The Universal Structure of Categories
ISBN: 9781139833899
Platform/Publisher: Cambridge Core / Cambridge University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
Subjects: Humanities; Language and Linguistics; English Language and Linguistics: General Interest Grammar and Syntax;

Using data from a variety of languages such as Blackfoot, Halkomelem, and Upper Austrian German, this book explores a range of grammatical categories and constructions, including tense, aspect, subjunctive, case and demonstratives. It presents a new theory of grammatical categories - the Universal Spine Hypothesis - and reinforces generative notions of Universal Grammar while accommodating insights from linguistic typology. In essence, this new theory shows that language-specific categories are built from a small set of universal categories and language-specific units of language. Throughout the book the Universal Spine Hypothesis is compared to two alternative theories - the Universal Base Hypothesis and the No Base Hypothesis. This valuable addition to the field will be welcomed by graduate students and researchers in linguistics.


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