A Functional Discourse Grammar for English

ISBN-13: 9780199571871 / Angielski / Miękka / 2015 / 320 str.

Evelien Keizer

Opis

This is the first textbook on Functional Discourse Grammar, a recently developed theory of language structure which analyses utterances at four independent levels of grammatical representation: pragmatic, semantic, morphosyntactic and phonological. The book offers a very systematic and highly accessible introduction to the theory: following the top-down organization of the model, it takes the reader step-by-step though the various levels of analysis (from pragmatics down to phonology), while at the same time providing a detailed account of the interaction between these different levels. The many exercises, categorized according to degree of difficulty, ensure that students are challenged to use the theory in a creative manner, and invite them to test and evaluate the theory by applying it to the new data in various linguistic contexts.
Evelien Keizer uses examples from a variety of sources to demonstrate how the theory of Functional Discourse Grammar can be used to analyse and explain the most important functional and formal features of present-day English. The book also contains examples from a wide variety of other typologically diverse languages, making it attractive not only to students of English linguistics but to anyone interested in linguistic theory more generally.

Recenzje

A Functional Discourse Grammar of English is a great resource for a course in English grammar

O autorze

Evelien Keizer is Professor of English Linguistics at the University of Vienna. Her main interest is in the interplay between the discourse-pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, and phonological properties of linguistic expressions. Her overall approach is a functional-cognitive one; more specifically she works within the framework of Functional Discourse Grammar. Her publications include The English Noun Phrase: The Nature of Linguistic Categorization (CUP, 2007) and The Syntax of Dutch: The Noun Phrase, Vol. 1 (Amsterdam University Press, 2011). Her current research interests include syntactic alternations, linguistic categorization, and the analysis of semi-fixed expressions.