This volume is a comprehensive, up-to-date, and readable introduction to linguistic meaning. While partial to conceptual and typological approaches, the book also presents results from formal approaches. Throughout, the focus is on grammatical meaning -- the way languages delineate universal semantic space and encode it in grammatical form.
The basic tenet of cognitive linguistics is that every linguistic expression is a construal relation. The first section of this volume focuses on issues of such construal and presentation of information, including figure-ground relations, image-schematic structures, and the role of syntactic constructions in information structure.In sections two and three papers are presented on cross-categorial polysemy between lexical and grammatical uses of a morpheme, and between different grammatical senses, and on the relationship between earlier lexical senses and later grammatical ones.
This book argues that the assumption that grammatical relations are both necessary and universal is an unwarranted generalization. The grammatical relations of subject and object are required in the case of the Indian language of Kannada. Furthermore, the notion of transitivity or transference which forms the basis for postulating grammatical relations does not play the expected central role in all languages: in the case of another Indian language, Manipuri, it is volitionality and transitivity which plays the central role in clause structure.
Perfect Grammar: How to Recognise, Correct and Avoid Grammatical Errors
Who else wants to make their writing sparkle? How often have you written something and not been sure if it is correct? Armed with this book, you will never make those errors again. This is an essential guide for students and teachers in post-16 education and for people in business. Communication is essential in any organisation and good grammar is the 'oil' that lubricates the flow of communication
This book presents a theory of grammatical relations among sentential constituents which is a development of Chomsky's Government-Binding Theory. The cross-linguistic predictive power of the theory is unusually strong and it is supported in the examination of a wide range of languages. Within the syntax of a language, grammatical relations determine such things as word order, case marking, verb agreement, and the possibilities of anaphora (co- and disjoint reference) among nominals.