Possessives in English An Exploration in Cognitive Grammar [Paperback]

John Taylor proposes a unitary account of the possessive morpheme. He takes as his theoretical framework Cognitive Grammar, as developed over the past 15 years by Ronald Langacker and others. In the earlier chapters of the book he introduces and motivates the conceptual apparatus of the theory, and in later chapters he develops a coherent account of the full range of possessive constructions in English.

A special feature of the book is that it offers wide-ranging critique of both traditional and more recent accounts of possessive expressions. Focusing particularly on Government and Binding theory, the author highlights the profound conceptual differences underlying the two theoretical approaches represented by GB and Cognitive Grammar, while also observing some points of convergence between them.

1. Preliminaries
2. Theoretical Orientation
3. Some Basic Notions of Cognitive Grammar
4. Syntax in Cognitive Grammar
5. The Constituent Structure of Prenominal Possessives
6. Prenominal Possessives: Some Generative Approaches
7. Specificity and Definiteness of Prenominal Possessives
8. Possessors as Topics
9. The Cue Validity of the Possessor
10. Ing-nominalizations
11. Possessive Compounds
12. Other Possessive Constructions
13. Possession

Possessives in Englishby John R.Traylor is a significant contribution to the study of the English possessive and seems destined to become one of the keystone texts for theory and research in cognitive grammar. -Chaoqun Xie, Fujian Teachers University, China