Teaching engllish grammar

Grammar is not just syntax. It includes all of the following:

• Syntax, i.e. sentence structure, where we distinguish subjects and objects, subordinate and main clauses, and so on.

• Morphology, i.e. word structure, where we recognise roots, suffixes, inflected words, and so on.

• Semantics, i.e. meaning - the things, people, events and so on that we refer to when talking.

This book presents a model of event structure for the analysis of aspectual constructions and argument structure constructions in English and other languages. Representing the culmination of two decades of the author's research and thought, it explores the contribution of semantics to the argument-structure and tense-aspect constructions in which verbs occur, integrating the aspectual and causal structures of events.

Semantic structure and word-formation

The verb-particle construction (in the following abbreviated as VPC) is here regarded as a class of lexical items which have a common morpho-syntactic surface structure. The present study aims to develop methods for the description of the underlying semantic structures. At the same time it attempts to describe the surface structure as thoroughly as possible. The results of the empirical investigation are also intended to provide data for theoretical considerations of semantic problems. This leads to the postulation of semantic formulas consisting of formators and designators.

Covering linguistic research on empty categories over more than three decades, this monograph presents the result of an in-depth syntactic and focus-theoretical investigation of ellipsis in generative grammar. The phenomenon of ellipsis most generally refers to the omission of linguistic material, structure and sound. The central aim of this book is to explain on the basis of linguistic theorizing of how it is possible that we understand more than we actually hear. The answer developed throughout this book is that ellipsis is an interface phenomenon which can only be explained on the basis of the complex interaction between syntax, semantics and information structure.

This book addresses how core notions of information structure (topic, focus and contrast) are expressed in syntax.The authorspropose that the syntactic effects of information structure come about as a result of mapping rules flexible enough to allow topics and foci to be expressed in a variety of positions, but strict enough to capture certain cross-linguistic generalisations about their distribution. Syntactic and semantic evidence from a range of languages are discussed.