Frederick J. (Fritz) Newmeyer (born January 30, 1944) is an American linguist who is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Washington and adjunct professor in the University of British Columbia Department of Linguistics and the Simon Fraser University Department of Linguistics. He has published widely in theoretical and English syntax and is best known for his work on the history of generative syntax[1] and for his arguments that linguistic formalism (i.e. generative grammar) and linguistic functionalism are not incompatible, but rather complementary.[2] In the early 1990s he was one of the linguists who helped to renew interest in the evolutionary origin of language.[3] More recently, Newmeyer argued that facts about linguistic typology are better explained by parsing constraints than by the principles and parameters model of grammar.[4] Nevertheless, he has continued to defend the basic principles of generative grammar, arguing that Ferdinand de Saussure's langue/parole distinction as well Noam Chomsky's distinction between linguistic competence and linguistic performance are essentially correct.[5]
^Newmeyer, Frederick J. (1986). Linguistic Theory in America (Second ed.). Academic Press.
^Newmeyer, Frederick J. (1998). Language Form and Language Function. MIT Press.
^Newmeyer, Frederick J. (1991). "Functional Explanation in Linguistics and the Origins of Language," Language and Communication 11, 3-28, 97-108.
^Newmeyer, Frederick J. (2005). Possible and Probable Languages: A Generative Perspective on Linguistic Typology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
^Newmeyer, Frederick J. (2003). "Grammar is Grammar and Usage is Usage," Language 79, 682-707.
