Functional Constraints in Grammar: On the unergative–unaccusative distinction: 1 - Rilegato

Kuno, Susumu; Takami, Ken-ichi

Rilegato

ISBN 10: 9027218218 ISBN 13: 9789027218216

Casa editrice: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2004

Riassunto

This book examines in detail the acceptability status of sentences in the following five English constructions, and elucidates the syntactic, semantic, and functional requirements that the constructions must satisfy in order to be appropriately used: There-Construction, (One’s) Way Construction, Cognate Object Construction, Pseudo-Passive Construction, and Extraposition from Subject NPs. It has been argued in the frameworks of Chomskyan generative grammar, relational grammar, conceptual semantics and other syntactic theories that the acceptability of sentences in these constructions can be accounted for by the unergative–unaccusative distinction of intransitive verbs. However, this book shows through a wide range of sentences that none of these constructions is sensitive to this distinction. For each construction, it shows that acceptability status is determined by a given sentence's semantic function as it interacts with syntactic constraints (which are independent of the unergative–unaccusative distinction), and with functional constraints that apply to it in its discourse context.

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Data di pubblicazione: 2004
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 9027218218
• ISBN 13: 9789027218216
• Rilegatura: Copertina rigida
• Numero di pagine: 253
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile