Reflections on Chomsky’s Strong Minimalist Thesis II

What UG Should be Like in the Context of Plato’s and Darwin’s Problems

• Norio SUZUKI / 2012.2
• JPY 6,667 / A5 size, paperback, 300 pages
• bookdesign: Toshinobu NAGATA

With the rapid development of the minimalist program, generative grammar today (the biolinguistic enterprise) now faces up to a new, more than ever challenging problem  Darwin’s problem (also known as the logical problem of language evolution). With the ultimate goal of elucidating the human nature and the human capacity in sight, researchers in this promising field continue their dedicated effort to understand not only the design and development of the human language faculty but its origins and evolution in the hominin history. In Reflections on Chomsky’s Strong Minimalist Thesis II: What UG Should be Like in the Context of Plato’s and Darwin’s Problems, Norio Suzuki brings his recent works together to discuss this new problem anew. By drawing on such crucial notions as UG-residues, the SMT, epigenetics and biological bootstrapping, Suzuki offers an in-depth reexamination and reevaluation of some of the most important proposals made in current minimalist theorizing. Because of the highly technical nature of the discussion made throughout, the book is certainly not for everyone out there, and there is no denying that other researchers will find some of the author’s arguments, suggestions and conclusions hard to accept for the moment. But that is where the very true value of this book lies, as a rich food for further thought. Together with Reflections on Chomsky’s Strong Minimalist Thesis: Evolution, UG Residues and Helen Keller previously written by the same author, this collection of papers should serve as a good steppingstone for the future progress of generative grammar.
― Koji Fujita, Kyoto University
（ISBN 9784861103001）

Table of contents

CONTENTS
PREFACE and BEYOND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chapter1: True Optionality as Evidence for UG-Residues
Chapter2: What Parametric Variation Should be Like, Given Plato’s and　Darwin’s Problems
Chapter3: The SMT, the CLT, and the Crash-proof System: How to Obtain a Minimal UG
Chapter4: What Happens in Acquisition: Principle B of the Binding Theory and Scalar Implicature Computation in　Child Language
REFERENCES
AUTHOR INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX

Author

Norio SUZUKI
1947: Born in Gifu Prefecture, Japan.
1980: Finished the Doctoral Course (first half) for English Literature of the Department of Literary Studies, Graduate School of Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
1982: Left School (halfway before finishing the latter half of the above course).
1982-1985: Full-Time Lecturer, Department of English Literature, Shinwa Women’s College, Kobe, Japan.
1985-1994: Associate Professor, Department of English Literature, Shinwa Women’s College.
1994-2002: Professor, Department of British and American Studies, Kobe Shinwa Women’s University.
1988-1989: Visiting Scholar, Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.
2002-2011: Professor, Department of (Clinical) Psychology, Faculty of Human Development and Education, Kobe Shinwa Women’s University.
2011-Present: Professor, Department of Cross-Cultural Studies, Faculty of Literature, Kobe Shinwa Women’s University.
Publications
Gendai Eibunpo Jiten (Sanseido’s New Dictionay of English Grammar). 1992. Tokyo: Sanseido. [Participated as author of specific entries].
Studies in Generative Syntax (Seisei-togo-ron Kenkyu). 1997. Tokyo: Eichosha.
Eigo-gaku Yogo Jiten (A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics). 1999. Tokyo: Sanseido. [Participated as author of specific entries].
Reflections on Chomsky’s Strong Minimalist Thesis: Evolution, UG Residues, and Helen Keller. 2007. Yokohama: Shumpusha Publishing.

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Experimental Studies on Prosodic Features in Second Language Acquisition

• Midori IBA / 2010.8
• JPY 4,600 / A5 size, paperback, 186 pages
• bookdesign: Yoko GOTOH

How do Japanese people speak natural English?
Experimental investigation of training method clarifies that training of prosody prior to word pronunciation practice is effective.
It connects speech science and English education and opens the path of rational English learning.
（ISBN 9784861102356）

Table of contents

Chapter 1 (study 1)
The Influence of Model Sounds on the Speech Production of Japanese Learners of English
Chapter 2 (study 2)
The Effectiveness of Low-Pass Filters in English Pronunciation Training
Chapter 3 (study 3)
The Apparent Priority of Prosodic Features over Individual Sounds in Second Language Speech Learning
Chapter 4
General Discussion and Implications for Second Language Pronunciation Teaching
Chapter 5
Teaching English Pronunciation for Global Communication

Author

Midori IBA
Graduated from the Department of English in Faculty of arts and sciences at Tsuda College, Japan. She received her M.A. degree from Kobe University. Ph.D.(Kobe University). Visiting researcher of University of London in 2002. Associate professor of The Institute for Language and Culture at Konan University.

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Reflections on Chomsky’s Strong Minimalist Thesis

Evolution, UG Residues, and Helen Keller

• Norio SUZUKI / 2007.7
• JPY 7,619 / A5 size, paperback, 376 pages

Given the conceptual shift involved in evolutionarily viewing UG as the object of explanation, not as an explanatory tool any more, and Chomsky’s strong minimalist thesis as the central concept of minimalist theorizing, this book attempts to explore its implications and consequences in several empirical domains such as acquisition/learnability, narrow syntactic derivation, interfacing, etc. with special emphasis on such notions as economy, optionality, the EPP, UG residues, etc.
（ISBN 9784861105401）

Table of contents

CONTENTS
PREFACE and BEYOND
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 Minimalism and Its Implications for Language Acquisition and Learnability
2 Triggers, Minimalism, and Learnability
3 Universals, Occam’s Razor, and the Strong Minimalist Thesis
4 How the Reality Can Be Compatible with the Strong Minimalist Thesis: Interfacing, Economy, and Variation
5 Two Case Studies in Language Acquisition: Evolution, Efficient Computation, and Learnability
6 What Language is Made From: Helen Keller, Some UG Residues, and the Strong Minimalist Thesis
REFERENCES
AUTHOR INDEX
SUBJECT INDEX

Author

Norio Suzuki
1947：Born in Gifu Prefecture, Japan.
1980：Finished the Doctoral Course （first half）for English Literature of the Department of Literary Studies, Graduate School of Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan.
1982：Left School （halfway before finishing the latter half of the above course）.
1982-1985：Full-Time Lecturer, Department of English Literature, Shinwa Women’s College, Kobe, Japan.
1985-1994：Associate Professor, Department of English Literature, Shinwa Women’s College.
1994-2002：Professor, Department of British and American Studies, Kobe Shinwa Women’s University.
2002-Present：Professor, Department of Clinical Psychology, Faculty of Human Development and Education, Kobe Shinwa Women’s University.
1988-1989：Visiting Scholar, Department of Linguistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.
Publications
Gendai Eibunpo Jiten （Sanseido’s New Dictionay of English Grammar）. 1992. Tokyo: Sanseido. [Participated as author of specific entries].
Studies in Generative Syntax （Seisei-togo-ron Kenkyu）. 1997. Tokyo: Eichosha.
Eigo-gaku Yogo Jiten （A Dictionary of Technical Terms of English Linguistics）. 1999. Tokyo: Sanseido. [Participated as author of specific entries].

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