This book proposes and motivates a ban on words and sentences of a particular form, and shows that there are differences between how this ban is satisfied at the word level and at the sentence level. One striking finding is that syntactic operations may serve as a means of avoiding violation of the ban, which might not be expected on a strictly feed-forward grammatical architecture. A theoretically interesting consequence of this is that the syntax must be able to see at least some information that the phonology can access, motivating an architecture of the grammar that is different from what is commonly assumed. Empirically, this ban can account for a variety of apparently disparate linguistic facts including, but not limited to: cross-linguistic skews in attested stress patterns, morphophonological differences between prefixes and suffixes, restrictions on certain disharmonic word orders and cases where this restriction is apparently lifted, and a requirement that heavy elements undergo obligatory extraposition from a variety of fronted constituents. Each of these cases can be understood as the consequence of the grammar of a particular language employing a limited set of strategies to ensure that the proposed ban is satisfied.
| ISBN: | 9780192882363 |
| Publication date: | 31st May 2026 |
| Author: | Kenyon Branan |
| Publisher: | Oxford University Press an imprint of OUP OXFORD |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 256 pages |
| Series: | Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics |
| Genres: |
Phonetics, phonology Grammar, syntax and morphology |
This book proposes and motivates a ban on words and sentences of a particular form, and shows that there are differences between how this ban is satisfied at the word level and at the sentence level. One striking finding is that syntactic operations may serve as a means of avoiding violation of the ban, which might not be expected on a strictly feed-forward grammatical architecture. A theoretically interesting consequence of this is that the syntax must be able to see at least some information that the phonology can access, motivating an architecture of the grammar that is different from what is commonly assumed. Empirically, this ban can account for a variety of apparently disparate linguistic facts including, but not limited to: cross-linguistic skews in attested stress patterns, morphophonological differences between prefixes and suffixes, restrictions on certain disharmonic word orders and cases where this restriction is apparently lifted, and a requirement that heavy elements undergo obligatory extraposition from a variety of fronted constituents. Each of these cases can be understood as the consequence of the grammar of a particular language employing a limited set of strategies to ensure that the proposed ban is satisfied.
The Left Edge Ban and the Architecture of the Grammar features in the following genres: Phonetics, phonology, Grammar, syntax and morphology
The Left Edge Ban and the Architecture of the Grammar is available in Hardback
The Left Edge Ban and the Architecture of the Grammar was written by Kenyon Branan and published by Oxford University Press an imprint of OUP OXFORD
The Left Edge Ban and the Architecture of the Grammar has 256 pages
Yes it is part of Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics series
£79.20