Overview

While much of contemporary syntax equates grammatical structure with hierarchical organization, i.e. tree structures, this book argues for a critical reassessment of that premise. It argues that a crucial part of the description of German clausal syntax should be based on linear, rather than hierarchical concepts. This is done here by adopting 'topological fields'DSa concept from traditional descriptive theory. Such fields are defined as syntactic position classes, that is, clusterings of continuous syntactic material, and are defined orthogonally to constituency. This idea is implemented in an extension of Head-Driven Phrase Structure Grammar that employs a separate level of flat linear organization called 'order domain'.

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9780198238720

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Review from previous edition 'An important contribution to the exploration of Germanic syntax within the theoretical assumptions of HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar) ... the book builds a bridge of communication between different research camps and gives linguists without a Germanic background access to the classical insights of topological theory, whose merits, as we see, have come an exceptionally long way.' * Journal of Linguistics *

Review from previous edition 'An important contribution to the exploration of Germanic syntax within the theoretical assumptions of HPSG (Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar) ... the book builds a bridge of communication between different research camps and gives linguists without a Germanic background access to the classical insights of topological theory, whose merits, as we see, have come an exceptionally long way.' Journal of Linguistics

Author Information

Andreas Kathol is Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley. He obtained his Doctorate at the Ohio State University (1995) and held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of Groningen (1995-6).

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