Frederick J. Newmeyer

List of John Benjamins publications for which Frederick J. Newmeyer plays a role.

Titles

Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics: Volume I: General papers

Edited by Michael Darnell, Edith A. Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick J. Newmeyer and Kathleen Wheatley

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 41] 1999. vi, 486 pp.
Subjects Functional linguistics | Generative linguistics | Language acquisition | Phonology | Syntax

Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics: Volume II: Case studies

Edited by Michael Darnell, Edith A. Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick J. Newmeyer and Kathleen Wheatley

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 42] 1999. vi, 407 pp.
Subjects Functional linguistics | Generative linguistics | Language acquisition | Phonology | Syntax

Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics: 2 Volumes (set)

Edited by Michael Darnell, Edith A. Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick J. Newmeyer and Kathleen Wheatley

[Studies in Language Companion Series, 41-42] 1999. vi, 486 pp. & vi, 407 pp.
Subjects Functional linguistics | Generative linguistics | Language acquisition | Phonology | Syntax

Articles

This article discusses and analyses the 1970 election for President of the Linguistic Society of America. In that year, Dwight Bolinger challenged the official candidate Martin Joos and defeated him easily. We see that it was mainly personal and generational factors, rather than intellectual… read more
The book Readings in Linguistics edited by Martin Joos is one of the best known collections of papers ever published in the field of linguistics. In this article I trace its publication history, from Bernard Bloch’s idea in 1946 for an anthology of important work in descriptive linguists, to the… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2015 American Linguists Look at Swiss Linguistics, 1925–1940Historiographia Linguistica 42:1, pp. 107–118 | Article
Swiss linguistic research did not have a major impact on American linguistics in the inter-war period. Nevertheless, there was a perhaps surprising awareness of the results of Swiss scholars among American linguists active in that period. This paper documents both their numerous references to the… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2014 Syntactic change: Between universal grammar and fuzzy grammarThe Sociolinguistics of Grammar, Åfarli, Tor A. and Brit Mæhlum (eds.), pp. 37–66 | Article
Two diametrically opposed positions on syntactic change have wide currency in the literature. The first is the classical position of mainstream formal linguistics. In this view, UG-based strategies lead to a dramatically rapid cascade of seemingly unrelated diachronic changes. The second view has… read more
Joseph, John E. and Frederick J. Newmeyer 2012 ‘All Languages Are Equally Complex’: The rise and fall of a consensusHistoriographia Linguistica 39:2/3, pp. 341–368 | Article
Throughout most of the history of the discipline, linguists have had little hesitation in comparing languages in terms of their relative complexity, whether or not they extrapolated judgements of superiority or inferiority from such comparisons. By the mid 20th century, however, a consensus had… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2011 English derived nominals in three frameworksPragmatics and Autolexical Grammar: In honor of Jerry Sadock, Yuasa, Etsuyo, Tista Bagchi and Katharine Beals (eds.), pp. 213–228 | Article
This paper contrasts the analysis of English derived nominals (i. e., words such as refusal, height, goodness, movement, etc.) in minimalism, automodular grammar, and classical transformational grammar. It argues that minimalism does the poorest job of the three in handling their distinctive… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2009 4. Current challenges to the Lexicalist Hypothesis: An overview and a critiqueTime and Again: Theoretical perspectives on formal linguistics, Lewis, William D., Simin Karimi, Heidi Harley and Scott O. Farrar (eds.), pp. 91–117 | Article
In this chapter, arguments against several variants of the modern syntax-based analyses of deverbal nominalizations are presented, and the classic lexicalist approach deriving from Chomsky’s 1970 Remarks on nominalization is defended. The modern approaches of Alexiadou (2001), Fu, Roeper and Borer… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2007 ‘More complicated and hence, rarer’: A look at grammatical complexity and cross-linguistic rarityPhrasal and Clausal Architecture: Syntactic derivation and interpretation, Karimi, Simin, Vida Samiian and Wendy K. Wilkins (eds.), pp. 221–242 | Article
Emonds (1980) conjectured that in one limited domain there is a robust correlation between the complexity of a syntactic derivation and the rarity of the sentence type produced by that derivation. Other scholars, however, have hypothesized a more general correlation complexity and rarity which is… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2007 Typological evidence and Universal GrammarWhat Counts as Evidence in Linguistics: The case of innateness, Penke, Martina and Anette Rosenbach (eds.), pp. 51–73 | Article
The paper discusses the relevance of typological evidence for the construction of a theory of Universal Grammar (UG). After introducing UG-based approaches to typology, it goes on to argue that most typological generalizations are in no sense ‘knowledge of language’. In fact, some of the… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2006 Negation and modularityDrawing the Boundaries of Meaning: Neo-Gricean studies in pragmatics and semantics in honor of Laurence R. Horn, Birner, Betty J. and Gregory Ward (eds.), pp. 241–261 | Article
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2004 Typological evidence and Universal GrammarWhat Counts as Evidence in Linguistics?: The case of innateness, Penke, Martina and Anette Rosenbach (eds.), pp. 527–548 | Article
The paper discusses the relevance of typological evidence for the construction of a theory of Universal Grammar (UG). After introducing UG-based approaches to typology, it goes on to argue that most typological generalizations are in no sense ‘knowledge of language’. In fact, some of the… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2004 Against a parameter-setting approach to typological variationLinguistic Variation Yearbook 2004, Pica, Pierre (ed.), pp. 181–234 | Article
The dominant position among generative grammarians with respect to typological variation is that it should be captured by parameters, which are either directly tied to principles of Universal Grammar (UG) or to functional projections provided by UG. Parameter-setting approaches, however, have… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 2001 200 Years of Syntax: A critical survey. By Giorgio GraffiHistoriographia Linguistica 28:3, pp. 435–442 | Review
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1999 Some Remarks on the Functionalist-Formalist Controversy in LinguisticsFunctionalism and Formalism in Linguistics: Volume I: General papers, Darnell, Michael, Edith A. Moravcsik, Michael Noonan, Frederick J. Newmeyer and Kathleen Wheatley (eds.), pp. 469 ff. | Article
Borsley, Robert D. and Frederick J. Newmeyer 1997 2 The Language Muddle: Roy Harris and Generative GrammarLinguistics Inside Out: Roy Harris and his critics, Wolf, George and Nigel Love (eds.), pp. 42 ff. | Article
The past 30 years have seen marked shifts in the generative grammarians’ view of the nature of linguistic competence. The rule-oriented period of early Transformational Grammar, which was ushered in by the publication of Chomsky’s Syntactic Structures in 1957, gave way a decade later to the… read more
Newmeyer, Frederick J. 1982 Reply to Murray’s ReviewHistoriographia Linguistica 9:1/2, pp. 185–186 | Miscellaneous