A Theory of Predicates (Paperback)

Farrell Ackerman

ISBN 10: 1575860864 / ISBN 13: 9781575860862

Verlag: Center for the Study of Language and Informat, Stanford, 1997

Paperback. Lexicalism is a theory of information associated with words and what exactly a word is. The authors propose a different idea of what can be contained in words. Lexicalism is first and foremost a hypothesis about functional-semantic information and secondly a hypothesis about the formal expression of this information. Grammar rules cannot change the argument structure of words. Any change to the meaning of words must occur in the lexicon. A new lexical theory of complex predicates is proposed in this volume. The authors argue that previous lexicalist accounts within Lexical Functional Grammar and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar have abandoned certain crucial aspects of lexicalism in their efforts to account for analytically-expressed predicates, in particular permitting predicate-formation operations to occur within phrase structure. Although the theory is presented in detail primarily for German expressions of these predicates, consideration is given to cross-linguistic application of this theory. When studying linguistics, it is commonplace to find that information packaged into a single word in one language is expressed by several independent words in another language. This observation raises an important question: how can linguistics research represent what is the same among languages while accounting for the obvious differences between them? In this work, two linguists-Farrell Ackerman and Gert Webelhuth-from different theoretical paradigms develop a new general theory of natural language predicates. This theory is capable of addressing a broad range of issues concerning (complex) predicates, many of which remain unresolved in previous theoretical proposals. The book focuses on cross-linguistically recurring patterns of predicate formation. It also provides a detailed implementation of Ackerman and Webelhuth's theory for German tense-aspect, passive, causative, and verb-particle predicates. In addition, a discussion of the extension of these representative analyses to the same predicate construction in other languages is presented. Beyond providing a formalism for the analysis of language-particular predicates, the authors demonstrate how the basic theoretical mechanism they develop can be employed to explain universal tendencies of predicate formation. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 9781575860862

Inhaltsangabe:

Lexicalism is a theory of information associated with words and what exactly a word is. A new lexical theory of complex predicates is proposed in this volume. Although the theory is presented in detail primarily for German expressions of these predicates, consideration is given to cross-linguistic application of this theory.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor: Farrell Ackerman is professor of linguistics and director of the Human Development Program at the University of California, San Diego.

Bibliografische Details

Titel: A Theory of Predicates (Paperback)
Verlag: Center for the Study of Language and Informat, Stanford
Erscheinungsdatum: 1997
Einband: Paperback
Zustand: new