Borer H. Structuring Sense. Volume 1: In Name Only

Oxford University Press Inc., New York, 2005. — 327 p. — ISBN: 9780199263899Fundamentally, this is a book about polysemy. About why words can mean so many different things, but structures cannot. An English word, such as stone, can be used in a multitude of syntactic contexts as either a noun or a verb, and it can have different meanings in different communicative situations. But not so for structures such as three stones and much stone, or to stone a bird, or be stoned. Each structure has defined properties; each is restricted to an extremely well-defined syntactic context, and each imposes relatively strict conditions on its interpretation. In some crucial sense, then, there is a difference between words, however we choose to define them, and structures, however constructed.
The distinct characterization of words and structures, and the way in which they interact with the grammar, is what we will attempt to describe here. The characterization of words and structures and the division of grammatical labour between them has always been a major component of the generative linguistic agenda.
Contents to Volume 1
Exo-Skeletal Explanations
Structuring Sense: Introductory Comments
Nuts and Bolts
Determining Structures
The Proper Way
Some Stuff: On the Mass-Count Distinction
Things that Count: Null D
Things that Count: Null # and Others
Another Language, Another System
One is the Loneliest Number
Cheese and Olives, Bottles and Cups: Notes on Measure Phrases and Container Phrases
Some Concluding Notes on Language Variation
Contents to Volume 2
Setting Course
Exo-Skeletal Explanations—A Recap
Why Events?
The Projection of Arguments
Structuring Telicity
(A)structuring Atelicity
Interpreting Telicity
Direct Range Assignment: The Slavic Paradigm
Direct Range Assignment: Telicity without Verkuyl's Generalization
How Fine-Grained?
Locatives and Event Structure
The Existential Road: Unergatives and Transitives
Slavification and Unaccusatives
Forward Oh! Some Concluding Notes