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This book is available in Oxford Scholarship Online - view abstracts and keywords at book and chapter level.

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Linguistics

Philosophy

Semantics

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Events, Phrases, and Questions

Robert Truswell

Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics

280 pages | Figures, Tables | 234x156mm

978-0-19-957778-1 | Paperback | 20 January 2011

Also available as: Hardback

Price: £29.99

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An original and accessible contribution to the study of the syntax-semantics interface
Offers two simplified theories, which interact to produce surprisingly far-reaching results
Crosses the boundaries of current research communities
Suitable for use in graduate courses

This book examines some knotty problems in natural language. These typically involve questions where the sense or the grammaticality of an utterance teeters on or over the edge of acceptability among native speakers. The phenomena in question have been examined within syntactic theory for over two decades with no wholly satisfactory outcome. Dr Truswell broadens the scope of the enquiry to the interface between syntactic structure and other, indirectly related, cognitive, and semantic structures such as aspect, agentivity, and presupposition. Uniting work from philosophical, cognitive and linguistic perspectives, he develops a model of the internal structure of events as perceptual and cognitive units. He deploys the model to explain and predict the acceptability of particular formulations. He considers the individuation of events in the light of the model and provides a novel account of patterns of question formation. He shows that these patterns throw new light on central claims of Chomsky's biolinguistic minimalist program and Jackendoff's parallel architecture theory of mind and language. This is work at the cutting edge of linguistic theory, catholic in its theoretical scope, open to insights from cognate fields, and illustrated with examples from a wide range of languages. It will interest philosophers, semanticists and cognitive scientists concerned with topics like events, agentivity, and planning, as well as linguists studying syntax or the syntax-semantics interface.

Readership: Graduate students and scholars of linguistics studying the syntax-semantics interface, as well as philosophers, semanticists, and cognitive scientists interested in agentivity and events.

The specification in this catalogue, including without limitation price, format, extent, number of illustrations, and month of publication, was as accurate as possible at the time the catalogue was compiled. Occasionally, due to the nature of some contractual restrictions, we are unable to ship a specific product to a particular territory. Jacket images are provisional and liable to change before publication.

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