This book is the first comprehensive presentation of Functional Discourse Grammar, a new and important theory of language structure. The authors set out its nature and origins and show how it relates to contemporary linguistic theory. They demonstrate and test its explanatory power and descriptive utility against linguistic facts from over 150 languages across a wide range of linguistic families. After a full introduction the book is divided into chapters concerned with the four levels of grammatical representation - pragmatic, semantic, morphosyntactic, and phonological - each of which has its own hierarchical structure. Functional Discourse Grammar offers a thorough account of how the use and meaning of language influence linguistic form by conditioning two levels of formulation which feed into two levels of encoding, all with their own specific characteristics. The book offers an ideal introduction to the theory and its applications in typology and description for scholars in linguistics and related fields from graduate students upwards.
This is a great book if you are part of a younger generation that did not grow up professionally while these papers were first being written/discussed. A few selections seem out of place, or perhaps are not quite as foundational as others, but overall it is a collection well worth having. Read from beginning to end you will have a basic handle on a large number of central topics in semantics.
Review Bill Bright, ex editor, Language in Society Mesthrie's outline is well thought out, and he is a sound scholar. ... a volume that meets high scholarly standards, and will be of great usefulness to readers seeking a reference book in sociolinguistics.
The volume comprises 232 thematically organised articles based on the highly successful Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics and the International Encyclopedia of Education (2nd edition) revised and, where necessary, updated and supplemented throughout. Dealing with all topics at the intersection between education and language, the work will prove an invaluable reference for all researchers in the field. Never has there been more intense debate over different attitudes and approaches to teaching and language. This volume will provide a state of the art description of all the topics of interest to language educators and all those concerned with making and implementing policy in language education. Fundamental topics include: the social context, society, national, school and curricular policy, literacy and oracy, language acquisition, bi- and plurilingualism, testing, TEFL, TESOL, SLA.
How is the meaning of natural language interpreted? Taking as its point of departure the logical problem of natural language acquisition, this book elaborates a theory of meaning based on syntactical rather than semantical processes. Hornstein argues that the traditional neoFregean approach taken by Davidson, Barwise and Perry, and Montague, among others - an approach that makes use of semantical notions like "truth" and "reference" - should be replaced by a theory drawn from the syntactical vocabulary of generative grammar. Surprisingly, the book points out that linguistic competence can be acquired despite the degeneracy, finiteness, and deficiency of the environmental stimulus, and it characterizes those innate aspects of the mind which enable a child to develop into a native speaker.
