Title: Lexical Categories: Verbs, Nouns, and AdjectivesAuthor(s): Mark C. Baker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Date: 2004
Pages: 368
Size: 1.23 Mb
Format: PDF
Quality: High
Language: American English
For decades, generative linguistics has said little about the differences between verbs, nouns, and adjectives. This book seeks to fill this theoretical gap by presenting simple and substantive syntactic definitions of these three lexical categories. Mark C. Baker claims that the various superficial differences found in particular languages have a single underlying source which can be used to give better characterizations of these “parts of speech.” [+/-]
These new definitions are supported by data from languages from every continent, including English, Italian, Japanese, Edo, Mohawk, Chichewa, Quechua, Choctaw, Nahuatl, Mapuche, and several Austronesian and Australian languages. Baker argues for a formal, syntax-oriented, and universal approach to the parts of speech, as opposed to the functionalist, semantic, and relativist approaches that have dominated the fewpreviousworks on this subject. This book will be welcomed by researchers and students of linguistics and by related cognitive scientists of language.
• Presents a formal theory of the basic ‘parts of speech’
• Claims that the parts of speech can be given simple, universally valid definitions
• Definitions are supported by data from languages from every continent
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. The problem of the lexical categories
2. Verbs as licensers of subjects
3. Nouns as bearers of a referential index
4. Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs
5. Lexical categories and the nature of the grammar
Appendix: Adpositions as functional categories.
About the author
Mark C. Baker is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Rutgers University and a member of the Center for Cognitive Science. He is the author of Incorporation: a theory of grammatical function changing (1988), The polysynthesis parameter (1996), and The atoms of language: the mind’s hidden rules of grammar (2001), as well as of numerous articles in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry and Natural Language and Lingustic Theory.
These new definitions are supported by data from languages from every continent, including English, Italian, Japanese, Edo, Mohawk, Chichewa, Quechua, Choctaw, Nahuatl, Mapuche, and several Austronesian and Australian languages. Baker argues for a formal, syntax-oriented, and universal approach to the parts of speech, as opposed to the functionalist, semantic, and relativist approaches that have dominated the fewpreviousworks on this subject. This book will be welcomed by researchers and students of linguistics and by related cognitive scientists of language.
• Presents a formal theory of the basic ‘parts of speech’
• Claims that the parts of speech can be given simple, universally valid definitions
• Definitions are supported by data from languages from every continent
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1. The problem of the lexical categories
2. Verbs as licensers of subjects
3. Nouns as bearers of a referential index
4. Adjectives as neither nouns nor verbs
5. Lexical categories and the nature of the grammar
Appendix: Adpositions as functional categories.
About the author
Mark C. Baker is Professor of Linguistics and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Rutgers University and a member of the Center for Cognitive Science. He is the author of Incorporation: a theory of grammatical function changing (1988), The polysynthesis parameter (1996), and The atoms of language: the mind’s hidden rules of grammar (2001), as well as of numerous articles in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry and Natural Language and Lingustic Theory.
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