This volume consists of an introduction and two groups of essays by Paul M. Postal, each with a connecting theme. The first, positive group of papers, contains five previously unpublished studies of English syntax. These include a long study of so-called "locative inversion," two investigations related to raising to non-subject status, an argument for the existence of a hitherto ignored nominal grammatical category and a study of vulgar negative polarity items. Each investigation of specific English details is argued to have significant theoretical consequences. The second, negative group of papers, contains seven essays each of which seeks to show that aspects of contemporary linguistic activity are in part contaminated by elements of what is called "junk linguistics." Postal uses the term to denote work which advances proposals, puts forward claims and asserts deep results which, he argues, can only be accepted by ignoring serious standards of inquiry and scholarship. Postal claims that much of this work is nonetheless currently considered not only serious but prestigious reveals the problem to exist at the core of the field, not its periphery. These chapters include documentation of "junk linguistic" aspects in National Science Foundation refereeing, work on the foundations of linguistics, and even in widespread terminological usages. The final chapter briefly lists personal suggestions for dealing with this problem.

Skeptical Linguistic Essays

Reference

POSTAL, Paul M.

Words, Language & Grammar

Oxford University Press

This volume consists of an introduction and two groups of essays by Paul M. Postal, each with a connecting theme. The first, positive group of papers, contains five previously unpublished studies of English syntax. These include a long study of so-called "locative inversion," two investigations related to raising to non-subject status, an argument for the existence of a hitherto ignored nominal grammatical category and a study of vulgar negative polarity items. Each investigation of specific English details is argued to have significant theoretical consequences. The second, negative group of papers, contains seven essays each of which seeks to show that aspects of contemporary linguistic activity are in part contaminated by elements of what is called "junk linguistics." Postal uses the term to denote work which advances proposals, puts forward claims and asserts deep results which, he argues, can only be accepted by ignoring serious standards of inquiry and scholarship. Postal claims that much of this work is nonetheless currently considered not only serious but prestigious reveals the problem to exist at the core of the field, not its periphery. These chapters include documentation of "junk linguistic" aspects in National Science Foundation refereeing, work on the foundations of linguistics, and even in widespread terminological usages. The final chapter briefly lists personal suggestions for dealing with this problem.

Foreign Language Study & Reference

In this important work of linguistic analysis, Paul M. Postal addresses a paradigm anomaly in French that has hitherto resisted explanation. A general restriction limiting the form of direct objects in complex infinitival constructions with main verbs like faire fails to hold with certain subordinate verbs, especially connaître. Marshaling extensive evidence, Postal argues that this apparent irregularity is a symptom of a deeper regularity. Rather than being an ordinary transitive complement, the subordinate clause in these cases is actually an Inversion structure, one in which the logical subject demotes to indirect object. However, since this demotion induces no word order change or other direct morphological consequences, the inversion is "masked," and revealed only by several types of apparent anomalies.This analysis has significant consequences for contemporary syntactic theories. First, the arguments support the view that a sentence's superficial structure cannot be identified with its syntactic structure, even though such an identification is a fundamental assumption of several currently influential grammatical frameworks. Second, even certain theories that do posit abstract aspects of grammatical form fail to allow for the needed Inversion structures. Postal's study supports theories based on the notion of arc and stratification into levels which provide a natural treatment consistent with the factual requirements.Masked Inversion in French is the first systematic account of this puzzling French syntactic anomaly, and its findings will stimulate research in many areas of natural language grammatical structure.

Masked Inversion in French

University of Chicago Press

Edge-based Clausal Syntax: A Study of (Mostly) English Object Structure (Mit Press)

An argument that there are three kinds of English grammatical objects, each with different syntactic properties.
In Edge-Based Clausal Syntax, Paul Postal rejects the notion that an English phrase of the form [V + DP] invariably involves a grammatical relation properly characterized as a direct object. He argues instead that at least three distinct relations occur in such a structure. The different syntactic properties of these three kinds of objects are shown by how they behave in passives, middles, -able forms, tough movement, wh-movement, Heavy NP Shift, Ride Node Raising, re-prefixation, and many other tests. 
This proposal renders Postal's position sharply different from that of Chomsky, who defined a direct object structurally as [NP, VP], and with the traditional linguistics text's definition of the direct object as the DP sister of V. According to Postal's framework, sentence structures are complex graph structures built on nodes (vertices) and edges (arcs). The node that heads a particular edge represents a constituent that bears the grammatical relation named by the edge label to its tail node. This approach allows two DPs that have very different grammatical properties to occupy what looks like identical structural positions. The contrasting behaviors of direct objects, which at first seem anomalous―even grammatically chaotic―emerge in Postal's account as nonanomalous, as symptoms of hitherto ungrasped structural regularity.

Edge-based Clausal Syntax: A Study of (Mostly) English Object Structure

Mit Pr

Classical NEG Raising: An Essay on the Syntax of Negation (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, 67)

An extended argument for a syntactic view of NEG raising with consequences for the syntax of negation and negative polarity items.In this book, Chris Collins and Paul Postal consider examples such the one below on the interpretation where Nancy thinks that this course is not interesting:Nancy doesn't think this course is interesting.They argue such examples instantiate a kind of syntactic raising that they term Classical NEG Raising. This involves the raising of a NEG (negation) from the embedded clause to the matrix clause. Collins and Postal develop three main arguments to support their claim. First, they show that Classical NEG Raising obeys island constraints. Second, they document that a syntactic raising analysis predicts both the grammaticality and particular properties of what they term Horn clauses (named for Laurence Horn, who discovered them). Finally, they argue that the properties of certain parenthetical structures strongly support the syntactic character of Classical NEG Raising. Collins and Postal also offer a detailed analysis of the main argument in the literature against a syntactic raising analysis (which they call the Composed Quantifier Argument). They show that the facts appealed to in this argument not only fail to conflict with their approach but actually support a syntactic view. In the course of their argument, Collins and Postal touch on a variety of related topics, including the syntax of negative polarity items, the status of sequential negation, and the scope of negative quantifiers.

Classical NEG Raising: An Essay on the Syntax of Negation (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

Collins, Chris

For some time it has been generally accepted by students of English grammar that a rule of Raising exists and that it functions to produce derived main clause subjects. Following Rosenbaum's work, it has also been widely accepted that this rule functions in a specified class of cases to derive main clause objects. However, in recent work, Chomsky has rejected the view that there is any Raising rule that produces derived main clause objects. According to his latest position, only the derived subject function of the rule is an actual feature of English grammar. On Raising is highly critical and is devoted chiefly to supporting the claim that English does contain a rule of Raising—a rule that has the function of taking the complement subject noun phrase in certain complement constructions and reassigning it as a constituent of the main clause. The author presents something on the order of two dozen arguments that Raising produces derived objects. In the course of this discussion, he also considers various other theoretical and descriptive consequences of, and questions raised by, the existence of Raising.

On Raising: An Inquiry into One Rule of English Grammar and Its Theoretical Implications (Current Studies in Linguistics)

MIT Press]

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

An extended argument for a syntactic view of NEG raising with consequences for the syntax of negation and negative polarity items.
In this book, Chris Collins and Paul Postal consider examples such the one below on the interpretation where Nancy thinks that this course is not interesting: Nancy doesn't think this course is interesting.
They argue such examples instantiate a kind of syntactic raising that they term Classical NEG Raising. This involves the raising of a NEG (negation) from the embedded clause to the matrix clause. Collins and Postal develop three main arguments to support their claim. First, they show that Classical NEG Raising obeys island constraints. Second, they document that a syntactic raising analysis predicts both the grammaticality and particular properties of what they term Horn clauses (named for Laurence Horn, who discovered them). Finally, they argue that the properties of certain parenthetical structures strongly support the syntactic character of Classical NEG Raising. 
Collins and Postal also offer a detailed analysis of the main argument in the literature against a syntactic raising analysis (which they call the Composed Quantifier Argument). They show that the facts appealed to in this argument not only fail to conflict with their approach but actually support a syntactic view. In the course of their argument, Collins and Postal touch on a variety of related topics, including the syntax of negative polarity items, the status of sequential negation, and the scope of negative quantifiers.

For some time it has been generally accepted by students of English grammar that a rule of Raising exists and that it functions to produce derived main clause subjects. Following Rosenbaum's work, it has also been widely accepted that this rule functions in a specified class of cases to derive main clause objects. However, in recent work, Chomsky has rejected the view that there is any Raising rule that produces derived main clause objects. According to his latest position, only the derived subject function of the rule is an actual feature of English grammar. On Raising is highly critical and is devoted chiefly to supporting the claim that English does contain a rule of Raising―a rule that has the function of taking the complement subject noun phrase in certain complement constructions and reassigning it as a constituent of the main clause. The author presents something on the order of two dozen arguments that Raising produces derived objects. In the course of this discussion, he also considers various other theoretical and descriptive consequences of, and questions raised by, the existence of Raising.

On Raising: One Rule of English Grammar and Its Theoretical Implications (Current Studies in Linguistics (Paperback))

This First Edition of Statistics moves the curriculum in innovative ways while still looking relatively familiar. Statistics utilizes intuitive methods to introduce the fundamental idea of statistical inference. These intuitive methods are enabled through statistical software and are accessible at very early stages of a course. The text also includes the more traditional methods such as t-tests, chi-square tests, etc., but only after students have developed a strong intuitive understanding of inference through randomization methods.
The text is designed for use in a one-semester introductory statistics course. The focus throughout is on data analysis and the primary goal is to enable students to effectively collect data, analyze data, and interpret conclusions drawn from data. The text is driven by real data and real applications. Although the only prerequisite is a minimal working knowledge of algebra, students completing the course should be able to accurately interpret statistical results and to analyze straightforward data sets.

The Vastness of Natural Languages

Langendoen, D. Terence

Wiley/Blackwell

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by POSTAL, Paul M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by POSTAL, Paul M.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by POSTAL, Paul M.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Skeptical Linguistic Essays

Skeptical Linguistic Essays

Masked Inversion in French

Edge-based Clausal Syntax: A Study of (Mostly) English Object Structure

Classical NEG Raising: An Essay on the Syntax of Negation (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

On Raising: An Inquiry into One Rule of English Grammar and Its Theoretical Implications (Current Studies in Linguistics)

Edge-based Clausal Syntax: A Study of (Mostly) English Object Structure (Mit Press)

Classical NEG Raising: An Essay on the Syntax of Negation (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs, 67)

On Raising: One Rule of English Grammar and Its Theoretical Implications (Current Studies in Linguistics (Paperback))

The Vastness of Natural Languages