On Understanding Grammar

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Academic Press, May 10, 2014 - Language Arts & Disciplines - 396 pages
On Understanding Grammar covers the interdependencies among the various aspects of linguistics and the human language. This eight-chapter text considers some pertinent topics in linguistics, such as discourse-pragmatics, diachronic syntax, topology, creology, method, and ontology. Chapter 1 describes the notions of fact, theory, and explanation, particularly about how these notions manifest themselves in actual practice. Chapter 2 redefines syntax in terms of communicative function and discourse-pragmatics, and about the relation between the function of grammatical devices and their formal properties. Chapter 3 deals with discourse-pragmatics and how it transcends the narrow bounds of deductive logic, as well as the function and ontology of negation in language, and how those relate to the fundamental information-theoretic principle of figure versus ground. Chapter 4 explores the two major aspects of case systems, namely, the semantic role and pragmatic function, and how the two interact in determining the typological characteristics of grammars. Chapter 5 examines the relation between discourse and syntax based on diachronic, ontogenetic, phylogenetic viewpoints. Chapter 6 tackles the relation between synchronic grammar and diachronic change, while Chapter 7 describes the relationship between human language and its phylogenetic evolution. Chapter 8 is about language and ontology, as well as the relation between cognition and the universe. This book will prove useful to linguistics and language researchers.
 

Contents

on the crypto Structuralist nature of transformational grammar
1
toward a discourse definition of syntax
45
negation in language pragmatics function ontology
91
promotion accessibility and the typology of case marking
143
from discourse to syntax grammar as a processing strategy
207
where does crazy syntax come from diachronic constraints on synchronic grammars
235
the SOV mystery and the evolution of discourse
271
on construing a universe
311
BIBLIOGRAPHY
353
INDEX
367
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