Possible and Probable Languages: A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology

In this important and pioneering book Frederick Newmeyer seeks to explain the variety of languages. He combines the leading ideas of the functionalist and formalist approaches to linguistic typology, advocating principles of Universal Grammar to explain why some language types are impossible, and functional principles to explain why some grammatical features are more common than others.

Newmeyer (linguistics, U. of Washington, Seattle) offers an exploration of cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation within the general framework of assumptions that characterize generative grammar, and challenges some central positions that have characterized mainstream generative approaches to linguistic typology for some two decades. Coverage includes discussion of the parameterization of principles of Universal Grammar; a critique of the parametric approach to grammar and the idea that it is the job of Universal Grammar per se to account for typological generalizations; a defense of the classical Saussurean conception of grammar; and the relationship between performance pressure on grammar and the typological distribution of formal elements. For scholars and students of language, particularly typologists, historical linguists, and theorists. Annotation ©2006 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Frederick J. Newmeyer is Howard and Frances Nostrand Professor of Linguistics at the University of Washington in Seattle where he has taught since 1969. He was Secretary-Treasurer of the Linguistic Society of America from 1989 to 1993 and its President in 2002. He specializes in syntax and the history of linguistics and in his current research program seeks to synthesize the results of formal and functional linguistics. He is the author of the books English Aspectual Verbs (1975), Linguistic Theory in America (1980), Grammatical Theory: Its Limits and its Possibilities (1983), The Politics of Linguistics (1986), Generative Linguistics: Historical Perspective (1996), and Language Form and Language Function (1998). He was also editor of the four-volume compilation Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey (1988).