
A Syntax of Substance
David Adger(Author)
MIT Press
Published on 4. January 2013
Book
Paperback/Softback
208 pages
978-0-262-51830-7 (ISBN)
Description
A new approach to grammar and meaning of relational nouns is presented along with its empirical consequences.In A Syntax of Substance, David Adger proposes a new approach to phrase structure that eschews functional heads and labels structures exocentrically. His proposal simultaneously simplifies the syntactic system and restricts the range of possible structures, ruling out the ubiquitous (remnant) roll-up derivations and forcing a separation of arguments from their apparent heads. This new system has a number of empirical consequences, which Adger explores in the domain of relational nominals across different language families, including Germanic, Romance, Celtic, Polynesian, and Semitic. He shows that the relationality of such nouns as hand, edge, or mother-which seem to have as part of their meaning a relation between substances-is actually part of the syntactic representation in which they are used rather than an inherent part of their meaning. This empirical outcome follows directly from the new syntactic system, as does a novel analysis of PP complements to nouns and possessors. Given this, he argues that nouns can, in general, be thought of as simply specifications of substance, differentiating them from true predicates. A Syntax of Substance offers an innovative contribution to debates in theoretical syntax about the nature of syntactic representations and how they connect to semantic interpretation and linear order.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge, Mass.
United States
Publishing group
MIT Press Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Interest Age: From 18 years
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 11 mm
Weight
340 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-262-51830-7 (9780262518307)
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Person
David Adger is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary, University of London, and the author of
Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach.
Core Syntax: A Minimalist Approach.