This volume makes accessible a substantial range of recent research in Cognitive Grammar. Building from fundamentals, it brings fresh insight to the analysis of varied grammatical phenomena. Topics considered in depth include constructions, grounding, clause structure, and complex sentences. The book is of interest to anyone concerned with the conceptual basis of meaning and linguistic structure.
In central cases of switch-reference, a marker on the verb of one clause is used to indicate whether its subject has the same or different reference from the subject of an adjacent, syntactically-related clause. In central cases of logophoricity, a special pronoun form is used within a reported speech context to indicate coherence with the source of reported speech. Lesley Stirling argues that these types of anaphoric linkage across clause boundaries cannot be adequately accounted for by Binding Theory.
The study of clause combining has been advanced lately by increasing interest in the study of actual language use in a typologically diverse set of languages. A number of received understandings have been challenged, among these the idea of clause combinations as being divisible into subordination and coordination in a binary fashion. Connected to this idea is the nature of conjunctions, a topic treated in several articles here.
A complement clause is used instead of a noun phrase; for example one can say either I heard [the result] or I heard [that England beat France]. Languages differ in the grammatical properties of complement clauses, and the types of verbs which take them. Some languages lack a complement clause construction but instead employ other construction types to achieve similar ends; these are called complementation strategies.
