Studies In Lexicogrammar

The leitmotif, but not exclusive theme, of the present volume is Ronald Langacker’s (1987) thesis that “lexicon, morphology, and syntax form a continuum of symbolic units serving to structure conceptual content for expressive purposes”. The concept of the lexicogrammar continuum contrasts especially with mainstream generative grammar, but also, although less radically, with other cognitive linguistic paradigms, such as Construction Grammar. The contributors to this volume explore the lexicogrammar continuum and other issues of the architecture of language mostly from a cognitive linguistic perspective. A wide range of theoretical and methodological themes is covered such as the integration of discourse and interactional phenomena into Cognitive Grammar, the status of introspective data, figurative language and thought (i.e. metaphor and metonymy), morphosyntactic constructions, and phonological structure. Besides English (including Old English), languages analyzed in some detail include Polish, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Georgian, German, Danish, and Portuguese. The volume will be of interest to scholars and graduate students in cognitive linguistics, especially Cognitive Grammar, Construction Grammar, metaphor and metonymy, and corpus linguistics.

Adjectives are the third most important class of words (after verbs and nouns), yet this is the first book-length study in English of this central grammatical category. In it English adjectives are described within a framework which unifies semantics and syntax; this has important implications for the modelling of lexis in general. It has long been a principle of systemic functional linguistics - the theory in which the description is set - that lexis should be treated, in Halliday's words, as 'most delicate grammar'. Until now, this challenging concept has never been explored and tested for more than a few small areas of lexis. The research reported here is the first large-scale test of this hypothesis. After a thorough survey of the relevant literature, Gordon Tucker provides a linguistic description of the meanings and forms of the adjectives themselves, the structures that occur around them, and the functions that such units perform as elements of other units (such as the clause and the nominal group). The Lexicogrammar of Adjectives constitutes a major descriptive addition to our knowledge of the value of'lexis as most delicate grammar'. It is a major contribution to the theoretical modelling of language in general and of words in particular. Its conclusions are important both for systemic functional linguistics and for linguistic theory in general.

Explorations in Functional Syntax develops a practical framework for analyzing the syntactic structure of a text from a functional perspective. It outlines a model in which the syntactic analysis, on a single dimension, mirrors more explicitly the multidimensional meaning structure of the text. The syntactic framework thus takes account of semantic concepts such as participants and things, processes, features and qualities, and circumstances, all of which constitute elements of ideas. But it also deals with the cohesive links which connect ideas and with personal comments, etc. which may be interspersed in amongst them. Though set firmly in the mould of systemic functional grammar, the book focuses on lexicogrammar -grammatical units and relations, structural elements, configurations and complexities; social context and the semantic stratum are sketched out only as integral background. In elaborating a unitary syntactic framework which is functionally orientated so as to reflect the meaning structure of a text, the book represents a significant departure from the 'standard' mode of handling lexicogrammar in systemic linguistics. Important differences have been introduced with regard, firstly, to the nature of units on the rank scale and their relationships to structural complexes and, secondly, to the range and scope of elements of clause structure. The book is well illustrated with examples of the descriptive framework in action throughout the text and in a summary end chapter.

This book contains the first in-depth corpus-based description of structural nativization at the lexis-grammar interface in Indian English, the largest institutionalized second-language variety of English world-wide. For a set of three ditransitive verbs give, send and offer –collocational patterns, verb-complementational preferences and correlations between collocational and verb-complementational routines are described. The present study is based on the comparison of the Indian and the British components of the International Corpus of English as well as a 100-million-word web-derived corpus of acrolectal Indian newspaper language and corresponding parts of the British National Corpus. The present corpus-based 'thick description' of lexicogrammatical routines provides new perspectives on the emergence of new routines and patternings in Indian English and is conceptually and methodologically relevant for research into varieties of English worldwide.

A comprehensive and accessible introduction to statistics in corpus linguistics, covering multiple techniques of quantitative language analysis and data visualisation.

This collection presents a number of studies in the lexico-grammar of English which focus on the one hand on close reading of language in context and on the other hand on current functional theoretical concerns. The various contributions represent distinct functionalist models of language, including Functional Grammar and Functional Discourse Grammar, Systemic-Functional Grammar, Role and Reference Grammar, Cognitive Grammar and Construction Grammar. Taken together, however, they typify current work being conducted from the grammatical perspective within the functionalist enterprise, emphasizing on the relation between structure and usage. A fundamental goal of the enterprise is to identify linguistic structures which are constrained by specific features of use, or which actually encode specific features of use, as many of the contributions here show.

Adjectives are the third most important class of words (after verbs and nouns), yet this is the first book-length study in English of this central grammatical category. In it English adjectives are described within a framework which unifies semantics and syntax; this has important implications for the modelling of lexis in general. It has long been a principle of systemic functional linguistics - the theory in which the description is set - that lexis should be treated, in Halliday's words, as 'most delicate grammar'. Until now, this challenging concept has never been explored and tested for more than a few small areas of lexis. The research reported here is the first large-scale test of this hypothesis. After a thorough survey of the relevant literature, Gordon Tucker provides a linguistic description of the meanings and forms of the adjectives themselves, the structures that occur around them, and the functions that such units perform as elements of other units (such as the clause and the nominal group). The Lexicogrammar of Adjectives constitutes a major descriptive addition to our knowledge of the value of'lexis as most delicate grammar'. It is a major contribution to the theoretical modelling of language in general and of words in particular. Its conclusions are important both for systemic functional linguistics and for linguistic theory in general.

This well-illustrated book outlines a framework for the analysis of syntactic structure from a perspective of a systematic functional grammar. In oart, the book goes back to the grammar's "scale and category" roots, but now with the aim of presenting how a descriptive framework illustrating how the analysis of the syntactic structure can reflect the meaning structure.The contents are divided into four sections. Section one gives a brief overview of systematic grammar, including the linguistic system, context of situation, and language fractions. Developing the lexicogrammar, section two considers formal units and their classes, but the principal focus is on section three, which covers the role of units as elements of structure. Section four discusses areas of structural complexity and concludes with several refinements to the analysis format.