This volume brings together fourteen papers which explore the
discourse-pragmatic, semantic, morphological and syntactic factors
involved in English morphosyntactic alternations. The contributors to
this volume deal with different types of "diathesis alternations"
--broadly defined by Levin (English Verb Classes and Alternations: A
Preliminary Investigation, 1993) as "alternations in the expressions of
arguments, sometimes accompanied by changes of meaning" --i.e.
transitivity alternations (such as the causative/inchoative alternation
and the conative alternation), alternations involving arguments within
the VP (such as the Swarm-alternation, and the dative or benefactive
alternations), etc. The volume will also include some contributions
dealing more generally with the issues of morphological relatedness and
verb-specific alternations within functionalist, cognitive and/or
constructionist frameworks.
The book features a wide range of theoretical approaches, ranging from
functionalist models such as Functional Discourse Grammar or the Cardiff
Grammar version of Systemic Functional Linguistics to more
cognitively-oriented approaches such as Goldberg's Construction Grammar
or Fillmore's Frame Semantics. This attempt to describe morphosyntactic
alternations within different contemporary theories¬¬ --derivational and
non-derivational-- will hopefully contribute to a better understanding
of the linguistic phenomena traditionally subsumed under the rubric of
morphosyntactic alternation. The book will be of interest to experienced
linguists and researchers of a functionalist, cognitivist or even
functional-typological persuasion.
