Subject-auxiliary inversion: A natural category
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Adele E. Goldberg
Abstract
This article argues that subject auxiliary inversion in English (SAI) provides an example of a syntactic generalization that is strongly motivated by a family of closely related functions. Recognition of the functional properties of each subconstruction associated with SAI allows us to predict many seemingly arbitrary properties of SAI: e.g., its (partial) restriction to appear in main clauses, the fact that the inversion only involves the first auxiliary, and the fact that its use in comparatives is more limited. The dominant feature of SAI, being nonpositive, is also argued to motivate the syntactic form of SAI. It is suggested that attention to the rich data inherent in language and to findings in categorization research simultaneously serves to reinforce and benefit our understanding of both language and categorization more generally.
Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial preface
- On the status of linguistics as a cognitive science
- Constraints and preadaptations in the earliest stages of language evolution
- Functional organization of speech across the life span: A critique of generative phonology
- Beyond formalities: The case of language acquisition
- What language creation in the manual modality tells us about the foundations of language
- Linguistics, cognitive science, and all that jazz
- The nature of semantics: On Jackendoff’s arguments
- Anatomy matters
- The pied piper of Cambridge
- Lateralization of language: Toward a biologically based model of language
- The science of language
- Attention and empirical studies of grammar
- Psycholinguistics, formal grammars, and cognitive science
- Alternatives to the combinatorial paradigm of linguistic theory based on domain general principles of human cognition
- Subject-auxiliary inversion: A natural category
- Generative linguistics within the cognitive neuroscience of language
- Language as a natural object – linguistics as a natural science
- Contributors
- Publications received
- Language index
- Subject index
- Contents of volume 22
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial preface
- On the status of linguistics as a cognitive science
- Constraints and preadaptations in the earliest stages of language evolution
- Functional organization of speech across the life span: A critique of generative phonology
- Beyond formalities: The case of language acquisition
- What language creation in the manual modality tells us about the foundations of language
- Linguistics, cognitive science, and all that jazz
- The nature of semantics: On Jackendoff’s arguments
- Anatomy matters
- The pied piper of Cambridge
- Lateralization of language: Toward a biologically based model of language
- The science of language
- Attention and empirical studies of grammar
- Psycholinguistics, formal grammars, and cognitive science
- Alternatives to the combinatorial paradigm of linguistic theory based on domain general principles of human cognition
- Subject-auxiliary inversion: A natural category
- Generative linguistics within the cognitive neuroscience of language
- Language as a natural object – linguistics as a natural science
- Contributors
- Publications received
- Language index
- Subject index
- Contents of volume 22
