Language

Igor Mel'?uk is the author of 44 books and 270 papers on linguistics, including Dependency Syntax (1988), Cours de morphologie ge'ne'rale (5 volumes; 1992-2000), Aspects of the Theory of Morphology (2006), Introduction a la linguistique (3 volumes, coauthored with J. Milic'evic'; 2014), and Semantics (3 volumes; 2012-2104). He is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Besancon University (France), member of the Royal Society of Canada, and corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of two Killam Research Scholarships (1988 and 1989), a John Guggenheim Fellowship (1990), and the Alexander-von-Humboldt Research Award (1991). Mel'?uk was nominated to College de France in 1997 and to Chaire internationale Blaise Pascal (Ecole Normale Supe'rieure, France) in 2002. He is currently Professor Emeritus at the University of Montreal, Canada.

• Contents AcknowledgmentsThe Author’s ForewordChapter 1. The Problem Stated1.1 What is natural language and how to describe it?1.2 Illustrations of some basic notions1.3 The structure of this book1.4 Limitations acceptedChapter 2. Functional Modeling in Linguistics2.1 A model as a means of study and description2.2 Functional models2.3 The Meaning-Text model: a global functional linguistic model2.3.1 Introductory remarks2.3.2 Three postulates of the Meaning-Text theory2.3.3 Main formal properties of a Meaning-Text model2.3.4 Two central notions of the Meaning-Text approach: linguistic meaning and paraphrasing2.3.5 General characterization of the Meaning-Text approachChapter 3. An Outline of a Particular Meaning-Text Model3.1 Deep and surface sublevels of linguistic representations3.2 Linguistic representations in a Meaning-Text model3.2.1 Introductory remarks3.2.2 The semantic structure of a sentence3.2.3 The deep-syntactic structure of a sentence3.2.4 The surface-syntactic structure of a sentence3.2.5 The deep-morphological structure of a sentence3.2.6 The surface-morphological structure of a sentence3.2.7 Prelinguistic representation of the world: conceptual representation3.3 The modules of the Meaning-Text model3.3.1 Introductory remarks3.3.2 Semantic module3.3.2.1 Semantic paraphrasing: rules of the form “SemRi ≡ SemRj”3.3.2.2 Semantic transition: rules of the form “SemRi ⇔ DSyntRk”3.3.2.3 Deep-syntactic paraphrasing: rules of the form “DSyntRk1 ≡ DSyntRk2”3.3.3 Deep-syntactic module3.3.4 Surface-syntactic module3.3.5 Deep-morphological module3.3.6 Surface-morphological moduleChapter 4. Modeling Two Central Linguistic Phenomena: Lexical Selection and Lexical Cooccurrence4.1 Modeling lexical selection (paradigmatics): semantic decompositions4.2 Modeling lexical cooccurrence (syntagmatics): lexical functions4.3 Correlations between paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects of lexeme behaviorChapter 5. Meaning-Text Linguistics5.1 Meaning-Text linguistics and the direction of linguistic description: from meaning to text5.1.1 Example 1: Spanish “semivowels”5.1.2 Example 2: Russian binominative sentences5.2 Meaning-Text linguistics and a linguistic conceptual apparatus5.2.1 Introductory remarks5.2.2 Linguistic sign5.2.3 Word5.2.4 Cases, ergative construction, voices5.3 Meaning-Text linguistics and the description of linguistic meaning5.4 Meaning-Text linguistics and the lexicon: the Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary [= ECD]5.4.1 Introductory remarks5.4.2 The three main properties of an ECD5.4.3 A lexical entry in an ECD: three major zones5.4.3.1 The semantic zone in an ECD lexical entry5.4.3.2 The syntactic cooccurrence zone in an ECD lexical entry5.4.3.3 The semantic derivation and lexical cooccurrence zone in an ECD lexical entry5.4.4 Two sample lexical entries of a Russian ECD5.5 Meaning-Text linguistics and dependencies in natural language5.5.1 Three types of linguistic dependency5.5.2 Criteria for syntactic dependencySumming UpAppendicesAppendix I : Phonetic TableAppendix II: Surface-Syntactic Relations of EnglishAppendix III: Possible Combinations of the Three Types of Linguistic Dependency between Two Lexemes in a ClauseNotesReferencesAbbreviations and NotationsSubject and Name Index with a GlossaryIndex of Languages

“This book should be required reading for every linguist, and if you ’merely’ teach a language, you should read it, too. It presents an extraordinary model of how language works, and if you don’t know how language works, how on earth can you be a language teacher?"