Non-Finiteness: A Process-Relation Perspective - Softcover

Yang

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1009073699 ISBN 13: 9781009073691

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2025

Synopsis

'Non-finiteness' is a phenomenon that occurs in most natural languages, whereby a verb is not inflected by grammatical tense, and does not possess the grammatical features of aspect, mood or voice. Various theories have been developed to explain their distribution and their role in clause structure, but many instances of non-finiteness remain unaccounted for. Taking a functional approach, this study proposes a 'process relation framework' to explain the more complex, previously unaccounted for, instances of non-finiteness in clause structure. It applies the framework comparatively to non-finiteness in English and Chinese, showing how it can be applied across typologically distinct languages. Drawing on corpus-based instances and observations, it introduces numerous thought-provoking cases, in which constructional (or combining) types and the predictability of non-finiteness co-occur. In terms of application, non-finiteness is decisive in categorising language types, and it is critical in processing natural languages, text segmentation and annotation in particular.

About this title

About the Author

Bingjun Yang is Professor in Systemic Functional Linguistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His publications include Corpus-based Investigations into Grammar, Media and Health Discourse (Springer Nature, 2020), Language Policy (Routledge, 2017) and Absolute Clauses in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective (Springer, 2015).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1009073699
• ISBN 13: 9781009073691
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 252