
Ebook: Language usage and language structure
Author: Kasper Boye, Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen
- Series: Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs, 213
- Year: 2010
- Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
- City: Berlin ; New York
- Edition: 1
- Language: English
- pdf
The volume addresses an issue hotly debated in current linguistic theory: the relation between language usage and language structure. The contributors represent different theoretical positions. What they have in common is that they recognize structure and usage as non-reducible linguistic phenomena and take seriously the challenge to describe the relation between them.
Content: Introduction --
Usage and structure: the case of clausal complementation: What conversational English tells us about the nature of grammar: a critique of Thompson's analysis of object complements / Frederick J. Newmeyer --
Usage, structure, scientific explanation, and the role of abstraction, by linguists and by language users / Arie Verhagen --
Raising verbs and auxiliaries in a functional theory of grammatical status / Kasper Boye --
The rise of structure: How not to disagree: the emergence of structure from usage / Ronald W. Langacker --
Paradigmatic structure in a usage-based theory of grammaticalisation / Lars Heltoft --
Where do simple clauses come from? / T. Givón --
Structure, usage and variation: Alternative agreement controllers in Danish: usage or structure? / Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen and Mads Poulsen --
Schmidt redux: How systematic is the linguistic system if variation is rampant? / Dirk Geeraerts --
More tiles on the roof: further thoughts on incremental language production / J. Lachlan Mackenzie --
Reconciling structure and usage: on the advantages of a dynamic, dialogic conception of the linguistic sign / Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen --
Methodology: Ten unwarranted assumptions in syntactic argumentation / William Croft.
Abstract: The volume addresses an issue hotly debated in current linguistic theory: the relation between language usage and language structure. The contributors represent different theoretical positions. What they have in common is that they recognize structure and usage as non-reducible linguistic phenomena and take seriously the challenge to describe the relation between them