Morphosyntactic Alternations in English: Functional and Cognitive Perspectives (Functional Linguistics) - Hardcover

Pilar Guerrero Medina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1845537440 ISBN 13: 9781845537449

Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2011

Synopsis

This volume brings together fourteen papers which explore the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, morphological and syntactic factors involved in English morphosyntactic alternations. The contributors to this volume deal with different types of diathesis alternationsA" -broadly defined by Levin (English Verb Classes and Alternations. A Preliminary Investigation, 1993) as alternations in the expressions of arguments, sometimes accompanied by changes of meaningA" -i.e. transitivity alternations (such as the causative/inchoative alternation and the conative alternation), alternations involving arguments within the VP (such as the Swarm-alternation, and the dative or benefactive alternations), etc. The volume will also include some contributions dealing more generally with the issues of morphological relatedness and verb-specific alternations within functionalist, cognitive and/or constructionist frameworks. The book features a wide range of theoretical approaches, ranging from functionalist models such as Functional Discourse Grammar or the Cardiff Grammar version of Systemic Functional Linguistics to more cognitively-oriented approaches such as Goldberg's Construction Grammar or Fillmore's Frame Semantics. This attempt to describe morphosyntactic alternations within different contemporary theoriesA--A-- -derivational and non-derivational- will hopefully contribute to a better understanding of the linguistic phenomena traditionally subsumed under the rubric of morphosyntactic alternation. The book will be of interest to experienced linguists and researchers of a functionalist, cognitivist or even functional-typological persuasion.

About this title

About the Author

Pilar Guerrero Medina is Lecturer in English Grammar at the University of Cordoba, Spain. She has mainly conducted her research within a functionalist framework, focusing on the relationship between lexis and grammar on the one hand, and grammar and discourse on the other. Over the past decade, she has published articles on a range of topics, including transitivity in grammar and discourse, grammatical and lexical aspect, Object assignment and the get-passive. While the earlier articles are framed mainly within the Functional Grammar theory of Simon Dik, later work also incorporates insights from the Goldbergian version of Construction Grammar.

Edition details

• Publisher: Equinox Publishing Ltd
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1845537440
• ISBN 13: 9781845537449
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 382
• Editor: Pilar Guerrero Medina