LINGUIST List 13.1505

Fri May 24 2002

Books: Typology: David Beck

Editor for this issue: Richard John Harvey <richardlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. jleppig, The Typology of Parts of Speech Systems

			
Title: The Typology of Parts of Speech Systems

Subtitle: The Markedness of Adjectives

Series Title: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics
			
Publication Year: 2002
			
Publisher: Routledge 
 http://www.routledge.com/
			
Author: David Beck 
				

Hardback: ISBN: 0415941555, Pages: 240, Price: 70.00
Comment: Series Editor: Laurence Horn
			
Abstract:

This book presents rigorous and criterial definitions of the
major parts of speech - noun, verb, and adjective - that
account both for their syntactic behaviour and for their
observed typological variation. Based on an examination of
languages from five different groups - Salishan, Cora,
Quechua, Totonac, and Hausa - this book argues that parts of
speech must be defined by combining the criteria of
syntactic markedness, which characterizes lexical classes in
terms of unmarked syntactic roles, and semantic
prototypicality, which delimits their prototypical meanings.
Adjectives are shown to be the marked (and, hence, most
variable) class because of their inherent non-iconicity at
the semantics/syntax interface. The four-member typology of
parts of speech systems (languages with three open classes,
those that group adjectives with verbs, those that group
adjectives with nouns, and those that conflate all three)
current in the literature is easily generated by free
recombination of these two criterial features.

Lingfield(s):
 
Language Description, 
Typology,
			 
Written In: English (Language Code: ENG)