Lexical Categories

For decades, generative linguistics has said little about the differences between verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This book seeks to fill this theoretical gap by presenting simple and substantive syntactic definitions of these three lexical categories. Mark C. Baker claims that the various superficial differences found in particular languages have a single underlying source which can be used to give better characterizations of these 'parts of speech'. These definitions are supported by data from languages from every continent, including English, Italian, Japanese, Edo, Mohawk, Chichewa, Quechua, Choctaw, Nahuatl, Mapuche, and several Austronesian and Australian languages. Baker argues for a formal, syntax-oriented, and universal approach to the parts of speech, as opposed to the functionalist, semantic, and relativist approaches that have dominated the few previous works on this subject. This book will be welcomed by researchers and students of linguistics and by related cognitive scientists of language.

ISBN 0521001102   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9780521001106 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 550 Publisher Cambridge University Press   Published in Cambridge Imprint Cambridge University Press   Series editor Anderson, S. R., Bresnan, J., Comrie, B. Format Paperback   Series ISSN 0068-676 Publication date 13 Mar 2003   Series title Cambridge Studies in Linguistics Non-book description xvi, 353 p. :   Previous ISBN 9780521806381 Library of Congress 2002067074   Height (mm) 228 DEWEY 415   Width (mm) 152 DEWEY edition DC21   Spine width (mm) 21 Pages 372   Academic level Professional / Scholarly

		Acknowledgements
		List of abbreviations
1		The problem of the lexical categories		1
2		Verbs as licensers of subjects		23
3		Nouns as bearers of a referential index		95
4		Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs		190
5		Lexical categories and the nature of the grammar		264
App		Adpositions as functional categories		303
		References		326
		Index		339

'... this book, which contains comprehensive and dynamic grammatical consequences of the universal three-way category system, is an important contribution to our understanding of lexical categories, which, seemingly self-evident, have escaped a good theoretical explanation.' Studies in English Literature

 Be the first to write a customer review