Possessives in English: An Exploration in Cognitive Grammar - Hardcover

Taylor, John R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198235860 ISBN 13: 9780198235866

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1996

Synopsis

Taylor provides an in-depth analysis of possessive constructions in English in terms of Cognitive Grammar, as developed by Ronald Langacker and others. He also provides a wide-ranging critique of alternative analyses, especially those derived from the Chomskyan school.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

The possessive morpheme in English occurs in a variety of constructions - prenominal possessives (the man's hat, the plane's arrival), postnominal possessives (a friend of mine), -ing nominalizations (without my saying so), and possessive compounds (a girls' school). What does this morpheme actually mean, what is its syntactic category, what is its semantic contribution to the expressions in which it occurs, and how can various restrictions on its use be accounted for? Dr Taylor proposes a unitary account of the possessive morpheme. He takes as his theoretical framework Cognitive Grammar, as developed over the past 15 years by Ronald Langacker and others. In the earlier chapters of the book he introduces and motivates the conceptual apparatus of the theory, and in later chapters he develops a coherent account of the full range of possessive constructions in English. A special feature of the book is that it offers a wide-ranging critique of both traditional and more recent accounts of possessive expressions. Focusing particularly on Government and Binding theory, the author highlights the profound conceptual differences underlying the two theoretical approaches represented by GB and Cognitive Grammar, while also observing some points of convergence between them.

About the Author:

John R. Taylor is a Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at University of Otago.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0198235860
• ISBN 13: 9780198235866
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 384