Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars

John Hawkins demonstrates a clear link between how languages are used and the conventions of their grammars. He sets out a theory in which performance shapes grammars and accounts for the variation patterns found in the world's languages. He backs this up with evidence from a wide array of languages. He also considers the profound consequences of this correspondence for explanations of language change and evolution, and for models of performance and acquisition. His book is of fundamental importance for linguistic theory.

About the Author :
John A. Hawkins completed his Ph.D. at Cambridge University in 1975. He has held teaching and research positions at the University of Essex, the Max-Planck-Institute for Psycholinguistics, and the University of Southern California. His visiting appointments include UCLA, Berkeley, Potsdam, and the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. His books include A Performance Theory of Order and Constituency (Cambridge, 1994); A Comparative Typology of English and German: Unifying the Contrasts (Austin, 1986) Word Order Universals (New York,1983), Definiteness, and Indefiniteness: A Study in Reference and Grammaticality Prediction (London, 1978).

Review :
"Jack Hawkins has long been a trail-blazer in the attempt to reconcile the results of formal and functional linguistics. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars charts new territory in this domain. The book argues persuasively that a small number of performance-based principles combine to account for many grammatical constraints proposed by formal linguists and also explain the origins of numerous typological generalizations discovered by functionalists."--Frederick J. Newmeyer, University of Washington "The central claim in Hawkins's new book is that grammar facilitates language processing. This rather natural idea is by no means novel: attempts to explain aspects of linguistic structure on the basis of processing considerations go back at least to the 1950s. But such attempts have characteristically been little more than 'just so stories'-- that is, post hoc accounts of isolated observations. What has been lacking until now is anything that could be called a theory of how constraints on the human processor shape grammatical structure. Hawkins has filled this lacuna... Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars is a landmark work, setting a new standard in the study of the relationship between linguistic competence and performance."--Tom Wasow, Stanford University "Hawkins argues that grammars are profoundly affected by the way humans process language. He develops a simple but elegant theory of performance and grammar by drawing on concepts and data from generative grammar, linguistic typology, experimental psycholinguistics and historical linguistics. In so doing, he also makes a laudable attempt to bridge the schism between the two research traditions in linguistics, the formal and the functional. Efficiency and Complexity in Grammars is a major contribution with far-reaching consequences and implications for many of the fundamental issues in linguistic theory. This is a tremendous piece of scholarship that no linguist can afford to neglect."--Jae Jung Song, University of Otago, New Zealand