This book brings together classic and recent papers in the philosophical and linguistic analysis of fuzzy grammar, of gradience in meaning, word classes, and syntax. Issues such as how many grains make a heap, when a puddle becomes a pond, and so forth, have occupied thinkers since Aristotle and over the last two decades been the subject of increasing interest among linguists as well as in fields such as artificial intelligence and computational linguistics.
Bas Aarts is Reader in Modern English Language and Director of the Survey of English Usage at University College London. He has held visiting appointments at a number of universities, and is currently working on a monograph on linguistic gradience. His other publications include Small Clauses in English: the Nonverbal Types (Mouton de Gruyter 1992), The Verb in Contemporary English (Cambridge University Press 1995, edited with Charles F. Meyer), English Syntax and Argumentation (Palgrave Macmillan 1997/2001), Investigating Natural
Preface Introduction
Fuzzy Grammar: the nature of grammatical categories and their representation
Part 1
Philosophical background
1. Aristotle on the categories, Aristotle
2. Frege on concepts, Gottlob Frege
3. Vagueness, Bertrand Russell
4. Family resemblances, Ludwig Wittgenstein
5. The phenomena of vagueness, Rosanna Keefe
Part 2
Categories in cognition
6. The boundaries of words and their meanings, William Labov
7. Principles of categorization, Eleanor Rosch
8. Jackendoff on categorisation, fuzziness and family resemblances, Ray Jackendoff
9. Discreteness, Ronald W. Langacker
10. The importance of categorisation, George Lakoff
Part 3
Categories in grammar
11. Jespersen on the parts of speech, Otto Jespersen
12. English word classes, David Crystal
13. A notional approach to the parts of speech, John Lyons
14. Syntactic categories and notional features, John M. Anderson
15. Bounded regions, Ronald W. Langacker
16. The discourse basis for lexical categories in Universal Grammar, Paul Hopper and Sandra Thompson
17. Grammatical categories, John Taylor
Part 4
Gradience in grammar
18. Bolinger on gradience, Dwight Bolinger
19. Degrees of grammaticalness, Noam Chomsky
20. Descriptive statement and serial relationship, Randolph Quirk
21. On the analysis of linguistic vagueness, J. V. Neustupný
22. Nouniness, John Robert Ross
23. The coordination-subordination gradient, Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik
24. The nature of graded judgments, Carson T. Schütze
Part 5
Criticisms and responses
25. Description of language design, Martin Joos
26. Prototypes save, Anna Wierzbicka
27. Fuzziness and categorization, Denis Bouchard
28. The discrete nature of syntactic categories: against a prototype-based account, Frederick J. Newmeyer
Preface
Introduction
Fuzzy Grammar: the nature of grammatical categories and their representation
Part 1
Philosophical background
1. Aristotle on the categories, Aristotle
2. Frege on concepts, Gottlob Frege
3. Vagueness, Bertrand Russell
4. Family resemblances, Ludwig Wittgenstein
5. The phenomena of vagueness, Rosanna Keefe
Part 2
Categories in cognition
6. The boundaries of words and their meanings, William Labov
7. Principles of categorization, Eleanor Rosch
8. Jackendoff on categorisation, fuzziness and family resemblances, Ray Jackendoff
9. Discreteness, Ronald W. Langacker
10. The importance of categorisation, George Lakoff
Part 3
Categories in grammar
11. Jespersen on the parts of speech, Otto Jespersen
12. English word classes, David Crystal
13. A notional approach to the parts of speech, John Lyons
14. Syntactic categories and notional features, John M. Anderson
15. Bounded regions, Ronald W. Langacker
16. The discourse basis for lexical categories in Universal Grammar, Paul Hopper and Sandra Thompson
17. Grammatical categories, John Taylor
Part 4
Gradience in grammar
18. Bolinger on gradience, Dwight Bolinger
19. Degrees of grammaticalness, Noam Chomsky
20. Descriptive statement and serial relationship, Randolph Quirk
21. On the analysis of linguistic vagueness, J. V. Neustupný
22. Nouniness, John Robert Ross
23. The coordination-subordination gradient, Randolph Quirk, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech and Jan Svartvik
24. The nature of graded judgments, Carson T. Schütze
Part 5
Criticisms and responses
25. Description of language design, Martin Joos
26. Prototypes save, Anna Wierzbicka
27. Fuzziness and categorization, Denis Bouchard
28. The discrete nature of syntactic categories: against a prototype-based account, Frederick J. Newmeyer