Sounds of Silence

"In the early '80s, largely due to Chomsky's Lectures on Government and Binding and ensuing research, a kind of encompassing theory of "empty elements" had emerged. This theory was largely concerned with silent subjects, silent pronominals, and various kinds of traces of movement. Since then, however, the picture has become more blurred. More types of empty elements were proposed, ellipsis phenomena began to receive some attention, and interface issues arose: are silent elements silent due to deletion (or failure to be spelled out) at the phonetic interface or are they independently existing items in the lexicon that simply fail to have a phonetic form?" "Furthermore, silent elements are also ubiquitous in phonology and similar questions arise: can syllables have empty nuclei, can segments fail to be pronounced when they are not properly attached to a slot in a (supra-) segmental structure?" "Sounds of Silence is an attempt to bring together a number of original contributions that all address such questions. And while a new encompassing theory is not yet in sight, this book helps pave the way." "Students and researchers in theoretical linguistics; historical linguistics; typology; cognitive sciences; neurolinguistics; sign language; language disorders; evolution and population genetics of language; philosophy of language; philosophy of science; pragmatics. Includes contributions from linguistics, dynamical systems, neurology, child development, genetics, language disorders, sign language, and more."--BOOK JACKET.Hartmann, Jutta M. is the author of 'Sounds of Silence', published 2008 under ISBN 9780080466149 and ISBN 0080466141.