How Categorical are Categories? : New Approaches to the Old Questions of Noun, Verb, and Adjective

This book addresses the foundational question of category distinctions and challenges the traditional views from the modern theoretical and experimental perspective. Its focus is on the noun-verb, noun-adjective distinctions and categories occupying the "grey zone" between standard categories (e.g., nominalizations). This book will be of interest for researchers and students of linguistics and cognitive sciences. Table of Contents About the Editors About the Contributors The status of categories in the linguistic theory: Introduction Part I. Linguistic Categories – Nouns and Verbs Nouns, verbs, and verbal nouns: Their structures and their structural cases Nuu-chah-nulth nouns and verbs revisited: Root allomorphy and the structure of nominal predicates Noun and verb in the mind. An interdisciplinary approach Part II. Linguistic Categories – Nouns and Adjectives Categorial ambiguities within the noun phrase: Relational adjectives in Polish Definiteness and degree morphology Part III. Problematic Categories – Numerals and Clitics What are categories? Adjective-like and noun-like semi-lexical numerals in Polish Defining vs. diagnosing linguistic categories: A case study of clitic phenomena Name/Author Index Subject Index Language Index The architecture of the human language faculty has been one of the main foci of the linguistic research of the last half century. This branch of linguistics, broadly known as Generative Grammar, is concerned with the formulation of explanatory formal accounts of linguistic phenomena with the ulterior goal of gaining insight into the properties of the 'language organ'. The series comprises high quality monographs and collected volumes that address such issues. The topics in this series range from phonology to semantics, from syntax to information structure, from mathematical linguistics to studies of the lexicon. To discuss your book idea or submit a proposal, please contact Birgit Sievert