Syntactic Analysis and Description: A Constructional Approach

by David Lockwood

Overview

This book is designed to teach undergraduate and beginning graduate students about the varieties of syntactic phenomena in different languages and a method of analyzing and describing them. The method is based on the concept of the syntactic construction, which is shared by various views of language structure. In this particular presentation, a construction is characterized as a combination of obligatory and optional functions, and each of these functions is related to a class of manifestations. Syntax as a whole is then seen as interrelating constructions on the ranks (size-levels) of the phrase, clause, and sentence.

Besides the essential features of phrase, clause, and sentence structures, there are chapters devoted to special topics such as clitics, negation, clausal organization, and voice and related devices.

While the emphasis is on the actual syntactic structures observable in the data, the relation of syntactic phenomena to linguistic meaning is also considered. In particular, the final chapter shows how account of syntax can often be simplified if control from meaning structure is assumed. Throughout the book, a distinction between meaningfulness and syntactic-well formedness is consistently made.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826455222
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	01/31/2003
Series:	Open Linguistics
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	386
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

David G. Lockwood is Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University, USA. He is co-editor, with Michael Cummings, Peter H. Fries and William Spruiell, of Relations and Functions within and around Language (Continuum, 2001).

Table of Contents

1. Constructions, Functions, and Classes2. Syntax and Morphology: Preediting Syntactic Data3. Types of Phrase Constructions4. Concord and Government in the Phrase5. Phrase Coordination6. Types of Basic Clause Constructions7. Congruence and Determination in the Clause8. Identification and Description of Clitics9. Negation in the Clause10. Varieties of Clausal Organization: Accusative, Ergative, and Others11. Voice and other Forms of Highlighting in the Clause12. Sentence Constructions13. Interrogation in Clause and Sentence Structures14. Subordinate Clauses and Clausoidal Phrases15. Syntax and SemologyAppendix: Adaptations of the Boxed NotationGlossary of Syntactic Terminology