A New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles - Hardcover

Dixon, Robert M. W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198242727 ISBN 13: 9780198242727

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1991

Synopsis

Linguistics often portray grammar as a kind of self-sufficient algebra. R M W Dixon offers a new approach, starting from the premiss that a speaker "codes" meaning into grammatical forms in order to communicate them to a hearer, who recover the "meaning". He investigates the interrelation of grammar and meaning, and uncovers a rationale for the varying grammatical properties of different words - why, for instance, we can say "I wish to go" and "I wish that he would go" and then "I want to go" but not "I want that he should go". In the first part of the book there is a review of some of the main points of English syntax, followed by a discussion of English verbs in terms of "semantic types". About 30 of these types are examined, including verbs of motion, of giving, of thinking, of speaking, of liking, and of trying. In the last part of the book the author looks in detail at five grammatical topics: complement clauses, which can fill subject or object slot in a main clause; the question of transitivity and causatives; passives of all kinds; promotion of a non-subject to subject slot, as in "dictionaries sell well"; and the relation between constructions such as "they walked" and "they had a walk", "she punched him" and "she gave him a punch" and "he looked" and "he took a look".

About this title

Review

"An ambitious and extensive account of English grammar....Books which take a semantic approach to grammar or a syntactic approach to semantics are increasingly common....But I have no hesitation in saying that I find Dixon's book by far the most informative, the one most likely to startle readers repeatedly by telling them what they knew all along but hadn't realized they knew.: --Charles Kreidler, Georgetown Journal of Languages & Linguistics "He has drawn attention to a wealth of facts that have not been widely studied, and his book will certainly repay repeated reading....Deserves the attention of any serious grammarian of English."--Times Literary Supplement "An ambitious and extensive account of English grammar....Books which take a semantic approach to grammar or a syntactic approach to semantics are increasingly common....But I have no hesitation in saying that I find Dixon's book by far the most informative, the one most likely to startle readers repeatedly by telling them what they knew all along but hadn't realized they knew.: --Charles Kreidler, Georgetown Journal of Languages & Linguistics "He has drawn attention to a wealth of facts that have not been widely studied, and his book will certainly repay repeated reading....Deserves the attention of any serious grammarian of English."--Times Literary Supplement "An ambitious and extensive account of English grammar....Books which take a semantic approach to grammar or a syntactic approach to semantics are increasingly common....But I have no hesitation in saying that I find Dixon's book by far the most informative, the one most likely to startle readers repeatedly by telling them what they knew all along but hadn't realized they knew.: --Charles Kreidler, Georgetown Journal of Languages & Linguistics "He has drawn attention to a wealth of facts that have not been widely studied, and his book will certainly repay repeated reading....Deserves the attention of any serious grammarian of English."--Times Literary Supplement "An ambitious and extensive account of English grammar....Books which take a semantic approach to grammar or a syntactic approach to semantics are increasingly common....But I have no hesitation in saying that I find Dixon's book by far the most informative, the one most likely to startle readers repeatedly by telling them what they knew all along but hadn't realized they knew.: --Charles Kreidler, Georgetown Journal of Languages & Linguistics "He has drawn attention to a wealth of facts that have not been widely studied, and his book will certainly repay repeated reading....Deserves the attention of any serious grammarian of English."--Times Literary Supplement

Edition details

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198242727
• ISBN 13: 9780198242727
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 414