Chapter 1 provides some background on the shift in emphasis from Universal Grammar (UG) to third factors and gives a description of selected third factors, e.g. the Inclusiveness Condition and the Extension Condition. The main emphasis is on the Labeling Algorithm and the Principle of Determinacy. Generative models focus on the faculty of language as represented in the mind/brain. UG is the “system of principles, conditions, and rules” that all languages share through biological necessity. However, although UG received a lot of attention, recently principles “grounded in physical law” and the general “capacity to acquire knowledge” have been emphasized more. This chapter also introduces two main reasons of language change that are responsible for the linguistic cycle: those caused by economy and those by innovation.

Chapter 3 provides an overview of a number of theoretical proposals that have been put forward in the literature to account for language variation. It elaborates on models that combine formal generative theorizing and quantitative sociolinguistic methodology, in line with current minimalist analyses (Adger & Smith 2005; Sessarego & Gutiérrez-Rexach 2011; Sessarego 2014a). This chapter also stresses the importance of embracing a perspective of mutual complementation – rather than mutual exclusion – between these two fields, especially when the varieties under study consist of stigmatized vernaculars, for which it may be hard to obtain reliable grammaticality judgments and that may be characterized by high levels of inter- and intra-speaker speech variability (Cornips & Poletto 2005).

In this paper I first worry that Rorty’s attack on various conceptions of “the world” has an alarming tendency to veer from opposition to the kind of realism that he associates with various philosophers, such as Plato, Descartes, or even Kant, into skepticism about ordinary activities including those of observing things and referring to them. I try to uncover the roots of this slide in various semantic doctrines, and explore the distinction between minimalist or deflationist theories of truth, and any wider, and less plausible general doctrine of semantic minimalism.

This chapter begins (1.1) by looking at prescriptive and descriptive approaches to grammar, and at different sources of linguistic data. It goes on to discuss the approach to syntax in traditional grammar, looking at grammatical categories (1.2) and grammatical functions (1.3). 1.4 considers aspects of syntax which are potentially universal before going on to consider the nature of universals, the architecture of grammars, and the Strong Minimalist Thesis. 1.5 examines parameters of variation between languages, before turning to consider the role of parameter-setting in language acquisition, and outlining Principles and Parameters Theory (1.6). The chapter concludes with a summary (1.7), and a set of bibliographical notes (1.8). There is a free-to-download Students’ Workbook that includes a separate set of exercise material for each core section and a Students’ Answerbook. The free-to-download Teachers’ Answerbook provides detailed written answers for every single exercise example. The free-to-download Powerpoints provide a more vivid and visual representation of the material in each core section of the chapter.

The chapter begins by delineating the separate tasks of truthmaker theory and theories of truth. The two kinds of theories can be separated, and so are in principle distinct. However, history has not always treated them that way. It is proposed that one way of understanding the distinction between substantive and deflationary theories of truth is in terms of their contrasting relationship to truthmaking. It is then argued that truthmaking cannot be put to work in a theory of truth. Consequently, truthmaking motivates the rejection of substantive accounts of the property of truth. (It ultimately remains neutral regarding the substance of the concept of truth.) As a result, it is shown how correspondence theorists – traditional allies of the notion of truthmaking – are threatened by this book’s approach to truthmaking, whereas deflationists – who frequently see an opponent in the truthmaker theorist – have found a friend.

Ths chapter introduces MacSwann’s (1999) model. It is a minimalist framework within separationist assumptions to the extent that it is claimed that the bilingual has two lexicons and two PFs. The chapter also presents two empirical challenges to this model: mixed selection and noun classes. Mixed selection refers to the empirical fact that an item from “one lexicon” may select for an item in “the other” lexicon. Under the label “noun classes,” I show that an English noun can be inserted into a Swahili discourse, in the process acquiring a noun class. Both these well-known features of code-switching are empirical problems for any theory that posits separate lexicons. The chapter ends with a brief discussion of Multiple Grammar Theory highlighting the points of contact and divergence with the integrationist approach.

This chapter is prompted by Coetzee’s longstanding interest in stories and storytelling, an interest that is registered across his critical essays and reviews, and thematized in several of his works. Focusing on In the Heart of the Country, The Master of Petersburg, and The Childhood of Jesus, as well as the computer poem ‘Hero and Bad Mother in Epic’, the chapter charts the relationship between the kinds of story that Coetzee has told – generally limited in the scope of their plots and the number of their principal characters – and the forms of narration he has adopted, which vary from the first-person character narration of certain of his early and middle fictions, to the tightly focalized external narration of his later works, to the dialogue-heavy and somewhat affectless narration of the Jesus novels. In each case, it is suggested that the particular form of narration is related to the particular truth with which the work in question seeks to confront its readers.

This chapter introduces the theoretical assumptions that ground the analyses in later chapters. I refer to this model as MDM: Minimalist Distributed Morhpology. It presents a minimalist syntax with emphasis on phases as cycles of syntactic derivation. Roots and categories are separated as distinct syntactic nodes and roots are reanalyzed as indices that link an Encyclopedia item with an exponent. Morpholoy is realizational, with an important role for impoverishment rules and vocabuary insertion rules. Code switching data is used to present these assumptions. The third module of the model is the Encyclopedia, where minimal syntactic structures find conceptual meaning.

Cormac McCarthy is the foremost American novelist to have simultaneously inspired and crafted screenplays which are successful in their own right. Beginning with his early script for The Gardener’s Son (1977) and continuing through both the Coen brothers’ film adaptation of No Country for Old Men (2007) and his own screenplay for The Counselor (2013), McCarthy has emerged as a formidable figure on both the page and on screen. Yet the intriguing aspect of this dual career is how fully his cinematic efforts have altered the trajectory of his novelistic creations, with an early verbal style that culminated in the famously baroque Blood Meridian honed decades later into a more elliptical, streamlined novelistic strain. And this becomes most clearly apparent in reviewing the successes (and failures) involved in adapting McCarthy’s astringent novelistic vision for the cinema. The review of seven distinct original screenplays and adaptations suggests that the arc of McCarthy’s novels cannot be adequately understood independent of his strong, developing commitment to cinematic possibilities, which have progressively altered a vision initiated as exclusively verbal and become increasingly tempered by visual and filmic considerations.

Hobbes’s On the Citizen discussed religion and church-state relations less fully than his later Leviathan. In Leviathan, he trenchantly attacked theories which granted the clergy power that was independent from that of the state and its sovereign. In On the Citizen, he expressed his views with greater moderation and circumspection. Modern scholars debate whether Hobbes changed his ideas or just his tone between the two books. This chapter discusses the evidence for and against the claim that On the Citizen put forward relatively conventional views on the relationship between the powers of the state and the church, and that it was only in Leviathan that he abandoned a theory that was close to orthodox Anglicanism, and characteristic of royalists at the time of the English Civil War. The chapter examines what Hobbes said in On the Citizen, and also discusses the ideas of some of his contemporaries. It notes that the book soon encountered criticism for its contentions concerning religion and church-state relations, and especially for granting the sovereign too great power over the church and the clergy. It argues that the theory presented in On the Citizen is not so very distant from that which Hobbes espoused in Leviathan.

The introduction discusses the changes in consumers' preferences and the symbolic and practical decline of ownership. Young consumers, especially millennials, prefer experiences over things, comfort and ease of use over ownership. It then presents the sharing economy phenomenon, renames it "the access economy" and introduces the main argument of the book: the sharing economy pushes for a mobile and flexible vision of engaging with possessions and, as a result, with other people. It then places this argument within the broader context of property discourse.