Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics Ser.: Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation : Qualities and the Grammar of Property Concepts by Andrew Koontz-Garboden and Itamar Francez (2017, Trade Paperback)
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This book explores a key issue in linguistic theory, the systematic variation in form between semantic equivalents across languages. Two contrasting views of the role of lexical meaning in the analysis of such variation can be found in the literature: (i) uniformity, whereby lexical meaning is universal, and variation arises from idiosyncratic differences in the inventory and phonological shape of language-particular functional material, and (ii) transparency, whereby systematic variation in form arises from systematic variation in the meaning of basic lexical items. In this volume, Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden contrast these views as applied to the empirical domain of property concept sentences - sentences expressing adjectival predication and their translational equivalents across languages. They demonstrate that property concept sentences vary systematically between possessive and predicative form, and propose a transparentist analysis of this variation that links it to the lexical denotations of basic property concept lexemes. At the heart of the analysis are qualities: mass-like model theoretic objects that closely resemble scales. The authors contrast their transparentist analysis with uniformitarian alternatives, demonstrating its theoretical and empirical advantages. They then show that the proposed theory of qualities can account for interesting and novel observations in two central domains of grammatical theory: the theory of syntactic categories, and the theory of mass nouns. The overall results highlight the importance of the lexicon as a locus of generalizations about the limits of crosslinguistic variation.
Product Identifiers
Publisher
Oxford University Press, Incorporated
ISBN-10
0198744595
ISBN-13
9780198744597
eBay Product ID (ePID)
237801387
Product Key Features
Author
Itamar Francez, Andrew Koontz-Garboden
Publication Name
Semantics and Morphosyntactic Variation : Qualities and the Grammar of Property concepts
Format
Trade Paperback
Language
English
Series
Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics Ser.
Publication Year
2017
Type
Textbook
Number of Pages
188 Pages
Dimensions
Item Length
9.2in
Item Height
0.6in
Item Width
6in
Item Weight
10 Oz
Additional Product Features
Lc Classification Number
P325.5
Table of Content
1. Introduction: Lexical semantics and morphosyntactic patterns2. Variation in the form of property concept sentences: The explananda3. The lexical semantic variation hypothesis4. The locus of variation in property concept sentences5. Meaning and Category: Semantic constraints on parts of speech6. Quality nouns and other mass nouns7. Conclusion