LINGUIST List 10.715

Tue May 11 1999

Books: Functional and Typological Linguistics

Editor for this issue: Scott Fults <scottlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. Paul Peranteau, Two New Books in Functional/Typological Linguistics

John Benjamins Publishing announces the availability of these two works in
Functional/Typological Linguistics:

The Prominence of Tense, Aspect and Mood.
D. N. S. BHAT
Studies in Language Companion Series 49
US & Canada:1 55619 935 X / USD 65.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 3052 8 / NLG 130.00 (Hardcover)

The book puts forth an exciting hypothesis for the typologist. Its
major claim is that languages can generally be regarded as belonging
to a tense-prominent, aspect-prominent or mood-prominent language
type. This grouping can be based upon the relative prominence that
languages attach to one or the other of the three verbal categories,
namely tense, aspect and mood, by grammaticalizing the chosen category
to a greater degree than others, and by making it more obligatory,
more systematic and more pervasive than others. The grouping, however,
involves a gradation, as is indeed the case with other typological
groupings, with some languages manifesting the relevant characteristic
more strikingly than others. There are several characteristics that
can be correlated with the relative prominence that languages attach
to verbal categories. For example, tense-prominent languages tend to
have mostly active but not stative verbs. They also tend to keep
adjectives as a distinct category, or group them with nouns but not
with verbs. Verbal forms used for foregrounding generally belong to
the most prominent verbal category. These and other similar
correlations make this typological classification worth pursuing. The
book also contains a descriptive study of the three verbal categories.


Function and Structure.
In honor of Susumu Kuno.
Akio KAMIO and Ken-Ichi TAKAMI (eds.)
Pragmatics & Beyond NS 59
US & Canada: 1 55619 822 1 / USD 89.00 (Hardcover)
Rest of world: 90 272 5073 1 / NLG 178.00 (Hardcover)

This collection of papers on functional syntax shows the development
of a specific stream of functional linguistics initiated by Susumu
Kuno of Harvard University. Inspired by Prague School linguists such
as Jan Firbas and Vil\233m Mathesius, Kuno developed a more
comprehensive and theory-oriented approach and linked it with the
American formalist approach of generative grammar.

His approach is thus a unique combination of functionalism and
formalism that constantly urges the promotion of interactions between
these two major trends in linguistics. The papers in this collection
coherently deal with functional aspects of linguistics from a wide
variety of perspectives such as theoretical, applicational,
experimental and diachronic aspects, incorporating the functional
concept advocated by Kuno.

Contributions by: Noriko Akatsuka; Jacqueline Guillemin-Flescher; Akio
Kamio and Margaret Thomas; Becky Kennedy; Kiri Lee; Lise Menn et al.;
Ken-ichi Takami; Etsuko Tomoda; Aiko Utsugi; Gregory Ward; John
Whitman.


			John Benjamins Publishing Co. 
Offices:	Philadelphia			Amsterdam:
Websites: 	http://www.benjamins.com	http://www.benjamins.nl
E-mail:		servicebenjamins.com		customer.servicesbenjamins.nl
Phone:		+215 836-1200			+31 20 6762325
Fax: 		+215 836-1204			+31 20 6739773

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1998 Contributors