Construction Grammar explains how knowledge of language is organized in speakers' minds. The central and radical claim of Construction Grammar is that linguistic knowledge can be fully described as knowledge of constructions, which are defined as symbolic units that connect a linguistic form with meaning.

This book presents a new paradigm of natural language grammar analysis, based on adposition as the key concept, considered a general connection between two morphemes – or group of morphemes. The adpositional paradigm considers the morpheme as the basic unit to represent morphosyntax, taken as a whole, in terms of constructions, while semantics and pragmatics are treated accordingly. All linguistic observations within the book can be described through the methods and tools of Constructive Mathematics, so that the modelling becomes formally feasible. A full description in category-theoretic terms of the formal model is provided in the Appendix. A lot of examples taken from natural languages belonging to different typological areas are offered throughout the volume, in order to explain and validate the modeling – with special attention given to ergativity. Finally, a first real-world application of the paradigm is given, i.e., conversational analysis of the transcript of therapeutic settings in terms of constructive speech acts. The main goal of this book is to broaden the scope of Linguistics by including Constructive Mathematics in order to deal with known topics such as grammaticalization, children’s speech, language comparison, dependency and valency from a different perspective. It primarily concerns advanced students and researchers in the field of Theoretical and Mathematical Linguistics but the audience can also include scholars interested in applications of Topos Theory in Linguistics.

This all-in-one reference is a quick and easy way for book, magazine, online, academic, and business writers to look up sticky punctuation questions for all styles including AP (Associated Press), MLA (Modern Language Association), APA (American Psychological Association), and Chicago Manual of Style. Punctuate with Confidence—No Matter the Style Confused about punctuation? There’s a reason. Everywhere you turn, publications seem to follow different rules on everything from possessive apostrophes to hyphens to serial commas. Then there are all the gray areas of punctuation—situations the rule books gloss over or never mention at all. At last, help has arrived. This complete reference guide from grammar columnist June Casagrande covers the basic rules of punctuation plus the finer points not addressed anywhere else, offering clear answers to perplexing questions about semicolons, quotation marks, periods, apostrophes, and more. Better yet, this is the only guide that uses handy icons to show how punctuation rules differ for book, news, academic, and science styles—so you can boldly switch between essays, online newsletters, reports, fiction, and magazine and news articles. This handbook also features rulings from an expert “Punctuation Panel” so you can see how working pros approach sticky situations. And the second half of the book features an alphabetical master list of commonly punctuated terms worth its weight in gold, combining rulings from the major style guides and showing exactly where they differ. With The Best Punctuation Book, Period, you’ll be able to handle any punctuation predicament in a flash—and with aplomb.