This book addresses a question fundamental to any discussion of grammatical theory and grammatical variation: to what extent can principles of grammar be explained through language use? The book argues that there is a profound correspondence between performance data and the fixed conventions of grammars. Preferences and patterns found in the one, the book shows, are reflected in constraints and variation patterns in the other. The theoretical consequences of the proposed ‘performance-grammar correspondence hypothesis’ are far-reaching — for current grammatical formalisms, for the innateness hypothesis, and for psycholinguistic models of performance and learning. Drawing on empirical generalizations and insights from language typology, generative grammar, psycholinguistics, and historical linguistics, this book demonstrates that the assumption that grammars are immune to performance is false. It presents detailed empirical case studies and arguments for an alternative theory in which performance has shaped the conventions of grammars and thus the variation patterns found in the world’s languages. The innateness of language, the book argues, resides primarily in the mechanisms human beings have for processing and learning it.
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