Semantic Syntax

Pieter Seuren is Professor of Linguistics at the University of Nijmegen. He was previously Lecturer in Linguistics at the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. His books include Discourse Semantics (Blackwell Publishers, 1985).

• Preface. 1. Introduction.2. Some Formal Properties of Grammars, Trees and Rules.3. The English Auxiliary and Complementation System.4. The French Auxiliary and Complementation System.5. The Dutch Auxiliary and Complementation System.6. The German Auxiliary and Complementation System.7. Any Other Business.List of French Words.List of Dutch Words.List of German Words.Bibliography.Index.

"In Semantic Syntax Pieter Seuren elegantly and solidly accomplishes what the generative semantics movement had set out to do in the seventies: the generation of surface structure from a semantic base. The relevance for realistic modelling of language production cannot be overestimated. The semantics has a thorough cognitive foundation in the speaker's developing discourse domain. The syntax displays an impressive coverage of speakers' basic syntactic patterns in a range of languages, including recalcitrant German. And the theory is computationally entirely transparent." Willem J. M. Levelt, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics "This book covers a vast array of constructions which are at the forefront of the current theoretical discussions.Denis Bochard, Universite du Quebec a Montreal "Semantic Syntax constitutes an important contribution to grammatical formalism and syntactic theory." Comptes Rendus