Robert Truswell

This survey explores interactions between syntax and discourse, through a case study of patterns of extraction from coordinate structures. The theoretical breadth of the volume makes it the most complete account of extraction from coordinate structures to date: at first glance, it appears to be a syntactic matter, but the survey raises theoretical and empirical questions not just for syntax, but also across semantics, pragmatics, and discourse structure. Rather than promoting a single analysis, Daniel Altshuler and Robert Truswell outline reasonable hypotheses that allow theoretical conclusions to be deducted from empirical facts. The theoretical conclusions show that coordinate structures have the potential to discriminate between current syntactic theories, and to inform work on the interfaces between syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. In many cases, however, the necessary empirical work has not yet been carried out, and too much of the literature revolves around the same handful of primarily English examples. The volume offers a starting point for further research on extraction from coordinate structures, particularly in understudied languages, and provides a guide to how to tease out the theoretical implications of empirical findings.

This survey explores interactions between syntax and discourse, through a case study of patterns of extraction from coordinate structures. The theoretical breadth of the volume makes it the most complete account of extraction from coordinate structures to date: at first glance, it appears to be a syntactic matter, but the survey raises theoretical and empirical questions not just for syntax, but also across semantics, pragmatics, and discourse structure. Rather than promoting a single analysis, Daniel Altshuler and Robert Truswell outline reasonable hypotheses that allow theoretical conclusions to be deducted from empirical facts. The theoretical conclusions show that coordinate structures have the potential to discriminate between current syntactic theories, and to inform work on the interfaces between syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse. In many cases, however, the necessary empirical work has not yet been carried out, and too much of the literature revolves around the same handful of primarily English examples. The volume offers a starting point for further research on extraction from coordinate structures, particularly in understudied languages, and provides a guide to how to tease out the theoretical implications of empirical findings.

This book examines some knotty problems in natural language. These typically involve questions where the sense or the grammaticality of an utterance teeters on or over the edge of acceptability among native speakers. The phenomena in question have been examined within syntactic theory for over two decades with no wholly satisfactory outcome. Dr Truswell broadens the scope of the enquiry to the interface between syntactic structure and other, indirectly related, cognitive, and semantic structures such as aspect, agentivity, and presupposition. Uniting work from philosophical, cognitive and linguistic perspectives, he develops a model of the internal structure of events as perceptual and cognitive units. He deploys the model to explain and predict the acceptability of particular formulations. He considers the individuation of events in the light of the model and provides a novel account of patterns of question formation. He shows that these patterns throw new light on central claims of Chomsky's biolinguistic minimalist program and Jackendoff's parallel architecture theory of mind and language. This is work at the cutting edge of linguistic theory, catholic in its theoretical scope, open to insights from cognate fields, and illustrated with examples from a wide range of languages. It will interest philosophers, semanticists and cognitive scientists concerned with topics like events, agentivity, and planning, as well as linguists studying syntax or the syntax-semantics interface.

This book examines some knotty problems in natural language. These typically involve questions where the sense or the grammaticality of an utterance teeters on or over the edge of acceptability among native speakers. The phenomena in question have been examined within syntactic theory for over two decades with no wholly satisfactory outcome. Dr Truswell broadens the scope of the enquiry to the interface between syntactic structure and other, indirectly related, cognitive, and semantic structures such as aspect, agentivity, and presupposition. Uniting work from philosophical, cognitive and linguistic perspectives, he develops a model of the internal structure of events as perceptual and cognitive units. He deploys the model to explain and predict the acceptability of particular formulations. He considers the individuation of events in the light of the model and provides a novel account of patterns of question formation. He shows that these patterns throw new light on central claims of Chomsky's biolinguistic minimalist program and Jackendoff's parallel architecture theory of mind and language. This is work at the cutting edge of linguistic theory, catholic in its theoretical scope, open to insights from cognate fields, and illustrated with examples from a wide range of languages. It will interest philosophers, semanticists and cognitive scientists concerned with topics like events, agentivity, and planning, as well as linguists studying syntax or the syntax-semantics interface.