Product Information
The key argument of this book, originally published in 1984, is that when human beings communicate with each other by means of a natural language they typically do not do so in simple sentences but rather in connected discourse - complex expressions made up of a number of clauses linked together in various ways. A necessary precondition for intelligible discourse is the speaker's ability to signal the temporal relations between the events that are being discussed and to refer to the participants in those events in such a way that it is clear who is being talked about. A great deal of the grammatical machinery in a language is devoted to this task, and Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar explores how different grammatical systems accomplish it. This book is an important attempt to integrate the study of linguistic form with the study of language use and meaning. It will be of particular interest to field linguists and those concerned with typology and language universals, and also to anthropologists involved in the study of language function.Product Identifiers
PublisherCambridge University Press
ISBN-139780521269049
eBay Product ID (ePID)95482414
Product Key Features
Book TitleFunctional Syntax and Universal Grammar
AuthorRobert D. Van Valin, Jr, William A. Foley
FormatPaperback
LanguageEnglish
Publication Year1984
Number of Pages432 Pages
Dimensions
Item Height229 mm
Item Width152 mm
Additional Product Features
Country/Region of ManufactureUnited Kingdom
Title_AuthorRobert D. Van Valin, Jr, William A. Foley
Series TitleCambridge Studies in Linguistics