Structural ambiguity in English an applied grammatical inventory Dallin D. Oaks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Oaks, Dallin D., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Structural linguistics.

Ambiguity.

Functional discourse grammar.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (560 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London New York Continuum 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Structural Ambiguity in English is a major new scholarly work that provides an innovative and accessible linguistic description of those features of the language that can be exploited to generate structural ambiguities. Most ambiguity scholarship is concerned with disambiguation-the process of making what is ambiguous clear. This book takes the opposite approach as it focuses on describing the features in the English language that may contribute towards the creation of structural ambiguities, which form the core of some of the best word-plays found in advertising, comedy and marketing. Oaks utilizes a systematic and comprehensive inventory approach that identifies individual elements in the language and their distinctive behaviors that can be manipulated in the deliberate creation of structural ambiguities. In doing so he also provides authentic examples to illustrate the concepts he presents. This book will appeal to researchers and academics interested in the structure of the English language, usage, pragmatics, communication, natural language processing, editing, and humor studies as well as those in marketing, advertising, or humor writing.

Contents:

Volume I

Part I: Preliminary Considerations

Preface

1. Introduction

2. Pragmatics and Structural Ambiguity

3. Phonological Influences on Structural Ambiguity

4. Auxiliary Verbs and Clause Types

5. Inventory of Affixes, Contractions, and Morphological Processes

Part II: The Lexical Inventory

-Form Classes

6. Inventory of Nouns

7. Inventory of Verbs, Part I: Transitive Verbs

8. Inventory of Verbs, Part II: Additional Verbs

9. Inventory of Adjectives and Adverbs

Volume II

Part III: The Lexical Inventory

-Structure Classes

10. Inventory of Pronouns

11. Inventory of Prepositions

12. Inventory of Conjunctions

Part IV: Scope and Modification

13. Inventory of Prenominal Modifiers

14. Inventory of Other Modification and Scope Ambiguities

Part V: Other Syntactic Considerations

15. Ellipsis

16. Questions and Indirect Reported Speech

17. Fixed Expressions

Conclusion

18. Conclusion and Formulas

Appendices

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN:

9781474211956

147421195X

9781441141378

1441141375

OCLC:

893331170