Customer Reviews

Chomsky's Universal Grammar: An Introduction

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Government and Binding Theory (GB), though Chomsky prefers it to be called the Principle and Parameter Theory, is the most popular version of Chomsky's grammar in 1980s'. This book is an easy reading to cover every important part of GB. All significant terms are highlighted in a shaded block, which is very convenient for the reader to check up. In particular, the last chapter of the book provides a brief but clear explanation for the current version of Chomsky's theory, i.e., the Minimalist Program (MP). The chapter is a good help for the reader who want to transit from GB to MP, though he would be quite surprising to see that almost all key concepts in GB, such as D-structure, S-structure, Government, disappear in MP. This is a good introductory book both about the GB and MP framework.

Although I am not a Chomskyan, I personally am fond of this book. It is well-written and lucid, presenting basic Government & Binding theory in terms that are very easy to understand. I doubt a single non-technical introduction to generative grammar of this brevity and clarity has yet been written (far superior to Pinker's hand-waving in _The Language Instinct_), and I recommend it to anyone, non-generative linguist and non-linguist alike, who is interested in current mainstream linguistics in North America.

However, Cook does seem worshipful of Chomsky to a degree that is just short of disturbing; Chomsky is frequently quoted more as authority than for argument, and does indeed appear on almost every page. The overall affect was, for me, disquieting.

It is also, of course, no longer accurate: "Chomsky's" Universal Grammar is now the Minimalist Program, which is handled only by a final, tacked-on chapter. Cook should completely update this book with a third edition that starts with Chomsky's current theory from the beginning.

this book contains a few gems, mostly from Chomsky, but the authors write very bad english!