A Theory of Predicates: Volume 76 (Center for the Study of Language and Information Publication Lecture Notes) - Softcover

Ackerman, Farrell; Webelhuth, Gert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1575860864 ISBN 13: 9781575860862

Publisher: The Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications, 1998

Synopsis

Lexicalism is a theory of information associated with words and what exactly a word is. The authors propose a different idea of what can be contained in words. Lexicalism is first and foremost a hypothesis about functional-semantic information and secondly a hypothesis about the formal expression of this information. Grammar rules cannot change the argument structure of words. Any change to the meaning of words must occur in the lexicon. A new lexical theory of complex predicates is proposed in this volume. The authors argue that previous lexicalist accounts within Lexical Functional Grammar and Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar have abandoned certain crucial aspects of lexicalism in their efforts to account for analytically-expressed predicates, in particular permitting predicate-formation operations to occur within phrase structure. Although the theory is presented in detail primarily for German expressions of these predicates, consideration is given to cross-linguistic application of this theory.

About this title

About the Author

Farrell Ackerman is professor of linguistics and director of the Human Development Program at the University of California, San Diego.

Edition details

• Publisher: The Center for the Study of Language and Information Publications
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1575860864
• ISBN 13: 9781575860862
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416