商品簡介
This book adopts a distinctively new approach to a major area of syntax - the way in which adjectives are bound together with other words in phrases or sentences. Connor Ferris argues first, that syntactic constructions do not exist simply as formal abstract grammatical structure, but directly reflect the speaker's cognitive system; second, that apart from the meanings attached to words, any phrase or sentence contains a quite different kind of meaning, virtually unexplored hitherto, which is directly tied to syntactic patterns in which words occur.
The author proposes a set of basic pattern meanings, and states clearly how they are expressed in the various adjectival constructions of English. The book gives a comprehensive account of the semantic grammar of English adjectives and explains why these precisely form the set of adjective constructions that are found in English. Using numerous examples from contemporary language, it is shown how interaction between the relational meaning of a construction and the word meaning of an adjective which it contains can enable us to predict in some detail when a sentence will be grammatical and when not, and what sort of meaning it will bear.
Written in a lively and readable style, this book will be essential reading for all students of English Language and Linguistics, both those with English as their first language, and those who are learning it as a foreign language.
作者簡介
Connor Ferris is Senior Lecturer in English at the National University of Singapore.
