Product Description: According to Chomsky, to learn a language is to develop a grammar for it – a generative grammar which assigns a definite structure and a definite meaning to each of a definite set of sentences. This forms the speaker’s linguistic competence, which represents a distinct faculty of the mind, called the faculty of language...read more

Product Description: This book explores the uses of adjectives in different constructions, and of the problems that arise in their analysis, both in terms of syntactic theory and philosophy of grammar. Professor Matthews also examines a variety of other issues relating to individual adjective positions, including the basic structure of noun phrases and the justification for binary constituents; the status of the copular and its uses in the progressive; the indeterminacy of what were once described as raised constructions; and the function of postmodifying adjectives and adjective phrases in relation to others...read more

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics is the most authoritative and up-to-date dictionary of linguistics available. Written by distinguished and highly respected scholar Peter Matthews, this handy reference contains over 3,000 concise and informative entries on everything from phonetics to formal semantics. Including world-wide coverage of languages and language families, the Concise provides grammatical terms in English as well as grammatical categories in other languages. Matthews also offers extensive coverage of the theory of language, language history, and important ideas and figures in linguistics. A directory of symbols is included for quick and easy reference. With entries ranging from epiglottal and morpheme to Austronesian and Navajo, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics is the ideal reference for anyone with an interest in language and its study.

Product Description: Accounts of syntax are usually based on two assumptions: firstly, that a sentence comprises a hierarchy of phrases, forming a 'tree' structure; and secondly, that phrases have 'heads', on which subordinate units depend. These fundamental assumptions are questioned in this critical survey, which argues that neither concept is important as is claimed, and that syntactic relations are in fact far more varied...read more

Product Description: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Linguistics is the most authoritative and up-to-date dictionary of linguistics available. Written by distinguished and highly respected scholar Peter Matthews, this handy reference includes worldwide coverage of languages and language families, grammatical terms in English as well as grammatical categories in other languages...read more

Product Description: This is a history of the spread and dominance of North American linguistic theory, concentrating on the influential ideas of Bloomfield and Chomsky. It gives an account of the development and continuity of three dominant ideas in linguistics: the study of formal relations can and should be separated from that of meaning; sentences are composed of linear configurations of morphemes; many aspects of grammar are determined genetically...read more

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Product Description: This is a textbook of a fundamental kind, designed to introduce students to the basic concepts of syntax. Professor Matthews does not expound the model of any one theoretical school; nor does he attempt a straightforward synthesis of already published work...read more

Product Description: This is an updated and substantially revised edition of Peter Matthews's well-known Morphology, first published in 1974. It includes chapters on inflectional and lexical morphology, derivational processes and productivity, compounds, paradigms, and much new material on markedness and other aspects of iconicity...read more

Product Description: Originally published in 1972, this was the most thorough discussion of morphological theory to appear in recent years, and one of the few to be based directly on an 'inflecting' or 'fusional' language - in this case Latin. The book is addressed to theoretical and descriptive linguists in general and no knowledge of Latin is assumed...read more

Product Description: Originally published in 1972, this was the most thorough discussion of morphological theory to appear in recent years, and one of the few to be based directly on an 'inflecting' or 'fusional' language - in this case Latin. The book is addressed to theoretical and descriptive linguists in general and no knowledge of Latin is assumed...read more