This handbook compares the main analytic frameworks and methods of contemporary linguistics. It offers a unique overview of linguistic theory, revealing the common concerns of competing approaches. By showing their current and potential applications it provides the means by which linguists and others can judge what are the most useful models for the task in hand.

Distinguished scholars from all over the world explain the rationale and aims of over thirty explanatory approaches to the description, analysis, and understanding of language. Each chapter considers the main goals of the model; the relation it proposes between lexicon, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and phonology; the way it defines the interaction between cognition and grammar; what it counts as evidence; and how it explains linguistic change and structure.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction , Bernd Heine and Heiko Narrog 2. An Adaptive Approach to Grammar , Talmy Givon 3. The Cartography of Syntactic Structures , Guglielmo Cinque and Luigi Rizzi 4. Categorial Grammar , Glyn Morrill 5. Cognitive Grammar , Ronald W. Langacker 6. Embodied Construction Grammar , Jerome Feldman, Ellen Dodge, and John Bryant 7. Sign-Based Construction Grammar , Laura A. Michaelis 8. Corpus-Based and Corpus Driven Analyses of Language Variation and Use , Douglas Biber 9. Default Semantics , Kasia M. Jaszczolt 10. Dependency Grammar and Valency Theory , Vilmos Agel and Klaus Fischer 11. An Emergentist Approach to Syntax , William O'Grady 12. Formal Generative Typology , Mark C. Baker 13. A Frame Approach to Semantic Description , Charles J. Fillmore and Collin F. Baker 14. Framework-Free Grammatical Theory , Martin Haspelmath 15. Functional Discourse Grammar , Kees Hengeveld and J. Lachlan Mackenzie 16. Grammaticalization and Linguistic Analysis , Bernd Heine and Heiko Narrog 17. Lexical-Functional Grammar , Ash Asudeh and Ida Toivonen 18. The Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach , Cliff Goddard 19. Linguistic Minimalism , Cedric Boeckx 20. Morphological Analysis , Geert E. Booij 21. Optimality Theory in Phonology , Maria Gouskova 22. Optimization Principles in the Typology of Number and Articles , Henriette de Swart and Joost Zwarts 23. The Parallel Architecture and its Place in Cognitive Science , Ray Jackendoff 24. Neo-Gricean Pragmatic Theory of Conversational Implicature , Yan Huang 25. Probabilistic Linguistics , Rens Bod 26. Linguistic Relativity , Eric Pederson 27. Relevance Theory , Francisco Yus 28. Role and Reference Grammar as a Framework for Linguistic Analysis , Robert D. Van Valin, Jr 29. The Analysis of Signed Languages , Sherman Wilcox and Phyllis Perrin Wilcox 30. Simpler Syntax , Peter Culicover 31. Systemic Functional Grammar and the Study of Meaning , Alice Caffarel 32. Usage-Based Theory , Joan L. Bybee and Clay Beckner 33. Word Grammar , Richard Hudson

Bernd Heine is Emeritus Professor at the Institute of African Studies (Institut fur Afrikanistik), University of Cologne. His thirty three books include Possession: Cognitive sources, forces, and grammaticalization (CUP, 1997); Auxiliaries: Cognitive forces and grammaticalization (OUP, 1993); Cognitive Foundations of Grammar (OUP USA, 1997); with Derek Nurse, African Languages: An introduction (CUP, 2000), A Linguistic Geography of Africa (CUP, 2007); and with Tania Kuteva, World Lexicon of Grammaticalization (CUP, 2002), Language Contact and Grammatical Change (CUP, 2005), The Changing Languages of Europe (OUP, 2006).

Heiko Narrog is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of International Cultural Studies of Tohoku University. He holds two PhDs in linguistics in Germany and Japan, and his publications include Japanische Verbflexive und flektierbare Suffixe (Harrassowitz 1999) as well as numerous articles in linguistic typology, semantics and language change, and Japanese linguistics. He is currently involved in a typological project on semantic maps and is preparing the publication of a book on modality and the hierarchy of functional categories.