Rules and Exceptions

This edited collection explores an area of linguistics referred to as 'the method of exceptions and their correlations'. Exceptions to linguistic rules are studied as clues to understanding and improving the original rule. Topics include passive, irregular verbs, morphology, phonology and more, in languages such as English, Arabic and Russian.

This book assembles a collection of papers first presented at the Summer School and Conference on the Method of Lexical Exceptions held at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, 2-8 September 2007, which explored an area of linguistics now referred to as 'the method of exceptions and their correlations'. Recognition of the work of Saussure was impeded during his lifetime by the Junggrammatiker (Neogrammarians) and their view of exceptions, but this book incorporates exceptions into a Saussurean approach. Exceptions to rules are treated here not as something wilful and inexplicable, but as a clue to what has gone wrong in the original rule. The topics covered are the passive, irregular verbs, morphology, transitivity, light verb constructions, resultative verbs, compound nouns, phonology, colour terms, historical-comparative reconstruction, language teaching, Saussurean structuralism and the approach of the Junggrammatiker to exceptions. The languages addressed are English, Arabic, Georgian, Turkish, Russian, the Cushitic languages and German. Grammar and linguistics are usually thought of as purely theoretical disciplines, but this book demonstrates how to use exceptions to conduct 'experiments' in the manner of the natural sciences, which leads empirically to better theory.

Autorentext

Christopher Beedham is Lecturer in the Department of German, School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews. He has published on the passive and irregular verbs in English, German and Russian and is developing a method of research in linguistics which he calls 'the method of exceptions and their correlations'. Warwick Danks is University Examinations Officer at the University of St Andrews and holds a PhD in Arabic and Linguistics from the University of St Andrews. His PhD thesis on the Arabic verb, in which he used 'the method of exceptions and their correlations', was published in 2011 and reviewed in Language in 2012. Ether Soselia is Professor of Linguistics at Tbilisi State University. Her PhD thesis was on the typology of colour term systems and her monograph Semantic Universals and the Kartvelian Languages: Models of Colour Categorization was published in 2009 (in Georgian).

Inhalt

Contents: Christopher Beedham: Exceptions and their Correlations: A Methodology for Research in Grammar - Warwick Danks: Evaluation and Adaptation: Applying the Method of Exceptions and their Correlations to Modern Standard Arabic - Christian Bassac: Rules and Exceptions: Neogrammarians and the Lexicon - Marine Ivanishvili/Ether Soselia: Passive in Georgian - Ether Soselia: On the Specification of Basic Colour Terms in Georgian - Marina Jikia: On Compounds in Georgian of the Type cxenip'aria 'horse stealer' - Rusudan Asatiani: A Cognitive Approach to Exceptional Ditransitive Verb Forms in Georgian - Манана Каркашадзе: Грузинский медиоактивн ый глагол - Marine Ivanishvili: Lexical Exceptions in the Comparative Reconstruction of the Kartvelian Languages: Words for 'oak' - Marina Jikia: The Non-Suffixal Derivation of Intensive Forms in Turkish - Christopher Gledhill: On the Discourse Functions and Contrastive Phraseology of Equivalent Light Verb Constructions Involving 'make' and 'take' - Juhani Rudanko: On a Class of Resultatives in English, with Evidence from Electronic Corpora - Pierre Rucart: Prefix Verbs in Cushitic are not Exceptions.