A Theory of Syntax

A Theory of Syntax, Minimal Operations and Universal Grammar--------------------------------------------------Human language seems to have arisen roughly within the last 50-100,000years. In evolutionary terms, this is the mere blink of an eye. Ifthis is correct, then much of what we consider distinctive to languagemust in fact involve operations available in pre-linguistic cognitivedomains. In this book Norbert Hornstein, one of the most influentiallinguists working on syntax, discusses a topical set of issues in syntactictheory, including a number of original proposals at the cutting edgeof research in this area. He provides a theory of the basic grammaticaloperations and suggests that there is only one that is distinctiveto language. If this theory is correct then this narrows the evolutionarygap between verbal and non-verbal primates, thus facilitating the rapidevolutionary emergence of our linguistic capacity.--------------------------------------------------Author Biography: NORBERT HORNSTEIN is Professor in the Departmentof Linguistics at the University of Maryland, College Park. He haswritten several books on minimalist syntax including UnderstandingMinimalism (with J. Nunes and K. Grohmann, Cambridge, 2005) and Move!:A Minimalist Theory of Construal (2000).