Syntactic Gradience

The Nature of Grammatical Indeterminacy

Bas Aarts author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:21st Jun '07

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Syntactic Gradience cover

This is the first exhaustive investigation of gradience in syntax, conceived of as grammatical indeterminacy. It looks at gradience in English word classes, phrases, clauses and constructions, and examines how it may be defined and differentiated. Professor Aarts addresses the tension between linguistic concepts and the continuous phenomena they describe by testing and categorizing grammatical vagueness and indeterminacy. He considers to what extent gradience is a grammatical phenomenon or a by-product of imperfect linguistic description, and makes a series of linked proposals for its theoretical formalization. Bas Aarts draws on, and reviews, work in psychology, philosophy and language from Aristotle to Chomsky., and writes clearly on a fascinating and important aspect of language and cognition. His book will appeal to scholars and graduate students of language and syntactic theory in departments of (English) linguistics, philosophy and cognitive science.

Aarts's judicious tackling of a tricky subject deserves praise. This book is likely to be regarded as a landmark in the study of indeterminacy and gradience for years to come. * Geoffrey Leech, Functions of Language *
Syntactical Gradience is a very interesting and well-balanced book...a carefully written, compact but nonetheless thoroughgoing study on the subject of syntactic gradience. * Oliver Schallert, Linguist List *

ISBN: 9780199219261

Dimensions: 241mm x 163mm x 24mm

Weight: 587g

296 pages