This book deals with the traditional problem of the classification of linguistic units, with a primary focus on word classes. The approach is descriptive rather than theoretical, and is based on the use of distinctive features analogous to the ones used in phonology, which entails a radical reworking of the traditional classification. The first part presents some basic notions such as the use of distinctive features and the role of word classes in grammar; classification by prototypes; and the use of world knowledge as a resource to assign thematic relations to constituents in the sentence. In the second part, some descriptive problems are examined, namely the classification of verbs according to valency; connectives, adverbs, and the internal constituents of the NP; and the classification of units larger than words. This book will be of use as a guide for linguists working on the description of natural languages, as well as a resource for students on courses in linguistic theory and description.
Chapter 1: Introduction.- Part I: General Principles.
Chapter
2: Categorization and knowledge.
Chapter 3: Form and meaning.
Chapter
4: Word classes.
Chapter 5: Classes and the grammar.
Chapter
6: Prototypes.
Chapter 7: Assignment by default.- Part II: Descriptive
Application.
Chapter 8: Classification of verbs.
Chapter 9: Constructions
of directional motion: a guided tour of valential complexity.
Chapter
10: Functions and classes in the NP.
Chapter 11: Towards a taxonomy of
connectives.
Chapter 12: Adverbs and their relatives.
Chapter 13: Features
and grammatical description.
Chapter 14: Semantic correlations and syntactic
features.
Chapter 15: Beyond the lexicon.
Chapter 16: Summary.
Mário A. Perini is Professor Emeritus at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG), Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He is the author of Describing Verb Valency (2015) and Thematic Relations (2019).
