Human language seems to have arisen roughly within the last 50-100,000 years. In evolutionary terms, this is the mere blink of an eye. If this is correct, then much of what we consider distinctive to language must in fact involve operations available in pre-linguistic cognitive domains. In this book Norbert Hornstein, one of the most influential linguists working on syntax, discusses a topical set of issues in syntactic theory, including a number of original proposals at the cutting edge of research in this area. He provides a theory of the basic grammatical operations and suggests that there is only one that is distinctive to language. If this theory is correct then this narrows the evolutionary gap between verbal and non-verbal primates, thus facilitating the rapid evolutionary emergence of our linguistic capacity.

Discusses a topical set of issues in syntactic theory, including a number of original proposals.

About the Author
NORBERT HORNSTEIN is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He has written several books on minimalist syntax including Understanding Minimalism (with J. Nunes and K. Grohmann, Cambridge, 2005) and Move!: A Minimalist Theory of Construal (2000).


Book Information
ISBN 9780521728812
Author Norbert Hornstein
Format Paperback
Page Count 204
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 340g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 152mm * 12mm