Morphosyntactic Alternations in English Functional and Cognitive Perspectives |
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Editor:
| Medina, Pilar Guerrero |
Series title: | Functional Linguistics Ser. |
ISBN: | 978-1-84553-744-9 |
Publication Date: | Sep 2011 |
Publisher: | Equinox Publishing Limited
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Book Format: | Hardback |
List Price: | USD $95.00 |
Book Description:
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This volume brings together fourteen papers which explore the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, morphological and syntactic factors involved in English morphosyntactic alternations. The contributors to this volume deal with different types of diathesis alternations -broadly defined by Levin (English Verb Classes and Alternations. A Preliminary Investigation, 1993) as alternations in the expressions of arguments, sometimes accompanied by changes of meaning -i.e. transitivity alternations...
More DescriptionThis volume brings together fourteen papers which explore the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, morphological and syntactic factors involved in English morphosyntactic alternations. The contributors to this volume deal with different types of diathesis alternations -broadly defined by Levin (English Verb Classes and Alternations. A Preliminary Investigation, 1993) as alternations in the expressions of arguments, sometimes accompanied by changes of meaning -i.e. transitivity alternations (such as the causative/inchoative alternation and the conative alternation), alternations involving arguments within the VP (such as the Swarm-alternation, and the dative or benefactive alternations), etc. The volume will also include some contributions dealing more generally with the issues of morphological relatedness and verb-specific alternations within functionalist, cognitive and/or constructionist frameworks. The book features a wide range of theoretical approaches, ranging from functionalist models such as Functional Discourse Grammar or the Cardiff Grammar version of Systemic Functional Linguistics to more cognitively-oriented approaches such as Goldberg's Construction Grammar or Fillmore's Frame Semantics. This attempt to describe morphosyntactic alternations within different contemporary theories -derivational and non-derivational- will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of the linguistic phenomena traditionally subsumed under the rubric of morphosyntactic alternation. The book will be of interest to experienced linguists and researchers of a functionalist, cognitivist or even functional-typological persuasion.