Non-Finiteness by Bingjun Yang

Non-Finiteness by Bingjun Yang

'Non-finiteness' is a phenomenon that occurs in most natural languages, whereby a verb is not inflected by grammatical tense, and does not possess the grammatical features of aspect, mood or voice. Various theories have been developed to explain their distribution and their role in clause structure, but many instances of non-finiteness remain unaccounted for. Taking a functional approach, this study proposes a 'process relation framework' to explain the more complex, previously unaccounted for, instances of non-finiteness in clause structure. It applies the framework comparatively to non-finiteness in English and Chinese, showing how it can be applied across typologically distinct languages. Drawing on corpus-based instances and observations, it introduces numerous thought-provoking cases, in which constructional (or combining) types and the predictability of non-finiteness co-occur. In terms of application, non-finiteness is decisive in categorising language types, and it is critical in processing natural languages, text segmentation and annotation in particular.

Bingjun Yang is Professor in Systemic Functional Linguistics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His publications include Corpus-based Investigations into Grammar, Media and Health Discourse (Springer Nature, 2020), Language Policy (Routledge, 2017) and Absolute Clauses in English from the Systemic Functional Perspective (Springer, 2015).

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781009073691
ISBN 10	1009073699
Title	Non-Finiteness
Author	Bingjun Yang
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Cambridge University Press
Year published	2025-03-20
Number of pages	250
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable