E-Books →The Grammar of Multiple Head–Movement A Comparative Study

In The Grammar of Multiple Head-Movement, Phil Branigan shows that multiple head-movement is far from rare, forming a part of the grammar in Finnish, in English, in Perenakan Javanese, in northern Norwegian and Swedish dialects, and generally in the Slavic and Algonquian language families. Basing his analysis on a new model of the grammatical parameters which control word formation in the human brain, Branigan shows how careful attention to the contexts in which multiple head-movement takes place allows new generalizations to be identified. And these, in turn, allow a new model to be formulated of how head-movement fits into the overall architecture of grammatical computation. Through careful comparative study, Branigan not only provides a better understanding of head-movement, but also provides new opportunities to address larger questions concerning the architecture of the grammatical system and the theory of linguistic parameters.
A new account of how complex words are formed in languages as different as Russian or Innu-aimun, as well as in English, this study deepens our understanding of how languages vary and of the mental computational system of human grammars.