Universal Semantic Syntax

Syntactic theory has been dominated in the last decades by theories that disregard semantics in their approach to syntax. Presenting a truly semantic approach to syntax, this book takes as its primary starting point the idea that syntax deals with the relations between meanings expressed by form-meaning elements and that the same types of relations can be found cross-linguistically. The theory provides a way to formalize the syntactic relations between meanings so that each fragment of grammar can be analyzed in a clear-cut way. A comprehensive introduction into the theoretical concepts of the theory is provided, with analyzes of numerous examples in English and various other languages, European and non-European, to illustrate the concepts. The theory discussed will enable linguists to look for similarities between languages, while at the same time acknowledging important language specific features.

Egbert Fortuin is Associate Professor of Russian Linguistics at Universiteit Leiden. He has published numerous articles in journals such as Lingua, Cognitive Linguistics and Russian Linguistics. He is currently editor of the book series Studies in General and Slavic Linguistics.

Hetty Geerdink-Verkoren studied English and Japanese and completed her Ph.D. in Japanese linguistics at Universiteit Leiden. She is chief editor and content manager on a project for the compilation of a new Japanese-Dutch dictionary.