Structuring Sense: Volume II: The Normal Course of Events (Oxford Linguistics)

Borer, Hagit

ISBN 10: 0199263914 / ISBN 13: 9780199263912

Published by Oxford University Press, 2005

About this Item

From publisher s library. Library marking on the jacket and on spine. Bookplate on inside cover and library stamp. Otherwise, book is new and unread. Pages clean and crisp, spine unbroken. 0423A.

Seller Inventory # A0423-045

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Structuring Sense: Volume II: The Normal Course of Events (Oxford Linguistics)
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication Date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199263914
• ISBN 13: 9780199263912
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: As New

About this title

Synopsis

Structuring Sense explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes, of which this is the first, that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language.

Hagit Borer departs from both constructional approaches to syntax and the long generative tradition that uses the word as the nucleus around which the syntax grows. She argues that the hierarchical, abstract structures of language are universal, not language specific, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material.

The Normal Course of Events applies this radical approach to event structure. Integrating research results in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the author shows that argument structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic event units. The topics she addresses include the structure of internal arguments and of telic and atelic interpretations, accusative and partitive case, perfective and imperfective marking, the unaccusative-unergative distinction, existential interpretation and post-verbal subjects, and resultative constructions. The languages discussed include English, Catalan, Finnish, Hebrew, Czech, Polish, Russian, and Spanish.

About the Author

Hagit Borer received her Ph.D. in Linguistics at MIT in 1981. She has held positions at the University of California at Irvine and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and is currently the chair of the linguistics department at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include syntax, morphosyntax, the syntax-semantics interface, and the acquisition of syntax.