort to 
show that phonology can be described in terms of the principles of the 
Minimalist Program.

Nevins demonstrates that the principle of target-driven search, the 
phenomenon of defective intervention, and the principles regulating the size 
of the domain over which dependencies are computed apply to both 
phonological and syntactic phenomena. Locality in Vowel Harmony offers 
phonologists new evidence that viewing vowel harmony through the lens of 
relativized minimality has the potential to unify different levels of linguistic 
representation and different domains of empirical inquiry in a unified 
framework. Moreover, Nevins's specific implementation of the locality of 
dependencies represents a major advance in understanding constraints on 
possible harmonic languages.

An online tool on the MIT Press Web site demonstrates the algorithm for 
calculating vowel harmony with the derivations exemplified in the book. 

Linguistic Field(s): Phonology
                     Syntax

Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=51506

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