Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T11:43:27.693Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Leonie Cornips and Karen P. Corrigan (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2007

Ralph W. Fasold
Ralph W. Fasold
Affiliation:
Professor of Linguistics, Emeritus, Georgetown University, Alexandria, VA 22301-2451 USA, fasoldr@comcast.net
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Leonie Cornips and Karen P. Corrigan (eds.), Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. vi, 312. Hb $144.00.

Cornips & Corrigan's Syntax and variation: Reconciling the biological and the social presupposes that we have a biological and a social dimension to linguistics, that the biological dimension is represented by generative syntax, and that the two dimensions require reconciliation. Cornips & Corrigan (C&C) consider this reconciliation possibly to be “the initial phase in the creation of a mature scientific community” (p. 2). These presuppositions should be questioned. In the first place, it is questionable whether linguistics really has a biological dimension, at least if generative syntax is that dimension. Second, it is far from clear that reconciliation is necessary for linguistics to be considered a mature science.

Type
BOOK REVIEWS
Information
Language in Society , Volume 36 , Issue 5 , November 2007 , pp. 771 - 775
Copyright
© 2007 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Crystal, David (1976). Neglected grammatical factors in conversational English. In Geoffrey Leach & Jan Svartik (eds.), Studies in English linguistics, 153–66. London: Longman.
Kroch, Anthony (1989). Reflexes of grammar in patterns of language change. Language Variation and Change 1:199–244.Google Scholar
Kroch, Anthony (1994). Morphosyntactic variation. In Katherine Beals et al. (eds.), CLS 30: Papers from the 30th Regional Meeting of the Chicago Linguistic Society, volume 2, 180–201. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.