Measuring Grammatical Complexity [Hardcover] Newmeyer, Frederick J. and Preston, Laurel B.

ISBN 10: 0199685304 / ISBN 13: 9780199685301

Published by Oxford University Press, 2014

About this Item

Some wear/nick at edges/corners of dust jacket. Faint storage marks/scratches to dust jacket. Light bumps/wear at edges/corners of hard board. Name sticker at inside hard board. Text very good but does have some pencil notetaking.

Seller Inventory # 034330-4

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Measuring Grammatical Complexity [Hardcover] Newmeyer, Frederick J. and Preston, Laurel B.
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2014
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199685304
• ISBN 13: 9780199685301
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

This book examines the question of whether languages can differ in grammatical complexity and, if so, how relative complexity differences might be measured. The volume differs from others devoted to the question of complexity in language in that the authors all approach the problem from the point of view of formal grammatical theory, psycholinguistics, or neurolinguistics. Chapters investigate a number of key issues in grammatical complexity, taking phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic considerations into account. These include what is often called the 'trade-off problem', namely whether complexity in one grammatical component is necessarily balanced by simplicity in another; and the question of interpretive complexity, that is, whether and how one might measure the difficulty for the hearer in assigning meaning to an utterance and how such complexity might be factored in to an overall complexity assessment.

Measuring Grammatical Complexity brings together a number of distinguished scholars in the field, and will be of interest to linguists of all theoretical stripes from advanced undergraduate level upwards, particularly those working in the areas of morphosyntax, psycholinguistics, neurolinguistics, and cognitive linguistics.

About the Author

Frederick J. Newmeyer specializes in syntax and the history of linguistics and has as his current research program the attempt to synthesize the results of formal and functional linguistics. He was Secretary-Treasurer of the Linguistic Society of America (LSA) from 1989 to 1994 and its President in 2002. He has been elected Fellow of the LSA and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 2011 he received a Mellon Foundation Fellowship for Emeritus Faculty.


Laurel B. Preston is a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Washington, Seattle. Her research interests include temporal semantics, with particular attention to the temporal interpretation of nouns, and adult second language acquisition. Her current work investigates poverty-of-the-stimulus problems in second language acquisition.