List of figures; List of tables; Preface; Abbreviations; 1. Why features?; 2. Formal perspectives: the internal structure of features; 3. Features for different components; 4. Justifying particular features and their values; 5. Typology; 6. Canonical typology and features; 7. Determining feature values: a case study on case; 8. Feature-value mismatches; 9. Conclusions; Appendix: standards and implementations; Reference; Author index; Language index; Subject index.
A unique examination of the features of language: how features vary between languages and also how they work.
Greville G. Corbett is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Surrey, where he leads the Surrey Morphology Group. His previous works on the typology of features include Gender (1991), Number (2000) and Agreement (2006).
'Grev Corbett's latest book, Features, is the capstone in a portal
of masterpieces. Like its predecessors on specific topics like
gender, number and agreement, it exhibits Corbett's unique blend of
typological breadth, clarity and morphosyntactic acumen. But it
goes beyond them to show how a properly developed theory of
features can help linguists get beyond their current impasse -
'like chemists without a list of the elements, or physicists with
no account of particles', as he puts it in his introduction -
towards a point where morphosyntactic theory is supple and
comprehensive enough to deal rigorously with the full panoply of
the world's linguistic diversity. Every linguist will benefit
deeply from reading this book from cover to cover.' Nicholas Evans,
Australian National University
'Greville Corbett's astonishing linguistic erudition is deployed
here in an indispensable, encyclopedic, theoretically thoughtful
overview of a topic that linguists have too often treated in an ad
hoc way. Corbett believes, correctly, that it is truly important
that theoretical linguists should be clear on the facts about the
range of features and values found in the languages of the world.'
Geoffrey Pullum, University of Edinburgh
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