Subject: linguistic theory

dominique sportiche , partitions and atoms of clause structure subjects , agreement , case and clitics this collection builds on the theory of principles and parameters and its economy - - minimalist descendants . the essays progressively develop a view of syntactic structures in which syntactic properties are increasingly analyzed as atomized in progressively smaller elementary components and partitioned in the way these elementary components are represented . dominique sportiche argues that as a consequence of this view , languages do not differ at all in their syntactic organization . routledge leading linguists routledge : 1998 : 448 pp cl : 0 415 16926 7 : # d4946 : $ 110 . 00 laura a . michaelis , aspectual grammar and past time reference this work examines the linguistic constructions which speakers use to talk about events that occurred in the past and states which held in the past . laura michaelis argues that the fundamental conceptual division between events and states forms the basis of systems of verbal aspect in all languages , and that one cannot talk about the meaning of a past-tense assertion without making reference to the event-state distinction . focusing on english data , the author examines the semantic and functional overlap between assertions about the past and assertions involving events : when one asserts that an event of a given kind exists , one is making an assertion about the past . this semantic overlap can be evoked as a way of characterizing the close relationship between the past-tense construction and the past-perfect construction : while a past tense assertion like she left is used to describe the past , a present-perfect assertion like she has left is used to assert the existence of an event by invoking its aftermath ( her absence ) . dr . michaelis argues that the two constructions are semantically equivalent , but distinguished by their function in narrative . this study presents a semantic framework for analyzing all aspectual constructions in terms of the event-state distinction , and describes the grammatical expression of aspectual meaning in terms of a theory of grammatical constructions . in this theory , grammatical constructions , like words , are conventionalized form-meaning pairs , which are best described not only with respect to their intrinsic semantic values , but also with respect to the functional opposition in which they participate . michaelis argues that many of the otherwise puzzling grammatical constraints which characterize the english present-perfect construction can be motivated in terms of the functional opposition between present perfect and past tense . routledge studies in germanic linguistics 4 routledge : 1998 : 320 pp cl : 0 415 15678 5 : # d4385 : $ 90 . 00 asa kasher , ed , pragmatics 6 volume set the purpose of this collection is to portray the development of pragmatics as a science of language , in a such a way as to enable readers to critically assess this theorectical development . issues explored include * presupposition * implicature * discourse * grammar * communication * indexicals * psychology * sociology . this work provides highly useful references and suggestions for further reading , and has an exceptionally detailed subject and name index to enable easy and immediate access for the reader . critical concepts routledge : 1998 : 2653 pp cl : 0 415 11734 8 : # d2960 : $ 905 . 00 for more information on these and other titles from : routledge london * new york in north america : www . routledge-ny . com elsewhere : www . routledge . com
