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From: sslyjim@ucl.ac.uk (Mr Jim Tyson)
Subject: Re: Universal Grammar
Sender: news@ucl.ac.uk (Usenet News System)
Message-ID: <1994Dec9.164829.32744@ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 1994 16:48:29 GMT
References: <3bljr1$ajp@agate.berkeley.edu> <jon-0312940940110001@hfmac323.uio.no> <D0C0Es.6Eo@discus.technion.ac.il>
Organization: Bloomsbury Computing Consortium
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In article <D0C0Es.6Eo@discus.technion.ac.il> 
jody@techunix.technion.ac.il (Jody Underwood) writes:
>
>Could someone provide a good (read: concise) reference for Universal
>Grammars?
>
>Thanks,

<Sigh> I think that hope for a _concise_ and useful reference to UG is
a vain wish: we're talking big topic here, both in internal scope and
scholarly disputation.

First there is the issue of whose UG.  If you are interested in Chomsky's
conceptualisation then you can't go far wrong with

Viv Cook (1988??) _Chomsky's Universal Grammar_,Oxford: Blackwell

A short and readable introduction that introduces you to the general
cognitive framework and gives you a passing working knowledge of
government and binding theory on the way.

Alternatively there is a rather longer intro by Chomsky himself

Chomsky N (1985) _Knowledge of Language: Its nature, origin and use_,New
York: Praeger

This delves deeper into the "philosophical" issues and doesn't give as
systematic account of the grammatical framework.

For syntactic detail and a look at non-Chomskyan approaches to syntax,
you might find

R D Borsley (1991) _Syntactic Theory: A unified approach_, Seven Oaks: Edward
Arnold

For a bog standard account of the government and binding in detail, then you
want

L Haegeman (1994) _An introduction to government and binding theory_, Oxford:
Blackwell

You may well find of course that you don't see what any of this has
to do with connectionism and you will be right: connectionism is an
implementation level theory and UG is emphatically not.

Jim Tyson


