last updated 15 March 2002
PART I: THEORY
1 GENERAL INTRODUCTION (download)
1.1 Some Recent Trends in Linguistics 3
1.2 The Main Tenets of Word Grammar 10
2 PROPOSITIONS AND THEIR FORMAL PROPERTIES
2.1 General
2.2 Predicates 16
2.3 Arguments
2.4 Quantification 21
2.5 Retrieval and Inference 24
3 DEFAULT INHERITANCE
3.1 General
3.2 Concept Names 31
3.3 Isa and Inheritance 35
3.4 Derivation and Unification 37
3.5 Overriding of Defaults
3.6 Prototypes and the Best Fit Principle
4 LINGUISTIC AND NON-LINGUISTIC CONCEPTS (download)
4.1 General 53
4.2 Processing 56
4.3 Words as Actions 63
4.4 Actions as Words 66
4.5 Companions 69
4.6 Grammars and Encyclopedias 72
4.7 Towards a Conceptual Hierarchy 75
5 CATEGORIES IN LANGUAGE
5.1 Non-Relational Categories 84
5.2 An Overview of Relational Categories 88
5.3 Morphology 90
5.4 Coordinate Structures 97
5.5 Other Syntagmatic Relations 98
6 SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES (download)
6.1 The Elements of Syntactic Structure 103
6.2 Dependency 105
6.3 Dependency in Modern Syntactic Theory 107
6.4 Relaxing the Formal Constraints on
Dependency Structures 113
6.5 Grammatical Relations as Types of Dependent 120
6.6. Summary of Syntactic Structures and Notation 121
7 SEMANTIC STRUCTURES
7.1 Overview of WG Semantics 123
7.2 Sense and Referent 125
7.3 Semantic Types and Syntactic Types 134
7.4 Sets and Quantifier Scope 139
7.5 Semantic Phrasing 146
7.6 Lexical Decomposition and Semantic Relations 151
PART II: ENGLISH
8 WORD CLASSES
8.1 Word-Types 167
8.2 Morpho-Syntactic Features 172
8.3 Word-Forms 176
8.4 Derived Types 179
8.5 Summary 180
Appendix 8 Morphology
8A.1 Word Structures 181
8A.2 Suffixes 183
8A.3 Stem Allomorphy 184
9 DEPENDENCY TYPES
9.1 Predependents and Postdependents 189
9.2 Extraction and Visitors 192
9.3 Complements and Adjuncts 202
Appendix 9 Word-Order
9A.1 Head-Dependent Ordering 211
9A.2 Dependent-Dependent Ordering 216
10 SIMPLE CLAUSES
10.1 Root Verbs, Finiteness and Mood 219
10.2 Subject-Verb 'Agreement' 225
10.3 Head-Marking and Dependent-Marking 229
10.4 Subject-Pronoun Morphology 230
10.5 Complements of Verbs 232
10.6 Polarity ('Auxiliary') Verbs 239
10.7 Adjuncts 244
Appendix 10 Some Lexical Entries for Verbs 250
11 SIMPLE NOUN-PHRASES
11.1 Introduction 268
11.2 'Determiners' and Pronouns 268
11.3 Possessive Pronouns 276
11.4 Distributives, Alias 'Quantifiers' 282
11.5 Definiteness and Co~reference 293
11.6 Numerals and Quantity Adjectives 302
11.7 Predependents of Common-Nouns 309
11.8 Postdependents of Common-Nouns 313
11.9 Gerunds and Clitics 316
Appendix 11 Some Lexical Entries for Nouns 326
12 PASSIVES
12.1 Overview 336
12.2 The Distribution of Passive Participles 339
12.3 Subject-Demotion 340
12.4 Object-Promotion 341
12.5 Prepositional Passives 346
13 EXTRACTION: TOPICS, INTERROGATIVES AND RELATIVES
13.1 Extraction 354
13.2 Topicalization 358
13.3 Interrogative Clauses 361
13.4 Relative Clauses 383
14 COORDINATION
14.1 Coordinate Structures 404
14.2 Coordination and Subordination 411
14.3 Gapping 416
References 422
Special Symbols Used in the Text 435
Index 436
This book is an attempt to provide a coherent theory of all the main parts of grammar - morphology, syntax, semantics, the lexicon. The main theoretical gaps are phonology and word-formation. One of the main tenets of the theory is that grammar is just a special case of propositional knowledge, so I have had to suggest the outlines of a more general theory of propositional knowledge as well. Most of this is derived from my understanding of quite standard views in cognitive psychology and Artificial Intelligence, and it fits comfortably with at least my version of common sense, but I know that it is less well grounded than the more linguistic parts.
The theory of language is called 'Word Grammar', and is a direct descendant of the theory with the same name which I described in a book (also with the same name) that was published in 1984. There are important differences between the two versions which make the current one both more sound and more user-friendly, but the similarities are sufficient to justify the shared name.
The word 'English' appears in the title of the book because I have applied the general theory of grammar to a reasonably wide range of constructions and well-known problems in English grammar. The grammar I offer is very far from being 'complete' (whatever that might mean), but it is broad enough in its coverage to allow a reader to evaluate the theory's potential.
I take great pleasure in acknowledging my very real intellectual debt to Billy Clark, John Fletcher, Norman Fraser, Tokumi Kodama, Andrew Radford, And Rosta and Max Volino, all of whom read and commented on some of the chapters of this book as well as giving me a lot of stimulating discussion of various topics in it. The book has been heavily influenced by them, as they will no doubt be able to see. The influence of a great many other fellow-linguists will be apparent throughout the book, but Chuck Fillmore deserves special mention both for his help and encouragement and for his ideas on lexical semantics. I received significant practical support from the IBM (UK) Scientific Research Centre, from the ESRC (who funded my research for half a year) and from my departmental chairman Neil Smith (who pretended the funding was for a full year).