LINGUIST List 15.2546

Tue Sep 14 2004

Books: Syntax: Whitman

Editor for this issue: Megan Zdrojkowski <meganlinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. kkaneta, Category Neutrality: Whitman

Title: Category Neutrality
Subtitle: A Type-Logical Investigation
Series Title: Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics 

Publication Year: 2004
Publisher:	Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
		http://www.routledge.com/ 

Author: John Whitman, Cornell University 

Hardback: ISBN: 0415970946, Pages: 320, Price: U.S. $ 90.00 

			
Abstract:

'Feature neutrality' is an issue that has received much attention
among linguists. For example, consider the sentence, 'I have never,
and will never, put my name on this document.' Here, the verb 'put'
acts simultaneously as a past participle (as in 'have never put') and
a base form (as in 'will never put'), and is therefore said to be
neutral between the two forms. Similar examples have been found for
many languages.

The accepted wisdom is that neutrality is possible only for
morphosyntactic features such as verb form, gender, number, declension
class-not at the level of gross syntactic category, where the semantic
differences are more significant. In other words, it has been claimed
that "category neutrality," where a word or phrase is used
simultaneously with more than one syntactic category, does not
exist. (A famous example is the glaring ungrammaticality of this
sentence, in which 'can' is used simultaneously as a main verb and
auxiliary verb: 'I can tuna and get a new job.') In this book,
however, Neal Whitman shows that category neutrality does exist in
English. This not only challenges the current thinking, but also
raises foundational questions about the nature of ambiguity.


Lingfield(s):	Syntax
		
Written In:	English (Language Code: ENG)

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