Formal Approaches to Function in Grammar: In honor of Eloise Jelinek

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today #62

by Andrew Carnie (editor), Heidi Harley (editor), MaryAnn Willie (editor)

The contributions making up this volume in honor of Eloise Jelinek are written from a formalist perspective that deals with stereotypically functionalist questions about language. Jelinek's pioneering work in formalist syntax has shown that autonomous syntax need not exist in a vacuum. Her work has highlighted the importance of incorporating the effects of discourse and information structure on the syntactic representation. This book aims to invoke Jelinek's work either in substance or spirit. The focus is on Jelinek's influential Pronominal Argument Hypothesis as an "non-configurational" language; the influence of discourse-related interface phenomena on syntactic structure; the syntactic analysis of the grammaticalization; interactions between morphology, phonology and phonetics; and foundational issues about the link between formal grammar and function of language, as well as the methodological issues underlying the different approaches to linguistics.

390 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2003

About the author

Professor of Linguistics
Faculty Director, Graduate College and Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs
University of Arizona