Syntactic Analysis and Description: A Constructional Approach

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Description

Aimed at undergraduate and beginning graduate students, this work covers the varieties of syntactic phenomena in different languages and a method of analyzing and describing them. The method is based on the concept of the syntactic construction, which is shared by various views of language structure. In this particular presentation, a construction is characterized as a combination of obligatory and optional functions, and each of these functions is related to a class of manifestations. Syntax as a whole is then seen as interrelating constructions on the ranks (size-levels) of the phrase, clause, and sentence. Besides the essential features of phrase, clause, and sentence structures, there are chapters devoted to special topics such as clitics, negation, clausal organization, and voice and related devices.

Author Bio

David G. Lockwood is Professor of Linguistics at Michigan State University, USA.He is co-editor, with Michael Cummings, Peter H. Fries and William Spruiell, of Relations and Functions within and around Language (Continuum, 2001).