A Theory of Predicates

By Gert Webelhuth and Farrell Ackerman

Book Overview

When studying linguistics, it is commonplace to find that information packaged into a single word in one language is expressed by several independent words in another language. This observation raises an important question: how can linguistics research represent what is the same among languages while accounting for the obvious differences between them?

In this work, two linguists-Farrell Ackerman and Gert Webelhuth-from different theoretical paradigms develop a new general theory of natural language predicates. This theory is capable of addressing a broad range of issues concerning (complex) predicates, many of which remain unresolved in previous theoretical proposals. The book focuses on cross-linguistically recurring patterns of predicate formation. It also provides a detailed implementation of Ackerman and Webelhuth's theory for German tense-aspect, passive, causative, and verb-particle predicates. In addition, a discussion of the extension of these representative analyses to the same predicate construction in other languages is presented. Beyond providing a formalism for the analysis of language-particular predicates, the authors demonstrate how the basic theoretical mechanism they develop can be employed to explain universal tendencies of predicate formation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1575860864
• ISBN13: 9781575860862
• Release Date: June 1997
• Publisher: Center for the Study of Language and Informat
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"