Essays on Grammatical Theory and Universal Grammar

This wide-ranging collection of essays provides penetrating insight into a variety of views on grammatical theory from a number of leading linguists. Contributors such as John Anderson and Jim Miller address, in different ways, the semantic basis for syntactic relations. John Alyons develops a theme underlying his work on "notional grammar"--the relationship between ontology and language. Steve Pulman's work on prepositional relatives in English, and Andrew Radford's essay on exclamative particles in modern spoken French, provide a detailed study of particular constructions in one language. The volume also contains a wealth of original work by leading figures in Universal Grammar such as Bernard Comrie on reference tracking systems, Bob Dixon on grammatical relations, Greville Corbett on gender systems, and John Hawkins on the explanation of Language Universals.

Introduction; John Anderson: Reflections on notional grammar, with some remarks on its relevance to issues in the analysis of English and its history; Bernard Comrie: Some general properties of reference-tracking systems; Greville Corbett: An approach to the description of gender systems; R. M. W. Dixon: Subject and object in universal grammar; John A. Hawkins: Competence and performance in the explanation of language universals; John Lyons: Semantic ascent: A neglected aspect of syntactic typology; Jim Miller: Participant Roles, synonymy, and truth conditions; Steve Pulman: Prepositional relatives and syntactic marginality; Andrew Radford: The status of exclamative particles in modern spoken French; References; Index