1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910777033503321

Autore

Sampson Geoffrey <1944->

Titolo

Empirical linguistics [[electronic resource] /] / Geoffrey Sampson

Pubbl/distr/stampa

New York, : Continuum, 2001

ISBN

1-281-29842-5

9786611298425

1-84714-431-4

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (237 p.)

Collana

Open linguistics series

Disciplina

410/.1

410.1

Soggetti

Linguistics - Methodology

Language and languages

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Sources and acknowledgements; 1 Introduction; 2 From central embedding to empirical linguistics; 3 Many Englishes or one English?; 4 Depth in English grammar; 5 Demographic correlates of complexity in British speech; 6 The role of taxonomy; 7 Good-Turing frequency estimation without tears; 8 Objective evidence is all we need; 9 What was Transformational Grammar?; 10 Evidence against the grammatical/ungrammatical distinction; 11 Meaning and the limits of science; References; URL list; Index

Sommario/riassunto

Linguistics has become an empirical science again after several decades when it was preoccupied with speakers' hazy ""intuitions"" about language structure. With a mixture of English-language case studies and more theoretical analyses, Geoffrey Sampson gives an overview of some of the new findings and insights about the nature of language which are emerging from investigations of real-life speech and writing, often (although not always) using computers and electronic language samples (""corpora""). Concrete evidence is brought to bear to resolve long-standing questions such as ""Is there one E