Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective

by William Croft

Overview

This book is based on the results of research in language typology, and motivated by the need for a theory to explain them. Croft proposes intimate links between syntactic and semantic structures, and argues that the basic elements of any language are not syntactic but rather syntactic-semantic "Gestalts." He puts forward a new approach to syntactic representation and a new model of how language and languages work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198299547
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	12/27/2001
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	9.16(w) x 6.16(h) x 0.95(d)

About the Author

William Croft is Professor of Linguistics at Manchester University and has held positions at the universities of Michigan, Stanford, and at the Max Planck Institute in Nijmegen. His books are 'Typology and Universals' (CUP 1990) and 'Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The Cognitive Organization of Information' (University of Chicago Press 1991). He is a series editor of 'Oxford Studies in Language Typology and Linguistic Theory'.

Table of Contents

1. Part I: Against Syntactic Categories as Theoretical Primitives2. Parts of Speech3. Syntactic Categories and Semantic Relativity4. Grammatical Relations/Syntactic Roles5. Part II: Against Syntactic Relations6. A Radical Approach to Syntactic Relations7. Heads, Complements, and Adjuncts8. Part III: Against Universal Syntactic Constructions9. The Coordination-Subordination Continuum10. Syntactic Theory and the Theory of Language