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Recent developments in research into acquisition show how ideas of construction grammar and generative grammar complement each other. This is illustrated with an overview of work on the acquisition of verb second, showing amongst others intriguing differences between early and late acquisition. It is argued that there are no a priori ('innate') features or categories but that these are derived based on the available distributional evidence. In particular young learners are able to do so. The features feed a sort and possibly task specific computational system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past thirty years or so have seen an increased interest from the part of generative syntacticians in dialect data. The article addresses the question to what extent generative methods in studying dialect syntax depart from traditional dialectological methods, and whether both disciplines have been integrated successfully. Despite earlier pessimistic accounts like De Schutter (2005) and Goossens & Van Keymeulen (2006), Hans Bennis' recent work shows that generative syntacticians are indeed adopting methods from dialect geography to tackle research questions that are still predominantly generative in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-distance dependencies belong to the most controversial challenges in linguistics. These patterns seem to contain constituents that have left their original position in a sentence and that have landed in a different place. A typical example is the relative clause the person I have talked to yesterday, in which the direct object (the person) is not situated in an argument position following the verb, but instead is located at the beginning of the utterance. Upon closer inspection, however, all problems related to long-distance dependencies can be reduced to the limits of phrase structural analyses. A phrase structure tree is a rigid data structure in which information is shared between local nodes. These analyses therefore need to resort to more complex formal machinery in order to overcome this locality constraint, such as using transformations or positing filler-gap constructions. However, there exists a more intuitive alternative within the tradition of cognitive-functional linguistics in which long-distance dependencies do not require special treatment. Instead, these patterns are simply the side effect of how grammatical constructions combine with each other in order to satisfy the communicative needs of language users. Through a computational implementation in Fluid Construction Grammar, this article demonstrates that it is perfectly feasible to formalize this alternative in a model that is capable of both formulating and comprehending utterances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To theoretically inclined linguists, the past half century has been a period of considerable significance: there is virtually perfect overlap with the period of the introduction (in the second half of the 1950s and 1960s) and subsequent growth and systematic development of "generative ", "Chomskian" linguistics. As is well-known, this framework is characterized by an emphasis on the discovery and formulation of universals: essentially it is the study of Universal Grammar, enhanced by the in-depth investigations of individual languages, and comparative research involving several languages. This study is closely linked to the demand that any generative theory should contribute to an explanation of the process of first language acquisition, one of whose most striking characteristics is the acquisition of a grammar based on excessively poor input. The difference is hypothesized to be bridged by an inborn language acquisition device, which itself is equated with Universal Grammar Against this background, this contribution provides a sketch of theoretical developments within the 50 year period, in the study, of generative phonology. Three well-known stages are addressed." that of the rule-based framework in the 1960s and 1970s, that of the combination of autosegmental phonology and Principles and Parameters theory in the 1980s, and finally, that of Optimality Theory in the 1990s, up until the present day. Each of these frameworks has a solidly, generative foundation, but the discussion specifically, addresses why, and how one theory, became the successor to the other, where arguments typically. revolve around issues concerning Universal Grammar and language acquisition. In order to facilitate the exposition, one constant of the discussion is the empirical material used as an illustration for each stage. This has been taken from Afrikaans, and concerns two phonological phenomena, shared with for instance Dutch, involving the feature [voice]: Final obstruent Devoicing (Auslautsverskerping) and obstruent Voice Assimilation (Stemassimilasie). These phenomena have been well-described for Afrikaans (in work by Wissing), one of the more interesting aspects of their coexistence being their interaction in words. In addition, however, theoretical developments, as they tend to do, resulted in new claims about further interacting phenomena, in this case claims about progressive devoicing, which - to different degrees and in different kinds- is also a property of the phonologies of both Dutch and Afrikaans, first discussed for the latter language in work by. Wissing and Du Plessis in the early. 1990s. Discussion of these decidedly, productive phenomena takes place against the theoretical claim that these processes must probably, be considered examples of "peripheral rules" (in the Principles and Parameters framework) or require a special treatment, possibly, an appeal to a combination of Optimality Theory and Cognitive Grammar (Van Rooy, in his 1999 dissertation) or to a special type of Optimality, constraint interaction (Zonneveld, in an extension to Afrikaans of proposals put forward previously, for Dutch). Hence, this principally, historical sketch also enables us to show that Afrikaans is a language of considerable theoretical-phonological interest, and increasingly, so. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]