The only fun, friendly, and surefire defense against the grammar snobs Having already made a name for herself with Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies, now in its fifth printing, June Casagrande returns with Mortal Syntax, taking on the 101 most frequently attacked usage choices. Dedicating one short chapter to each, Casagrande brings her subject to life, teaching English usage through lively and amusing personal anecdotes. Mortal Syntax includes such chapters as: ? "I wish I was taller" ? "I am continuously watching Simpsons reruns" ? "Was it Horton that heard the Who?" Casagrande's clear and concise lessons-with entertaining titles and themes-make a potentially prickly subject go down like a spoonful of sugar.
This volume offers a new perspective on the syntax of nominal expressions in various European languages, arguing that articles do not directly and biunivocally realise semantic definiteness. The first two chapters provide an accessible introduction to recent developments in generative syntax, namely the cartographic and minimalist approaches, by focusing on the “imperfect” parallels between clauses and nominal expressions. The third chapter shows that feature sharing is not the result of a unique syntactic process, but, rather, the consequence of Merge, which creates syntactic structure instantiating two types of relation: Selection and Modification. It argues for three different ways of transferring features: Agreement allows for an argument (an independent phase, selected by a head) to re-enter the computation as part of the predicate of the new phase. It targets Person features and is not involved in the feature sharing triggered by modification. Concord copies the features of N (notably gender, number and case, where this is present). It is the result of Modification and can coexist with Agreement. Finally, Projection is triggered by multiple internal mergers of the head, bundled with all its interpretable and uninterpretable features, which may be realized in different segments. The fourth chapter focuses on the nature of determiners such as articles, demonstratives, quantifiers, possessive adjectives and pronouns, personal pronouns and proper names, and shows that only articles have the properties to be attributed to “functional heads” because they are a segment of a scattered nominal head. The rest of the volume is devoted to the analysis of syntactic phenomena, such as double definiteness, expletive articles, and weak and strong adjectival inflection, by means of the proposal that (scattered) nominal or adjectival heads concord with their modifiers. This approach reinterprets head movement in a fashion that makes it compatible with minimalist requirements, provides an explanation for the apparent optionality of head movement, eliminates the typology of head movements by adjunction or substitution, and gives an original answer to the doubts raised about the legitimacy of the very notion of “functional category”.
Language columnist June Casagrande presents a fun and breezy guide to everything a grown-up interested in grammar needs to know. When it comes to grammar, it seems like everyone—even die-hard word nerds—feel they "missed something" in school. The Joy of Syntax picks up where sixth grade left off, providing a fresh foundation in English syntax served up by someone with an impressive record of making this otherwise inaccessible subject a true joy. With simple, pithy information on everything from basic parts of speech and sentence structure to usage and grammar pitfalls, this guide provides everything you need to approach grammar with confidence.
This book provides a state-of-the-art introduction to categorial grammar, a type of formal grammar which analyses expressions as functions or according to a function-argument relationship. The book's focus is on linguistic, computational, and psycholinguistic aspects of logical categorial grammar, i.e. enriched Lambek Calculus. Glyn Morrill opens with the history and notation of Lambek Calculus and its application to syntax, semantics, and processing. Successive chapters extend the grammar to a number of significant syntactic and semantic properties of natural language. The final part applies Morrill's account to several current issues in processing and parsing, considered from both a psychological and a computational perspective. The book offers a rigorous and thoughtful study of one of the main lines of research in the formal and mathematical theory of grammar, and will be suitable for students of linguistics and cognitive science from advanced undergraduate level upwards.
This second edition of Ian Roberts's highly successful textbook on diachronic syntax has been fully revised and updated throughout to take account of the multiple developments in the field in the last decade. The book provides a detailed account of how standard questions in historical linguistics - including word order change, grammaticalization, and reanalysis - can be explored in terms of current minimalist theory and Universal Grammar. This new edition offers expanded coverage of a range of topics, including null subjects, the Final-over-Final Condition, the diachrony of wh-movement, the Tolerance Principle, and creoles and creolization, and explores further advances in the theory of parametric variation. Each chapter includes suggestions for further reading, and the book concludes with a comprehensive glossary of key terms. Written by one of the leading scholars in the field, the volume will remain an ideal textbook for students of historical linguistics and a valuable reference for researchers and students in related areas such as syntax, comparative linguistics, language contact, and language acquisition.
This book is an English version of two series of highly acclaimed introductory lectures given by the great Swiss linguist and classical philologist Jacob Wackernagel (1853-1938) at the University of Basle in 1918-19 on aspects of Greek, Latin, and German as languages. Out of print in German since 1996, these lectures remain the best available introduction, in any language, not only to Greek, Latin, and comparative syntax but also to many topics in the history and pre-history ofGreek and Latin, and their relations with other languages. Other subjects, such as the history of grammatical terminology, are also brilliantly dealt with. This new edition supplements the German original by providing a translation of all quotations and examples, a large number of detailed footnotesoffering background information and suggestions for further reading, and a single bibliography which brings together Wackernagel's references and those added in the notes.
English Grammar: Learning at Lightning Speed By: Okon Attah, Ph.D. English Grammar: Learning at Lightning Speed is part of a collective effort to water the flower of grammar and maintain its wholesomeness. This book is neither the ultimate nor the penultimate work on English grammar; it is intended to serve as a prolegomenon to further studies. Verbosity has been reduced here; there is focus on what is germane to understanding English grammar, so the reader can learn at lightning speed.
