A fascinating and comprehensive exploration of Germany Perfect for everyone from general readers to students to recreational or business travelers, the Teach Yourself World Cultures series explores language, history, art, politics, economics, cuisine, and much more. Each book in the series lists useful addresses, websites, and points of interest. Mixing historical information with travel tips, Teach Yourself World Cultures books are both educational and entertaining. Teach Yourself World Cultures: Germany provides:
<ul>
<li>A balanced and comprehensive overview of the nation--from geography to political history to the workplace environment of today </li>
<li>Valuable information on the people and their customs </li>
<li>Practical vocabulary and language tips for the traveler </li>
<li>Recipes for common dishes of the region</li>
</ul>

Teach Yourself World Cultures: Germany

History

RobertS, Ian

World

McGraw=Hill

Master the verbs of a new language without intimidating textbooks or confusing charts Essential German Verbs helps you improve your command of German by focusing on one aspect of language learning that invariably causes difficulties: verbs and the way they behave. Whether you're a beginner or relatively advanced learner, you can consult the book whenever you need to know the form of a verb quickly.

Essential German Verbs: A Teach Yourself Guide (Teach Yourself, Refernece)

McGraw–Hill Education

Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar

This book develops a minimalist approach to cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation. Ian Roberts argues that the essential insight of the principles-and-parameters approach to variation can be maintained - albeit in a somewhat different guise - in the context of the minimalist program for linguistic theory. The central idea is to organize the parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) into hierarchies that define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories and features may act in concert. A further leading idea, which is consistent with the overall goal of the minimalist programme to reduce the content of UG, is that the parameter hierarchies are not directly determined by UG, and are instead emergent properties stemming from the interaction of the three factors in language design. Cross-linguistic variation in word order, null subjects, incorporation, verb-movement, case/alignment, wh-movement, and negation are all analyzed in the light of this approach. This book represents a significant new contribution to the formal study of cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation on both the empirical and theoretical levels, and will appeal to researchers and students in all areas of theoretical linguistics and comparative syntax.

Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar (Rethinking Comparative Syntax)

Reference

Words, Language & Grammar

Oxford University Press

This second edition of Ian Roberts's highly successful textbook on diachronic syntax has been fully revised and updated throughout to take account of the multiple developments in the field in the last decade. The book provides a detailed account of how standard questions in historical linguistics - including word order change, grammaticalization, and reanalysis - can be explored in terms of current minimalist theory and Universal Grammar. This new edition offers expanded coverage of a range of topics, including null subjects, the Final-over-Final Condition, the diachrony of wh-movement, the Tolerance Principle, and creoles and creolization, and explores further advances in the theory of parametric variation. Each chapter includes suggestions for further reading, and the book concludes with a comprehensive glossary of key terms. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, the volume will remain an ideal textbook for students of historical linguistics and a valuable reference for researchers and students in related areas such as syntax, comparative linguistics, language contact, and language acquisition.

Diachronic Syntax (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

This book develops a minimalist approach to cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation. Ian Roberts argues that the essential insight of the principles-and-parameters approach to variation can be maintained - albeit in a somewhat different guise - in the context of the minimalist programme forlinguistic theory. The central idea is to organize the parameters of Universal Grammar (UG) into hierarchies that define the ways in which properties of individually variant categories and features may act in concert. A further leading idea, which is consistent with the overall goal of theminimalist programme to reduce the content of UG, is that the parameter hierarchies are not directly determined by UG, and are instead emergent properties stemming from the interaction of the three factors in language design. Cross-linguistic variation in word order, null subjects, incorporation,verb-movement, case/alignment, wh-movement, and negation are all analysed in the light of this approach. This book represents a significant new contribution to the formal study of cross-linguistic morphosyntactic variation on both the empirical and theoretical levels, and will appeal to researchersand students in all areas of theoretical linguistics and comparative syntax.

This is an introduction to syntactic change from the perspective of generative theory. Generative diachronic syntax has developed since the inception of the principles and parameters approach to comparative syntax in the early 1980s and have become increasingly important in historical linguistics and generative theory: it acts as a bridge between them and has provided insights to both. The generative approach was developed to account for synchronic variation: Ian Roberts shows how it may be used to understand how and why languages change. He relates work in historical linguistics to contemporary work on universal grammar and historical syntactic variation. He explains how standard questions in historical linguistics - including word-order change, grammaticalisation, and reanalysis - can be helpfully explored in terms of current generative syntax. He examinbes the nature of the links between syntactic change and first-language acquisition and language learnability and concludes by considering the short and long-term effects of language contact. Professor Roberts illustrates his exposition with numerous examples from a range of different languages and provides guides to further reading and a comprehensive glossary.

Foreign Language Study & Reference

Oxford University Press, U.S.A.

This book shows how the generative approach to linguistics may be used to understand how languages change. Generative diachronic syntax has developed since the inception of the principles and parameters approach to comparative syntax in the early 1980s: it has become increasingly important in historical linguistics and generative theory, acting as a bridge between them and providing insights to both. Ian Roberts relates work in historical linguistics to contemporary work on universal grammar and historical syntactic variation. He explains how standard questions in historical linguistics - including word-order change, grammaticalization, and reanalysis - can be explored in terms of current generative theory. He examines the nature of the links between syntactic change and first-language acquisition and considers the short and long-term effects of language contact. Professor Roberts provides numerous examples from a range of different languages, guides to further reading, and a comprehensive glossary. This is the ideal textbook introduction for students of syntactic change.

Agreement and Head Movement: Clitics, Incorporation, and Defective Goals (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

An argument that, contrary to Chomsky, head-movement is part of the narrow syntax.In Agreement and Head Movement, Ian Roberts explores the consequences of Chomsky's conjecture that head-movement is not part of the narrow syntax, the computational system that relates the lexicon to the interfaces. Unlike other treatments of the subject that discard the concept entirely, Roberts's monograph retains the core intuition behind head-movement and examines to what extent it can be reformulated and rethought. Roberts argues that the current conception of syntax must accommodate a species of head-movement, although this operation differs somewhat in technical detail and in empirical coverage from earlier understandings of it. He proposes that head-movement is part of the narrow syntax and that it applies where the goal of an Agree relation is defective, in a sense that he defines.Roberts argues that the theoretical status of head-movement is very similar―in fact identical in various ways―to that of XP-movement. Thus head-movement, like XP-movement, should be regarded as part of narrow syntax exactly to the extent that XP-movement should be. If one aspect of minimalist theorizing is to eliminate unnecessary distinctions, then Roberts's argument can be seen as eliminating the distinction between "heads" and "phrases" in relation to internal merge (and therefore reducing the distinctions currently made between internal and external merge).Linguistic Inquiry Monographs 59

MIT Press]

The Final-Over-Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages.
This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. 
FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order.

The Final-over-final Condition: A Syntactic Universal (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

Biberauer, Theresa

Holmberg, Anders

Sheehan, Michelle

Mit Pr

An examination of the evidence for and the theoretical implications of a universal word order constraint, with data from a wide range of languages.
This book presents evidence for a universal word order constraint, the Final-over-Final Condition (FOFC), and discusses the theoretical implications of this phenomenon. FOFC is a syntactic condition that disallows structures where a head-initial phrase is contained in a head-final phrase in the same extended projection/domain. The authors argue that FOFC is a linguistic universal, not just a strong tendency, and not a constraint on processing. They discuss the effects of the universal in various domains, including the noun phrase, the adjective phrase, the verb phrase, and the clause. The book draws on data from a wide range of languages, including Hindi, Turkish, Basque, Finnish, Afrikaans, German, Hungarian, French, English, Italian, Romanian, Arabic, Hebrew, Mandarin, Pontic Greek, Bagirmi, Dholuo, and Thai. 
FOFC, the authors argue, is important because it is the only known example of a word order asymmetry pertaining to the order of heads. As such, it has significant repercussions for theories connecting the narrow syntax to linear order.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

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

Books by RobertS, Ian

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

Teach Yourself World Cultures: Germany

Essential German Verbs: A Teach Yourself Guide (Teach Yourself, Refernece)

Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar (Rethinking Comparative Syntax)

Diachronic Syntax (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

Parameter Hierarchies and Universal Grammar

Diachronic Syntax (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

Diachronic Syntax (Oxford Textbooks in Linguistics)

Agreement and Head Movement: Clitics, Incorporation, and Defective Goals (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

The Final-over-final Condition: A Syntactic Universal (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)

The Final-Over-Final Condition: A Syntactic Universal (Linguistic Inquiry Monographs)