31.3765, Books: Born to Parse: Lightfoot

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-31-3765. Mon Dec 07 2020. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 31.3765, Books: Born to Parse: Lightfoot

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Date: Mon, 07 Dec 2020 23:50:09
From: Amy Harris [aeharris at mit.edu]
Subject: Born to Parse: Lightfoot

 


Title: Born to Parse 
Subtitle: How Children Select Their Languages 
Publication Year: 2020 
Publisher: MIT Press
	   http://mitpress.mit.edu/
	

Book URL: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/born-parse 


Author: David W. Lightfoot

Hardback: ISBN:  9780262044097 Pages: 210 Price: U.S. $ 30.00


Abstract:

In this book, David Lightfoot argues that just as some birds are born to
chirp, humans are born to parse—predisposed to assign linguistic structures to
their ambient external language. This approach to language acquisition makes
two contributions to the development of Minimalist thinking. First, it
minimizes grammatical theory, dispensing with three major entities:
parameters; an evaluation metric for the selection of grammars; and any
independent parsing mechanism. Instead, Lightfoot argues, children parse their
ambient external language using their internal language. Universal Grammar is
“open,” consistent with what children learn through parsing with their
internal language system. Second, this understanding of language acquisition
yields a new view of variable properties in language—properties that occur
only in certain languages. Under the open UG vision, very specific language
particularities arise in response to new parses. Both external and internal
languages play crucial, interacting roles: unstructured, amorphous external
language is parsed and an internal language system results.

Lightfoot explores case studies that show such innovative parses of external
language in the history of English: development of modal verbs, loss of verb
movement, and nineteenth-century changes in the syntax of the verb to be. He
then discusses how children learn through parsing; the role of parsing at the
syntactic structure's interface with the externalization system and logical
form; language change; and variable properties seen through the lens of an
open UG.
 



Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Written In: English  (eng)

See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/books/get-book.cfm?BookID=149553




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