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? John A. Hawkins argues that there is a profound correspondence between performance data and the fixed conventions of grammars. Preferences and patterns found in the one, he 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, Professor Hawkins demonstrates that the assumption that grammars are immune to performance is false.

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This volume introduces a new concept, 'criterial features', for the learning, teaching and testing of English as a second language. The work is based on research conducted within the English Profile Programme at Cambridge University, using the Cambridge Learner Corpus. The authors address the extent to which learners know the grammar, lexicon and usage conventions of English at each level of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). These levels are currently illustrated in functional terms with 'Can Do' statements. Greater specificity and precision can be achieved by using the tagged and parsed corpus, which enables researchers to identify criterial features of the CEFR levels, i.e. properties that are characteristic and indicative of L2 proficiency at each level. In practical terms, once criterial features have been identified, the grammatical and lexical properties of English can be presented to learners more efficiently and in ways that are appropriate to their levels.

In this major new book, John A. Hawkins presents a new theory of linear ordering in syntax. He argues that processing can provide a simple, functional explanation for syntactic rules of ordering, as well as for the selection among ordering variants in languages and structures in which variation is possible. Insights from generative syntax, typological studies of language universals, and psycholinguistic studies of language processing are combined to show that there is a profound correspondence between performance and grammar.