A01=David Beck
Attributive Constructions
Author_David Beck
Bella Coola
Category=C
class
cross-linguistic analysis
Cross-linguistic Variation
eq_bestseller
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Intransitive
Intransitive Verbs
inventories
lexical
Lexical Class
Lexical Class Distinctions
lexical classification
lexical inventories
Lexical Inventory
linguistic typology
major
Major Lexical Classes
Meaning Text Theory
names
Noun Verb Distinction
predicate
predicates
Quality Nouns
RCs
Referential Argument
roles
Salishan Languages
semantic
Semantic Characterization
Semantic NAMEs
Semantic Predicates
Semantic Prototypes
semantic prototypicality
semantic-syntax interface in grammar
syntactic
Syntactic Actants
Syntactic Dependant
Syntactic Distribution
syntactic markedness
Syntactic Predicate
Syntactic Role
Unmarked Modifiers
Product details
- ISBN 9780415864992
- Weight: 317g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 03 Sep 2013
- Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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This book presents rigorous and criterial definitions of the major parts of speech - noun, verb, and adjective - that account both for their syntactic behaviour and for their observed typological variation. Based on an examination of languages from five different groups - Salishan, Cora, Quechua, Totonac, and Hausa - this book argues that parts of speech must be defined by combining the criteria of syntactic markedness, which characterizes lexical classes in terms of unmarked syntactic roles, and semantic prototypicality, which delimits their prototypical meanings. Adjectives are shown to be the marked (and, hence, most variable) class because of their inherent non-iconicity at the semantics/syntax interface. The four-member typology of parts of speech systems (languages with three open classes, those that group adjectives with verbs, those that group adjectives with nouns, and those that conflate all three) current in the literature is easily generated by free recombination of these two criterial features. Closer examination of the data, however, casts doubt on the existence of one of the four possible language-types, the noun-adjective conflating inventory, which is accounted here for by replacing free recombination of semantic and syntactic features with an algorithm for the subdivision of the lexicon that gives primacy to semantics over syntax.
