Verb Meaning and the Lexicon: A First Phase Syntax

by Gillian Catriona Ramchand

Overview

The relationship between the meaning of words and the structure of sentences is an important area of research in linguistics. Studying the connections between lexical conceptual meaning and event structural relations, this book arrives at a modular classification of verb types within English and across languages. Ramchand argues that lexical encyclopedic content and event structural aspects of meaning need to be systematically distinguished, and that thematic and aspectual relations belong to the latter domain of meaning. The book proposes a syntactic decompositional view of core verbal meaning, and sets out to account for the variability and systematicity of argument structure realisation across verb types. It also proposes an interesting view of lexical insertion.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521182348
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/17/2011
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Linguistics , #116
Edition description:	Reissue
Pages:	228
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

GILLIAN CATRIONA RAMCHAND is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Tromsø.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. The empirical ground; 3. A first phase syntax; 4. Deriving verb classes; 5. Paths and results; 6. Causativization; 7. Conclusion.