New Book -- Lexical Functional Grammar by M. Dalrymple

[mconner at acad.com]

ACADEMIC PRESS is pleased to announce the publication of:

LEXICAL FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR
Volume 34 of Syntax and Semantics

MARY DALRYMPLE
Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center,
Palo Alto, California, U.S.A.

VOLUME 34 of SYNTAX AND SEMANTICS is a thorough and accessible overview and
introduction to Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG), a theory of the content
and representation of different aspects of linguistic structure and the
relations that hold between them. The book motivates and describes the two
syntactic structures of LFG: surface phrasal organization is represented by
a context-free phrase structure tree, and more abstract functional
syntactic relations like subject and object are represented separately, at
functional structure. The book also presents a theory of semantics and the
syntax-semantics interface in which the meaning of an utterance is obtained
via deduction from semantic premises contributed by its parts. Clear
explication of the formal aspects of the theory is provided throughout, and
differences between LFG and other linguistic theories are explored. The
theory is illustrated by the analysis of a varied set of linguistic
phenomena, including modification, control, anaphora, coordination, and
long-distance dependencies. Besides its interest to linguists, LFG also has
practical applications in computational linguistics and computer science.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
MARY DALRYMPLE is currently a senior research staff member of the Natural
Language Theory and Technology Group, at the Information Sciences and
Technologies Laboratory, Xerox PARC, Palo Alto, California. She is also a
consulting associate professor in the Department of Linguistics and a
faculty member in the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford University,
Stanford, California. Her work at Xerox PARC investigates the
syntax-semantics interface: how the syntactic properties of natural
language can guide the process of assembling meanings of words and phrases
into meanings of larger phrases and sentences. Much of her recent work has
been done in the Constraint-Based Semantics project. She is the author or
editor of three books on Lexical-Functional Grammar, numerous book
chapters, and dozens of journal articles. She served on the editorial board
of COMPUTATIONAL LINGUISTICS and the JOURNAL OF LOGIC, LANGUAGE, AND
INFORMATION.


CONTENTS:
Background and Theoretical Assumptions
Functional Structure
Constituent Structure
Syntactic Correspondences
Describing Syntactic Structures
Syntactic Relations and Syntactic Constraints
Beyond Syntax: Nonsyntactic Structures
Argument Structure and Mapping Theory
Meaning and Semantic Composition
Modification
Anaphora
Functional and Anaphoric Control
Coordination
Long-Distance Dependencies
Related Research Threads and New Directions
Appendix: Proof Rules for Linear Logic
Bibliography
Author Index
Language Index
Subject Index

Casebound: $120.00, August 2001, 504 pp./ISBN: 0-12-613534-7

Academic Press,
An Imprint of Elsevier Science

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