Functional Discourse Grammar: A Typologically-Based Theory of Language Structure - Softcover

Hengeveld, Kees; Mackenzie, J. Lachlan

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0199278113 ISBN 13: 9780199278114

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

This book is the first comprehensive presentation of Functional Discourse Grammar, a new and important theory of language structure. The authors set out its nature and origins and show how it relates to contemporary linguistic theory. They demonstrate and test its explanatory power and descriptive utility against linguistic facts from over 150 languages across a wide range of linguistic families.

After a full introduction the book is divided into chapters concerned with the four levels of grammatical representation - pragmatic, semantic, morphosyntactic, and phonological - each of which has its own hierarchical structure. Functional Discourse Grammar offers a thorough account of how the use and meaning of language influence linguistic form by conditioning two levels of formulation which feed into two levels of encoding, all with their own specific characteristics. The book offers an ideal introduction to the theory and its applications in typology and description for scholars in linguistics and related fields from graduate students upwards.

About this title

About the Author:

Kees Hengeveld has been active in Functional Grammar for over twenty years. He is the author of Non-verbal Predication: theory, typology, diachrony (Berlin, 1992) and editor of Simon Dik's two-volume The Theory of Functional Grammar (Berlin, 1997). He is Professor of Theoretical Linguistics at the University of Amsterdam.

J. Lachlan Mackenzie has worked with Functional Grammar since his appointment in 1977 to the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, where he is now Honorary Professor of Functional Linguistics. He is co-editor of Crucial Readings in Functional Grammar and of A New Architecture for Functional Grammar.

Review:

This book impresses the reader by its coherence, clarity, amplitude and typological relevance... The book will be welcomed by many more than the members of the 'FDG community'... It reads easily. The book is beautifully produced. * Johan van der Auwera and Frank Brisard, The Functions of Language *

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0199278113
• ISBN 13: 9780199278114
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 448