Simpler Syntax [Paperback]

Peter W. Culicover (Author), Ray Jackendoff (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0199271097 | ISBN-13: 978-0199271092 | Publication Date: September 15, 2005 | Edition: 1

This groundbreaking book offers a new and compelling perspective on the structure of human language. The fundamental issue it addresses is the proper balance between syntax and semantics, between structure and derivation, and between rule systems and lexicon. It argues that the balance struck by mainstream generative grammar is wrong. It puts forward a new basis for syntactic theory, drawing on a wide range of frameworks, and charts new directions for research.
In the past four decades, theories of syntactic structure have become more abstract, and syntactic derivations have become ever more complex. Peter Culicover and Ray Jackendoff trace this development through the history of contemporary syntactic theory, showing how much it has been driven by theory-internal rather than empirical considerations. They develop an alternative that is responsive to linguistic, cognitive, computational, and biological concerns.

Simpler Syntax is addressed to linguists of all persuasions. It will also be of central interest to those concerned with language in psychology, human biology, evolution, computational science, and artificial intelligence.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Simpler Syntax is a very rich book, both in its basic content--over 500 pages worth--and in its generous provision of food for thought. It should prove thought-provoking not just for scholars working within generative linguistics, for whom it will provide many novel and insightful solutions to some very old questions within that paradigm, but also for linguists from outside the generative tradition, who will find in it one of the very few historically and applicationally contextualised accounts of the preoccupations of generative linguistics."--Linguist List 17.718

"This book is a major step forward for linguistics. Its systematic, accessible style of analysis heralds a renaissance in syntax, not just for specialists but for everyone."--Mark Liberman, University of Pennsylvania

"Two master syntacticians show how far current syntactic theory has lost touch with reality--and how to reconnect. A brilliant book, inspiring new optimism about the field."--Geoffrey K. Pullum, University of California, Santa Cruz

About the Author

Peter W. Culicover is Chair of the Department of Linguistics and former Director of the Center for Cognitive Science at the Ohio State University. His books include Formal Principles of Language Acquisition (1980, with Kenneth Wexler), Principles and Parameters (1997), Syntactic Nuts (1999), and Dynamical Grammar (2003, with Andrzej Nowak).

Ray Jackendoff is Professor of Philosophy and Co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He was previously Professor of Linguistics at Brandeis University. His books include Semantics and Cognition (1983), Consciousness and the Computational Mind (1987), A Generative Theory of Tonal Music (1982, with Fred Lerdahl), and Foundations of Language (2002). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a past president of the Linguistic Association of America and of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1 edition (September 15, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199271097
• ISBN-13: 978-0199271092
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,604,395 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

57 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A difficult but rewarding read, December 29, 2005

By 

Prof D. V. Bishop (Oxford, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Simpler Syntax (Paperback)

The title 'Simpler Syntax' means simpler than syntax as implemented in Chomskyan mainstream generative grammar. The book is not at all simple, and readers who are not already familiar with arcane linguistic concepts such as c-command, theta roles, pied-piping, and pro-drop, will soon become lost. I'm not a linguist, but I've tried to follow mainstream linguistics over the years and I could follow enough of this book to see that the authors were saying something very important, despite the complexity of the arguments, which were illustrated with alternative analyses of a wide range of linguistic constructions.
The authors have in-depth knowledge of Chomskyan theory and what they've done here is to argue that it went wrong years ago in some of its foundational assymptions. They reject core notions, such as the idea that branching is binary, that movement is involved in syntactic derivations, that there is a distinction between periphery and core, and that syntax is the sole generative component. The result is that the syntax gets a lot simpler, though the semantics gets more complicated. For a psychologist the argument they present is very persuasive: their analyses are intuitively far more appealing than the fiendishly complex syntactic trees that you get from mainstream generative grammar - one can get a sense of how children might learn a language conceptualised this way, and how the brain might process it. This is essentially a processing account. The numerous examples are pretty challenging for the reader, but I can see they are essential to make the case - and they demonstrate a remarkable range of knowledge and depth of scholarship in the authors.
Finally, a very unusual feature, for a book in this field, is that the authors attempt to compare and contrast different linguistic approaches, noting what is useful about different analyses, and avoiding the kind of confrontational argument that all too often has led to overheated and sterile debate.
I had always felt uncomfortable with the sheer implausibility of Chomskyan accounts of language and its acquisition: this book explains why and offers an alternative.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Compelling, but not New, October 8, 2008

By 

M. Aubrey "Hellenistic Linguist" (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Simpler Syntax (Paperback)

The description tells you that,

"This groundbreaking book offers a new and compelling perspective on the structure of human language."

Its true, it is a compelling perspective and in many ways, its groundbreaking too. But its not a new perspective. In fact, the view of the authors is incredibly similar to the views that alternative generativists have putting forward for decades. The book talks about rejecting deep structure - Role and Reference Grammar, Lexical Functional Grammar and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar did that decades ago. It talks about using parallel constrains as a basis of its theory - that's been LFG's statement for decades and its also a concept that the authors have contributed to since the the late 70's and early 80's at least (Granted, Jackendoff and Culicover have been talking about a parallel architecture for quite a while too). It talks about positing an abstract structure distinct from the constituent structure - LFG already did that too. And RRG maps the meaning in their abstract structure straight onto their tree diagrams for a hybrid syntactic, semantic, relational structure, so in a sense so have they.

Jackendoff & Culicover have always been more "out of the box" in their thinking compared to "mainstream" (i.e. Chomskyan) generative grammar--even though both have made significant contributions to it as well. I give this book four stars instead of five because I grow ever weary of the multiplication of linguistic frameworks/"theories." Simpler Syntax demonstrates how other frameworks can be modeled in formalism their proposing, but I'm less than confident about the benefits of having *another* formalism.

With that said, the introduction and its survey of the history of generative grammar and the problems of the Chomskyan program so absolutely fantastic. That section of the book deserves 5+ stars.

Perhaps in the end, what we have more is an excellent book with some overly zealous marketing copy written up by Oxford.